The Language Shop’s Director, Sam Lingard, and Managing Director Jaimin Patel, have defended the lack of artificial intelligence (AI) being used to assess the quality of court interpreting services in the UK, as part of an ongoing public inquiry into the management and provision of court interpreting and translation services.

The Language Shop is currently the quality assurance provider of court interpreting assignments fulfilled by thebigword. The language service provider (LSP) carries out ‘mystery shops’ of 1% of all UK court interpreting bookings, amounting to approximately 2,000 assessments per year across both telephone and face-to-face interpreting assignments.

Lingard told the public audience that the LSP has “no plans to use AI” to deliver quality assurance “any time soon”.

Lord Willis of Knaresborough responded, “I find that very disappointing, to be honest, because we are clearly in a situation where AI and other technologies — not just AI — will play an ever more significant role in maintaining quality services.”

“If you are not doing anything at the moment to introduce that, either by training people or within the operation, then that is a big issue that we should address to the Government,” he added.

“It is just language. The consequences are not as dire as they would be in the health service,” — Lord Porter of Spalding

Lord Porter of Spalding agreed: “There seems to be a reticence to go anywhere near this, on the basis that this particular service is so important. But the health service is starting to use it and there is no more important service from a user’s perspective than the health service.”

Source: Slator

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