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Guidelines for Legal Settings

The Judicial Council on Diversity and Inclusion (JCDI – previously called the the Judicial Council on Cultural Diversity, JCCD) has developed Recommended National Standards for Working with Interpreters in Courts and Tribunals, to promote optimal practices for Australian courtrooms. AUSIT strongly encourages anyone working with interpreters in a courtroom setting to familiarise themselves with these Standards, below. Other guidelines, specifically for lawyers, judges and judicial officers communicating legal rights can also be found below.

Further resources specific to certain state jurisdictions (NSW, SA) are available:

People working with interpreters in family violence settings are encouraged to read the Victorian Royal Commission Report into Family Violence, Report and Recommendations, 2017:

A number of videos are available to assist and prepare people who will be working with translators and interpreters in legal settings:

AUSIT’s Guidelines for People who Work with Interpreters: Sight Translation are also relevant –
go to the ‘In Legal Settings’ section.

Submission form

for court interpreters to report incidents or issues that occur in court interpreting assignments.

Purpose and function of this information submission form.

This form enables you to report issues or problems that you encounter in the course of court interpreting assignments. These issues and problems will be collected by AUSIT to report to the JCCD (the Judicial Council on Cultural Diversity) to monitor the implementation of the Recommended National Standards. The reporting of these issues and problems enables AUSIT to work with the JCCD to suggest steps to address these issues and to avoid the repetition of these problems in the future.

  • Details of interpreter and court interpreting assignment

    (These details will be retained by AUSIT only. These details will not be passed on to JCDI):

  • MM slash DD slash YYYY
  • Your interpreting assignment experience

    (These details may be shared with JCDI. If you do not wish for a specific piece of information to be made available to the JCDI, please make this clear.)

  • Give details of what you wish to report on in chronological order below (NOTE: you can access the Recommended National Standards here)
  • Thank you for taking the time to report your experience. It will assist us in advocating for interpreters to be treated as the skilled and experienced professionals that we are. Your feedback is welcome.

  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

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