A further call to action: training as a policy issue in court interpreting

Abstract

This article gathers research from three studies conducted by industry stakeholders in US court interpreting – research which provides a blueprint for prioritising quality in courtroom language access and which concretely links court interpreter training to policy decisions in the areas of language access and interpreter certification testing. The first study examines training experiences of Spanish/English court interpreters in one US state (Wisconsin); the second surveys practising court interpreters in the same state to demarcate specific skill domains and content in which court interpreters wish to receive training; and the third study examines failure rates on the state-level oral court interpreting exams on a national level over a 15-year period, suggesting some key strategies to mitigate such failure. In light of the aforementioned studies, as well as in response to the National Center for State Court’s recent publication entitled A National Call to Action, this article represents a further call to action, beseeching educators and policymakers to create meaningful training opportunities, to acknowledge the relationship between lack of training and widespread oral exam failure, and to reward and incentivise training and credentialing through proactive policy decisions.

Keywords:

• language access
• language access policy
• due process
• court interpreter training

Notes

1. Thefreedictionary.com offers an accessible definition of due process, defining it as ‘a fundamental principle of fairness in all legal matters, both civil and criminal, especially in the courts. All legal procedures set by statute and court practice, including notice of rights, must be followed for each individual so that no prejudicial or unequal treatment will result … From this basic principle flow many legal decisions determining both procedural and substantive rights’ (Hill and Hill 1981–2005).

2. As of 31 March 2010, the states which were members of the Consortium but which did not have certification processes were Alabama, Alaska, Illinois, Maine, New Hampshire, Ohio and Vermont. The states which did not belong to the Consortium at all as of April 2012 were Kansas, Montana, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Rhode Island and Wyoming.

3. The National Summit was held in Houston, Texas, in October 2012 (see NCSC 2012).

4. Less than a year later, all Spanish/English interpreters at the provisional and trainee levels were removed from the state’s roster, a decision taken by the Supreme Court Committee to Improve Translation and Interpreting in the Wisconsin Courts. Spanish/English was the only language pair affected, as the Committee decided that there were enough certified interpreters that the use of less-qualified people in that language pair was unjustifiable. This process of adjusting criteria for inclusion on official registers constitutes yet another example of using policy to prioritise quality.

5. By way of comparison, examinees in the healthcare interpreting profession must be able to document a minimum of 40 hours of specialised healthcare interpreter training in order to be eligible to sit for the exam offered by the Certification Commission for Healthcare Interpreters. To take the exam offered by the National Board of Certification for Medical Interpreters, examinees must be able to document 40 hours of training in the event that they do not already have 1 year of on-the-job interpreting experience.

6. Raw exam scores were provided by the Consortium for Language Access in the Courts with all identifying information removed. (For a more exhaustive analysis of the Consortium data set and its analysis, see Wallace 2012.)

7. The Committee to Improve Interpretation and Translation in the Wisconsin Courts is a state Supreme Court advisory committee that provides policy and guidance on interpretation and translation issues to the Director of State Courts, which is the administrative arm of the court system. The author was an appointed member of this committee at the time the survey was taken and was involved in its drafting and implementation.

8. The website of the Wisconsin Court System states that ‘Beginning 1 January 2015, all spoken language interpreters who appear on the Roster will be required to obtain Continuing Education (CE) credits during a two-year compliance period in order to maintain their certification with the CIP’ (Wisconsin Court System 2014, n.p.).

9. A worthy model for such standards might be found in the National Standards for Healthcare Interpreter Training Programs (NCIHC 2011).

10. While one study has been carried out on the predictive validity of the written portion of the federal (FCICE) certification exam, nothing similar has yet been done on the standardised written screening exam that the Consortium for Language Access in the Courts has made available to its member states (Stansfield and Hewitt 2005).

11. The states which required no written screening exam as of the publishing of this report are Alabama, Alaska, Delaware, Illinois, Main, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Ohio, South Carolina and Vermont. Minnesota required only a written ethics test (NCSC 2013b, n.p.).

12. Although the non-English language is not assessed in the written examination phase, the Consortium written exams were designed to test for substantive knowledge as well as proficiency in the language of record of the court. The multiple-choice test is in English and consists of 135 questions covering general English proficiency, court-related terms and usage, and ethics/professional conduct.

13. Voir dire refers to the questioning of prospective jurors by a judge and attorneys in court. It is used to determine if any juror is biased and/or cannot deal with the issues fairly, or if there is cause not to allow a juror to serve. By the same token, this questioning mechanism is used by judges to determine a court interpreter’s fitness to serve and can include questions aimed at determining the interpreter’s professional qualifications, potential biases, acquaintanceship with the parties involved, or other potential conflicts of interest.

14. According to the Wisconsin State Legislature, the term ‘qualified interpreter’ refers to a person who is able to do all of the following: ‘(1) Readily communicate with a person who has limited English proficiency; (2) Orally transfer the meaning of statements to and from English and the language spoken by a person who has limited English proficiency in the context of a court proceeding and; (3) Readily and accurately interpret for a person who has limited English proficiency, without omissions or additions, in a manner that conserves the meaning, tone, and style of the original statement, including dialect, slang, and specialized vocabulary’ (Wisconsin State Legislature 2014, n.p.). The pilot project’s final report did not provide guidelines for how the District Court Administrator’s office would determine which interpreters met the criteria of ‘qualified’.