Shock over ‘sweet payouts’

Court interpreter gob-smacked by pay rates her peers are charging out

Acourt interpreter who covered the Christchurch mosque terrorist’s sentencing is shocked at the huge pay rates being awarded to some of her peers while she earns peanuts and struggles to survive.

Pratima Nand, 69, has worked as a court interpreter for 21 years and translated some of the most heinous criminal cases.

They include last year’s sentencing of mass killer Brenton Tarrant; Kamal Reddy who murdered his partner, Pakeeza Faizal, and her young daughter, Juwairiyah “Jojo” Kalim, before burying their bodies under a North Shore bridge; and Shahidan Nisha, who was jailed for nearly nine years for burning a boy with a heated poker and forcing him to eat 12 hot chilli peppers. Nand told the Herald she usually earned $35 an hour plus mileage and parking.

She was gob-smacked to read a Herald investigation revealing some court interpreters were billing more than $1500 for a single day’s work — akin to top criminal lawyers — in what a Justice Ministry insider has described as a “gravy train”.

“It was upsetting and disappointing to a lot of interpreters because a majority of us have never and will never enjoy such sweet payouts,” Nand said.

Examples seen by the Herald and verified by the Ministry of Justice include $1700 paid to a te reo interpreter for a one-day hearing in Kaikohe; $2628 to a Ma¯ori translator at a two-day hearing in Wellington; and a $3197 bill for two sign-language interpreters for just 31⁄2 hours’ work in January, which included return flights.

Figures obtained under the Official Information Act show taxpayers have spent more than $13 million on court interpreters in the past five years. The single largest bill was $42,077 for four Mandarin/Cantonese interpreters at a three-week High Court criminal trial in Auckland in 2019.

Nand was one of 89 court interpreters who signed a petition to the ministry last year demanding $100 an hour. The interpreters threatened to withdraw services, hobbling up to 10,000 hearings a year, if their demands were not met.

Current regulations stipulate court interpreters should receive no more than $25 an hour or $175 a day. Though the ministry admits these rates are “well out of market expectation”, it has refused to bow to interpreters’ demands, saying pay rates are “under review”.

Nand said interpreting traumatic court cases was demanding. The job was high pressure and required unique skills.

Although she had not had a pay increase in 10 years, she was passionate about the job and felt she was part of history when covering major cases.

Society of Translators and Interpreters president Isabelle PoffPencole defended the amounts charged by her members.

Trial work often involved unpaid preparation work, and interpreters were mostly contractors so received no holiday or sick pay.