Anonymous 10 – Written evidence (ITS0059)
I am a Polish Interpreter registered with the Big Word and until recently have been providing my regular services to HMCTS since around 2017. I am also a licenced sworn interpreter and translator (I&T) in Poland.
Since I have no experience of working in the industry before 2012, I cannot offer my views on any recent change, however as an I&T working also for the Polish Ministry of Justice, I can confidently highlight differences between the standards of and attitudes towards the service in the UK and Poland. I can also offer my views on my experience of working as an I&T through thebigword.
Re. Q1, Q3.
- UK: DPSI is the basic level 6 qualification constituting a gateway to the profession. There are no entry criteria; anyone can sit the exam which is very easy to pass. I passed it with very little preparation in a single attempt (all 6 parts of it). I had in fact attended a course run by a Mango Spice Academy agency but the course was not really fit for purpose. Thus, having passed the exam, I was completely unprepared for my job; I did not know the basic legal vocabulary; I had no skill set required; I was unfamiliar with the court procedures. Yet, I was deemed qualified and fit for the job. Appallingly, I was still better placed than some of my colleagues who had no university degrees to fall back on or in fact no DPSI.
- Poland: the exam is organised and run by the Ministry of Justice. The basic entry criterion is a university degree and the candidates can also voluntarily complete a postgrad course in legal translation run by the Institute of Applied Linguistics, UW. The exam consists of 6 parts and the level is extremely high (the pass rate is around 25%). A pass mark (75%) in the written part is a prerequisite to attempt the oral part which takes place on a different day (as opposed to DPSI). I attempted the exam once and failed. Therefore, in Poland only the best and most competent Interpreters and translators are selected to perform the job. The list of those Interpreters and translators is published on the Ministry of Justice website and only those interpreters can be booked to attend court.
Re. Q1, Q2.
- UK: I&Ts have no rights, they only have obligations, and those are steadily expanding. For example, now thebigword expects I&Ts to complete multiple bookings within the scope of one assignment. In other words, upon accepting a booking, I know only some of the T&Cs as those can be modified while the booking is in progress. On one occasion, when assigned to one defendant, I was requested by Leicester Magistrates Court to interpret for 5 others in the same case. I was literally running from one consultation room to another while being snatched by solicitors competing for my services. The fact that the defendants belonged in reality to two hostile groups was completely overlooked, and in the end, I was placed in a conflict position. The court case was inevitably delayed while I was assisting in a succession of legal consultations and when it eventually started some defendants were unable to hear me as I was interpreting from one end of the row to the 6 of them sitting next to one another.
- In terms of working conditions, courts seem to be under no obligation to ensure that I&Ts can actually perform their job. Most of the time the onus rests on I&Ts to arrange hearing equipment (which is not always available), request the speed of the proceedings to be adjusted, request the access to court bundles or documents, etc. In one of the recent assignments, I was interpreting in a manslaughter trial in Coventry Crown Court. It was the third day of the trial and the previous interpreter had been removed. When I requested headphones, the usher said that I would not need them as I would be able to hear everything without them. I insisted. It turned out that despite the headphones I could hardly hear anything. There was a loud interference which drowned over the voices of the speakers. On top of that, the headphones kept losing connection and we had to pause the proceedings whenever it happened. At one point when the jury monitors were not working and some cables were being tampered with to fix it, my headphones stopped working again. I felt very anxious and guilty but the prison officers reassured me that they had reported the audibility issue on many occasions but no one listened. When I questioned the usher about the technical issues still persisting 3 days into the trial, he responded that the previous interpreter had not raised any concerns. I told the court that I would be cancelling the remainder of my booking due to the distress the malfunctioning system was causing me. The Judge decided to finish the hearing earlier and my subsequent bookings were cancelled by the court.
- There are no fair procedures in place to resolve potential contentious issues between courts and I&Ts. In such instances, due to the power imbalance, I&Ts are at a disadvantage as courts are not held accountable for any failures on their part - and there are many. For example, double bookings placed in error, remote bookings requested when f2f attendance is required, failure to cancel I&Ts even if all the parties to the proceedings and their reps have been notified, lack of communication, no investigation procedures in existence, ill-treatment by court employees, etc. In May I was booked to attend a few-week trial in Birmingham Crown Court. 3 weeks into the trial I had an unpleasant experience when the usher rudely refused to sign my timesheet at the end of the day. I stood my ground as a signed timesheet is one of thebigword requirements and the only evidence of my attendance. As a consequence, I was removed from the remainder of the trial. The rationale for this was never explained to me despite my DSAR request. The management found no administrative failures on the part of the court notwithstanding the usher leaving work early without completing his duties. The fact that the change of the interpreter ‘on a whim’ would inevitably cause disruption at this late stage did not seem to matter. This clearly demonstrates that courts are given a free reign in dealing with interpreters; it allows for groundless and misguided decisions to be made to seek personal vendetta without any regard to a public purse or I&Ts’ wellbeing. There seems to be no control over this and no one is held accountable.
- There are many more examples of injustice that show that I&Ts are vulnerable to abuse of any kind having no laws or organisations (definitely not the Ministry of Justice which have been refusing to accept any responsibility nor NRPSI which aims at “protecting the public from Interpreters” [Mr Bishop]) they could rely on. There is no statute which regulates the profession; there are no provisions that would require courts to meet the needs of I&Ts. This in turn has a knock-on effect on other court users, as it impacts the quality of I&Ts’ performance, the speed and effectiveness of court cases, and finally the listings.
- Poland: rights and responsibilities of I&Ts are regulated by a statute; the statute sets out the rules for the spoken and written translation, disciplinary procedures, remuneration for I&Ts, code of conduct, etc. I&Ts have the right to see case documents before a hearing, hence they attend their bookings prepared. There are fair and balanced processes in place and I&Ts are afforded proper investigation if allegations are made. Since I&Ts are protected by law and the profession comes with prestige, there is less room for abuse.
Re. Q2
C. Qualifications
- As stated above, some I&Ts deployed to court cases do not hold basic qualifications, such as DPSI. This will inevitably lead to mistranslations. I personally know one colleague who has not passed DPSI but is regularly assigned to complex cases, such as murder trials. I have come across a defendant who was told by the said interpreter to attend his hearing on the 7th instead of 2nd. The defendant missed his hearing date and was subsequently punished for non-attendance when turned up in court on 7th.
D. Communication
- Lack of direct communication between courts and I&Ts is another problem. I&Ts are not cancelled when no longer required, links to remote hearings are not sent to I&Ts, to name a few. In 2020 I had been ordered by a Judge to attend a Coventry Crown Court hearing on the following day but thebigword failed to send me the booking and instead advised me to attend my original assignment in Nottingham. As a result, I attended the Coventry hearing late and the Judge put me under arrest and threatened with immediate two-year custody for breaching the court order. This is because thebigword did not take me off the original assignment to place me on a new one, and failed to inform the court of their mistake. Also, the fact that I was diverted from my original assignment just before it was due to commence caused disruption to the other hearing.
E. thebigword
- Most recently the new system introduced by thebigword in June this year has been causing multiple issues. For example, bookings disappearing from the app or not appearing there at all causing uncertainty as to whether the booking has been assigned or not, timesheets not opening resulting in I&Ts unable to access data such as venue, start time, case details. On one occasion I was on the line to thebigword for 30 min. before my call was answered. In the meantime, the judge was waiting as the court staff could not locate my case. On another occasion I was contacted by the court as I was not there while according to the app my booking was to start on the following day. The issues with the new app have also been affecting courts. For example, when courts could not access my details because those were not sent by thebigword, they could not email me the link to the virtual hearing. When courts were not contactable, the hearings simply would not go ahead.
- The rates of pay, including travel rates, and the whole idea of curtailing bookings (eg 7h bookings to 1h) do not make some jobs financially viable. I have been refusing to accept many bookings where costs might exceed earnings. Once however I fell into a trap of accepting a three-day trial in Leeds. The journey from Leicester took me 3 hours. On attending the hearing, I heard from the Judge that I was not required on that day. I was signed off with a one-hour booking duration. It was a lesson painfully learnt.
- Finally, the new invoicing system and the associated issues regularly ignored by thebigword is the most effective deterrent from accepting any jobs at all. At present the agency owes me over £6000 for jobs completed back in March, April, May, etc. and the debt is growing in tandem with the new errors piling up. Thebigword keep sending us all sorts of promises dependent on the nature of problems arising at a given time but those are invariably defaulted upon. I have sent multiple emails to various departments and managers but all I have received was two responses so far, and both arrived when the matters were escalated by way of the letter before action. Regrettably, I have been given another vague promise of interminable claim review but two weeks on no specifics have been offered. I took an active part in the protest last week and have not resumed work for thebigword. I have little choice but to leave the career I love if the status quo continues.
Re. Q4.
- F. The existing quality assurance is not fit for purpose. It is impossible to fail the assessment. The colleague of mine I referred to above has been assessed as a ‘pass’ although he mixed up basic vocabulary, i.e. colours.
- G. The complaints system is flawed. I have had a misfortune of accessing it recently in Birmingham Crown Court and followed all its stages. The responses I received were full of factual errors repeated in their exact form across all the stages. It is indicative of the lack of proper investigative procedures and yet again lack of control and accountability.
Re. Q5.
- Many of my colleagues, like myself, have now stopped working for thebigword.
Re. Q. 6.
H. The use of AI:
Introduction of AI in courts sounds like an ambitious plan given a lamentable state of the basic technology, which is outdated and malfunctioning. I have been attending only few cases where technical glitches have not been causing disruption to the court proceedings. What is more, printed documents are still widely used as a resource in courtrooms, and when additional printouts are prepared for I&Ts, they are in the same big format/font without any regard for the amount of material used. Links to remote hearings fail to work, and CVP is not the most reliable platform either. Perhaps those should be prioritised over grand AI plans.
30 September 2024