The Office on Equality and Access to the Courts (OEAC) is a bit hard to find. It is where you might think it would be: downtown Honolulu, close to the Capitol building and the Hawai‘i State Supreme Court. It is in the basement of, as the security guard told me, in an it’s-there-if-you-look-for-it way, “the building one over and one behind” the Supreme Court. You can go down the ramp or take the stairs. I took the ramp, as the stairs were being repaired. I pressed the button for the Equality and Access Office and was shortly buzzed in by Debi Tulang-DeSilva, the director of the program and my first interview. Immediately, I feel relaxed. Debi’s smile is kind and welcoming as we exchange greetings. She leads me to a small conference room and I take a quick survey of the office. It contains a few desks, some shelves with books, paperwork and pictures of families, all tightly but comfortably squeezed into the office, giving it a homey feel. We sit down at the rectangular desk in theconference room and I pull out my laptop, notepad and pen. Debi has already printed the questions I sent her prior and takes out her own notepad and pen. As she settles into her chair, I notice that all indicators so far label her as a professional: to the point, prepared, and kind but brisk. We begin to discuss the history of the Hawai‘i State Judiciary’s interpreter program, as well as some of Debi’s personal history. At this point in time, I know that the Language Access Services for the Courts provides interpreters for persons of limited English proficiency (LEP) for a number of languages and by a number of means. The demand or need for interpreters in the State Court is determined by data kept by the Judiciary on the number of encounters its staff has with LEP court customers and by the amount of instances the Judiciary has provided some kind of interpreting service. But, as Debi is about to tell me, there is much more than that. She begins by explaining the importance of, as wellas the implementation of, certifying interpreters. According to Debi, the current interpreter program was established in 2007 and prior to its installation, interpreters self-represented, meaning they provided their own references and credentials, and took a 25 question multiple-choice ethics exam.
“Since 2007, because of the heightened need for language access and the focus on the quality of the type of interpreting service that you are providing to people that don’t understand, speak, read or write English very well, we established a formal program that would incorporate a measurement of quality,” said Debi.
This measurement of quality is accomplished through a screening process. Those who possess the necessary language capabilities must, at a minimum, attend a court interpreter orientation workshop, pass two written exams that test English proficiency, court terminology, and court interpreter ethics, and pass a criminal background check. Thereafter, interpreters may be eligible to take oral exams. A structure of tiers that assigns a level to each interpreter designates the quality level of their interpreting skills. Identifying higher skilled or qualified interpreters allows the Judiciary to call upon the most qualified interpreter available for any given assignment. A problem that the Equality and Access Office faces is finding interpreters for languages in high demand. Looking at the information Debi has given me, I see that the highest demand is for Chuukese, followed by Ilokano, Korean, Marshallese, and Spanish (in descending order). This list, containing 15 languages total, is basedon the number of interpreted proceedings for 2013. A total of 41 languages, with more than 350 interpreters, are available to be accessed. These resources are spread out around the state and each interpreter has varying degrees of availability and skill. “Languages other than Spanish have difficulty with professional development and advancement because there are less resources. There are so many resources out there for Spanish,” said Debi. “There are classes, books, and reading material. It’s one thing that we can’t find the people of quality to be passing the mandatory minimum requirements and then tell them ‘Well you need to study more.’ There are hardly any resources out there for them.”
I realize I’ve probably never seen a book of Chuukese or Ilokano vocabulary, either at the library or the bookstore — and I spend a lot of time at Barnes & Noble. If someone were trying to improve their Chuukese or English to Chuukese interpreting skills, where would he or she go to do it? Debi explains to me that in this field the whole point is being proficient in both English as well as the language you are interpreting for. This means that with current resources and actualities, it is hard for someone who did not grow up bilingual to develop that proficiency.
Huh, I think to myself, that seems a little counterintuitive. Somewhere there is a fundamental flaw in the way language is being looked at. As if she’s reading my mind Debi says, “I believe in the Roadmap project because there needs to be a movement from the top, from the private and public sectors, to recognize that we need to put our heads together to be able to meet our demands in Hawai‘i. How are we going to help this population? It’s not going to be just one agency. It needs to be a concerted effort.” In short, the effort needs to be on all levels. But, I am having trouble understanding why there is even the need for effort in language access. Why would anyone question it? To find out, I ask Debi what she thinks.
“We’ve lived in the melting pot for a long time…I think it’s a mental shift. People recognize that there are people in our population who are maybe not 100% proficient or fluent. But, the assessment of whether somebody understands enough is where, as a state, we’ve been lax.”
Debi explains to me that one’s ability to understand does not affect one’s right to understand. She uses the term “civil right.” Maybe it’s my personal heritage but, when I hear “civil right,” I think of the Civil Rights Movement and people like Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, the fight for women’s rights, and the struggle for same-sex equality. I hesitate to say these names or these ideas to Debi, because these topics can be loaded, but, it gets me thinking. These movements, protests and ideas all have one thing in common: the idea of equality before the law. She tells me about her grandparents, specifically her grandfather, who was a 1st-generation immigrant from the Philippines. Debi reflects on his language skills and how she wonders what he missed out on because of them. She tells me that she knew her grandfather did not speak perfect English but, as a child, it wasn’t something she questioned. He came to Hawai‘i in his twenties and worked on a plantation on the Big Island, whichDebi thinks meant he didn’t have the opportunity or the need to learn English. It wasn’t until she started working in this field that she began to think about what he might have missed. “I use the story of my grandparents in the trainings that I do, to try and build a rapport with the staff that I’m training to make them realize that being LEP is a challenge for people. It does take away from someone’s ability to be treated equally and fairly. That’s the part where I think about my grandparents… I’m gonna have to bank that they missed out on some opportunities. Just because someone is getting by does not mean that they are getting equality. And they deserve that.”
She tells me that this program is one thing she wished, if they had needed it, her grandparents would have been able to use. Then she says something that hits home for me. Debi asks this question when she is training, to help her staff understand the importance of this type of work.
“What would you want?” she asks. “That’s the question I [ask] staff. What level of equality would you want for your [for example] Japanese speaking grandparents? Would you want them to understand only 50% of what that person is saying? 30%? 75%? Or would you want almost as close to 100% as you can get?” I think about people I know who are LEP and what they might experience if they went to court for whatever reason. Debi is right; going to court for whatever reason can be scary, or, at the very least, hard. What if my neighbor down the street, who speaks Chuukese, needed to know something about his house or his son? And the Japanese line cook I work with, what about him? They have the right to understand just as much as I do.
Debi Tulang-DeSilva has taught me something I hadn’t even thought about before. There is a whole group of people out there that is missing out on an important aspect of daily life that the rest of us take for granted: understanding and being understood. Being understood is a right we all have and when it comes to the courts, that right becomes a need. We end our interview. Putting away our pens and notepads we make small talk. I thank her, and take my leave of the cozy, half-hidden office of Equality and Access. As I walk up the ramp and out into the Honolulu sunshine, I realize I just met an unsung hero.
Debi Tulang-DeSilva is a champion, a champion of language and civil rights. Her work, and that of her staff, is making Hawai‘i a better place for language access.
: lives on O‘ahu with her cat and her younger sister. She is currently attending the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, pursuing a major in Spanish. She works and spends her free time eating, studying, reading, writing, doodling, hiking, and doing yoga. She enjoys sci-fi and romance movies, her fixed-gear bicycle and skateboards, fantasy novels and poetry. Shiwani has been known to be emotionally confused about a number of things simultaneously. Her sister and mother often tell her to get over herself.