ALS Fact Check: Almost 70 percent of Courts hit by Interpreter Chaos
New figures from Applied Language Solutions indicate that almost 70 percent of courts in England and Wales have had problems since the introduction of the Ministry of Justice Framework Agreement. The company also said that it couldn't fulfil bookings in more than half of the languages requested.
The figures were revealed in an email from ALS today and were, of course, presented the other way round: “35% of all courts have not missed a single booking” So 65% have missed bookings. And then “Just under 50% of all languages have had a 100% fulfilment rate” means that more than half had not. The figures get even more challenging when anecdotal evidence suggests that in some languages, the actual rate is closer to ‘0’. Lies, damned lies, statistics.
Even if the figures are to be believed (they came from ALS and cannot be verified at the moment), they indicate a severe failure. One month in, the company is so stuck for ‘linguists’ it’s trying yet another ‘refer a friend’ scheme to get people to join. Clearly the last two referral schemes were a big success.
