Without courtroom interpreters, language gaps can lead to confusion, misunderstandings and wrongful trial outcomes. Cook County’s court interpreter workforce is chronically understaffed, with low pay, stressful working conditions and the psychological toll of the job contributing to recruitment and retention challenges.
Fewer than 30 full-time court interpreters work across the entire county, according to Elsa Prado, a Cook County Court Interpreters Union representative.
“It’s critical to have language access because that [can] make the difference between probably convicting a person, having a person taken into custody,” Prado said.
The county relies on contract interpreters to fill in the gaps, but Prado said the court system realistically needs to double its certified interpreter workforce to function effectively.
The shortage can leave a single interpreter responsible for multiple courtrooms at once, forcing them to juggle simultaneous proceedings. When a contract interpreter cancels or fails to show, there may be no available replacement, potentially delaying hearings and leaving people waiting for the language assistance they need to participate in their cases.
The recently sworn-in Chief Judge Charles Beach is prioritizing staffing the Interpreters’ Office, Abdon Pallasch, director of communications at Cook County Circuit Court told TCR, with 10 new full-time interpreters hired in recent months, bringing the total to 28.
Cook County’s diverse language needs
Approximately 1 million Illinois residents speak English less than “very well” and may require language assistance to access state services, and a quarter of Illinoisans—totalling nearly 3 million—speak a language other than English at home.
Limited-English-Proficiency (LEP) residents have risen substantially in recent years due to migration from Venezuela and Ukraine.
Pallasch said between 2025 and 2026 there were close to 70,000 requests for interpretations in Spanish, and nearly 2,000 in Polish, as well as Arabic. More than 3,000 other requests spanned other languages, including Russian, Ukrainian, Urdu, and more.
Waiting to be understood
People who depend on an interpreter can face real consequences when one is unavailable. Delays force them to miss work, pay for additional child care or spend hours waiting for their case to be heard. In some cases, Prado said, leaving before a case is called can result in a warrant for failing to appear in court, potentially accompanied by the forfeiture of bail. Scheduling delays can last months.
“Why should they have to wait another month, or why would people have to be postponed in such a manner because [courts] don’t provide the service that they need to provide?” Prado said. “That is a constitutional right.”
A growing problem
The shortage of qualified interpreters is a nationwide problem, Middlebury Institute of International Studies professor Holly Mikkelson told TCR. The profession is aging as interpreters and translators retire, while younger workers may be less inclined to enter the field amid the rise of artificial intelligence, she said.
But Mikkelson warned AI cannot reliably replace human interpreters—particularly when attorneys depend on the precise interpretation of witness testimony—which can be critical to a case. Mikkelson said she regularly sees notices for openings in federal courts and hears about shortages of certified interpreters across the country. “I don’t think there’s a shortage of people who want to work as interpreters, but there’s certainly a shortage of certified interpreters,” she said.
Communication challenges go beyond translating words from one language to another—interpreters must be able to use and explain legal terminology, understand regional dialects, slang, context, and the way people actually speak under the stress of testifying in court.
“Interpreting testimony, interpreting—really, I don’t think oral proceedings in general can be handled well enough with AI,” Mikkelson said. “It’s getting better, but when you’re talking about going from one language to another, there are too many complexities for AI to deal with.”
No justice without communication
When qualified interpreters are unavailable, courts can be forced to compromise the quality of interpretation, potentially affecting defendants’ due process rights, jurors’ perceptions and the public’s faith in the judicial system.
“It’s fundamentally a due process issue–meaningful participation in courts,” Noor Alawawda, the Senior Program Manager for Language Access at the Administrative Office of the Illinois Courts (AOIC) said. “When someone’s civil liberties are at risk, it’s not just convenience.”
The problem persists despite decades of federal guidance intended to improve language access. In 2000, President Bill Clinton signed an executive order directing recipients of federal financial assistance – including state and local governments – to take reasonable steps to ensure meaningful access to services for people with limited English proficiency and warning that inadequate access could constitute discrimination under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act.
The interpreter shortage is particularly acute for languages other than Spanish, which is the most commonly requested language in U.S. courts. Illinois’ oral court-interpreter exam is offered in 22 languages, while interpreters of other languages may have to qualify through an oral proficiency interview, making it difficult for courts to find qualified interpreters for less commonly spoken languages, Mikkelson said. Remote interpretation services can fill some gaps, but courts may have to rely on companies’ assurances that interpreters are qualified.
“The courts can’t do their job without qualified interpreters,” Mikkelson said. “And the Supreme Court has found there are lots and lots of legal cases demonstrating that proper interpretation is a matter of due process.”
Because Illinois is a non-unified court system, each county hires and schedules their own interpreters. Some are unionized and shortages vary by county, but rural areas like Hancock, with populations of 18,000 or less, face some of the steepest shortages in qualified interpreters, Alawawda said.
Languages of limited diffusion–languages spoken by a relatively small or geographically concentrated population, making qualified interpreters harder to find–require at least 48 hour notice to get an interpreter on the phone, Alawawda said.
A nationwide problem
According to Robert Joe Lee, a member of the National Association of Judiciary Interpreters and Translators’ (NAJIT) Advocacy Committee, courts across the country face bottlenecks at nearly every stage of the process. Recruitment, certification, scheduling, compensation and retention can all contribute to shortages of qualified interpreters, he said.
About 14 percent of Illinois residents have some type of hearing loss, and about 3 percent are deaf, according to the Illinois Deaf and Hard of Hearing Commission.
Communication can be more complex for people who use other sign languages, such as Mexican Sign Language. In those cases, Wohlmuth said, the court may use a relay in which an interpreter familiar with Mexican Sign Language communicates through a certified deaf interpreter and a hearing interpreter. For deaf people with limited formal language instruction, interpreters and court personnel may also need to establish signs or use drawings and concrete examples to ensure meaningful access.
Being bilingual does not necessarily qualify someone to interpret in court. Court interpreters must understand legal terminology and courtroom procedure, know how to interpret simultaneously and consecutively, and be able to convey legal concepts accurately between languages, Mikkelson said. Using an unqualified interpreter can distort testimony and, in serious cases, force a retrial to ensure a reliable record and due process.
The same principle applies to sign-language interpretation. Wohlmuth said there can be substantial linguistic variation within the deaf community, and courts cannot assume that a person will automatically understand an interpreter simply because both people use sign language.
In the past 20 years, Chicago has seen a surge of people from Mexico and Central America who speak indigenous languages that the courts have never heard before, presenting a unique problem, Lee said. Video remote interpreting and telephone interpreting has been adopted for such less spoken languages. Lee added that when staff interpreters are unavailable, the system relies on contract interpreters, and the quality is not guaranteed in the same way.
Prado attributed Cook County’s interpreter shortage to five factors: compensation, heavy workloads and understaffing, working conditions and burnout, a limited recruitment pipeline, and certification requirements.
Lee added that working conditions in the courts are not conducive to mental health. Court interpreters can also face a psychological toll from the work itself. A 2023 systematic review of research on interpreters working in domestic violence and other traumatic settings found that repeated exposure to victims’ accounts of violence can lead to distress, anxiety, sadness, helplessness and vicarious trauma — a form of trauma response that can develop through empathetic engagement with another person’s traumatic experiences.
On top of mental health concerns, interpreters sometimes find higher pay in the private sector, and find few avenues for professional development in the public court interpreting world. Lee said three basic levels exist in public courts; a probationary level, an entry level, and a master level.
“There’s a huge reluctance in the public sector to understand and treat court interpreting as a bona fide profession that deserves respect and appreciation,” Lee said.