Taniguchi v. Kan Pacific Saipan, Ltd.
The Supreme Court ruled that a federal cost-shifting law allowing winning parties to recover "compensation of interpreters" does not cover the cost of translating written documents, because an "interpreter" ordinarily means someone who translates spoken language.
The ruling narrows what expenses a losing party in federal litigation can be forced to pay, keeping document-translation costs off the list of routine expenses shifted to the losing side.
How it got here: A federal district court awarded the resort its document-translation costs; the Ninth Circuit affirmed; the injured man asked the Supreme Court to review the cost award.
The Case in Depth
What happened
A Japanese professional baseball player sued a resort in the Northern Mariana Islands after he was injured when his leg broke through a wooden deck. The resort won summary judgment and then sought to recover, as part of its litigation costs, the expense of translating Japanese documents into English that it had used to prepare its defense.
The question before the Court
When a federal law lets winners recover the cost of "interpreters," does that cover paying someone to translate written documents, not just spoken words?
Why it matters
Businesses and individuals involved in federal lawsuits with foreign-language evidence will now have to bear their own document-translation expenses rather than passing them to the losing side as recoverable costs, even though they can still recover costs for live oral interpretation, such as at depositions or trial.
What changes now
The Court vacated the Ninth Circuit's judgment and sent the case back for further proceedings consistent with its ruling that document-translation costs are not recoverable under this statute. The resort will likely have to bear its own translation expenses rather than recovering them from the losing party. This is a final merits decision resolving the legal question, though the case itself returns to the lower courts for further handling of the cost award.
What this does not decide
The Court did not decide whether document translation costs might be recoverable under some other cost category, and it acknowledged that "interpreter" can sometimes encompass document translators in some contexts — it simply held that is not the ordinary meaning of the word as used in this particular statute.
Concurrences and dissents
Dissent — Justice Ginsburg
“Documentary evidence in a foreign language, no less than oral statements, must be translated to equip the parties to present their case clearly and the court to decide the merits intelligently.”The dissent's objection that written translation deserves the same treatment as oral interpretation.
Justice Ginsburg argued that "interpreter" is commonly and acceptably used to include translators of written documents, citing dictionaries, lower-court rulings, and local court rules that treat document translation as covered. She emphasized that written translation, like oral translation, is essential to helping parties and courts understand foreign-language evidence, and that some tasks (like sight translation) blur the line between oral and written work, making the majority's line-drawing unworkable. She would have affirmed the Ninth Circuit and allowed recovery of the translation costs.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- The Court had to decide the ordinary meaning of the undefined statutory term "interpreter," since courts give undefined statutory words their common, everyday meaning rather than any technically possible reading.
- Surveying dictionaries in use when Congress passed the 1978 Court Interpreters Act, the Court found that most defined "interpreter" as someone who translates spoken language, while only a handful defined it broadly enough to also cover translators of written material; even the source recognizing a written-translation sense (the Oxford English Dictionary) labeled that sense obsolete.
- The Court reasoned that a dictionary definition being broad enough to include a meaning does not make that meaning the ordinary one, since the most common usage — oral translation — controls unless context points elsewhere.
- Turning to statutory context, the Court noted that the Court Interpreters Act's companion provisions all describe modes of oral interpretation (simultaneous, consecutive, summary) used in courtroom proceedings, and that professional literature distinguishes "interpreters" (oral) from "translators" (written), reinforcing that Congress used "interpreter" in its oral sense.
- The Court rejected the argument that Rule 54(d)'s general preference for awarding costs to the prevailing party justifies stretching the word's meaning, explaining that Rule 54(d) only lets courts decline to award listed costs, not expand the list of costs Congress specified in the statute.
- Applying this ordinary, oral-only meaning, the Court concluded that the document-translation expenses here fell outside "compensation of interpreters" under the statute.
Doctrinal impact
Cases affected by this decision
Reaffirms Crawford Fitting Co. v. J. T. Gibbons, Inc. (482 U.S. 437)
The Court relied on this case's rule that §1920 defines allowable costs and Rule 54(d) cannot expand that list.