A DUP peer has described the rates of pay earned by interpreters by the court service as “startling”.
Lord Morrow has said he is intending to uncover how much had been spent on interpreters in Northern Ireland over the past three years, after finding out that they were “well paid”.
The Northern Ireland Courts and Tribunals Service (NICTS) is party to a contract with Connect-NICEM, who supply interpreters in a variety of languages for the criminal justice agencies.
NICTS is also party to a similar contract with the Royal National Institute for the Deaf (RNID) for the provision of sign language interpretation services.
For hearings other than a Crown Court trial, one local interpreter is booked for defendants who may have difficulty speaking or understanding English.
The minimum fee, for a three hour session, is £75 with the hourly fee thereafter set at £25 an hour.
The booking fee is £50, but this can rise to an enhanced fee of £70 if less than 24 hours notice is given. There is also a charge of £10 waiting fee between interpreting sessions if this is necessary.
The fixed travel fee sits at £6 while the mileage rate for interpreters is 45 pence per mile. Read more.
See: Newsletter.co.uk
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United Kingdom
Local time: 22:41
Member (2011)
English to German
+ ...
What is startling about this? The rates quoted seem spot on. I would be happy with them, but some interpreters might even like to ask more.
The general problem is that translation and interpreting is often not seen as serious work.
France
Local time: 23:41
French to German
+ ...
Surprisingly enough, agencies providing global services such as hiring court interpreters for "an apple and a piece of bread" and making more than comfortable margins are never mentioned in such articles.
I wonder why?
Local time: 17:41
Spanish to English
+ ...
This begs two questions:
1 – Since, in both cases, the requirement is to communicate the goings-on in court to someone who doesn’t / can’t understand, why is one interpreter paid twice what the other gets?
2 – What fee is paid to an interpreter w... See more
This begs two questions:
1 – Since, in both cases, the requirement is to communicate the goings-on in court to someone who doesn’t / can’t understand, why is one interpreter paid twice what the other gets?
2 – What fee is paid to an interpreter who, for example, interprets spoken English to Urdu sign language for a deaf blind person from Pakistan?
And the third of my two questions is: Is Lord Maurice Morrow (the peer who is apparently unhappy about these fees merely because he finds the professionals are 'well paid') bothered more specifically about the fees paid to deaf blind interpreters or those paid to foreign language interpreters?
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Poland
Local time: 23:41
Member (2010)
English to Polish
+ ...
It's called demand and supply. The supply of such interpreters is, most probably, much lower than e.g. Spanish interpreters.
Also, it is disturbing - I'm quite sure that he has never had the opportunity to meet an overworked interpreter who has to work twice as much to earn a decent living because the rates he/she is offered are so low that even the government is happy to pay them. A qualified interpreter has the same right for decent earnings as a banker or a finance specialist. And yet, we still fail to earn the same
[Edited at 2011-02-09 11:39 GMT]
Türkiye
Arabic to English
+ ...
What is startling about this? The rates quoted seem spot on. I would be happy with them, but some interpreters might even like to ask more.
The general problem is that translation and interpreting is often not seen as serious work.
Not until they need you.
"You are the single most important person in the room right now" makes me feel like gifting my services, whereas, "You don't need to come, I can manage by myself," after their initial bewilderment is gone makes me feel like overcharging the client for our trade's honour. For such people, money leaving them is their only teacher.
United States
Local time: 17:41
French to English
+ ...
They're on the order of double that in the US.
As for the disparity between sign language and spoken language, I agree it's supply and demand. The same is true of spoken language: a Spanish interpreter isn't going to be able to demand as much per hour as an Arabic or Georgian or Nepali interpreter, because the Spanish interpreter has a lot more competition.
Spain
Local time: 23:41
Spanish to English
+ ...
I'd prefer to sit around here and have more time to do a written translation and get more for it. As for shocked peers of the realm, I remember we used to have an expression in Northern Ireland - What do you expect from a pig but a grunt?
[Edited at 2019-02-21 16:06 GMT]
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