State Certified vs. Bilingual

State Certified Judicial Interpreter

A State Certified Judicial Interpreter has acquired many years of court interpreter training and study of complex mental tasks of mental perception, storage, retrieval and generation at all levels and modes, including but not limited to, simultaneous, consecutive and sight translation.

They are professional individuals possessing specialized knowledge and adhere to a code of ethics. Certified interpreters demonstrate their mastery of skills through a licensing and certification process and serve the public interest in the performance of their services.

A certified interpreter is a native to all of their languages and transpire perfect proficiency and fluency in all their languages, has precise knowledge and complexity of legal language, technical vocabulary and aspects of meaning, formal to informal and general language including slang and dialects, sociolinguistic context of a particular interpreting setting.

Each State Certified Judicial Interpreter has been tested rigorously. Their performance has been evaluated by a combination of expert senior interpreters and out of field specialists by the National Consortium of Language Access for the courts and ultimately the interpreter has been approved by the Supreme Court.

Additionally each Supreme Court certified foreign language interpreter and Supreme Court certified sign language interpreter is mandated to complete and report twenty-four credit hours of continuing education consisting of ethics instruction and the work of the interpreter in the legal setting.

Bilingual

If a bilingual individual is detached from his/her own native country and language, this person may have lost fluency in the foreign language particularly if that person has no active use of the foreign language. If the individual has no interpreter training he/she will not know the proper techniques or standards. Additionally if the interpreter has no judicial training or ethics instruction, they will not be familiar with the vast amount of legal terminology. Legal professionals can pose certain types of questions and terminology to interpreters, i.e. accessory, arraignment, bench trial, bench warrant, citation, conflict of interest, without prejudice, etc.

Without a competent interpreter that is capable of facilitating a complete and accurate flow of information, vital information may be absent, the gathering of facts will get distorted, misunderstanding may be prevalent and most importantly justice will be denied.

In criminal cases defendants cannot be meaningfully or linguistically present, be able to assist in their own defense, receive the effective assistance of counsel, confront witnesses or waive any of their rights knowingly, intelligently and voluntarily only with competent interpreting and translation will non-English speakers have access to justice, due process fundamental fairness and equal protection of law.