Abdula was tried jointly with another man on a charge of raping a teenage student in the back streets of Wellington's main nightclub and bar area in April 2007.
He was found guilty and jailed for seven years, while his co-accused got four years behind bars for unlawful sexual connection and being a party to rape.
During their 2009 trial the pair shared an interpreter who sat between them in the dock translating between English and Oromo, one of the official languages in Ethiopia.
With no Oromo language interpreters in New Zealand, one of only two on the database of the relevant Australian government agency was brought to New Zealand but was able to stay for just the first week.
The next week the only other interpreter available - a Wellington taxi driver - took over.
One of the grounds of Abdula's appeal was that the quality of interpretation during the first week of his trial was poor and did not meet the standard required under the Bill of Rights Act.
Through his lawyer, Donald Stevens QC, he also complained of problems arising from the interpreter's soft voice and the lapse from time to time into simultaneous interpretation as evidence was given.
The Supreme Court accepted that there were some occasional difficulties during the trial but said the judge had regularly taken the initiative "in a number of ways" to ensure the process was working.
Neither the accused nor his counsel had raised any objections to the quality of interpretation during the trial.
For those reasons, the appeal against conviction was dismissed.
However, the Supreme Court recognised that the trial "did not at times reflect best practice".
In future cases, the judgment said, interpretation should not become simultaneous with the giving of evidence. This would give accused time to react appropriately and would avoid the risk of the interpreter missing passages of evidence.
The interpreter should also speak in a voice loud enough for all in the courtroom to hear, plus an audio recording should be made of all criminal trials in which interpretation was required.
While the standard of interpreters in court proceedings was high, "it is not one of perfection", the Supreme Court said.
It was clearly desirable that programmes for training court interpreters should be further developed, but it was not the case that only those holding particular qualifications should be recognised as competent to interpret trials.
Interpreting New Zealand trains speakers of English and one or more languages as interpreters for Government organisations, including the Justice Department.
