Haitian man spent 16 months in a Brazilian prison, waiting to be understood

Language barriers can get you into trouble, depending on the situation. You might get the wrong order at the coffee shop, or you might get on the wrong bus and end up lost in a foreign country. However, for one Haitian man in São Paulo, a language barrier landed him in prison for 16 months.

Accused of murdering his wife, the man was hauled in for questioning but couldn’t understand what the police were asking him. And, in turn, law enforcement couldn’t understand their suspect, who only spoke Creole — the native language of the majority of Haitians.

As Creole is largely based on 18th-century French, the courts called for a French-speaking interpreter to take his testimony. Alas, the two languages are not mutually intelligible, having developed huge differences in phonetics and grammar structure over time. The public defender appointed to serve as the man’s counsel showed up to court without ever having heard his client’s side of the story — the case was considered lost.

The last chance for the accused came during his trial. Bruno Silva Pinto, a postgraduate linguistics student and Haitian Creole speaker, was invited to take...