The Week That Was – 30th March 2012
Court staff and lawyers have been forced to use Google Translate to communicate with non-English speaking defendants because of problems with the new interpreter service, it has been claimed. In some cases it has been claimed friends of alleged offenders have had to stand up in court to help explain what is going on to the defendant. One translator was also forced to get up a 3am to make a 564-mile round trip to appear in court for just eight minutes, under the new system. The problems come after the government awarded the interpreter contract to Applied Language Solutions, which took over on January 30.
