The Right to an Interpreter

Abstract

This Chapter focuses on the right to an interpreter under international law, since this allows for an introduction into the overall topic of interpreters in criminal proceedings. The Chapter sets out the circumstances that give rise to a right to have an interpreter appointed. This is shown to be problematic, since monolingual courtroom personnel are tasked with both evaluating the language competence of a foreign language participant and also assessing the professional competence of any potential court interpreters. Following upon this discussion, the difficulty of assessing competence generally is also examined, revealing that it is the adequacy of the eventual interpretation itself that is required by the right to an interpreter rather than the general competence of the interpreter herself. The Chapter further analyses the basic difficulty in assessing and enforcing competency standards at both the trial court and appellate level. A final conclusion reached is that the legal norms surrounding the right to an interpreter are still somewhat undeveloped. Given that the main purpose of an interpreter is to enable the fulfilment of the other Article 14 fair trial rights in proceedings involving foreign language participants, in order to understand the requirements of the right to an interpreter, it is necessary to understand what the other fair trial rights require of such an interpreter.