Courts agency tries to curtail translator wait

U.S. grant would let states pool interpreting services

Staff members at Arkansas’ Administrative Office of the Courts are hoping a federal grant will lower the cost of sharing interpreters with neighboring states and cut back on the wait time for qualified legal interpreters.

The state currently uses freelance interpreters from Nebraska, Tennessee, Minnesota and Washington, among other states, to satisfy the need for language services in its state courts.

The agency hopes eventually to buy and install video equipment to allow courts in Arkansas to use translators in Louisiana, Oklahoma and Mississippi over video or telephone conferencing, cutting back on the cost of travel. The idea is in its infancy and is boosted by a planning grant of up to $20,000, said Mara Simmons, the office’s coordinator of Court Interpreter Services.

The federal grant from the National Center for State Courts through the State Justice Institute is being shared with the Louisiana court system so that both states can survey their respective courts to find out what equipment is available, which interpreters are needed and which courts would be willing to use interpreters who aren’t physically present in the courtroom.

“For future plans, what we are trying to do is reach out to Mississippi, Oklahoma, maybe Tennessee, to see if we could request a multistate grant to start a video remote interpreting program in maybe two or one court in each state,” Simmons said. “Basically, establishing those programs in each state would help us establish standards of what type of equipment would be best for this kind of program.”

Simmons said the four states have collaborated on standards for court interpreters themselves, making it easier for them to eventually share the translation resources.

She said the survey of Arkansas’ 220 courts will be done by May or June. Other states are being asked to participate; the agency plans to apply for a grant to fund a pilot program once interest has been gauged.

Regionally, Arkansas has the most experience with state-managed interpreting services, with a program started under the Administrative Office of the Courts more than 12 years ago. Arkansas was one of the first states to provide a certified sign language interpreter for its courts back in the 1980s, Simmons said, adding that the state’s Supreme Court has always recognized the importance of interpreters in assuring that non-English-speaking defendants get fair trials.

Louisiana’s court interpreter program, which is managed at the parish level rather than by a state centralized court office, is about 2 years old; Oklahoma and Mississippi recently began their state-managed interpreter programs, Simmons said.

James Gingerich, the director of the Administrative Office of the Courts, made a pitch to the Arkansas Legislature’s Joint Budget Committee for a $3.5 million increase in the agency’s annual budget — only a portion of which will fund interpreter services. The committee agreed to the request, which will add one Spanish language interpreter employed full time at the Administrative Office of the Courts if it is approved by the Legislature in 2015.

“Those folks provided foreign language or deaf interpretation in 11,000 cases in 2013 and in 24 different languages,” Gingerich told the committee earlier this month.

He said the video interpreting program would “share our resources between our contiguous states to try to do that more efficiently and cheaper and so we can have access to interpreters in their states that we don’t have, and likewise they can use some of ours.”

There are three full-time Spanish language interpreters employed by the Administrative Office of the Courts, Simmons said. There are an additional 16 qualified Spanstaff ish language court interpreters who work on a freelance basis, but Simmons said only seven of those people translate exclusively for state courts.

Many of the others also do work for federal courts, private attorneys, out-of-state clients and private institutions.

“They’re not obligated to be available, so there are times when we ask and they are not available,” Simmons said. “In those cases, if none of the other interpreters are available, then we will ask the court to continue the case [so it can be heard at a later date]. We don’t like to do that. We want to make sure that people receive timely and fair treatment.

“If people can’t hear what is going on, then they can’t fully participate in their trial or in the court process. And if they can’t participate, then it’s not really due process.”

Simmons said demand in Arkansas is highest for Spanish-speaking interpreters, followed closely by Marshallese.

The state has the nation’s largest Marshallese population. Most of them live in Northwest Arkansas.

“I’m very proud to say we have the only certified Marshallese interpreter in the country here in Springdale, Ark.,” Simmons said. “She’s all alone; she needs help. She can’t even go on vacation, and because she’s the only interpreter in the nation, other states borrow her for trials that can last two weeks. … All of the time, judges ask me when are we going to get more Marshallese interpreters? I’ve done outreach and held luncheons to try to recruit interpreters and explain what their role is. We’ve just had a hard time with that language.”

Simmons said the state has populations of Vietnamese, Hmong, Chinese, Arabic and Lao speakers but has had trouble recruiting those speakers as interpreters. Louisiana, she said, is preparing to certify its first class of interpreters, some of whom will speak Vietnamese and possibly Hmong.

“These other states may have more resources in those languages, and we have resources in others that they might need,” she said. “If we can get this program working, it will help economically and efficiently share those resources.”