Sara Karki, staff attorney with the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota (ILCM), recently spoke with Minnesota Lawyer about language diversity issues in the legal system and what is being done to address them. In Multilingual challenges in law, Karki discusses the ongoing need for interpretation services, even in the smallest communities, as well as how Minnesota is doing with translation services, for example in the state court system.

Karki and Ingrid Christensen, president of INGCO International, a Minnesota-based translation service also explain barriers and misconceptions that make translating legal information difficult. And in Minnesota, language access in the legal system is a right.

“To be honest, not a lot of people know about these rights, and not a lot of people are able to advocate for themselves,” Karki said. She also noted that document translation opens up a new plethora of issues around access. For example, a translated document might be accurate, but some cultures do not rely on a written language, or the written language varies from what the speaker is familiar with.

Both Karki and Christensen acknowledge the efforts being made by the court system and attorneys working with non-English speakers and share ways to improve access. Karki recommends LawHelpMN.org for clear and targeted explanations of legal concepts in English (as well as Hmong, Somali, Spanish, and others), along with Microsoft Word’s reading level feature. Read more in Multilingual challenges in law.