2018 State of the Court

STATE OF THE COURT REPORT | 2018 EDITION

DELIVERING MULTILINGUAL INTERPRETATION

In San Bernardino County, it’s estimated that more than 41 percent of households speak a language other than English at home―nearly doubling the national average. SBCSC provides limited-English speaking court users with language assistance in over 45 languages utilizing a combination of certified staff interpreters, interpreter employees borrowed from other courts on cross-assignment, and independent contractors. In SBCSC, the most frequently requested languages are Spanish, American Sign Language, Mandarin, Arabic, Korean, and Vietnamese. Interpreters are provided to most case types and to all court users, jurors, and observers for sign language. For spoken languages, interpreters are provided for criminal, juvenile delinquency, juvenile dependency, traffic, child support (AB 1058), mental health, family law domestic violence protective orders, civil harassment (under §527.6 (w)), elder or dependent adult protective order (involving physical abuse or neglect), landlord- tenant, guardianship, and conservatorship. For all other case types, interpreters are provided based on availability of resources. SBCSC spends more than $5 million annually on interpreter services provided by certified court interpreters and provides a stipend for bilingual court staff to provide language assistance to the public outside of the courtroom. SBCSC also spends $465,000 annually for contracted interpreter services.

In 2018, SBCSC served the interpretation needs for 37 languages other than Spanish

Requests by Litigation Type

Civil

Criminal

Family Law

100000

33,101

Juvenile

7,363

6,247

3,890

10000

Mental Health

1,534

1,012

545

1000

339

Other

62

Probate

100

Traffic/Infractions

10

Unlawful Detainers

1

81,768 Interpretations in 2018 1,572 Interpretations per week

SAN BERNARDINO COUNTY SUPERIOR COURT (SBCSC)

34