West Yorkshire Police – together with the North Yorkshire and Humberside forces – have encouraged people with foreign language skills to register. It is hoped up to 60 new interpreters will help cut mileage and travel costs.

Since the project was announced in January 2010, over 1000 people from migrant and minority ethnic communities, together with people who were already trained interpreters, applied to take on the role.

Now whittled down to around sixty applicants, it is hoped that once training, qualification and registration with the National Register of Public Service Interpreters is complete, they will be ready to use their linguistic skills for any number of public organisations.

As well as working for the police, they will also be on call to help interpret for councils and health, education, refugee, asylum and voluntary sector organisations.

The planned new influx of interpreters means West Yorkshire Police will now have access to speakers of 32 languages, including some of the most under-represented European, African and Asian languages. The force claims that it will mean less money being spent on interpreters who have to travel across the UK. Read more.

See: BBC News

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