Workforce Language Services

This article notes the tremendous growth in limited English proficient residents in Arkansas and the need for interpreters of all language backgrounds for legal proceedings.

State law requires interpreters during legal proceedings if a defendant or witness has trouble with English. It’s up to individual judges to decide who is in need of an interpreter.

If a defendant can’t pay for the service, taxpayers foot the bill.

A 1999 Arkansas Supreme Court order put the responsibility of certifying interpreters in the hands of the state Administrative Office of the Courts, which has seen a dramatic rise in the demand for foreign language interpreters.The use of court interpreters in Arkansas has increased by 384 percent since 2004, leaving a small pool of interpreters scrambling to courtrooms across the state.

Last year, the state sent interpreters to court 5,000 times, compared to around 1,000 times in 2004, the first year the office began keeping those figures.

That doesn’t account for an unknown number of cases in which courts or defendants arranged for interpreters when state funds ran out. When that happens, courts are responsible for paying for interpreters.