National Register of Public Service Interpreters published a statement: ‘As long as bookings continue to be outsourced by agencies at inadequate rates offered to qualified and regulated interpreters, the current backlog… will continue growing. www.lawgazette.co.uk/features/cri...

A story of absence: documents should have been shared, but have not; people should be in court, but are not; defendants absent because prison van delayed; prosecutor not turned up; no interpreter. A story of courts that should be sitting but are not. (£) www.thetimes.com/uk/law/artic...

Fascinating! "...although there is a constitutional and statutory right to speak Irish in court in Ireland, it may be harder to locate a qualified interpreter in Ireland than in the UK – where no such right exists."

neerlandistiek.nl/2025/12/heb-... @bbvt-uptij.bsky.social @ortv.bsky.social @nrpsinterpreter.bsky.social

🔥🇪🇺 “Europeans enjoy more free time than Americans, a higher life expectancy and lower levels of inequality – all with roughly comparable productivity. Whichever way you look at it, this is a significantly superior economic performance.”

Stop the "Catapult Killer Influencers": Across the UK, children and teenagers are buying military-grade catapults hunting for "content". But now there’s something we can all do to end this sickening social media trend. Add your name: you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/en...

Juries don't just serve justice they serve society. This post explores how contracting jury trial will fray the social fabric. open.substack.com/pub/counselo...

But translation was never just a technical challenge. It is an act of witnessing. An interpreter does not merely convert words from one language to another. They carry meaning across the chasm between us. www.politico.eu/article/when...

neerlandistiek.nl/2025/11/meer... @bbvt-uptij.bsky.social @ortv.bsky.social @nrpsinterpreter.bsky.social

Belonging grows when communities create spaces for real connection, where newcomers and locals enrich one another – Helen’s story | Helen Wildig and Nazish Saad @nazishmunch.bsky.social @seryndippyt.bsky.social

📈Today, 11 December 2025, 70 out of the 516 Crown courtrooms in England & Wales will not be sitting. That's 14% of them. #courtstats #CS11122025 courtstats.co.uk

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Highlights from the Railways Bill session in Parliament pt4. Here's Brighton Pavilion MP Siân Berry on the scandal of Rolling Stock Companies. 🤑Every time you buy a train ticket, approx 25% of the cost goes on paying the rent being charged by the ROSCOs to the train lines. @sianberry.bsky.social

A shortage of British Sign Language (BSL) interpreters is a significant barrier to the success of a proposed law. The British Sign Language (Wales) Bill aims to promote and facilitate the use of British Sign Language (BSL) in Wales. www.southwalesargus.co.uk/news/2567950...

Love being reminded to do this every year. It's a win/win all round

The government intends to reduce the right to jury trial. I think this is a bad thing. But what do the judges think? open.substack.com/pub/counselo...

14. The government artificially restricting court “sitting days” - effectively closing perfectly usable courtrooms and forcing judges to stay at home, to make a tiny saving on court staff. This happened regularly under the last government. The new lot are still doing it.

As set out in this thread, the causes of the court backlog are chronic lack of funding and absurd inefficiency. The government has made no proposals to address either. Their answer is to remove juries. Rather than fix the leaking roof, their solution is to burn the house down.

By coincidence, I took a screen shot of this tweet by the Lord chancellor and justice secretary David Lammy, in 2020 when he was in opposition.

Juries don’t cause backlogs — underfunding does, ’ Jason Lartey, LCCSA president, tells @thetimes.com, asking justice secretary David Lammy to meet him and see what it's like on the "frontline" of the system. www.thetimes.com/uk/law/artic...

Court interpreter service is ‘going badly wrong’ - in @TimesLaw. www.thetimes.com/uk/law/artic...

UK households cut spending at fastest pace in almost five years, says Barclays www.theguardian.com/business/202...

📈Today, 9 December 2025, 66 out of the 516 Crown courtrooms in England & Wales will not be sitting. That's 13% of them. #courtstats #CS09122025 courtstats.co.uk

"[ICE officers] are sitting there, waiting to see who speaks a foreign language, who needs an interpreter, and then they're following those people out of court to question and detain them," she said. "Not everybody has an ICE detainer."

I recall being in a mags court one day when *three* booked interpreters failed to turn up. One case was a simple remand in custody of a Chinese sailor so they used Google Translate to tell him what was happening and had to hope it was correct.

Holding the private service providers to account for their incompetence would be a start. Frequently 'forgetting' to bring a defendant to court would be grounds for breach of contract in any other universe.

Pamela Fraher from RTE has a very well researched article about how a court interpreter continued to work on 240 cases after their interpreting was found to be inadequate by the Court of Appeal in 2021. www.rte.ie/news/investi...

I vaguely remember some comments on the now-deleted hellsite back in the day. I also remember that the Scottish & Welsh briefings always had an interpreter & Downing Steet sometimes didn't. I didn't know the Government was taken to court over it!

I'm reminded of how the UK government had to be taken to court after failing to provide sign language interpreters at Covid briefings. abilitynet.org.uk/news-blogs/c...

A court has requested a Latin interpreter for today's sentencing hearing LATIN (AMERICAN) INTERPRETER REQUIRED Luckily they added (American), and someone who speaks Spanish has turned up. Otherwise the interpreter might have spent the day translating legal asides, but not much else

#49 Intimacies (Katie Kitamura, 2021). After moving to The Hague for a new job at the Criminal Court the protagonist, an interpreter, faces challenges that are both very intimate and universal. Solitude, finding your place, revealing yourself to people around you if you can. Masterful #booksky 📚🖋️

It didn’t escalate to violence, but this reminds me of that time ICE agents in Chicago wrongfully tried to arrest a court interpreter.

"The interpreter already messed up one child's age in their translations, which we heard & caught & corrected in the court record. If we hadn't, that child could be deported for 'lying about their age in court.' But the child didn't correct the interpreter, because they're terrified and silent." 34/

I sat them down to explain. "Not one of those children understands what is happening to them. They all speak indigenous Mayan languages, which is why you heard an interpreter on speakerphone repeat the judge's instructions/questions. They're nodding and staying silent bc they don't want trouble. 33/

A lot of societal breakdowns had to go into this situation. Phone call scams, immigrant and language stuff, the lying machine, etc

A patient's family was using an AI phone call screening service and my coworker called with the official hospital interpreter service who listened as the AI told the patient's husband in Chinese that he was going to have to go to jail. OBVIOUSLY they helped ensure he knew what was going on but?!?

A decade of Brexit: Britain falls behind peers in trade & growth…businesses most deeply integrated into European supply chains,including many of the UK’s most productive exporters, felt the sharpest blow, weakening sectors that historically powered national growth.” www.euronews.com/business/202...

I have other much weirder stories, but the interpreter Code of Ethics guarantees confidentiality and I would have to give too many personal details

See also File on Four's investigation of the enshittening of interpreting in healthcare that has led to the death or serious birth injury of some 80 babies in the past 5 years www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...

Who have such derisory T&Cs for the interpreter that no one will take it up (especially NRPSI registered interpreters). Another thing the thread above implied - Interpreters are not just for defendants - but witnesses (including victims).

Public service interpreting getting privatised, farmed out to big agencies and enshittified

As a former military linguist, I always preferred the label "interpreter" because we… weren't linguists. At least half the reason I pursued a degree in linguistics is because I was called it so often and didn't want to be a fraud.

What’s the worst question someone can ask after you tell them your profession? For linguists, it’s definitely “how many languages do you speak?”, but I’m curious what else is happening to the rest of y’all out there?!

3. The Witness Care Unit forgetting to tell witnesses to attend trial. Meaning the whole trial has to be adjourned.

10. Not enough barristers to cover cases. Often - especially in serious, specialised and difficult work such as Rape and Serious Sexual Offences - the CPS will not be able to find an available barrister, due to so many having quit. www.lawgazette.co.uk/news/barrist...

8. A lift being broken (lying unfixed for weeks because no engineer can be found/afforded), meaning that a disabled witness cannot attend a trial.

9. Queues to enter the court building taking over an hour, due to insufficient numbers of security staff to conduct the on-the-door checks. Meaning jurors, witnesses, interpreters and defendants are stuck outside the building while the hours tick by.

7. The ancient court plumbing giving up, meaning no running water or flushing toilets, meaning everybody is sent home.