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Lost in translation

I am really confused by all of this, apparently there have been 26.000 requests for interpreters in the last 3 months, that does seem a lot to me, how many of these were defendants and how many were witnesses, that is the real question. The puzzling thing is that when I watch TV News from Iran, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, any eastern European country they can almost all speak pretty good English, even the man in the street. In fact watching Eurovision and SoccerAid this weekend I saw that most of the Eurovision entries sang in English, all of those representing their countries in the vote spoke very good English, not the french though, and SoccerAid's visits to India, PhillIpines and a number of African countries introduced many pretty good English speakers in the streets, I also seem to recall the same with all of the other televised AID programmes. My question therefore is why do all of these people need interpreters? If there is a genuine need then so be it but If they are defendants and found gui;ty they should be made to pay the interpreter costs, that might just stop them demanding an interpreter and rouse their long lost command of the English language.

28-May-2012

11:26 am