Saturday, 18 August 2012

Social Justice First: Lost in translation


18 August 2012

Lost in translation
[…] Between January and April of this year 26,059 people requested the provision of a courtroom interpreter. Over half of these requests concerned criminal law proceedings and 142 different languages were used. Speedy and quality provision of interpreters is not cheap. Therefore, it is unsurprising that the government wished to make savings. However, the manner in which it has chosen to do so is proving to be expensive in terms of legal costs and the quality of justice provided. The company to whom the government has entrusted this vital function, in the form of a sixty million (Applied Language Solutions). The firm has come under fire from interpreters, judges and lawyers and the manner in which the contract was awarded is now the subject of investigation by MPs. […]


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