Appeals Court President Edward Zacca has turned away an appeal by a man who's lawyer claimed a Portuguese interpreter was inaccurate in court.

Joseph Moniz Lima, 41, of no fixed abode, was convicted in May last year and sent to prison for four years after being found guilty of punching the driver of a car and taking his vehicle, in March 2004.

During the trial an interpreter was required to translate the evidence of a Portuguese-speaking witness.

Presenting the appeal, lawyer Shade Subair said neither Lima nor his defence team were fluent Portuguese speakers and so had to rely on the translations of an interpreter.

Ms Subair argued this had presented difficulties throughout the cross-examination of the witness because of the quality of some of the translating.

But her appeal did not find favour with Court of Appeal President Justice Edward Zacca or Justices Sir Anthony Evans and Sir Charles Mantell, who asked to be given specific instances where the translation could be shown to have been inaccurate.

After an hour of submissions Mr. Justice Zacca dismissed the appeal.

He said: "Whilst it would have been better to have an interpreter more fluent than this interpreter ? and one hopes the court will try harder to get proper and more fluent interpreters ? in this case we have no reason to believe that proper answers were not given.

"So I do not think that the lack of 100 percent interpreting affected the case in any way."