Arizona Will Soon Require Court Interpreters To Know Law.

Foreign language interpreters are now being subject to further their education beyond the boundaries of language interpretation. Arizona will soon require court interpreters to know the law, and this makes perfect sense. Having a clear and concise knowledge of the industry in which you are interpreting for is paramount for a successful scheduled courtroom interpretation.

There are many cases where a slight miscommunication has had detrimental effects, and we have spoken about some of them in previous posts. In this blog post, one simple misused word led to the defendant thinking he had done much worse than a traffic violation. Here is another article, in this situation, the scheduled phone interpreter misinterpreted, and what was a bleed in the brain was treated as a drug overdose. Arizona requiring their interpreters to gain a further understanding of law is a great thing, peoples lives are on the line and no chances should be taken.

The Arizona Supreme Court recently announced it will require all 100 interpreters on staff and the 500 more who are contracted throughout the state to go through a credentialing program by 2019. The goal is to ensure they all meet a baseline knowledge of not only interpreting skills but also of the legal concepts and ethics that guide their work.

So what does this mean for language service providers (LSPs)? It shouldn’t mean too much of a change in their operations provided they have a dynamic intelligent system in place to cope with the changes in compliance. Interpreters will now have to get further education and receive the correct credentials to allow them to be eligible to interpret in a court hearing. LSPs using a system like Interpreter Intelligence can just edit their HR and compliance requirements with the option to attach a photo/scan of a certificate, then once this requirement is met, interpreters will be able to see the jobs as normal and not much will have changed from the LSPs day to day operations.

If you’re interested in learning more about Interpreter Intelligence’s industry-leading Scheduling Software or our VRI software in development we’d love to discuss how we can help you transform your business by contacting our support team.

How an online scheduling software can increase your organization’s efficiency.

One of the main reasons why an agency would adopt an interpreter scheduling software would be to increase their efficiency. Efficiency is crucial for saving time, money, increasing employee productivity and increase the quality of service you provide. Below are just 3 of the features that Interpreter Intelligence provides that can increase the level of efficiency in the organization that uses our scheduling software.

Provide staff members with their own user profile.

With each internal user having their own profile, they can login using their own credentials. From here they can create a booking, assign an interpreter to a job, manage and edit existing bookings already on the system if a booking needs to be altered.  This would result in the agency staff becoming more efficient with less time switching between booking calendars and contact lists, everything is in one place at their fingertips.

Easily Manage Bookings.

Manage all your bookings past, present and future from an easy to use, consistent interface. Quickly review those bookings that need any follow up. You can easily address any problems with future bookings before they escalate. Booking coordinators can quickly review the bookings under their management. Once there has been a significant change to a booking, all relevant people are automatically notified of the change, be it a change of location or time of the appointment.

Calculate travel time and mileage.

A big factor when choosing an interpreter is the distance they have to travel to get to the appointment location. With agencies who pay for mileage, this is crucial. An interpreter who is too far away will cost too much for the agency. Interpreter Intelligence calculates the distance an interpreter is from a booking and then displays that distance to the assign interpreter screen. An internal user from the company can set a radius to only find interpreters within a certain distance. This can have massive benefits for the agency by reducing the cost of travel while also saving the agency time as now the internal staff do not need to calculate each interpreter individually.

Using an online scheduling system like Interpreter Intelligence can have profound effects on your organization’s efficiency. In an article by businessdictionary.com, they go on to explain how the use of technology can maximize your organization’s efficiency and this couldn’t be more true. We are constantly striving to improve our software to optimize our customers’ use of its features. Please always feel free to leave us product improvement suggestions by contacting our support team.

Technology plays a great role in courtroom interpretation!

Technology plays a vital role in today’s courtrooms. This is especially relevant in Utica where there are more than 50 languages spoken. Having such a diverse language span, sometimes language service providers are unable to provide a simultaneous interpreter in person. So this means the courts have to turn to technology, which is a good thing, however, the platform they are using is off the mark completely.

While researching this topic, I came across an article where, Michael Klein, district executive for the Fifth Judicial District Court of New York State said, “We use remote interpreting through Skype”. In the same article, Tony Colon, a Spanish interpreter said “Judges don’t like it and it’s a very difficult scenario,” he said. “When you’re going to the city court here in Utica you’ll see the screen set up for Skype.” Not only is this method unprofessional but using a third party software that is not specifically designed for a scheduled court interpretation could have some serious security ramifications.

Within the same article, Mohawk Valley Resource Center for Refugees Executive Director Shelly Callahan said that “We’re seeing growth in video interpretation,” and that Medical Video Interpretation used to be the main scheduled appointment type but in recent times courtroom interpretation is certainly growing. So now is the time for Utica courts to adopt an interpreter schedule software that supports video remote interpreting (VRI), this way they are efficiently managing their interpreters, while also using a platform specially designed for courtroom interpreting.

An interpreter scheduling software is what these courts and other courts in similar circumstances or with similar requirements could greatly benefit from. There are between 800 and 1,000 scheduled interpretation appointments per month, both simultaneous and video. With Skype being used it is very easy for the language service providers to lose track and mismanage all the scheduled appointments and list of interpreters.

Also, another feature that Utica could benefit from is Interpreter Intelligence’s feature of calculating mileage, as it says in this article, “if it isn’t possible for interpreters to travel to the area for a legal proceeding, video interpretation is a tool that cuts down on transportation costs.” If cutting costs is a factor in deciding on an interpreter, then Interpreter Intelligence is the solution. If there are no interpreters within a select distance, then the interpreters group within the court or the language service providers can choose our (soon to be released) VRI option instead.

If you’re interested in learning more about Interpreter Intelligence’s industry-leading Scheduling Software or our VRI software in development we’d love to discuss how we can help you transform your business by contacting our support team.