The State of California recently added two more languages to its list of court-certified languages. The state’s courts officially added Khmer and Punjabi, two of the most commonly spoken dialects in Southeast Asia, to its list of certified languages.
For the previous thirty years, the state’s courts only granted certifications to interpreters for eleven languages (Arabic, Armenian, Cantonese, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Tagalog, and Vietnamese.) The past years, however, have seen some significant changes to their list. In 2011, the state added a certification for American Sign Language. In 2012, they also split Armenian into two different certifications for the Eastern and Western dialects. With the inclusion of Khmer and Punjabi this year, the court’s current list of certified languages has grown exponentially over the last three years totaling 15 court certified languages, after remaining virtually unchanged in the previous thirty.
California also has a designation for administrative hearing and medically certified interpreters
The list of languages includes these 8: Arabic, Cantonese, Japanese, Korean Portuguese, Spanish Tagalog and Vietnamese. These are interpreters that have passed the Administrative Hearing and Medical interpreter examination that is mandated by Government Code Section 11435-11435.65. This list of languages has not changed in well over a decade.
American Language Services, a leading legal specialist in California for the last three decades, is continuing to recruit and partner with court-certified interpreters in these two new languages. The company’s proprietary database has thousands of court certified, medical certified and administrative hearing interpreters ensures that they can fulfill any request in the state of California.
