05/11/19 by Bethan Staton
UK’s court interpreters fear cost-cutting is
threatening fair trials
Immigration lawyer Lawrence Youssefian thought he knew
his client well, so he was surprised when the asylum seeker he was representing
at a hearing earlier this year was reprimanded by the judge for answering
evasively. The man, a Dari speaker, who was communicating through an
interpreter, had described his experience of fleeing persecution many times
before. But when he was asked whether his business partner had been pursued by
militants, he replied instead that his wife had not been targeted. The judge
pulled him up for not answering the question. The apparent evasion put Mr
Youssefian — who understands some Dari because of his knowledge of Farsi (the
two languages have common roots) — on alert. He began to focus more on the
translation of the proceedings and a bit later noticed the interpreter had
skipped over an entire sentence spoken by his client. It was then he realised
where the problem lay: the interpreter simply did not have a good enough grasp
of English and had been unable to distinguish between the terms for marital and
business partners. As a result, the judge adjourned the case. “It literally can
be the difference between life and death,” Mr Youssefian said. “The nuances of
the language you use, and whether your accounts match, can make or break your
case.” Accurate court interpreting — the right to understand and be understood
— is important. It is enshrined in English law and the European Convention on
Human Rights as fundamental to a fair trial. But professional interpreters and
lawyers have warned that this right is increasingly under threat in UK
courtrooms following a 2011 decision by the Conservative-led government to
outsource interpreting services to agencies to reduce costs. This led to a cut
in rates of pay and qualification requirements.
Groups representing interpreters said the low pay made
it harder to attract qualified language specialists, leaving less capable
linguists to take on complex court assignments. “We’re looking at the complete
deprofessionalisation of interpreting,” said Alan Thompson, head of
professional body the Association of Police and Court Interpreters.
“Interpreters consider themselves professionals working in the justice system.
Under outsourcing, we’re treated like paper clips.” Before court languages
services were outsourced, interpreters would earn £30 an hour, with good
provision for travel time and minimum rates. They were booked directly by
courts from the National Registry of Public Service Interpreters, a voluntary
body that vetted those on its books for qualifications and standards. Now, all
foreign language interpreters are booked through a single agency, Thebigword,
and can earn as little as £18 an hour, with a sharp reduction in benefits.
Qualification requirements are also now below what the NRPSI would accept. Paul
Tomlinson, a French and Spanish interpreter based in Birmingham, now rarely
accepts court work, not least because it can often leave him out of pocket
because of a sharp reduction in travel expenses. He said he has witnessed an
exodus of qualified interpreters from the courts, and when he does work in
courtrooms, it is often alongside incompetent linguists. “Vulnerable parents
whose English is not good can face losing their children, liberty or sometimes
both,” Mr Tomlinson said, referring to sensitive family cases he was involved
in. Mr Tomlinson’s experience and warning of a “catastrophic” deskilling, was
echoed by a dozen interpreters interviewed by the Financial Times. Klasiena
Slaney, a Portuguese interpreter, pointed out that the Crown Prosecution
Service still uses the NRPSI to book its specialist linguists and called on the
government to reinstate the system for the court services. “The Ministry of
Justice has said the national register is obsolete, that we’re not going to
need it any more,” she said. “But the government needs to regulate the
profession — we need a protection for the title of interpreter.”
Outsourcing of the service did not start well. Within
the first year, the House of Commons public accounts committee had described
the arrangement as “total chaos”. Capita, the contractor, was fined more than
£50,000 by the government and the outsourcing specialist withdrew from bidding
for a retendered contract in 2016. Thebigword, which has the £120m contract
until next year, rejected all of the allegations about shortcomings in its
service. The company said all the linguists it used were qualified for the
assignments they were given. It said official data showed that it provided
“reliable, high-quality language services” that were “excellent value for
money”. Last year it processed 143,646 interpreter bookings, with a success
rate of about 97 per cent, just short of the government target of 98 per cent,
and a complaint rate of less than 1 per cent.
The justice ministry also pointed to the statistics,
adding that it “monitors services carefully to ensure they are consistently
good and accessible”. But lawyers and interpreters said the data hid the
problem. Mr Youssefian, who is based at Goldsmiths Chambers in London, said
most barristers could not be expected to spot problems with interpreting
unless, like him, they had at least some understanding of the language their
clients spoke. Their concerns have been voiced in parliament through Yasmin
Qureshi, a barrister and Labour MP, who is concerned the favourable statistics
do not tell the whole story. “Contrary to government claims that translation
services are working well, I have been repeatedly informed by legal
professionals that quality is low and interpreters are both overstretched and
under-resourced,” she said. The collapse of Debonair Languages, one of
Thebigword’s subcontractors, underscored the crisis in court interpreting. The
company filed for administration in August, leaving some interpreters unpaid.
Mike Orlov, director of NRPSI, said the collapse had destroyed what little
trust remained between interpreters and Thebigword. Immediately after it was
announced, he wrote to business secretary Andrea Leadsom demanding that she
acted to end what he described as the “wild west” conditions of agency work.
His letter was passed on to the minister for procurement and he will meet
officials at the Ministry of Justice this month. Mr Orlov accused the
government of undermining court interpreting by “focusing on price and supply
at the expense of quality”, and warned that it needed to act to guarantee the
right to a fair trial. “If the interpreter doesn’t turn up on time, if they
can’t speak the language, if they’re not a professional, then the case is
jeopardised,” he said. “It’s unacceptable.”
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