CRIME TRACK
Meet the woman translating Thailand's darkest crimes
Lamphai Intathep and Wassayos Ngamkham
In the fairy tale, Snow White is bullied by a witch and seeks help from the seven dwarfs. But a real-life Snow White is the person police turn to when they need help with certain delicate cases.
Snow White Orawin Smelser - or Snowy to her friends - is a Thai-Texan woman who works as a translator at the Children, Juveniles and Women Division (CWD).
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| Snow White Orawin Smelser, a Thai-Texan English teacher, uses her bilingualism to help police officers at the Children, Juveniles and Women Division deal with cases involving foreign suspects. PATTANAPONG HIRUNARD |
Her work includes translating documents on transnational cases and for embassy officials and foreign crime investigation teams, and interpreting dialogues between the police and English-speaking suspects.
Ms Snow White - and yes, it is her real name - is the daughter of a Thai mother and a Texan father. She was raised in the United States and moved to Thailand five years ago.
The 32-year-old also works part-time as an English teacher at the AUA private language institute and as a freelance translator for a law firm.
She said a fellow teacher at AUA recommended she work as a translator for the CWD, which needed help with cases involving English-speaking foreigners.
At first, she was reluctant to do it, because she had a bad impression of the Thai police.
"People talk about bad police behaviour," she said. "I've heard that if a policeman charges you with a traffic offence, you can hand him some money and he will let you go."
The English teacher, however, decided to give it a try.
Now, after a year of working with officers at the CWD, Ms Snow White said her opinion of the Thai police had totally changed.
"They work all day and night to find the truth and track the criminals," she said.
Ms Snow White, who graduated from the University of Texas at Austin, where she studied advertising and web design, had worked on many cases, including that of a Canadian teacher who sexually abused underage boys around Southeast Asia, and a former British police officer implicated in a sex trafficking ring in London.
Christopher Paul Neil was arrested last October in Bangkok following a campaign by Interpol, which had reconstructed a series of digitally "swirled" internet images of a man abusing boys.
And former British police officer Ian Shuttleworth was arrested in Bangkok in March. He was accused of acting as a job broker, luring and smuggling Thai women into Britain for a London gang.
Ms Snow White remembers sitting between the suspect and the police one day and interpreting their conversations for nine hours.
After finishing the investigation process, she was asked to translate all information and dialogue between the Thai and British police which came in several forms - email, telephone conversations and video conferences.
She admitted that it is sometimes difficult to control her emotions while working on such sensitive cases. She said she often feels pity for the victims, but knows she has to keep her personal feelings to one side.
"I tell myself to remain unbiased and to bear in mind that everyone is innocent until proven guilty," she said.
She said working with the CWD can be stressful as she has to listen to details of inhumane acts, including human trafficking, sexual harassment, and child sex abuse.
But despite this, she said she would continue working with the CWD as it furnishes her with valuable experience difficult to find in other jobs.
With a degree in web design, she also helped developed an English-language website for the CWD, english.cwd.go.th, which contains useful information about the agency and emergency contacts for foreigners in trouble.
"I am proud to help the police," she said, adding that an English translator and interpreter is a must-have at police stations here because there are many foreigners in Thailand, and many criminal cases involved foreigners.
Ms Snow White, who was given her unique name by her Texan father because she was "white as snow" when she was born, said she loves working with languages and dreams of one day having her own language institute in Thailand.
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