When a Defendant Gets Lost in Translation

The English expression “like a deer in the headlights” has no real equivalent in Spanish. Instead of its literal translation, “como un ciervo en los faros,” which would be lost on many Spanish speakers, you might instead use the phrasal verb “quedarse pasmado” (“to stay stunned”), which still fails to capture the momentary paralysis that accompanies the subject’s bewilderment. That’s how Fidel Gutierrez-Garcia looked when defense attorney Robert Garcia spoke to him in Spanish about his case, Garcia would later testify: “like a deer in the headlights.”  Gutierrez-Garcia, a pecan picker from a rural part of the Mexican state of Chihuahua, had been charged in Texas with possession with intent to distribute more than one hundred kilograms of marijuana—a felony, punishable by five to forty…

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