21 May 2012
Plan to cut spending on court interpreters leads to
farce
Rethink prompted after solicitors resort to Google
Translate to understand their clients
A defendant dubbed a
"pervert" by mistake, a rabbit applying to be a Czech language
specialist and solicitors using the Google Translate website to understand
their clients: the debacle surrounding court interpreters has had its amusing
moments.
Now the situation has
apparently become so serious that both the Commons Justice Select Committee and
the National Audit Office have confirmed that they may investigate the new
private contract.
In February, the Ministry
of Justice decided to replace the ad hoc system under which interpreters were
hired as and when needed. They hoped a single private contract with Applied
Language Solutions (ALS) would slash the £60m annual bill by a third.
The decision led to a
boycott by many interpreters, outraged at what they described as "woefully
inadequate" wages from ALS, which is owned by the support services company
Capita. The result has been a host of adjourned trials and some that have
collapsed. A retrial was ordered three days into a burglary case at Snaresbrook
Crown Court in east London when it emerged that the Romanian interpreter had
muddled the words "beaten" and "bitten".
Judge David Radford, who
presides at Snaresbrook, said recently that some cases had been "badly
affected".
In April, the barrister Andrew
Dallas said it might be quicker for him to learn Czech when an interpreter
failed to turn up at Bradford Crown Court to translate for his client, who was
accused of attempted murder.
In another case, a
Vietnamese translator was told to make a 560-mile round-trip from Newcastle for
an eight-minute hearing at South-East Suffolk Magistrates' Court. Solicitors at
the court in Ipswich complained that they were sometimes forced to use the
internet to translate.
Neil Saunders, who was
defending a Vietnamese client accused of growing cannabis, said no translator
turned up at four previous hearings. "Farcical is not the right word. It's
actually a tragedy," he said.
In other examples, a man
charged with perverting justice was told he was "a pervert", while a
volunteer had to be pulled from the public gallery to translate for a Slovak
defendant. To make a point, a Czech interpreter, Marie Adamova, applied to
register her rabbit, Jajo, with ALS. He was promptly sent a dozen emails by the
company.
Last week, the National
Register of Public Service Interpreters told the Justice Secretary, Ken Clarke:
"The concerns we referred to in February have not gone away. Indeed, the
position now appears to be worsening almost daily, to the detriment of both
professional interpreters and, equally importantly in our view, to the
efficient and fair administration of public service across most of the justice
sector."
A spokesman for ALS said
yesterday: "ALS is happy to co-operate fully with any review though has
not, to date, been approached on that basis by any of the bodies
mentioned."
The Ministry of Justice
insisted: "We have now seen a sustained improvement in performance. There
are now only a tiny handful of cases each day when an interpreter job is
unfilled.
"Disruption to court
business and complaints have reduced significantly. Close to 3,000 interpreters
are now working under this contract."
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