Published: July 07, 2008 12:47 pm         

Interpreter key in courtroom proceedings

Walter “Buddy” Holder seems out of place in the courtroom.

The clinically blind man with slightly graying hair, wearing a pale green shirt and a SpongeBob SquarePants tie, is not a lawyer, accused criminal or witness. Still, he plays a critical role in the room.

Holder, 62, has been a court interpreter for Cass County for 13 years, he said. He works about 20 hours a week translating for witnesses and defendants who speak only Spanish.

The job is a critical one to ensure the fundamental idea of fairness, said Cass Superior Court II Judge Rick Maughmer. Case law requiring an interpreter be available to defendants has been on the books for at least 30 years.

“Due process requires that a person appearing before the court be entitled to understand the proceedings,” said Maughmer, who manages the county’s court interpreter services. “We use Buddy every day.”

The county has been flush with Hispanics since the IBP Inc. pork processing plant arrived in Logansport in 1995, the judge said.

That same year, Holder, who is also the pastor at Logansport’s Bethel Temple Church, was approached by county council members in need of a court interpreter. At the time, he wasn’t sure he wanted the job, Holder remembered with a smile.

“I almost walked out on it when I started,” he said. “But they didn’t have anyone else to do it.”

Holder, who learned Spanish while living in Mexico for eight years to start several churches, wasn’t the first court interpreter in the county. That title belongs to Chico Canalaz, who is honored with a plaque in Cass Superior Court I.

But since Canalaz’s death, Holder has handled about 95 percent of the Spanish language interpretation for the county courts, Maughmer said. When he is unavailable, the county turns to two other interpreters, Kimberly Perez and Susannah Bueno.

It’s a makeshift arrangement for a court system whose county council still doesn’t want to hire a court interpreter full-time.

Maughmer works to pay the interpreters’ salaries by applying for grant money from the Indiana Supreme Court. He has leaned on Holder because he receives $35 per hour, while Perez and Bueno cost $60 per hour.

Last year, while spending $30,000, Maughmer received $7,000 from the state. The rest of the money for the interpreter came from the county’s general fund.

This year, Maughmer was able to secure $14,000 for the county. The Indiana Supreme Court doled out $239,250 in total for interpreter services this year, said Adrienne Meiring, manager of the state court interpreter program. Cass earned one of the largest grants.

But the money comes with a catch this year. For the first time, 60 percent of the grant must be spent on Indiana certified interpreters.

That stipulation could change the look of the Cass court interpreter system, since Holder is not certified. While he’s hopeful he’ll become certified soon, Holder said the process is not easy.

“I once talked to an Indiana doctor who took the certification test,” Holder said. “He said it was easier to get medical license in Indiana than to become a court interpreter.”

The pass rate for the certification test is less than 20 percent in Indiana, said Meiring, noting the Indiana number is higher than the national average. Potential interpreters must receive a 70 percent on three written and oral tests to become certified.

The test is meant to be hard because the court interpreter’s job itself is hard, said Perez, one of the 52 certified interpreters in the state.

“The job is very challenging,” said Perez, 27, who also does court interpretation for Howard County. “It’s mentally exhausting.”

One of the biggest challenges for interpreters and the entire system is that many defendants who don’t speak English also don’t understand the American legal system, Maughmer said. Interpreters only do “real-time” translation, unable to explain anything about the system.

“To you and me, it’s common to have right to attorney and a right to trial,” Maughmer said. “But they have no idea. They think of me as a warlord, and they think I’m gonna have them thrown off a building or drowned in the river.”

The job also produces some interesting situations, said Holder, noting a time when language problems caused the court to use three different interpreters at the same time. In that case, Holder translated English to Spanish for a second interpreter who interpreted the Spanish to Chu to a third interpreter who interpreted the Chu for the defendant.

Through the challenges and interesting times, Holder said it’s been a rewarding 13 years for simple reasons.

“I enjoy meeting people,” he said. “I enjoy communicating with people.”

Brian Rosenthal can be reached at (574) 732-5148, or via e-mail at brian.rosenthal@pharostribune.com