The State of Court Interpreting in California: 2026

AMS publishes a state-of-practice report on court interpreting in California each year. This 2026 edition is built on the Judicial Council of California Court Interpreter Workforce Study, delivered to the Legislature in December 2025 under Government Code section 71900, together with the Judicial Council language access program and the Administrative Office of the United States Courts. Every figure names its source. Claims that could not be traced to a published document were cut from this edition rather than carried forward.

What changed since the 2025 edition

• California certifies court interpreters in American Sign Language plus twelve spoken languages. Filipino (Tagalog) is on that certified list. Khmer and Western Armenian are not, and earlier editions of this report said otherwise.
• Federal certification is a Spanish program. The Administrative Office states that the federal examination "is currently offered only in Spanish." Programs once developed for Navajo and Haitian Creole are no longer offered.
• The Judicial Council published its first Court Interpreter Workforce Study in December 2025. It brings together statewide data on interpreter supply, testing and method of delivery, and most of the numbers in this report come from it.
• About a third of the credentialed workforce is 65 or older, and the study lists a retiring workforce among the causes of interpreter shortages.
• On October 16, 2026 the Judicial Council approved three interpreter measures, each effective January 1, 2027: changes to the certification requirements, higher maximum pay and common statewide contract terms for independent contractor interpreters, and a pilot that lets 6 to 10 volunteer courts use ASL generalist interpreters in non-complex, non-evidentiary matters during 2027 and 2028.
• In October 2026 the Judicial Council canceled its request for proposals to roll out AI translation at court counters statewide, after a pilot in more than 30 courts, and said it would review "accuracy, efficiency, and effectiveness" before considering new voice-to-text options.
• Staff interpreters in Region 2, the 15 superior courts of coastal Northern California, authorized a strike in October 2026 and held half-day walkouts in San Francisco on October 16 and in Oakland on October 28. As of November 8, 2026, AMS found no report of a settlement, a mediation date or a further strike.

Section 1The certified language roster

The Judicial Council of California certifies court interpreters in twelve spoken languages: Arabic, Cantonese, Eastern Armenian, Farsi (Persian), Filipino (Tagalog), Korean, Mandarin, Portuguese, Punjabi (India), Russian, Spanish and Vietnamese. American Sign Language interpreters are credentialed separately under Evidence Code section 754. The Judicial Council newsroom and the language access program site both publish this list, and they agree.

Certification requires passing a written examination and the Bilingual Interpreting Examination, which tests simultaneous, consecutive and sight translation under timed conditions, and then enrolling with the Judicial Council. As of March 2025 there were 1,856 certified and registered court interpreters, serving 58 superior courts, according to the Judicial Council's December 2025 workforce study. Spanish accounts for 88 percent of courtroom interpretations statewide.

The path to certification changes on January 1, 2027. At its October 16, 2026 meeting the Judicial Council approved three changes recommended by its Court Interpreters Advisory Panel. Candidates will have to complete an orientation before testing and pass an additional screening exam, an Oral Proficiency Examination at the Advanced High level, before they sit the Bilingual Interpreting Examination. They may also carry over passing scores on individual sections of the Bilingual Interpreting Examination for up to two years and retake only the sections they failed, although the two sight translation sections must still be passed in the same session. The carryover applies once, retroactively, to candidates who passed one or more sections from 2023 on. The council says the aim is to improve candidate success and expand the pool of interpreters. The advisory panel's report shows the scale of the problem: 39 of 472 test takers passed the Bilingual Interpreting Examination in 2025, and 9 of 201 in 2026 to date.

The council also approved a pilot for American Sign Language, which its release calls the fourth-most requested language in California courts. The approval takes effect January 1, 2027, and the pilot is expected to run in 2027 and 2028 in about 6 to 10 volunteer courts. Those courts may use qualified ASL generalist interpreters, who are credentialed but not certified as ASL court interpreters, and only for non-complex, non-evidentiary matters. The panel's report says generalists already interpret about one in five ASL-interpreted court events, without statewide guidance on when they may be used. Under the draft guidelines, permitted settings include clerk interactions, routine procedural hearings and jury orientation, while trials, testimony and waivers of rights are excluded. Participants need at least five years of interpreting experience after certification, at least 40 hours of legal interpreter training that includes supervised court practice, and a passing result on the National Center for State Courts court interpreter written examination. The pilot also carries ethics requirements and a pathway toward certification.

SourcesJudicial Council of California, Language Access Services, certified spoken language interpreter page; Judicial Council newsroom, branch facts on language access; Judicial Council newsroom, October 16, 2026 council meeting release; Judicial Council reports for the October 16, 2026 meeting, Court Interpreters: Changes to Certification Requirements (item 26-145) and Court Interpreters: American Sign Language Generalist Interpreter Pilot Program (item 26-124); Slator, October 23, 2026.

Section 2The registered category

Every spoken language without a certification examination is handled through the registered category. The Judicial Council states the rule directly: all non-certified languages are considered registered languages. A registered interpreter has passed the required examinations for a non-certified language and enrolled with the Judicial Council.

The registered list is long and includes Japanese, Hindi, Urdu, Hebrew, French, German, Polish, Romanian, Somali, Hmong, Haitian Creole, Ukrainian and dozens of others. Note that Filipino (Tagalog) is not among them, because it is certified. Where, after a diligent search, neither a certified nor a registered interpreter is available, courts may appoint a provisionally qualified interpreter. Provisional qualification is a judicial finding valid for one year, and the judge must state the required findings on the record in each proceeding where the interpreter is appointed. The study counted 468 provisionally qualified interpreters used in FY 2023-24, up about 51 percent from FY 2020-21.

SourceJudicial Council of California, registered spoken language interpreter page; Workforce Study, December 2025, Figure 3.

Section 3Federal court interpretation in California

Federal court interpreting rests on the Court Interpreters Act, 28 U.S.C. 1827, enacted in 1978 and amended in 1988. The Federal Court Interpreter Certification Examination began in 1980 and, in the words of the Administrative Office, "is currently offered only in Spanish." Certification programs were developed for Navajo and Haitian Creole but are no longer offered; the Administrative Office describes those interpreters as having been certified only during the early nineties. More than 900 Spanish interpreters have been federally certified, and Spanish is about 96 percent of federal interpreter usage.

In every other language, federal courts appoint interpreters classified as professionally qualified or language skilled, decided case by case by the local court. Certified and professionally qualified interpreters are paid at a higher rate than language skilled interpreters. California state certification is not a federal credential.

California has four United States District Courts: the Central District at Los Angeles, Santa Ana and Riverside, the Northern District at San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose and Eureka, the Southern District at San Diego and El Centro, and the Eastern District at Sacramento, Fresno, Bakersfield and Redding. The Central District is the busiest.

SourceAdministrative Office of the U.S. Courts, Federal Court Interpreter Orientation Manual and Glossary, revised December 2024; Administrative Office interpreter categories page.

Section 4Team interpreting

Team interpreting, two interpreters covering one proceeding and trading off, is standard practice for long or complex matters. Federal policy provides for it in those terms: to mitigate the effects of interpreter fatigue and safeguard the integrity of interpreting services, long or complex proceedings may be covered by two interpreters through team or tandem interpreting.

What the federal guidance does not do is set a time threshold or a rotation interval. It advises the team to agree in advance when and how they will switch, and to inform the courtroom deputy so the arrangement can be stated on the record if the court wants it there. It also assigns the interpreter who is not actively interpreting a working role: staying in the courtroom, noting names and numbers for the active interpreter, handling equipment, and researching terminology.

Numbers do circulate for this, a switch every twenty to thirty minutes and a one-hour trigger being the usual ones, and they are widely repeated on agency and law firm pages. They do not come from the federal policy, which sets neither. Treat them as practice conventions rather than as a standard, and treat the decision as one for the court and the interpreters. What counsel can plan for is cost: teaming roughly doubles the interpreter line, and it should be raised with the court at scheduling rather than on the day.

SourceAdministrative Office of the U.S. Courts, Federal Court Interpreter Orientation Manual and Glossary, revised December 2024, Chapter 3, Overview of Court Interpreting; Guide to Judiciary Policy, Volume 5, Chapter 5, section 530.

Section 5Where the shortages actually are

The Workforce Study quantifies this. For each language it compares the credentialed interpreter pool against the share of court events actually covered by a certified or registered interpreter, and estimates how many more interpreters full coverage would take. Spanish does not appear, because Spanish need is generally met.

Two observations that matter for anyone scheduling. First, Punjabi and Arabic are certified languages with severe coverage gaps, so a language being on the certified list says nothing about whether an interpreter will be available in your county on your date. Second, Mixteco and Mixteco Alto appear here with three and two credentialed interpreters statewide, which is the indigenous language gap in numbers rather than in adjectives.

Section 6Indigenous Mesoamerican languages

Speakers of Mixteco, Mam, K'iche', Q'eqchi', Triqui, Zapoteco and other indigenous languages appear in California proceedings as criminal defendants, civil witnesses, asylum applicants and workers' compensation claimants. The recurring failure is misclassification: a speaker with working Spanish as a second or third language is booked as a Spanish speaker, and the testimony that results is not the testimony they would give in their first language.

The Workforce Study records Mixteco at 3 credentialed interpreters and 31.31 percent coverage, and Mixteco Alto at 2 interpreters and 64.75 percent coverage. It also notes that interpretations completed by provisionally qualified interpreters rose by more than 100 percent between FY 2020-21 and FY 2023-24 for Punjabi, Mixteco, Farsi, Portuguese and Mixteco Alto, and that demand for Mixteco de Guerrero has grown sharply. That is the supply picture: a handful of credentialed interpreters, and rising reliance on the provisional category to fill the gap.

AMS position, offered as opinion rather than as a finding: identification at intake is the cheapest available fix. Asking any witness from southern Mexico or highland Guatemala what language they speak at home, before booking a Spanish interpreter, costs nothing and prevents most of these failures.

Section 7The workforce itself

The study is blunt about supply. Roughly a third of credentialed California court interpreters are at or past retirement age, and the pipeline replacing them is narrow because the examination is hard to pass.

That puts 596 of 1,812 interpreters, about 33 percent, at 65 or older. On testing, the study reports that the Bilingual Interpreting Examination pass rate "previously averaged less than 10 percent," and that participants in the near-passer training the Judicial Council launched in 2021 average 21 percent. For comparison the study itself draws, the California General Bar Examination passed 53.8 percent in July 2024 and 55.9 percent in February 2025.

Court employee positions are also going unfilled. The study reports vacancy rates by classification for two consecutive fiscal years, and all three classifications got worse.

The study names the causes: difficulty passing the required examinations, a retiring workforce, geographic constraints, contractor reluctance to take salaried court positions, and competition from other industries. It also finds that California interpreter salaries are nationally competitive but remain below federal levels.

In October 2026 pay and staffing became a labor dispute in Region 2, the 15 superior courts of coastal Northern California that bargain with their staff interpreters as one unit. On Monday, October 12, the California Alliance of Legal Interpreters, which represents 91 staff interpreters in the region, announced that 96 percent of its members had approved a strike authorization after more than eight months of bargaining, Local News Matters reported. The union alleges that the Region 2 courts favor contract interpreters over staff interpreters, in violation of the Trial Court Interpreter Employment and Labor Relations Act, and says 42 percent of staff interpreters left their jobs over nine years. The courts proposed mediation.

On October 16, the day the Judicial Council met in San Francisco, interpreters held a half-day walkout at San Francisco Superior Court. The union says state court interpreters earn 35 to 47 percent less than federal court interpreters, and it is seeking limits on remote interpreting, Mission Local reported. On October 28 interpreters held a half-day strike at Alameda County Superior Court, at the Wiley W. Manuel and René C. Davidson courthouses in Oakland. The court stayed open.

KQED's report on the Oakland strike set out the money behind the dispute. Citing a 2025 Judicial Council report, it put staff interpreter pay at about $86,000 to $105,000 a year; the union is pushing to raise that range gradually to $128,000 to $150,000. KQED reported that courts have spent more than their interpreter funding since 2023, by $19 million last year, and that the state added $20 million this year, for $155 million in total. It also reported that David Slayton, court executive officer of the Los Angeles County Superior Court, said Los Angeles County has more than 120 interpreter job vacancies. As of November 8, 2026, AMS found no report of a settlement, a mediation date or a further strike.

SourcesLocal News Matters (Bay City News), October 14, 2026; Mission Local, October 16, 2026; KQED, October 28, 2026; Judicial Council of California, Meeting Information Center, October 16, 2026 council meeting. The 35 to 47 percent pay gap, the 42 percent departure figure and the alleged violation of the act are the union's claims.

Section 8How interpretation is being delivered

California courts have moved back overwhelmingly to in-person interpreting.

Remote and video remote interpreting was 11 percent of interpretations in FY 2020-21, the first year shown, and 3 percent in FY 2023-24. Telephonic went from 4 percent to 1 percent. In-person is 96 percent. Regional variation is wide: the study puts remote use at 6.5 percent of interpretations in Region 1 and 0.2 percent in Region 4. The study finds video remote interpreting underutilized in California courts and recommends its expanded use to address statewide interpreter shortages; the stakeholders it consulted pointed particularly to languages other than Spanish.

Independent contractor interpreters are paid under a separate Judicial Council policy, and on October 16, 2026 the council revised it effective January 1, 2027. Maximum daily compensation rates rise to federal levels, staying within the statutory limit that the rates not exceed what federally certified court interpreters are paid. The maximum full-day rate goes from $350 to $617 for certified and registered interpreters, and from $220 to $540 for noncertified and nonregistered interpreters. Courts can no longer negotiate above the maximum, and an interpreter who will not accept the maximum rate is treated as unavailable; after a diligent search, the court may then appoint a noncertified or nonregistered interpreter who has been provisionally qualified. A new statewide framework puts every court on the same contract terms: standardized, nonnegotiable rates, travel compensation, contractual obligations and administrative procedures. The policy also promotes remote video interpreting when appropriate. It covers spoken-language interpreters; sign language interpreting is governed separately by Evidence Code section 754.

The Court Executives Advisory Committee, which recommended the change, reports that contract interpreter costs rose 19 percent in FY 2024-25 and estimates that matching federal rates will cost about $7 million a year. The proposal drew 363 public comments.

Machine translation at court counters has been pulled back. The Judicial Council piloted an AI voice-to-text translation tool in more than 30 courts from 2021 to April 2026, and in late August 2026 it released a request for proposals to roll out AI translation at public-facing service points such as clerk's counters statewide, with a contract to start December 1. On October 15 it published a notice canceling the request, citing evolving technology, and said it would conduct an internal review of "accuracy, efficiency, and effectiveness" before considering new voice-to-text options, Times of San Diego reported. The Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles and California Rural Legal Assistance obtained pilot transcripts through public records requests and reported translation errors, including "DUI" rendered as "IUD" and "no contest" as "no competition."

SourcesJudicial Council newsroom, October 16, 2026 council meeting release; Judicial Council report for the October 16, 2026 meeting, Court Interpreters: Payment Policies for Independent Contractor Interpreters (item 26-122); Slator, October 23, 2026; Times of San Diego, October 24, 2026.

Section 9Practical guidance

• For California state proceedings, engage a certified interpreter where the language is one of the twelve. For every other spoken language, the registered category is the correct tier, and provisionally qualified is a fallback that has to be established on the record.
• Do not treat the certified list as an availability guarantee. Punjabi and Arabic are certified languages with coverage below 40 percent.
• For federal proceedings, federal certification means Spanish. In any other language, ask which federal classification the interpreter holds, professionally qualified or language skilled.
• For witnesses from southern Mexico or highland Guatemala, establish the first language before booking. In AMS's view, booking Spanish by default is the most common failure in this category.
• For long or complex matters, raise teaming at scheduling. Budget for two interpreters and agree the switch protocol before the proceeding, which is what federal guidance advises.
• For a rare language in a county with no local interpreter, ask about video remote interpreting rather than assuming it cannot be covered.
• From January 1, 2027, every California court pays independent contractor interpreters of spoken languages on the same nonnegotiable rates and contract terms, and the Judicial Council policy promotes remote video interpreting when appropriate. Ask the court early whether an interpreter will appear in person or by video.

About this report

AMS publishes this report as a free public reference and revises it when the underlying sources change. Where this report states an opinion rather than a finding, it says so in the sentence. Sources are named at the end of each section; where you are citing a statistic, cite the underlying Judicial Council or Administrative Office document, and note the date you consulted this page. Corrections to [email protected] are welcome and are made promptly.