Field notes / primary interviews
Six anonymised field files. Lawyers, interpreters, standards bodies, scholars, and refugees describe how language failure becomes institutional fact.
Ethics and engagement routes for first-hand fieldwork.
Not language alone. Interpreters step over the line. Interview records become consistency tests. Bad interpretation produces different portrayals of evidence. Recordings reveal repeated errors. Judges dismiss them. Early-stage proceedings have no control. Client and interpreter fail to understand each other. The same interpreter is booked again.
In the moment, the interpreter can still be changed. Afterward, usually not. Long, short, or off-question answers are warning signs. Interpretation needs domain knowledge, including religion. The system begins from suspicion: could they be lying?
The DPSI is a "Driving Test" for cognitive load and high-end linguistic capacity. The system still relies on agency interpreters who may not have passed it. That risk is built into the framework.
Interpreting means understanding two languages. Knowing them is only the start. Officers and courts push for speed. Clarification disappears. Small misunderstandings become legal errors.
Too many interpreter qualifications lowers the value of qualification itself. The framework is fragmented. Qualifications exist, but they are not mandatory. AI repeats the same hierarchy: languages with little online presence become harder to model and easier to ignore.
Refugees often do not know where to ask for help, or how to begin. The system assumes English before access starts. The barrier appears before the interview, before the form, before the hearing.