San Bernardino Superior Court now provides court interpreters for all courtroom proceedings, the court announced June 6. The last hold-outs were civil litigation and small claims.
Forty-two percent of San Bernardino County’s population speak a language other than English at home, the announcement says.
Two days of notice is required to gain a Spanish-language interpreter, and five days of notice is required for other languages, according to the court. Litigants can call the phone number of the interpreter coordinator for each courthouse listed here. Sign language interpreters can be requested by asking courtroom staff or the courthouse’s Americans with Disabilities Act coordinator.
According to the court’s 2022 Annual Report, 54,060 people requested Spanish language interpreters across the court in 2022, and another 2,027 people requested interpretation for other languages.
Family law cases received interpretation services in 2022, the report said.
San Bernardino received $6.7 million in court reporter funding from the state budget in 2022-2023, according to a July 15 Judicial Council report.
The 2020-2021 gave San Bernardino Superior Court $6 million in trial court funding, according to a 2022 Judicial Council report on court interpreters. Most of those expenditures, $5.6 million, went to staff interpreters. Contract interpreters took up $291,000, and, of that, regular contracted interpreters took up $138,000, ASL interpreters took up $89,600, and telephonic interpreters took up $10,000.
Few other counties offered interpreters for civil cases, according to the report. Only 27 counties spent any money on court reporters for civil cases, and only nine counties used staff interpreters in civil cases.
Assembly Bill 1657, passed in 2014, requires the Judicial Council to reimburse courts for court interpreter services provided in civil actions for litigants who do not proficiently speak or understand English. The Strategic Plan for Language Access in the California Courts, created in 2015, announced the Judicial Council’s intent to provide interpreters in all courtroom proceedings where a litigant has limited English understanding.
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