When they searched his car, with his consent, they found quite a stash of meth and cocaine, which naturally led to his arrest.īut there’s a catch: Cruz-Zamora doesn’t speak English well, so the consent to search the car was obtained via an exchange facilitated by Google Translate - an exchange that the court found was insufficiently accurate to constitute consent given “freely and intelligently.”

The case in question involved a Mexican man named Omar Cruz-Zamora, who was pulled over by cops in Kansas. We are fortunate to live in a multilingual society, but for the present and foreseeable future it seems humans are still needed to bridge language gaps. The ruling (PDF) is not hugely consequential, but it is indicative of the evolving place in which translation apps find themselves in our lives and legal system. And when it comes to the law and constitutional rights, a “good enough” translation doesn’t cut it, a judge has ruled. Machine translation of foreign languages is undoubtedly a very useful thing, but if you’re going for anything more than directions or recommendations for lunch, its shallowness is a real barrier.

Google translate to mexican spanish