Norwich Crown Court: ALS linguist complains to court about pay
A Lithuanian ALS linguist, Mr D. L., who is not on the National Register of Public Service Interpreters and who does not profess to hold any language-related qualifications whatsoever, arrived at Norwich Crown Court on 04/04/12 to interpret for a preliminary hearing. However, throughout the hearing the ALS linguist concentrated on actively discussing the case with the defendant over the videolink, instead of interpreting for her! He also complained to the court that, apparently, he is severely underpaid and would only receive £20 for this job - even though he had travelled from Harrogate (366 miles for a return journey)!
Remember ALS claiming they only allocate Tier1 jobs (Crown Court jobs) to highly qualified and experienced interpreters? Surely, if Mr D. L. was one of them, he would know the Interpreter’s code of conduct and actually adhere to it. I doubt "impartiality" or "high standards" would mean anything to him!
Every day we hear stories of ALS linguists travelling for hundreds of miles to attend hearings, and still it's only a few of them who make it in the end. Let me remind you once again that the Language Services Framework between ALS and MoJ states that one of the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) is to produce "Evidence that [for 95% of assignments] availability of all languages came from within a 25 mile radius" (p. 99, Section 2, J4).
What a blatant false promise by ALS, and such gullibility from the MoJ...
