HMCTS Interpreting Reports
An advocate said he had battled to communicate with his cannabis farmer-accused client using Google Translate – as no interpreter was available.
An officer at South London Magistrates Courts said: “I am unable to give you a specific reason as to why an interpreter wasn’t arranged on both occasions but more often than not we book them but the agency that we use are unable to provide.”
An Ipswich court was forced to use a translation app to communicate with a defendant who speaks limited English after an interpreter failed to attend his sentencing hearing.
To ask Her Majesty's Government how often each year between 2017 and 2020 interpreters were used in courts or tribunals in each of the following case categories, as specified by the Ministry of Justice's language services contract: (1) complex written, (2) complex, and (3) standard.
