Demand for Interpreters In Area Courts on Rise
By Ernesto Londoño
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, August 16, 2007
They stand on the sidelines of court battles as neutral actors. Their work is sometimes overlooked and occasionally criticized.
But court interpreters play a key role in judicial matters, and demand for their services is soaring in Montgomery County and elsewhere in the Washington region as court systems evolve with the area's changing demographics.
Over the past year, the Montgomery County Circuit Court spent about $1 million for interpreter services, a nearly tenfold increase from the amount spent in 2000.
Statewide, the Maryland judiciary spent $2.6 million during fiscal 2006, the most recent data available. In fiscal 2002, it spent about $1.3 million.
The spike is partly the result of the expansion of the state's court interpreter program. In July 2002, Maryland Court of Appeals Chief Judge Robert M. Bell, the state's top judge, expanded it to cover civil and family law proceedings. Previously, the state appointed interpreters only in criminal cases.
The move has been applauded by career interpreters, immigrant advocates and lawyers.
"Language causes problems, and our job is to bridge that gap so people can have equal access to justice," said Javier A. Soler, the state's court interpreter program administrator.
But it has put great pressure on court officials. All court interpreters in the state work on a contract basis. But as demand continues to grow, Soler said, court officials in jurisdictions such as Montgomery are contemplating funding permanent interpreter jobs.
"It's clear that in the future this is something that is going to be needed," he said. "The biggest challenge is always recruiting and training certified interpreters."
The vast majority of interpreter cases in the state are for Spanish speakers, for whom interpreters are generally readily available. A Spanish-speaking interpreter is almost always present during the daily bond hearing in District Court in Rockville, when people detained overnight appear before a judge for the first time. Interpreters communicate crucial information, including bail amount, pretrial release supervision requirements and future hearing dates.
In more complex cases, interpreters can spend several days in court, relaying to defendants word for word what the judge, attorneys and witnesses say.
The job is tougher than many think, court interpreters say, and for too long it has wrongly been perceived as a task any bilingual person can perform.
"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.
View all comments that have been posted about this article.