Scottish Court Interpreting Service in Crisis

Follow @LalmyBen “Alas, three times alas” as we say in French, the Scottish court interpreting system and the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) are still learning the hard way despite clear and relevant recommendations made by various bodies and researchers in public service interpreting (e.g Scottish Forum for Public Service Interpreting and Translating, 2000).
Ruth Morris’s excellent paper “Court interpreting 2009: An undervalued and misunderstood profession? Or: Will justice speak? (1) is as relevant today in the spring of 2012 as when written in the summer of 2009. Morris concludes "Scotland is but one example of a legal system’s attitude to the undervalued and misunderstood profession of court interpreting”.

Three years later the provision of interpreting services to the Scottish Courts is marred by many shortcomings such as cutting cost at the expense of a quality of service in courts which in many cases led to adjournments because of inadequate interpreters being sent by the current Applied Language Solutions Agency. The cost of each case adjourned, of which there are many examples, is likely to cost the MoJ and the taxpayer far more than the poorly thought out notion of saving £18 million to the MoJ.

(1) Ruth-Morris, weblink for this document: https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:RUQa4Xi7DcIJ:www.ruth-morris.info/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/WillJusticeSpeakJuly2009REVISED051109.doc+court+interpreting+2009,+an+undervalued+and+misunderstood+profession?&hl=en&gl=uk&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESjNo1_ssCHIGQC2zFqPWhhFHV5uoMXscK0mlrFEAF4aFLY70w4kdEqZl1ask3rbyCeQXhdjxHTVag5hgOVhmPpSDFfRFl-2hs0Q34rgNUE1d5YGNnc70UfqiL5aNj73eKcfNf3z&sig=AHIEtbSd8UoywBL1W-G4W2zOVElDpNGvmQ