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Alerts, News:

Saturday, October 29th, 2011 Petition to Maintain Standards in California

Due to the continued and overwhelming concern of court interpreters throughout California, members and non-members alike, at our conference we distributed a petition for interpreters to request the AOC to maintain certification standards.

Download and print the petition in pdf format. If you agree, please sign and write in your personal comments on the bottom. Return to the CFI office in San Francisco:

CFI attn: Petition
433 Natoma St, 3rd Floor
San Francisco CA 94103

The full text of the petition is reproduced below:

Petition to Maintain Certification Standards

As a certified/registered interpreter, I am deeply concerned about the Consortium Exam recently adopted in California to certify court interpreters. The new Consortium Exam does not meet the same high standards set by the California exam it replaced for the following reasons:

  1. The written portion of the Consortium Exam does not screen for the foreign language.
  2. The sight translation texts are almost 30% shorter than the sight texts on the old exam.
  3. The speed for the simultaneous portion has decreased to 120 words/minute, from an average of 134 words/minute.
  4. The 70% cut-off score for the oral portion is below the recommendation of subject matter experts.
  5. The Consortium Exam eliminates the subjective scoring component, which tests for various elements that impact comprehension.

I respectfully request the adoption of the following changes:

  • That the cut-score be set at 80% for California to protect non-English speakers’ language-access rights and to preserve the integrity of the judicial process, pending scientific studies of what the cut score should be.
  • That a bilingual screener be added to avoid over-exposure of test instruments and to assure that only qualified candidates advance to the oral exam.
  • That the new and old exams be fully reviewed and compared by an independent body to ensure adequate standards of competence.

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