By Evan Hill

September 17, 2008

Two years after a measure to make interpreters broadly available in civil courtrooms failed to win state funding, some in the Chinese-American legal community are drawing attention to a new, scaled-down effort on the issue.

San Francisco Superior Court Judges Lillian Sing and Julie Tang have thrown their support behind AB 3050, a bill awaiting the signature of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger that would establish a pilot program to provide increased access to interpreters in civil litigation.

At a press conference Tuesday in San Francisco's Chinatown, the two described a broken system where people with limited English abilities - many of them recent immigrants - are often forced to participate in weighty civil court proceedings without the benefit of a certified interpreter.

Sing and Tang recalled instances of hasty, "slipshod" arrangements: a court staffer brought in when a landlord being sued by her tenant wanted to have her 16-year-old daughter translate; an 8-year-old girl whose parents wanted her to interpret in their custody dispute; and even Tang herself, who said that she translated for a Chinese-speaking litigant in at least one case, with the consent of both parties.

Without certified interpreters on call, Sing said, there's no assurance of an accurate translation.

"If you don't have a good interpreter, and if the court misunderstands your testimony … you can lose your child," she said.

The new bill, which is designed in particular to help low-income litigants, would apply to family-law, landlord-tenant, probate and elder abuse disputes, among other civil cases. It has arrived at the governor's desk with the support of Assemblyman Dave Jones, D-Sacramento, chairman of the judiciary committee.

Jones said in an interview Tuesday that AB 3050 avoids the trap of its predecessor by paying for itself. In 2006, he authored a bill that would have given the courts $10 million to guarantee interpreters to non-English speakers in certain civil cases. Schwarzenegger vetoed the bill, citing the state budget deficit.

The bill now before the governor would require the state Judicial Council to create a pilot program to provide interpreters in civil cases in five counties by July 1, 2010. The council would fund the program through a fee: Teleconference providers that attorneys use to appear at hearings by telephone would charge the attorneys $15 per appearance, which the provider would then pay to the state's Trial Court Trust Fund.

First District Court of Appeal Justice James Lambden, who appeared at the Tuesday event hosted by Chinese for Affirmative Action, compared the importance of civil proceedings with criminal cases, where the presence of interpreters is guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution.

"In these [civil] cases, the results to a family, if they lose their home, can be devastating," he said.

Nearly 21 percent of the state's population cannot speak English with enough proficiency to go through legal proceedings without significant help, according to a summary of the bill released by Jones' office. Still, at least when it comes to having Chinese-speaking interpreters on hand, San Francisco seems better off than other counties. Of the 59 Mandarin- and Cantonese-certified interpreters statewide, 25 work in San Francisco, according to the CAA.

Sing said San Francisco funds its own interpreter service for indigent litigants in small-claims court.

"Can you imagine other counties where they don't have the funding … or sensitivities?" she asked.