by Lingo24, 15th October, 2007
Recent years have seen massive increases in the amount that the UK government spends on the provision of translation services; the main driver of this trend has been a commensurate increase in the numbers of non-English speaking peoples within some regions of the UK.
Recent years have seen massive increases in the amount that the UK government spends on the provision of translation services; the main driver of this trend has been a commensurate increase in the numbers of non-English speaking peoples within some regions of the UK. Factors such as the expansion of the European Union with its resultant ‘open boarder’ policy, combined with a general relaxation of immigration controls have served to fuel this trend.
So is there an obligation to provide such widespread and comprehensive translation services?
The imperative to provide these services is actually unclear! Two often quoted pieces if legislation that are meant to lay out the requirement for such provision are; The Race Relations Act and the Human Rights Act. A closer look at these acts reveals that:
•The Race Relations Act simply states that all parts of the community should have access to services.
•The Human Rights Act only specifically requires the provision of translation services if someone is arrested or charged with a criminal act.
The Home office additionally quotes the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights 1950 and the United Nations Convention for the Rights of the Child 1989. Whether these acts actually specifically provide a mandate for translational provision is unclear at best. However, there is an assumption within many public bodies that they must provide such services.
Let us examine some of the modes of translation service that are provided nationally. This data was sourced from a Home Office commissioned survey of service users:
•National telephone services. Providing translation in over 140 different languages. These are particularly useful for emergency legal and household situations, as they operate 24 hours a day; seven days a week. They were used by 82% of respondents.
•Face to face services. These were accessed by the most users with 89% of respondents using them for interpretation and 57% for translation of financial or legal documents.
•Centralised services. An example of this type of service is the Central Interpreting Unit of the Immigration and Nationality Directorate in London. This unit holds a database of 4,500 pre-assessed and vetted interpreters.
•In-House services. This is where public sector departments maintain a full time staff of permanent interpreters. The languages provided for would be those of the stable non English speaking communities in each locale.
•Brokerage services. This is a sort of clearing house system for the commissioning of translation services as required.
Coming now to an assessment of the costing of such service provision, we find that the identification of these costs are somewhat complex. The main reason being, that there is no clearly coordinated nationwide strategy to compile this information from all cost centers and thus, we can only come to an approximation of the sum involved.
What we do know is that Local councils spend at least £21 million, the courts system spend over £10 million (not including legal aid) and the NHS spends £55 million. These figures are, however, very conservative and are likely to me much higher…in fact the cost nationally, across all public services is likely to be well in excess of £100 million. In the closing months of 2006 the Secretary of State for Local Government (at that time, Ruth Kelly), asked for a review of language services across government. To date no fresh information has been published.