The Generalitat will sanction the interpreter company of the Roger Español case trial

BarcelonaThe fiasco of the Catalan interpreters at the Roger Español case trial will end in sanctions. As reported by Nació Digital and confirmed to ARA by sources from the Department of Justice, the Generalitat has decided to open a file on the company awarded the translation service, Ofilingua SL, to impose the "economic penalties" provided for in the contract specifications.

The decision comes after the Justice Department had already required the company, which has its registered office in Granada, to clarify why the two workers it sent to the trial were unable to translate the interrogations from Catalan to Spanish and to guarantee that it will not happen again. The Generalitat has received the explanations and has requested more information.

According to the same sources, for the moment the company has committed to "adopting internal organizational measures" to "improve" the assignment of workers for the required services. Ofilingua is one of the companies to which the Generalitat keeps the interpretation service for the judiciary awarded, a service that depends on the Government but which is mostly outsourced.

Faced with the fiasco with Catalan in the Roger Español case trial, the Government has also reminded the High Court of Justice of Catalonia (TSJC) of the possibility that, in accordance with the Organic Law of the Judiciary, in extraordinary cases, any person with knowledge of the language used can be authorized as an interpreter, beyond the translators and interpreters provided by the Department of Justice.

In the session of the trial where the controversy occurred, in fact, Español's lawyer, Benet Salellas, already conveyed to the magistrate of the court that the law allows any judicial official to do the translation, but the judge ruled out this possibility. Finally, the prosecution lawyers ended up translating for themselves or questioning the accused Spanish police officers directly in Spanish.

Iridia, Òmnium and the ANC, which are acting as private and popular prosecutors, together with the entities promoting the #JustíciaPerRoger campaign, described as "intolerable" the "violation of linguistic rights" that had occurred at the trial as a result of this situation. Sources familiar with the reality of interpretation in trials in Catalonia, however, make it clear that this situation is not new.

The problem is not because the interpretation "is in Catalan", explained a few days ago to ARA the sworn translator and interpreter Emma Soler, and pointed out as a cause how this service is tendered and awarded to agencies that repeatedly have bad practices. "The specifications are not an exercise in transparency and quality assurance, but often auctions to the bottom: the one who presents the lowest price wins, without adequately requiring or accrediting the training and experience of the interpreters", she stated.