OCA Unveils Reform Plan For Translators

Daniel Wise

04-10-2006


The Office of Court Administration has unveiled a plan to increase the number and improve the quality of translators available to non-English speaking litigants in New York's courts.

Chief among the reforms are a doubling of the pay rate for per diem interpreters to $250; improved testing and certification procedures; and the creation of a new senior court interpreter title for sign-language translators.

See "Court Interpreting in New York: A Plan of Action."

In reviewing the court's "action plan" at a meeting last week at the New York City Bar Association, Chief Administrative Judge Jonathan Lippman said providing comprehensive translation services "is our solemn duty, as important as any access-to-justice initiative we could ever envision."

State law only requires that interpreters be provided to criminal defendants and crime victims. But the court system is attempting to provide assistance in as broad a range of proceedings as possible, Judge Lippman said.

Participants at the city bar session, which examined the state of translation services in the courts, welcomed the initiative, but said serious problems need to be remedied.

About 30 percent of New Yorkers — roughly 5 million people — primarily speak a language other than English at home. Across the state, 168 different languages or dialects are spoken.

The court system has on staff more than 300 full- and part-time interpreters who speak 30 different languages, as well as sign-language interpreters. In addition, 1,300 private, per diem interpreters are used to help translate approximately 100 other languages each year.

Interpreters are most often called on to translate Spanish, Mandarin, Russian, French, Haitian Creole and sign language.

See some of the other languages.

The OCA's plan also calls for:

• Expanded use of telecommunications and video equipment to allow interpreters to operate from remote locations. The ability to operate from outside the courtroom is particularly important when translation of a language rarely used in this country is needed in a short proceeding.

• Statewide expansion of Internet scheduling, which will enable court managers to quickly find and schedule interpreters.

• Improved testing and certification procedures.

Over this year and next, testing for oral proficiency will be added for eight languages — Albanian, Bengali, French, Farsi, Fuzhou, Japanese, Turkish and Urdu — bringing the total to 20. Testing is now required for Arabic, Cantonese, Greek, Haitian Creole, Italian, Korean, Mandarin, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Vietnamese.

The increased testing will increase the number of interpreters who have demonstrated adequate oral skills by 10 percentage points to 95 percent of all proceedings in which interpreters are used.

The annual cost of increasing the per diem rate for non-staff translators will be about $1.5 million, said Mai Yee, an OCA spokeswoman. Additional costs will be incurred in improving training and testing, she added.

Concerns Remain

One of the panelists at last week's city bar meeting, Purvi Shah, commended OCA for "committing New York state to the needs of all of us to attain the dream of equal justice."

By the same token, much improvement is needed, said Ms. Shah, executive director of Sahki for South Asian Woman, a group that assists domestic violence victims.

Ms. Shah said staff from her group had encountered interpreters who failed to show up or were not proficient in the language they were assigned to translate. She also said some interpreters had committed serious ethical lapses, such as telling victims they should drop their cases or saying that children belong with their fathers.

"There are some real problems in the system," Lawrence H. Marks, OCA's administrative director, said in an interview, "but we don't think they are that widespread. With this action program, we have initiatives that will eliminate those problems."

Stanley Mark, program director for the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, called on OCA to make sure the plan is carried out. He said it is important to check every few months whether bi-lingual materials, which are supposed to be available in certain courthouses, are in fact available.

Mr. Mark also expressed concern that "budgetary pressures" will cause OCA to rely on remote translation when in-person translation may be preferable.

— Daniel Wise can be reached at dwise@alm.com.