A yet further instance of problems seeming to arise from the new system of appointing court interpreters happened on Friday 13 April. According to reports, a four-day burglary trial at a London Crown court collapsed after a Romanian language interpreter admitted mistakenly telling the court that the defendant had allegedly been ‘bitten’ rather than ‘beaten’ by the victim of the alleged offence.

Defence solicitor Dhaneshwar Sharma is reported as saying that the interpreter’s mistake came to light when the Crown asked for medical evidence of the bite mark. He went on to say that one result of the collapse was that a 13-year-old would have to give evidence again at the new trial, and that it is “…traumatic enough for an adult to give this kind of evidence, let alone for a girl of her age”.

On 30 January Applied Language Solutions took up the contract to provide translation and interpretation services for courts in England and Wales. The MoJ subsequently allowed courts to revert to the old system temporarily because of an ‘unacceptable number’ of problems in the first weeks of the contract.