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Common Sense Advisory Blogs
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Will Lady Justice Ever Be Multilingual?
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Recent news items in Ireland and the United States this week show that judicial systems are still sorely lacking when it comes to upholding the rights of individuals with limited English proficiency. Now, organizations with national influence, such as the Irish Translators and Interpreters Association (ITIA) and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), are having their say -- and attracting significant attention.
Yesterday, the ACLU and other organizations filed a legal brief in Georgia on behalf of a Mandarin speaker who was sentenced to 10 years in prison after a trial in which she did not understand any of the proceedings. Her own attorney did not request an interpreter because he did not want to delay the trial and annoy the jury.
History keeps repeating itself. The Irish Times reported this week on a 2003 case in which a Mongolian man did not understand the reading of his rights by a police officer, as no interpreter was present. The case triggered a review of standards, but limited progress was made at a national level, and as the ITIA points out, little has been done to improve court interpreting quality in Ireland in the seven years that have passed since that time.
And, Ireland and the United States are not the only countries facing barriers in linguistic access to justice - the problem appears to be a global one. We've written before about the lack of court interpreters for Aboriginal languages in Australia, interpreters with criminal records in Spain, and efforts in Guam, Korea, and South Africa to improve their legal interpreting programs.
What seems inexcusable in the cases of the U.S. and Ireland is the sheer number of times that individuals' rights have been overlooked, in spite of significant advocacy efforts at a national level. Despite significant media coverage and action taken, these efforts appear to bear minimal fruit.
For example, the Irish Times led a similar investigation on court interpreter qualifications in 2009. In 2008, Common Sense Advisory also spoke with Metro Éireann for an article on the country's lack of interpreting services for emergency settings. Not much appears to have changed during this period.
Within the United States, the advocacy page of the National Association for Judiciary Interpreters and Translators (NAJIT) reveals a litany of letters of support and attempts to raise awareness of the rights of limited English proficient individuals. The efforts of a powerful organization like the ACLU certainly show promise to help shed more national light on this issue. And, next week, attendees at the InterpretAmerica conference will gather to discuss legislation and lobbying.
On both sides of the Atlantic, groups struggle to fight for language rights within their respective homelands. Will they ever be able to teach Lady Justice to speak other languages? As Wendell Phillips once stated,"Law is nothing unless close behind it stands a warm living public opinion." Swaying the opinion of society at large seems to be a lofty goal -- but one that organizations will nevertheless continue fighting to achieve, one interpreting case at a time.
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Keywords: Interpreting, Language policy, Translation |
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