Poor interpreting did not simply disrupt a trial. It exposed what happens when language access is treated as an administrative afterthought rather than essential justice infrastructure.
An earlier guilty verdict was “thrown out over ‘seriously inadequate’ translation by the Punjabi language interpreter appointed to the case.”
That sentence, reported by the Edmonton Journal, should concern us all.
The case involves Ramjit Sandhu, who was convicted of sexual assault after a second trial. His first conviction was set aside by the Alberta Court of Appeal in R. v. Sandhu, 2024 ABCA 47. The Court summarized one of the grounds of appeal this way:
“There was such seriously inadequate language interpretation during the trial that it made the trial a miscarriage of justice.”
Read that again — a miscarriage of justice.
When do we start getting angry about this? When are we permitted to stop calling these incidents unfortunate and start calling them what they are: evidence of a system that has failed to build, maintain and oversee competent language access?
I have worked in this field for more than 30 years. Sadly, the fundamental problems remain the same. There have been pockets of progress, but we continue to see the same institutional failures, the same preventable consequences and the same calls for change after the harm has already been done. That is not meaningful improvement. It is a cycle, and it is long past time to break it.
This is not a debate about whether newcomers should learn English. But predictably, reporting on this case has attracted comments such as this one:
“How about simply getting back to basics. English and French, no accommodation for any other languages in the courts.”
This response is not only hostile; it fundamentally misunderstands the issue.
Official bilingualism and the right to an interpreter are not the same thing. Section 14 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the assistance of an interpreter to a party or witness who does not understand or speak the language of the proceedings or who is deaf. That right is connected to the rights to make full answer and defence and to receive a fair trial. The Supreme Court of Canada has held that court interpretation must be “continuous, precise, impartial, competent and contemporaneous.”1
Perfection is not required. A high standard is.
Professional responsibility extends far beyond passing a test or obtaining a certificate. It means understanding the weight of the work: that another person’s rights, safety, freedom and ability to be understood may depend on the interpreter’s competence, judgment and integrity.
This is not an immigration benefit. It is not a special accommodation granted out of generosity. It is part of the machinery of justice.
It also protects far more than an accused person. Competent interpreting supports witnesses, complainants, counsel, judges and the integrity of the evidence itself. Everyone in the courtroom depends on the communication being reliable. When it is not, no one can be confident that justice was done or seen to be done.
Canada has never been a one-language country
The suggestion that Canada should simply withdraw language access ignores both our history and our present reality.
This land was linguistically diverse long before colonization. It remains home to more than 70 Indigenous languages, two official languages, at least 5 different signed languages, and hundreds of languages brought and sustained by people from around the world. That diversity is not a recent inconvenience. It is part of Canada.
A shared language, or shared languages, can certainly help a society function. But supporting access in other languages does not weaken Canada. It allows people to participate in Canadian institutions when the stakes are too high to rely on partial understanding, improvised communication or hope.
Most newcomers learn English or French. They establish businesses, work in our institutions and industries, buy goods and services, pay taxes, raise families and contribute to their communities. Canada actively recruits talented people from around the world because this country needs immigration to grow.
Yet language proficiency is not absolute or static. A person may need first-language access early in the settlement process. Someone who functions well in English at work may not understand rapid, highly specialized courtroom language. Stress, trauma, illness or disability can affect comprehension. Some older adults lose access to languages learned later in life while retaining their first language. I witnessed this with my own mother. After immigrating to Canada, she learned to speak, read and write in three languages. Yet, as her dementia progressed, she increasingly returned to her first language. At that stage of her life, access to that language was not simply a convenience; it was essential to reaching her. And witnesses or parties may understand conversational English without being able to follow legal argument, testimony, evidentiary rulings or cross-examination.
None of this should be controversial. Understanding a casual conversation is not the same as understanding a criminal trial.
What does one failed trial cost?
We may never see a single invoice labelled “cost of inadequate interpreting.” The cost is spread across the system, which makes it easier to ignore.
There is the first trial itself: courtroom time, judicial time, Crown and defence preparation, court administration, transcripts, scheduling and interpreting services. Then there is the appeal, including legal research, written submissions, hearings and the review of interpreted evidence. When a new trial is ordered, much of that public expenditure begins again.
There are also consequences that cannot be reduced to a line in a government budget. A complainant may have to testify again. Witnesses must return. Families wait. The accused remains caught in unresolved proceedings. Court time that could have served other matters is consumed. Public confidence is damaged.
The question is not whether qualified interpreters cost money. Of course they do. The question is why governments continue to behave as though inadequate interpreting is the cheaper option.
It is not cheaper. The costs are merely deferred, dispersed and imposed on other people.
This cannot be reduced to one interpreter.
Interpreters are not born, nor are they created by a single test or certificate.
This is at the heart of what I mean when I speak about professional responsibility, and it is the focus of a presentation I will be giving in October. Professional responsibility extends far beyond passing a test or obtaining a certificate. It means understanding the weight of the work: that another person’s rights, safety, freedom and ability to be understood may depend on the interpreter’s competence, judgment and integrity.
An interpreter whose work is inadequate must be held accountable. But stopping there allows the system to escape scrutiny. Institutions also have a responsibility to ensure that the interpreters they retain are properly educated, assessed, supported and qualified for the complexity of the work they are being asked to perform.
- Who determined that the interpreter was qualified for this assignment?
- What evidence of proficiency in English and Punjabi was required?
- What legal-interpreting education, skills assessment and courtroom orientation had been completed?
- Was the interpreter’s performance ever monitored?
- Were concerns documented and investigated?
- Was there a clear process for judges, lawyers, court staff, witnesses or other interpreters to report problems?
- Were working conditions and compensation sufficient to recruit and retain qualified professionals?
- When problems became known, what changed?
There is an entire education, assessment and professional-development continuum that must be reinforced. Interpreters are not born, nor are they created by a single test or certificate. They enter the profession with linguistic and other relevant abilities that must first be assessed. They must then receive rigorous, standards-based interpreter education, followed by assessment of their interpreting competence. As they move into specialized settings, they must be further educated, assessed, supported in practice, continually upskilled and reassessed.
Certification can provide important evidence of competence at a particular point in time, but it is not the beginning and end of professional development. Competence must be built, demonstrated, maintained and expanded throughout an interpreter’s career. Institutions that retain interpreters have a responsibility to understand, and invest in, that continuum.
These are governance questions, not excuses.
According to the Edmonton Journal, internal documents obtained by Sandhu’s lawyer show that Alberta’s courts and government had known of longstanding concerns with court interpreting. A 2021 Court Interpreters Review Committee report reportedly acknowledged that hiring unqualified interpreters was not an isolated issue.
If those reports are accurate, this was not an unforeseeable mistake. It was a known risk.
A system cannot knowingly use weak qualification, selection and oversight processes and then place the entire burden of failure on the last person in the chain. The interpreter’s competence is essential, but competence does not appear by administrative declaration. It must be developed through appropriate education and practice, demonstrated through valid assessment, supported by working conditions, and maintained through monitoring and continuing professional development.
We already have frameworks that define professional interpreting and the competences required in legal settings. ISO 20228:2019 establishes requirements for legal interpreting services and specifies the competences of legal interpreters. A revised and updated edition is now in its final stages, with publication anticipated in late 2026 or early 2027. We also have ISO/TS 6253:2024, which establishes current, competence-based requirements and recommendations for training programmes in interpreting; standards grounded in the realities of the work interpreters perform today.
Canada does not need to invent the idea that interpreting is skilled professional work, nor do we need to keep returning to outdated guidelines, training models and assessment criteria designed for yesterday’s world. Current standards exist. So does the expertise of professionals who work in this field every day.
What is missing is the will to apply that knowledge, to build education, procurement, qualification and accountability systems that reflect the complexity and consequences of the work. Ignoring current standards and available expertise is not simply an oversight. When people’s rights and freedom are at stake, it is an institutional choice with serious consequences.
Language access is infrastructure
Courts would not knowingly use an unqualified court reporter and hope the record was close enough. They would not treat the reliability of evidence as an optional administrative detail. Interpreting services should not be approached differently.
The interpreter is not an accessory in a multilingual proceeding. The interpreter is the channel through which testimony, questions, answers, objections, instructions and legal rights become accessible. If that channel is unreliable, every decision built upon it is put at risk.
A coherent court-interpreting system requires, at minimum:
• clear, current and transparent qualification requirements
• independent assessment of language proficiency and interpreting competence
• specialized education in legal interpreting, ethics and court procedure
• appropriate matching of interpreters to language, setting and complexity
• orientation for interpreters and for the court professionals who work with them
• fair compensation and workable conditions that help retain qualified practitioners
• documented quality-assurance and complaint processes
• meaningful consequences and remediation when standards are not met
• data that allow courts to identify patterns before they become miscarriages of justice.
This is what it means to treat language access as infrastructure rather than a last-minute booking.
Yes, we should be angry. I know I am.
And I also know that courts are not the only institutional settings in which these egregious failures occur. They happen in healthcare, mental health and complex care, policing(*), immigration, education, child protection and other public services; anywhere critical decisions are made through interpreted communication. The consequences may differ, but the underlying failure is the same: language access is treated as an administrative accommodation rather than essential professional infrastructure.
Anger is warranted when a preventable systems failure threatens a fair trial. It is warranted when institutions know there is a problem but continue to expose the public to the same risk. It is warranted when professional interpreting is treated as though bilingualism alone were enough, and everyone else is left to absorb the consequences.
But anger must lead somewhere.
It should lead to a public accounting of what Alberta knew, when it knew it and what it did in response. It should lead to transparent qualification and procurement requirements. It should lead to proper training, valid assessment, oversight and investment. And it should lead other Canadian jurisdictions to examine their own systems before another conviction is overturned, another proceeding is repeated or another person is denied meaningful participation in justice.
The question is no longer whether poor court interpreting can cause serious harm. The courts have already answered that.
The question is how many warnings governments require before they decide to build a system worthy of the rights it is supposed to protect.
Citations
Sources
- Jonny Wakefield, “Lost in translation: Edmonton case reveals longstanding worries about unqualified interpreters in Alberta courts”, Edmonton Journal.
- R. v. Sandhu, 2024 ABCA 47.
- Department of Justice Canada, Charterpedia: Section 14 — Right to an interpreter.
- Supreme Court of Canada, R. v. Tran, [1994] 2 S.C.R. 951.
- International Organization for Standardization, ISO 20228:2019 — Legal interpreting — Requirements.
- International Organization for Standardization, ISO TS 6253:2024 Requirements and Recommendations for Training Programmes in Community Interpreting.
Footnotes
(*) A devastating example occurred in Surrey, British Columbia, in September 2024. Vanessa Renteria Valencia, a 37-year-old Colombian refugee experiencing an apparent mental health crisis, was fatally shot by an RCMP officer while holding her young child and a pair of scissors. Renteria Valencia spoke little or no English. With no Spanish-speaking officer initially available, police relied on Google Translate to obtain critical information and communicate with her. The Independent Investigations Office later concluded that the officer’s use of force was legally justified but acknowledged that language barriers prevented effective communication. The case raises a larger and deeply troubling question: how can an automated translation tool be considered an adequate institutional response when communication may determine whether someone lives or dies?