Court translators failing exams not reason enough to launch inquiry: Ontario AG

TORONTO - The failure of 77 Ontario court translators to pass proficiency exams is not reason enough to launch an inquiry into cases involving those interpreters that resulted in convictions, Attorney General Chris Bentley said Monday.The government would have to be handed new information or a "real concrete reason" before it would launch such a review, Bentley said in an interview."If there's some evidence, something more beyond the results of the accreditation (exams) to suggest cause for inquiry I'm sure that will be brought to our attention," Bentley said.It was revealed earlier this month that 77 of 223 court translators failed accreditation tests administered by the ministry last June. An additional one-third were given conditional approval, while several hundred more await testing.Last week the Criminal Lawyers' Association called on the government to conduct an inquiry into the matter and identify cases in which substandard court translation may have resulted in a miscarriage of justice.Association president Paul Burstein said in an interview Monday that he is disappointed the attorney general isn't reviewing the issue further.Starting with the names of translators who failed the test, the government "could go back and look at the cases where there were trials that resulted in convictions... and (get) a sense of whether or not they had enough skills to reliably interpret the evidence and proceedings," Burstein said.Only the ministry has the necessary information to conduct such inquiries, he added.The Ontario Court of Appeal has ruled previously that post-trial concerns about translation quality are not enough to call the validity of court proceedings into question.Accredited interpreters must achieve a score of 70 per cent and above overall and in each category tested, according to the ministry's website.Conditionally accredited interpreters are ones who did not reach a score of 70 per cent overall in each category, but their test score showed a high level of proficiency.The ministry website says accredited interpreters will be assigned to the more complex court matters, with conditionally accredited interpreters being assigned to other proceedings.The previous test used to accredit court interpreters in Ontario was a standard language interpretation test.The test rolled out last year, developed by Vancouver Community College, is specific to courts and based on actual court documents and trial transcripts from Ontario court proceedings, the website states."This approach ensures the tests match a realistic court interpreter experience and reflect the high level of skill and specialized terminology required for court interpretation."

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