Court interpreters for foreigners rising
By Lee Kyung-min
Suren Otgonbayar, 41, who came to Korea from Mongolia to earn a Seoul National University doctorate in social education, frequently receives mail from the court.
“It’s from court,” a postal service delivery worker says in Korean with suspicious eyes.
Otgonbayar is used to receiving such mail. After opening the envelope, he sits down at his desk and begins translating the summons into Mongolian.
It reads, “The recipient of this letter is subject to questioning and is therefore required to appear before the Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office on Thursday at 10 a.m.”
He puts the translated paper in an envelope and seals it. The envelope will be delivered to a Mongol man, a robbery suspect, who the summons was initially written for, living in Gyeonggi Province.
Otgonbayar is one of 1,581 court-registered interpreters in Korea. They are fluent in Korean and another foreign language, including English, Chinese, Kazak, Hindi, Nepali, Urdu, Vietnamese and Arabic.
The number of court interpreters is on the rise in line with the growing number of crimes committed by foreigners living here.
According to the National Police Agency (NPA), the number of foreigners investigated by the prosecution stood at 30,684 in 2014, up 15 percent from a year earlier.
The number of trials involving foreign suspects is also on the rise with 3,790 in 2014, up 441 from 2012. To cope with the rising number of foreigner-related cases, courts have taken steps in selecting qualified interpreters to better provide suspects with due representation and equal protection under the law regardless of their nationality.
The Seoul Central District Court offers regular training sessions for interpreters, which are also attended by judges, law professors and law clerks.
The sessions provide those involved with the legal system tips to avoid misrepresentation.
The two main tasks of interpreters are translating court documents and providing interpretation during court hearings.
They receive up to 30,000 won for translation work the size of an A4 paper.
Interpretation during hearings costs 70,000 won for the first 30 minutes and an additional 50,000 every 30 minutes thereafter.
According to the Supreme Court, a yearly budget of 1.65 billion won ($1.3 million) is allocated for interpreters, an eight-fold increase from 2 billion won in 2010.
Besides criminal cases, interpreters are helping foreigners in other courts.
The Seoul Administrative Court, which deals with disputes between the government and foreigners, has a counter that provides foreign language services to help throughout court proceedings.
The court mainly deals with refugee status approval, political asylum approval, expatriation orders, naturalization approval and visa extensions.
The Seoul Family Court, which deals with divorces involving foreign wives, has counters for those from the Philippines and Vietnam. An average of 106 people a month visit the counter.