The UAB's MIRAS group studies problems in the field of legal interpreting

The UAB’s MIRAS group is examining the critical situation facing judicial translation and interpreting services in Catalonia, a result of years of precarious working conditions, a lack of professionalisation, and outsourcing models that directly compromise the quality of court interpreting.

Within the framework of the TIPp research project ("Translation and Interpretation in Criminal Proceedings"), "The Quality of Translation as a Guarantee of the Criminal Process" (FFI2014-55029-R), funded by the Ministry for Economy and Competitiveness, the MIRAS research group at the UAB analysed 55 actual court hearings recorded in ten criminal courts in Barcelona, totalling 1,116 minutes of recordings and interpretations in English, French and Romanian. The results showed that, on average, the defendant was not interpreted for 54% of the content of the hearings.

The study also detected an average of 21.1 serious errors per hour of bilingual interaction in the segments that were actually interpreted—ranging from omissions of relevant information and additions to mistranslations and nonsensical remarks. These errors are classified as serious precisely because they can affect the understanding of the trial and, potentially, how it unfolds.

Subsequent research by the MIRAS group has continued to identify issues related to language competence, a lack of understanding regarding the interpreter's professional role, and a failure to apply the ethical principles specific to judicial interpreting. These studies have emphasised the need to improve the qualifications of judicial interpreters while simultaneously training and raising awareness among legal professionals regarding the conditions necessary for interpreting to be carried out effectively.

Areas for improvement

Events surrounding the trial of Roger Español confirm the research findings: companies awarded contracts appoint interpreters who lack the necessary linguistic competence to perform the service; lawyers are forced to translate their own remarks or forgo using Catalan; and interpreters work with minimal lead time, without sufficient information about the proceedings in which they must participate, and under financial conditions hardly compatible with the demands of a highly complex professional service.

According to the MIRAS group, several improvements must be implemented:

- A review of the public procurement model for these services in Catalonia, incorporating award criteria that effectively guarantee the quality of the service. In the current tender, 66 out of 100 points are allocated to the economic offer, while "specific training for interpreters and translators related to the administration of justice" is worth a maximum of 5.5 points. The contractual documentation also provides for the evaluation of the availability of interpreting and translation staff with a higher level of knowledge of law and of the official languages of Catalonia, but this criterion carries a maximum weight of only 4 points in the evaluation of bids.

- Review the establishment of clear and verifiable requirements for professional qualification and competence for all those who act as court interpreters. The current requirements do not guarantee that everyone providing these services has specific professional training and qualifications. As for languages considered in regular demand, the tender documents allow 60% of interpreters not to demonstrate language proficiency through official academic qualifications.

- While language competence is an essential prerequisite, it cannot in itself constitute sufficient proof of professional competence. Demonstrating knowledge of a language is not the same as demonstrating the competence required to interpret in judicial proceedings. Judicial interpreting requires specific skills in interpreting, knowledge of law and procedure, mastery of specialised terminology, and knowledge and application of the profession's ethical and deontological principles.

- Implement effective quality control and monitoring mechanisms that allow for continuous verification that the professionals providing the services genuinely comply with the conditions set out in the tender documents and possess the appropriate competencies for each assignment.

- These rigorous technical requirements must be accompanied by decent working conditions and remuneration, commensurate with the high level of responsibility, specialisation, and availability required for interpreting within the justice system. Service quality cannot be guaranteed by relying on the precarious employment of those providing the service.

- Adequate organisational planning that allows professionals to be assigned in good time and provides them with the necessary information and materials to prepare interventions rigorously. Access to this information should not be restricted by general confidentiality considerations, since interpreters, like other professionals involved in the judicial field, are subject to the relevant duties of confidentiality and professional secrecy.

- Particular attention is paid to effectively guarantee the use of Catalan in the judicial sphere. The tender specifications require the awarded company to guarantee the provision of the service in Catalan and stipulate that, when the assigned interpreter cannot provide the service directly in that language, a second interpreter must be assigned to act as a Catalan-Spanish or Spanish-Catalan liaison, at no additional cost to the administration. Training in Catalan is offered at all faculties of translation and interpreting; therefore, access to professionals working with this language should not pose a problem, particularly regarding the Catalan-Spanish language combination.