Courts Service pays over €1m for interpreters

Yoruba, Cebuano, Lingala, Iloko, and Tagalog are some of the obscure, exotic, and far-flung languages spoken by those accused of offences before the courts here last year.

The Courts Service, in response to a Freedom of Information request, confirmed the bill for providing interpretation services for 68 languages in the courts last year totalled just over €1m. The lion’s share of the fees was paid to translation.ie or Forbidden City Ltd, which received 832,324.

According to the Courts Service, Polish was the language interpreted most often last year in the courts when interpreters were required on 2,151 different occasions — accounting for 28.8% of the 10 most popular languages last year. This was followed by the demand for Romanian interpreters who were required 1,367 times in court.