I’m mainly talking about conversations that are wired (like those use by law enforcement) when an undercover agent is wearing a wire. Of course, those conversations are recorded but can languages alone obfuscate the nuance of the spoken dialog since each language is different?
Again, not talking about “Spanish to English” level translation where it’s straight forward, rather it’s closer to “Japanese to English” where there are cultural differences, slang, honorifics and personification that can’t be translated properly without given context in advance.
I think the best outcome is for your defense attorney to sow doubt over the recorded audio.
There are a number of things a recording will not pick up. Somebody could make air quotes with their hand while giving the spoken word a neutral tone. You could easily get to a he said she said situation there. Did they mean it? Or did they know about the wire? Do we have witnesses who saw the air quotes? Reasonable doubt spreads from here. I saw an interesting video where a mobster was showing his technique of pouring wine in different ways to communicate to his in-group to watch their mouths if an outsider is there. A wire would miss stuff like that. It’s the sign language of House Artreides, for the people who don’t hate sand.
There is also something to say about translations. You’ll inevitably arrive in situations where different interpretors will translate certain quotes differently depending on context. There is wiggle room. So the hypothetical Japanese wire recording could provide some fertile soil for reasonable doubt in an English speaking court as well. Less so because of the additional politeness levels but because the language drops subjects all the time. English grammar slavishly demandsa subject for most phrases and the Japanese omit them willy nilly. Who did what and to whom becomes harder to judge when you don’t have all the pieces of the puzzle. Slang can be decoded; inside jokes may prove harder. “Shaka when the walls fell.” If you’re a Trekkie, you know. But if you have an inside joke like that within a small group of foreign language speakers language could obfuscate some things. But it may not be enough to render the whole recording useless.
We have come to a point where lenses are so small. With the possibility of deepfakes, I think law enforcement may no longer just send people in with a mic only. Sure, a video can be deepfaked as well but it will be harder to fake and maybe easier to prove that it was.