Justice is hard enough to get to when everyone speaks the same language. But when they don’t, it’s fraught with peril.

It’s so fraught that at times like Thursday in B.C. Supreme Court, a trial needs to be stopped until everyone involved is satisfied that what is being said is being perfectly understood and perfectly interpreted.

For Mumtaz Ladha, it’s particularly crucial. She is accused of human trafficking, employing a foreign national without authorization and misrepresenting facts to both the Canadian High Commission in Tanzania and to Citizenship and Immigration Canada.

The problem is not that Ladha can’t make herself understood. The 60-year-old is a Canadian citizen, who speaks fluent English and Swahili.

It’s her alleged victim — a 26-year-old Tanzanian woman with a Grade 8 education — who is having a hard time because she speaks Swahili and only limited English.

Since she began testifying Wednesday, the court-accredited interpreter has struggled to translate both from English into her particular Tanzanian dialect of Swahili and then from Swahili back into English.

Times and dates were wrong and nuance was lost.

When another interpreter was brought in Thursday morning, he was rejected before Justice Lauri Ann Fenlon even had a chance to see him. He speaks a Kenyan dialect that’s even less connected to the Tanzanian one.

So, with the permission of Justice Lauri Ann Fenlon, others in the courtroom were encouraged to step in to correct the interpreter. Sometimes it was the witness. Sometimes Ladha. And, at least once, it was Crown lawyer Simon Charles, who learned Swahili as a child growing up in Tanzania.

But by Thursday afternoon, it was clear to everybody — even spectators in the gallery — that while the Rwandan-born interpreter was doing the best, it simply wasn’t good enough.

Because of the language confusion, it was occasionally difficult to discern whether the witness was changing her story, whether she’d misunderstood questions or her answers were improperly translated.

Justice requires precision — or at least the closest that flawed humans can manage.

Yet, there was little of that in Courtroom 55 that didn’t come without questions being asked, re-asked and restated or, at one point, with the witness speaking English herself.

There is much at stake in this trial.

If she’s found guilty, Ladha could face a fine of up to $1 million and life in prison.

For prosecutors, the key witness’s credibility is at stake because her testimony forms the backbone of the government’s case.

But that aside, the credibility and reputation of the court is also on the line.

All citizens and even non-citizens (including the Tanzanian maid who is facing her former employer in an English-speaking court) need to trust that if they do go to court, they will be fairly treated and that the rule of law will prevail regardless of what their mother tongue is, their ethnicity or their gender.

It’s especially in trials like this one where the word of an orphaned, poorly educated housemaid is pitted against that of a wealthy, powerful businesswoman.