{"id":1199,"date":"2017-04-03T23:25:07","date_gmt":"2017-04-03T23:25:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/justycja.co.uk\/legal\/?p=1199"},"modified":"2017-04-03T23:25:07","modified_gmt":"2017-04-03T23:25:07","slug":"10-things-i-have-learned-in-the-allegedly-busiest-court-in-europe1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.justycja.co.uk\/legal\/10-things-i-have-learned-in-the-allegedly-busiest-court-in-europe1\/","title":{"rendered":"10 things I have learned in the allegedly busiest court in Europe\u2026(1)"},"content":{"rendered":"

… and other less busy ones in Scotland. <\/span>
\n 
\nAuthor: Kuba Hiterski\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Photo: Jane McPhelim <\/a><\/span>
\n 
\nYour face is your badge \u2013 I heard from a security guard one day clearly showing I am no stranger to the courts\u2026 \u2013 don\u2019t worry, I am not one of those \u2018pesky\u2019 foreign criminals you can read about in tabloid press. Indeed, I have been assisting Scottish courts in a public service interpreter capacity with various frequency since 2011, a role that accounts for majority of my just over 3000 hours of professional interpreting experience. <\/span>
\nNowadays, as I am spending more time working in the private sector (mostly on business development) I am thinking a lot about the future of court interpreting in Scotland and what I have learned from this journey, especially that in the current political climate nothing seems certain for ever longer. This is true both locally in the United Kingdom with Brexit and still possible second Scottish independence referendum, as well as globally with the newly elected POTUS.<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>Is there a global trend of shutting down borders, building walls and stigmatising immigrants? <\/span>
\nAs far I am concerned, I\u00a0am a subcontractor to a local, Scottish business, namely Global Connects, who have been awarded a government contract with the Scottish Courts and Crown Office among others. <\/span>
\nAs a court interpreter, I have been providing an interpreting service to the Courts and Crown Office, mostly in criminal proceedings. The objective is to make the court proceedings understood by an accused or assisting a witness in giving evidence. The gravity of offences varies greatly \u2013 from common<\/span>\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>breach of peace through road traffic matters to various assaults, domestic violence, sexual offences, murders and organised crime. Moreover, I interpret in civil proceedings including Children Hearings, Scottish Children Reporter Agency panels, Small Claims Court and Family Court proceedings. <\/span>
\nI should at this\u00a0point mention that I have decided to break this article down into a series of mini-posts\/articles as I had quickly realised it is virtually impossible for me to write even about the top 10 things I have learned at Glasgow Sheriff and other Scottish courts in just under 500 words. Thus, this piece should be seen as the first article in this series with more to come in subsequent months. <\/span>
\n 
\nHere are some\u00a0of\u00a0my 10 key conclusions: <\/span>
\n 
\n1)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Pragmatism and meticulous time-management <\/span><\/strong>
\n 
\nGlasgow Sheriff Court is Scotland’s busiest, handling more than 11,500 cases in a year. <\/span><\/strong>M<\/span>oreover, I often hear that Glasgow Sheriff Court is the busiest court in Europe. <\/span>\u00a0<\/span>If this is indeed the case then one must admire the incredible sense of openness and friendliness of its staff from security guards, Police officers (that\u2019s right, personally I strongly agree that the British cops are the best in the world!), through administration personnel all the way to Sheriffs \u2013 as judges are called in Scotland. There naturally are a few exemptions to that but they do not deserve our attention. <\/span>
\nWith anything up to 2,000 court users crossing Glasgow Sheriff Court\u2019s threshold on a daily basis<\/span>, <\/span>pragmatism<\/span><\/i> closely followed by <\/span>time-management <\/span><\/i>are probably the most valued and championed virtues of work ethos in here. Through them trust is built.\u00a0I recall that once I witnessed a Procurator Fiscal helping an accused in that he found a precedent for him after his defence solicitor had resigned shortly before the trial. These two<\/span> apply to interpreters as well, not only when we are trusted in that what we interpret is true and accurate, but also when it comes to other critical matters like\u00a0multitasking (often an interpreter\u00a0is required to deal with more than one case\u00a0in a day). Given the unpredictability of how long\u00a0court interpreting may last and court proceedings in general, I had to adopt and ALWAYS carry my portable laptop, smartphone, chargers and powerbanks (oh and snacks too!) with me so that I can keep an eye on and answer emails, take and make calls, prepare quotes and basically keep in touch with the world \u2013 and I do mean, the world as I\u00a0often need to speak, chat, skype, whatsapp or otherwise connect with people around the globe. So it is not unusual to sit outside the courtroom, checking on an email from a client in Australia or United States, sending a message to a supplier in Germany or China whilst being fully prepared to start interpreting in a trial or a custody matter which can call at any time \u2013 easy peasy lemon squeezy! <\/span>
\nTo be continued…<\/span>
\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

… and other less busy ones in Scotland.   Author: Kuba Hiterski\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Photo: Jane McPhelim   Your face is your badge \u2013 I heard from a security guard one day clearly showing I am no stranger to the courts\u2026 \u2013 don\u2019t worry, I am not one of those \u2018pesky\u2019 foreign criminals you can read about […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1200,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_locale":"en_US","_original_post":"1199","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1199","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","en-US"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.justycja.co.uk\/legal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1199","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.justycja.co.uk\/legal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.justycja.co.uk\/legal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.justycja.co.uk\/legal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.justycja.co.uk\/legal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1199"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.justycja.co.uk\/legal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1199\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.justycja.co.uk\/legal\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.justycja.co.uk\/legal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1199"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.justycja.co.uk\/legal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1199"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.justycja.co.uk\/legal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1199"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}