- Details
- Written by Dobitoc
- Category: Analysis and Comment
- Published: 12 March 2014
So, according to the Cambridge News, in one year, Cambridgeshire Police managed to reduce its monthly 'translation' bill for Romanian and Bulgarian from £1,366.94 in January 2013 to £0 in January 2014. However, the word 'translation' here must refer to 'written translation' not '[verbal] translation' or 'interpreting'. This is proved by the fact that, although January 2014 might have been a very quiet month for interpreters in Cambridgeshire, there were nevertheless interpreting assignments for which - obviously - interpreters were paid more than £0. Furthermore, amongst police forces, written translations make up only a small part of the overall expenditure on interpreting and translation. This is obvious from the minute expenditure on Bulgarian 'written translations' in January 2013, namely £9.10, a sum, incidentally, so meagre as to be below any reasonable minimum charge. In other words 'not very much expenditure' in January 2013, has been reduced to 'nil' in January 2014.
This is good news for Cambridge MP Julian Huppert who has a gift for stating the obvious. He notes that 'these statistics [show] that Cambridgeshire Police have not had to employ the services of Bulgarian & Romanian translators very often'. However the MP soon slides into a generalisation about the costs of 'translation services'. He observes that that 'over the last year' there were few demands on the Police budget 'for translation services'. He seems to think that the statistics arising from a comparison between one January and another involving only two languages can be extrapolated across all languages over an entire year. Huppert seems anxious to assure the folk of Cambridgeshire that far from there being a sudden influx of Balkan peoples in January 2014, the whole of the preceding year had itself been a very quiet one for immigration in general. In Huppert's world, all has been well for Cambridgeshire tax payers for some time. But it is entirely possible that other languages such as Polish & Lithuanian were all-too-much in demand in 2013, especially as those nationalities could enter the UK free from the restrictions imposed on Romanians and Bulgarians.
- Details
- Written by The Press, York
- Category: News
- Published: 05 March 2014
The company responsible for providing interpreters for criminal courts in England and Wales has apologised unreservedly to York magistrates for causing a day-long court delay.
Romanian speaking Cristian Bodgan Ariel Cristea, 31, was scheduled to have his bail application and case heard at 10am.
But although staff at York Magistrates Court had booked an interpreter from Capita Translation & Interpreting, none attended.
Magistrates heard it was not until staff rang the agency that they learned, at 10.55am, that the interpreter scheduled to attend could not attend because her car had broken down at 6.15pm the previous day.
Only after the court had contacted a different interpreter directly, could Cristea start his bail application – at 4.30pm. He was successful and was able to walk free shortly after 5pm, seven hours after his case had been due to be heard.
Magistrate Jenny Taylor, speaking on behalf of all three magistrates, said of the non-arrival of the Capita interpreter: “We have had a lot of problems because of that.”
She thanked the court-booked interpreter who had rushed from Harrogate Magistrates Court where she had been working in a different case to York.
- Details
- Written by Belfast Telegraph
- Category: News
- Published: 27 February 2014
A sex offender attempted to have his conviction for attacking a woman quashed after claiming an interpreter – who was not properly qualified – told the victim what to say in court.
The Court of Appeal this week dismissed the appeal by Noel Jesus Foronda against his conviction for the offence of sexual assault.
Foronda was found guilty by a jury last May and sentenced to two years, one of which he was ordered to spend in prison.
He appealed the conviction, citing concerns over the conduct of the Filipino interpreter employed for the case by the Public Prosecution Service (PPS).
The Court of Appeal heard that during the Crown Court trial the interpreter appointed on behalf of Foronda informed the judge that the PPS interpreter had been prompting the victim.
- Details
- Written by Aisha Maniar
- Category: Analysis and Comment
- Published: 21 February 2014
A translator and human rights activist analyses the ongoing issues thrown up by the privatisation of court interpreting services by the Ministry of Justice.
Next year marks the 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta, arguably one of the most important legal documents in the world, guaranteeing the right to a fair trial. That right is also ensured under Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which includes the minimum right of a defendant ‘to be informed promptly, in a language which he understands and in detail, of the nature and cause of the accusation against him’ and ‘to have the free assistance of an interpreter if he cannot understand or speak the language used in court.’ The right to interpretation also applies to complainants. These fair trial rights are now under threat in various ways in modern Britain, particularly through plans to privatise legal aid services and the privatisation of court interpreting services, the privatisation framework agreement for which became operational on 30 January 2012.
The framework agreement replaced a system governed by a National Agreement whereby interpreters, who are largely self-employed and work independently, are selected from the National Register of Public Service Interpreters (NRPSI), the UK’s independent voluntary regulator for the interpreting profession (formed in 1994). This system, introduced following a number of miscarriages of justice related to a failure to appreciate the language needs of criminal justice system users, functioned adequately until the beginning of this decade. But in August 2011, following a public procurement procedure, the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) signed a five-year, £90 million contract with a small private language service provider called Applied Language Services (ALS). Before the contract went live six months later, ALS was acquired by Capita, a private company notorious for its large stake in the public sector and its ability to both secure and mismanage public contracts. Both the MoJ and ALS deny that they knew at the time of signing the contract of the imminent acquisition of ALS by Capita.
- Details
- Written by BrendanP
- Category: Analysis and Comment
- Published: 12 February 2014
How times have changed. Was it really less than 3 years since Vinod Puri was convicted on seven counts of fraud for falsely claiming to be NRPSI? The sentence was seven months imprisonment and a fine of almost £19,000. PC Max Conner said: "Mr Puri had prevented genuine registered interpreters doing their job." Since then, Capita has supplied to the Courts - on at least 6,000 occasions that we know about - unqualified linguists masquerading as genuine bona-fide interpreters.
What punishment has Capita suffered? No one has gone to prison, and the financial penalty amounts to a miserly £53,000, which is more than offset by the £390,000 annual 'must try harder' bonus-for-failure contract variation agreed by the MoJ. All of which proves that there is one law for the rich and another for the poor, and that the punishment doesn't always fit the crime.