What we will not promise
Court interpreting is not ours to offer
Courts appoint their own interpreters. Asking the court costs nothing, and asking early matters more than asking well.
What you will see advertised
“Our interpreters cover court hearings in any language.”
There are two claims in that line: that we could send somebody, and that a court would hear them. The second one is not ours to make, and it is the one the customer is relying on.
Who appoints an interpreter in a proceeding
Courts appoint their own interpreters. Each state runs its own process for who may interpret in its courtrooms, the federal courts run another, and being available and competent is not the same as being the person the court has appointed.
Competence and availability are ours to offer. Appointment is not, and it is the appointment rather than the ability that decides whether the person sitting beside you may do the job.
Why the courts built a process for this at all
A proceeding is the one setting where an interpreter's words become part of a record that somebody may later have to rely on, which is not true of any other room we work in.
A proceeding is the one setting where an interpreter's work becomes part of a record that somebody may later have to rely on, and the courts have built appointment processes for exactly that reason. An agency that offers to send an interpreter to a hearing is offering something the court did not ask it for, and a party who books one instead of asking the court for an interpreter may arrive to find the court will not hear them through anybody else.
What to do, and what we do cover
Ask the court for an interpreter. It is the court's job, it does not cost you anything, and asking early matters more than asking well. What we do cover is everything around a case that is not the proceeding — a meeting with your own attorney, a deposition where the parties instruct us, a document you need to understand before you sign it.
That work is priced on the rate card like any other interpreting: by the hour on site, by the half hour remotely, with the minimums said out loud rather than discovered on an invoice. What none of it is, is the room the court is sitting in.
The other nine
One argument in ten parts. Each one is a sentence this trade sells and a plainer thing that is true instead.
Send us the document
A photograph is enough to quote from, and you will hear what the problem is — if there is one — before anybody starts work rather than afterwards.