Foreign language interpreters are now being subject to further their education beyond the boundaries of language interpretation. Arizona will soon require court interpreters to know the law, and this makes perfect sense. Having a clear and concise knowledge of the industry in which you are interpreting for is paramount for a successful scheduled courtroom interpretation.
There are many cases where a slight miscommunication has had detrimental effects, and we have spoken about some of them in previous posts. In this blog post, one simple misused word led to the defendant thinking he had done much worse than a traffic violation. Here is another article, in this situation, the scheduled phone interpreter misinterpreted, and what was a bleed in the brain was treated as a drug overdose. Arizona requiring their interpreters to gain a further understanding of law is a great thing, peoples lives are on the line and no chances should be taken.
The Arizona Supreme Court recently announced it will require all 100 interpreters on staff and the 500 more who are contracted throughout the state to go through a credentialing program by 2019. The goal is to ensure they all meet a baseline knowledge of not only interpreting skills but also of the legal concepts and ethics that guide their work.
So what does this mean for language service providers (LSPs)? It shouldn’t mean too much of a change in their operations provided they have a dynamic intelligent system in place to cope with the changes in compliance. Interpreters will now have to get further education and receive the correct credentials to allow them to be eligible to interpret in a court hearing. LSPs using a system like Interpreter Intelligence can just edit their HR and compliance requirements with the option to attach a photo/scan of a certificate, then once this requirement is met, interpreters will be able to see the jobs as normal and not much will have changed from the LSPs day to day operations.
If you’re interested in learning more about Interpreter Intelligence’s industry-leading Scheduling Software or our VRI software in development we’d love to discuss how we can help you transform your business by contacting our support team.
Reading your article helped me a lot and I agree with you. But I still have some doubts, can you clarify for me? I’ll keep an eye out for your answers.