A Change In the Provision Of Court Interpreters Causes Trouble In UK Courts
February 15, 2012 by la-andrea
Interpreting in court is a highly specialised and challenging job. However, the cost of court interpreting can be expensive which is why the UK government is hoping to save money by changing the way court interpreters are provided for court hearings. Courts in England and Wales used to use interpreters who were registered on the National Register, a register of professional and qualified interpreters. The new system, uses interpreters via an agency called Applied Language Solutions (ALS) who claim to be able to cut the cost of court interpreting, by a third.
The change in the way court interpreters are booked for hearings has caused outrage amongst the interpreters who are registered on the National Register as their pay has been drastically cut. The Professional Interpreters Alliance (PIA), the interpreters’ membership body, says that due to this boycott the ALS is now having to use people with very little experience of the legal system, which could have detrimental consequences.
“We are already hearing horror stories from all over the country. Being a court interpreter is a specialised and difficult job. You have to be accurate as people’s liberty is at stake,” says PIA director Madeleine Lee.
The ALS denies this claim saying that their interpreters are vetted and undergo independent assessments. The Ministry of Justice is monitoring the new system very closely.
Read more about the new changes in the provision of court interpreters in the UK>>
What are your thoughts on this change? Are you an interpreter? How has this affected you? We’d love to hear from you. Please send us your comments using the Comments box below.
The cost of professional interpreters is NOT expensive. Have you compared it to the cost of solicitors, barristers, a QC (jobs for two boys in the High Court), many of whom are paid by the state? The other point is that quite a lot of the cost of interpreters is recuperated through the Proceeds of Crime orders, fines, etc. Court interpreters are the most vulnerable people in the legal system. They are purely independent, get no holiday or sick pay and are at the mercy of those who employ them who can arbitrarily cut their pay (as has been the case here) by 75%. Interpreting is not an unskilled job, it requires many fine qualities as well as an excellent knowledge of BOTH languages (yes, English is important as well), of the English or Scottish legal system and legal procedure to say nothing of tact, diplomacy, etc. I have been a court interpreter for 35 years on three continents. Every magistrates court list, in every country, always contains a high proportion of foreigners for a number of reasons, so the need for interpreters is worldwide. It is just an expense that the British Government will have to grin and bear or the consequences will be dire.
The new arrangement has obviously been agreed by people who have no idea about court interpreting. When an interpreter is needed in court nobody knows for how long he /she will have to be there, so the interpreter will actually reserve the whole day for that particular booking. Sometimes he/she can make an acceptable guess and set aside only half a day if the hearing is only a simple one and in a court that is known to be less busy. We may look a bit churlish to some people by not accepting to work for £20 per hour. This is because in practice ALS wants us to work for £20 a day. Imagine, an interpreter from East London going to Isleworth Crown Court. The return journey is 4 hours, the cost of the travelcard is £10.40 and when you get there the hearing is over in ten minutes. The interpreter cannot do much else during the rest of that day and, in any case, could not have accepted another booking because that hearing could also have taken the whole day. Under the National Agreement system the interpreter gets £85 minimum payment, plus travel time at £15/hour plus the cost of travel. As we are all freelancers, so no pension, no holiday or sick pay, this is a reasonable but not excessive fee. With ALS we would only get £9.60 at the end of such an assignment (£20 minus £10.40 travel). No wonder, the cleaners and jobseekers they are trying to recruit are not interested.