for Judicial Interpreters and Record Integrity
— the first national bar association for judicial interpreters in the United States —
The Foundation for Judicial Interpreters and Record Integrity is a forming non-profit organization dedicated to safeguarding the integrity of the cross-language record in courts across the United States.
We are a community of independent professionals — federal and state judicial interpreters from every state, alongside attorneys — who share a common commitment to an accurate cross-language record.
Just like a court reporter, a judicial interpreter's core duty is to produce and guard an accurate cross-language record, including any evidence collected in a language other than English.
Open to federal and state judicial interpreters from any jurisdiction, and to attorneys who work with the cross-language record.
The Foundation is not a labor union, an employee rights organization, or a collective bargaining body. Our purpose is to guard the cross-language record through the development and protection of the judicial interpreting profession.
The Foundation, to be organized as a 501(c)(3) public charity, will be dedicated to guarding the integrity of the cross-language record in the United States. The cross-language record is part of the official judicial record itself, and the standards of integrity that govern that record must be extended and upheld over its cross-language portion in equal measure. To that end, the Foundation seeks to establish the means by which judicial interpreters may govern their own profession.
Because judicial interpreters are the guardians of the cross-language record, the development and protection of the profession is the development and protection of that record’s integrity itself. The Foundation’s work — through legal analysis, judicial papers, formal correspondence, and the development of institutional standards governing record and evidentiary integrity — addresses a structural gap the profession has historically lacked the means to resolve.
Unlike a labor union, an employee rights organization, or a general advocacy body, the Foundation’s focus is the function of the judicial record itself and the evidentiary inputs upon which it depends: defining, articulating, and defending the judicial interpreter’s role as the neutral officer uniquely responsible for rendering legally operative equivalents across languages into the English record.
We are now accepting expressions of interest from federal and state judicial interpreters in any state, and from attorneys who work with the cross-language record. There is no fee at this stage. You will be notified once the Foundation is formally registered.