Courts will not provide Portuguese translation of ruling

From left to right: Jorge Menezes, Sulu Sou, Scott Chiang and Pedro Leal

The Times has learned that a request from the two lawyers defending Sulu Sou and Scott Chiang to have the 66-page ruling translated from Chinese to Portuguese has been rejected by the court.

The two official languages of the Macau Special Administrative Region are Chinese and Portuguese. Lawyers Jorge Menezes and Pedro Leal are both Portuguese and neither speaks Chinese.

Sou and Chiang were both sentenced to fines worth 120 days on Tuesday, drawing to a close a controversial case that had been subject to numerous appeals and disputes.

Their lawyers told the media on Tuesday evening that they were both surprised and unhappy over the sentence, adding that they had expected their clients to be acquitted

Menezes and Leal said that they are studying with their clients the possibility of appealing the sentence. The verdict and sentencing may only be appealed during a 20-day period that began after the trial concluded.

It is not the first occasion that a request to have court documents translated into Portuguese, an official language of the MSAR, has been refused.

However, in January this year, Menezes was successful in requesting that the Court of First Instance postpone the start of the case until the lawyer could have the relevant case documents translated.