Legal Interpreters in Exotic and Common Languages
Today, almost one in five Americans speaks a language other than English at home. As the non-English-speaking population continues to increase, so does the need for highly skilled legal interpreters.
Today, ninety-five percent of foreign-language interpreting events in federal court proceeding required services of Spanish language interpreters. Other frequently used languages, requiring court interpreter services, were: Mandarin, Vietnamese, Arabic, Korean, Cantonese, Russian, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, and Punjabi.
Court interpreting is a very specialized skill requiring great fluency in English and in a foreign language, and familiarity with the American legal system. Court interpreters need to be skilled in simultaneous and consecutive interpreting, and in document sight translation. Qualified interpreters provide consecutive interpreting services during depositions in civil cases, as well as during debriefings and proffer sessions in federal criminal cases. Often, court interpreters and language translators are required to provide foreign language tape transcription and translation.
Federal courts use language interpreters under federal law (the Court Interpreters Act, 28 U.S. Code Section 1827). So far there are federal certification programs for court interpreters, fluent in Spanish, Haitian-Creole and Navajo.
In the states the situation with court interpreter certification varies. The National Center for State Courts has organized a consortium of states that is sharing resources for testing court interpreters in a number of foreign languages. As of this writing, 39 states are members of the Consortium.
Contact our professional translation service to retain professional court interpreters for government debriefings, depositions, hearings, IMEs, settlement conferences, mediation, arbitrations, and trials, and for live, print, and written translations.