19 July 2012
Unqualified interpreter halts trial
A murder
trial in Hampshire was halted for a day after an unqualified interpreter -
filling in for his wife - could not accurately translate questions from a
barrister.
The man
turned up at Winchester Crown Court 45 minutes late and concerns were raised
after 30 minutes that he was not translating questions into Punjabi properly
for a key witness during the trial of mother-of-two Rajvinder Kaur.
He later
revealed that his wife - the booked interpreter - was busy and he had come to
do her job. He said that he had taken the ALS interpreter test but not received
his results.
The
judge, Mr Justice Burnett, was forced to halt the trial last Friday, but a
similar event happened the following Monday when a female interpreter turned up
and was not able to correctly translate evidence, the Southern Daily Echo
reported.
The court
was able to carrying on sitting on that day with help from Kaur's junior
counsel Sukhdev Garcha, who speaks Punjabi and who had raised concerns in both
cases.
Both
translators were supplied by Applied Language Solutions (ALS), who have been
given a Government contract to supply translators to courts.
Judges
and court officials across the country have criticised the Ministry of
Justice's deal with ALS after stories of translators failing to arrive for
trials or unable to accurately interpret proceedings for defendants, witnesses
and victims.
Kaur, 37,
was on Thursday sentenced to life imprisonment and told she would serve a
minimum term of 11 years for battering her mother-in-law Baljit Kaur Buttar to
death with a rolling pin at her home in Southampton last February.
In a
brief statement, ALS said it would not comment on individual cases.
"Any
complaints received about interpreters are investigated thoroughly and, where
necessary, the interpreter is suspended from working with ALS until the
investigation is complete. At that point ALS will either remove them from its
register, reinstate them or provide further training, as appropriate," it
said.
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