Need for qualified court interpreters growing in Virginia

RICHMOND – A Spanish-speaking woman embroiled in a child visitation battle said in court that the father could see their child, but not after 9 o’clock at night.

But when a court-appointed interpreter relayed the testimony in English, it came out as a flat refusal to allow any visitation at all.

“Luckily the woman understood enough English to say, `That’s not what I said,'” said Patricia Michelsen-King of Richmond, a certified court interpreter who was not involved in the visitation case. “A mistake like that can really change a judge’s decision.”

Such blunders are not uncommon in Virginia courts, Michelsen-King said. As the state’s immigrant population grows, so does the demand for interpreters who can accurately convert foreign-language testimony into English for judges and juries.

The 2000 census showed more than 570,000 foreign-born residents in Virginia, most of them from Asian and Latin countries. They represent 8 percent of the population, up from 5 percent in 1990.

The census found that 11 percent of Virginia residents over the age of 5 speak a primary language other than English. Among that population, about one-fifth live in “linguistically isolated households” in which little English, if any, is spoken.

Among the foreign-born is Pablo Fantl, a Richmond attorney who moved here from Argentina when he was 5. His practice is largely devoted to serving the area’s burgeoning Hispanic population.

“When my family came here in 1972, there was only a handful of Hispanic families,” he said. “The influx has been incredible – mostly people from Central America and Mexico.”

With his fluency in Spanish and his frequent representation of Spanish-speaking clients, Fantl is in a better position than most to judge the quality of court interpretation services in Virginia.

The verdict?

“For a serious case in circuit court, I would feel comfortable with less than half of the interpreters now practicing,” he said. “You have some who are a joke.”

Part of the problem, Michelsen-King said, is that state or federal certification of interpreters is voluntary. She said some judges still sometimes tap into the good ol’ boy network, appointing an acquaintance or a friend of a friend, no matter how poorly qualified.

Even voluntary certification was suspended in Virginia a few years ago because of a lack of state funds, forcing those who want to bolster their credentials to go out of state or seek certification in the federal court system.

“That’s OK for one or two years, but after that it’s terrible,” said Michelsen-King, who headed the training and testing program before the funds dried up. “It’s a great injustice.”

Breck Arrington, executive vice president of the Virginia Bar Association, said the court system has many needs. Judges received a much-needed raise this year, he said, and the need to invest more in indigent defense is well documented.

“But in any list of priorities that the court system puts forward, the interpretation issue needs to be fairly high,” Arrington said.

Interpreters have to pass written and oral tests and agree to a professional code to obtain certification, which entitles them to higher pay than their noncertified counterparts.

Michelsen-King and Myriam Sigler have federal certification, which allows them to work in both the federal and state courts. The federal courts, unlike those at the state level, use only certified interpreters. They pay $178 for four hours, $329 for a full day and $45 per hour for overtime.

“Most of the cases are in state court, yet we have higher certification requirements at the federal level,” Sigler said. “I find that silly.”

Virginia is not the only state with such a problem.

“I think what Virginia experiences is pretty much the same as all states,” said William Hewitt of the National Center for State Courts in Williamsburg. The NCSC administers a 32-state court interpreters consortium, which allows participants to pool their resources to develop training, tests and professional standards for interpreters.

“The biggest problem is that the ability to provide qualified interpreters is difficult to meet because it’s a very difficult job,” Hewitt said.

Fantl said miscommunication is not the only problem. Perhaps more unsettling, he said, is that some interpreters ignore judges’ warnings that they refrain from giving legal advice.

For example, Fantl said a man waived his right to an attorney and pleaded guilty to drunken driving, even though his blood-alcohol content was within the legal limit, after an interpreter told him he wouldn’t get any jail time. The man was spared jail, but the conviction counted against him in a subsequent DUI case.