{"id":406,"date":"2012-10-18T13:36:11","date_gmt":"2012-10-18T13:36:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/xislblogs.xtreamlab.net\/slwoods\/?p=406"},"modified":"2013-07-06T08:49:22","modified_gmt":"2013-07-06T08:49:22","slug":"interpreting-courting-disaster","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/?p=406","title":{"rendered":"Interpreting: courting disaster"},"content":{"rendered":"

Earlier this year, the Ministry of Justice made a massive cock-up when it changed the method by which courts in England and Wales procured interpreters. It handed a £ 43 mn. contract for court interpreting services to an outfit called Applied Language Solutions (ALS), an outfit totally incapable of and unprepared for handling such a large contract.<\/p>\n

Once it had laid its hands on the court interpreting contract, ALS sought to change the terms and conditions under which interpreters are engaged, introducing a savage pay and expenses cut, resulting in a boycott of ALS which is still continuing as many interpreters are not prepared to do a professional job of work for a rate of pay that now works out at less than the minimum wage once expenses have been deducted.<\/p>\n

To attempt to make good the shortfall, ALS resorted to hiring unqualified translators, including a rabbit called Jajo<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Earlier this week the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee examined the MoJ\/ALS fiasco (footage here<\/a>). The senior civil servants in charge of the project did not put in a good performance. To call them incompetent would be too praiseworthy.<\/p>\n

Just as the Select Committee were settling in to their deliberations, the latest edition of Private Eye had also picked up the ALS story.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

As the Eye piece points out, ALS has since been acquired by Capita and rebranded Capita Translation and Interpreting.<\/p>\n

Private Eye spells Capita with an additional ‘r’. Say no more.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Earlier this year, the Ministry of Justice made a massive cock-up when it changed the method by which courts in England and Wales procured interpreters. It handed a £ 43 mn. contract for court interpreting services to an outfit called Applied Language Solutions (ALS), an outfit totally incapable of and unprepared for handling such a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,15],"tags":[31,22,20],"class_list":["post-406","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-translation-and-language-related-matters","category-politics","tag-crapita","tag-language","tag-politics-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/20"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=406"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2299,"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406\/revisions\/2299"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=406"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=406"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=406"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}