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New Court Interpreter Internship Harnesses CUNY Students’ Language Skills

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Facing an exponentially growing need for qualified language interpreters, New York State’s court system is teaming up with The City University of New York to prepare multilingual students for the state’s court-interpreter screening exams, the first step in qualifying for well-paid full- and part-time jobs as court interpreters.

The Unified Court System Internship Program in Court Interpreting, piloted last spring with 42 students, officially launches this semester with 37 students from LaGuardia, Hunter College and John Jay College for Criminal Justice – all schools with language interpretation and translation programs. The internship program will expand to more campuses in Spring 2018.

The program offers 20- and 100-hour internships. The greatest growth is expected in the 100-hour program, which this semester has six Hunter Russian-language speakers and four John Jay Spanish-language speakers; in the spring, it is expected to draw 25 to 30 students.

“Thirty-nine percent of our students speak a native language other than English,” said Chancellor James B. Milliken. “Their ancestries trace back to more than 200 countries and regions, and they speak an astounding total of 174 languages. These internships offer an exciting way for our students to capitalize on their language skills and to benefit the city and state.”

Ann Ryan, New York State coordinator for the courts’ Office of Language Access, agreed: “The students see that interpreters are really helping people. When they find someone who speaks the same language, it is almost like helping a kindred spirit,” she said.

In 2009, courts in New York provided interpreters in 95 languages. In 2013, that grew to 108 languages and in the past 12 months to 119 languages among all the courts in the state. Many CUNY students could help meet the need for interpreters because they speak a language other than English as either their first language or heritage language. At LaGuardia Community College alone, students speak languages including Spanish, Polish, Pashtu, Urdu, Thai, Bengali, Nepali, Korean, Japanese and Chinese.

New York’s court system requires the provision of interpreting services in court proceedings of all types, and to all court users, including witnesses and crime victims, not only in courtrooms, but also in clerical offices and other points of contact. Yet, as the court’s 2017 “Ensuring Language Access: A Strategic Plan for the New York State Courts” makes clear, the challenge is great. Five million New York state residents speak one or more of 150 languages other than English, 2 million of whom are not fluent in English.

Edited by: JV Staff
(CUNY Newswire)

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