The board of the Union of Translators of Russia (UTR) has been working diligently on court translation and interpreting issues to resolve lingering areas of concern.
At the end of 2023, the Moscow city government supported the board’s initiative to carry out a project to develop and test a regional model for court interpreting in Moscow. Throughout 2024, the UTR team, led by our head of legal services, Alexander Larin, have worked on implementing it, organising and conducting a number of important activities and events.
After surveying the current status of court interpreting in Moscow specifically, and Russia as a whole, the team concluded that the languages spoken in Russia’s Indigenous communities and CIS countries were in highest demand in the courts today, with languages like English, Spanish, Chinese, Vietnamese, Arabic and others in less demand. The high-demand languages present a number of challenges worth examining, including interpreter training and court interpreter certification, cooperation with the relevant authorities on the specifics of legal proceedings requiring translation or interpreting, and issues with compensation, to name a few.
As part of this project, UTR organised lectures and seminars throughout 2024 for law enforcement officers and law school students and teachers to educate them about working with translators and interpreters.
A pilot training programme was developed and is being tested for court interpreters working in Moscow, with more than 250 trainees taking part. Successful trainees will be able to undergo additional certification to be included in a trial electronic registry of Moscow court interpreters that was launched at the end of November. If successful, the registry could be used directly by official law enforcement and judicial services in the region.
The results of the project will be summarised and presented at a conference for interpreters, judges, lawyers, migration officials, notaries, legal scholars and linguists, law students and professors at the end of December. The latest information about the project can be found at ersp.rutrans.org.
The UTR board expresses its deepest gratitude to all the FIT colleagues who have supported and participated in the project.
Olga Yu. Ivanova, UTR
