Open letter to the Law Society Gazette on behalf of NRPSI Registrants
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Please find below an open letter,
for publication, in response to an article in a recent edition of Private
Eye.
Dear Sir.
There was a recent article in Private Eye focusing on some of the issues faced in ensuring effective interpreting services are delivered in the courts. Notwithstanding the concerns raised by the article about the standards of interpreting when unqualified or inexperienced interpreters are engaged, one of the problems identified by Private Eye was the sourcing of effective interpreters in a timely manner for the courts.
Given interpreters play such a vital role in the legal process, those used by the courts should be highly-qualified, well-experienced and have the requisite skills to enable effective communication. With the National Register of Public Service Interpreters (NRPSI) celebrating the 25th Anniversary of its founding this year, practitioners in the courts should by now as a matter of course be insisting on equally professional, accredited and ethically-bound language services support. This is something that they can rely on when working with NRPSI Registrants, who voluntarily ensure they follow the high professional standards set out in NRPSI’s publicly available code of conduct.
When next you face an interpreter in court, ask if they are an NRPSI Registrant and to see their NRPSI Photo ID Card. You can easily find a Registered Interpreter for the task in-hand via the online and free to search National Register.
To find out more, please review www.nrpsi.org.uk.
Kind regards,
