1) To what extent do the current interpreting and translation services provided in courts meet the needs of those involved in proceedings, including defendants, witnesses, prosecutors and legal professionals?
I. How have interpreting and translation services changed in recent years?
- The interpreting has become unreliable source of income since the outsourcing begone.
- interpreting rates offered by the MOJ contractor TBW are not financially viable, cancellations of bookings are not renumerated in a proper manner (booked for time), when interpreters are booked for a whole day and the interpreting finishes earlier the interpreter only gets paid the worked time resulting in financial losses.
- The qualified interpreters are exposed to submit to the oppressive T&Cs by TBW if they want to work for courts – the work is controlled by TBW monopoly.
- The qualified interpreters are being replaced by unqualified who are happy to work for below minimum wage rate. This lowers the standards in the profession. It is misleading the rest of the professionals who we work with as there is a great variety of standards.
- lack of regulation
- Agencies’ disinterest in public interest and employment of manipulative tactics in favour of profits. When unqualified interpreters are reported, the whistleblower losses work as consequence. The agencies show lack of responsibility, and the profits are placed before the public interest / quality provision. Their argument is that they can give the job to any interpreter they choose and the evidence is hard to gather apart from when lucky accidents happed for these practices to be revealed.
- interpreting rates have not changed for years and T&Cs (cancellations, travel) has worsened
2) What are the key issues in the provision of interpreting and translation services and what impact do they have on the running of the courts, public trust, interpreters and translators.
Key issues are that the profits of the private sector takes priority over the public interest by far and large bringing down the standards within the profession.
The qualified interpreters are being squeezed into poverty, and replaced by not qualified interpreters – TBW and other agencies actively recruit bilingual people with volunteering experience and send them to courts and police stations; Language Line provides interpreters for solicitor consultations at police stations – many of these interpreters lack any form of qualification leading to misinterpretations and miscommunication during police interviews and later at court.
The solicitors and barristers who book interpreters through agencies are oblivious to the facts that they might not be qualified. Miscarriage of justice which can happen is real and no one will ever know because the non English speaker has no voice. The unqualified interpreter becomes their voice. The accused’s rights are heavily impacted.
TBW’s new app introduced in June 2024 caused mass disruption and time wastage causing many interpreters to stop working for TBW. There is lack of transparency in their invoicing, the court bookings are double booked and more interpreters are coming to the same booking, some bookings are difficult to fill due to a completely unrealistic pay rates equating below minimum wage rare. Cancellations of court hearings due to the lack of interpreters cost public money.
TBW has not been paying all interpreters, I personally sent two SCC over the last two months and have not been accepting any work from TBW for several weeks, and cancelled all my future bookings including trials. I had to file for CCJ against TBW due to its inability to pay and respond to the email requests sent to them.
TBW manipulates the data of how many interpreters they have available. In June 2024, during a heavily controlled unfruitful meeting between interpreters and TBW, the representative Mark Rice stated that they had 2000 interpreters – only a few weeks later in September the public statement reports 5000 interpreters.
Mark Rice informed the interpreters during the very disappointing meeting from his messy bedroom that the app is working well and that it was absolutely fine when it was introduced in Sweeden. This was one of many misstatements – app still does not work properly and upon closer inspection, the interpreters found that our colleagues in Sweden protested when TBW took over the government contract due to the newly introduced low pay rates. The Swedish interpreters received support from the government .
There is general distrust towards TBW due to its public misstatements are misrepresentations which the interpreters feel is the opposite to what TBW states – there is no great working relationship - we are being oppressed and mistreated. Our emails to TBW remain unaswered, SCC go unanswered, even CCJ is not responded to.
How can the government body contract a company with a made up self proclaimed success whilst the people working for TBW keep shouting of mistreatment?
I. Is there data on the number of miscarriages of justice due to ITS error?
The interpreters have been taking screenshots during the launch of the new app and its continued dysfunction – interpreters are double booked, wrong languages are being sent to the interpreters, random cancellations, disappearing bookings, bookings with zero value on them…..
3) Are the required qualifications and experience of interpreting and translation services in the courts consistent?
Absolutely not. Bilingual people with volunteering experience are being called to interpret over the phone at police stations, for remote court hearings (by various agencies), and even to interpret at courts.
NO
NO
4) What quality assurance and complaints procedures are in place in relation to interpreting and translation services in the courts?
Very poor ones – reporting back to agency can lead to the loss of future work.
I. How easy is it for people to report or submit a complaint?
II. What data exists on the number and types of complaints made?
5) How easy is it to recruit and retain skilled interpreters and translators to work in the courts?
I have recently stopped accepting work from TBW, I only accept work from courts directly – my work load has dramatically decreased , I am DPSI law qualified and NRPSI registered.
It is easy for agencies to recruit unqualified interpreters.