Translators Essential to Unlocking Legal Battles

"People still believe that if you're bilingual that's sufficient for being an interpreter," said Isabel Framer, a court interpreter and chair of the National Association of Judiciary Interpreters and Translators.

Performing the job requires the ability to interpret simultaneously for long periods of time, paying close attention to detail, emphasis and meaning. An understanding of the judicial process and a solid grasp of forensic and scientific terms -- as well as slang, which often varies from country to country -- is also crucial.

"If the interpreter is not competent, it will render everyone incompetent," Framer said. "None of the officers of the court can carry out their jobs."

For the most part, interpreters in Montgomery County do a good job, said Mariana Cordier, a defense lawyer and past president of the Maryland Hispanic Bar Association.

"You get spoiled in Montgomery County," she said, noting that qualified interpreters are more scarce in neighboring jurisdictions.

She said the expansion of the program to family and civil proceedings was long overdue. In the past, Cordier said, people involved in family and civil cases would ask relatives to serve as interpreters.

"We had at one point a huge problem where witnesses were being witnesses and translators," she said.

Locally and nationally, court officials say they are increasingly handling cases that require interpreters fluent in uncommon languages. In Maryland, the demand for uncommon languages and dialects spoken in India, Africa and Central America has grown in recent years, Soler said. Searches for interpreters of rare languages have become a weekly issue in the state, he added.

One such case made national news last month when a Montgomery County judge dismissed rape and sex abuse charges filed against a Liberian man after repeated delays in the case. It was postponed numerous times because court officials struggled to find an interpreter fluent in Vai, the man's native dialect. By the time an interpreter was in place, the judge ruled that the defendant's constitutional right to a speedy trial had been violated. The state is appealing the dismissal.