April 15, 2020
By Josh Hoch
Going to court in Massachusetts, or any State for that matter, can make some people nervous. Add an inability to speak English and those nerves can compound. Fortunately, once in Court in Massachusetts, people can get the help they need through the Office of Court Interpreter Services.
Looking at divorce in Massachusetts, the Probate and Family Court does a great job offering interpreter services. Foreign language interpreters are available by advance request and at no charge to those who need it.
Massachusetts courts provide “approximately 175 interpreters, 40 of whom are full-time staff interpreters”. The most common languages include: Albanian, Amharic, Arabic, Cape Verdean, Chinese (Cantonese, Hakka, Mandarin), Creole/French, Ethiopian, Farsi, Greek, Haitian Creole, Hebrew, Indian (Bengali, Hindi, Punjabi, Urdu), Italian, Khmer, Korean, Nepali, Japanese, Persian, Polish, Portuguese (Brazilian), Portuguese (European), Portuguese Creole, Russian, Somali, Somali Bantu, Spanish, Tamil, Telugu, Thai, Tigrinya, Turkish, Twi, and Vietnamese.
Given Massachusetts is fortunate to be home to people who speak over a hundred languages, MWI is now doing more to provide mediation services, prior to court. MWI partners with a Massachusetts-based interpreting service to interpret divorce and family mediation cases via phone.
In addition to each of the languages listed above, interpreters working with MWI divorce and family mediators provide our mediators and clients with services for the following languages: Czech, Danish, Dari, Dinka, Dioula, Dutch, Edo, Estonian, Ewe, Finnish, Flemish, French, French Canadian, French Creole, Fukienese, Fulani, Fulde, Fuzhou, Ga, Garre, Georgian, German, Guarani, Gujarati, Hainanese, Harar, Hassaniya, Hausa, Hindi, Hmong, Hokkien, Hungarian, Icelandic, Igbo, Ilocano, Ilonggo, Indonesian, Jarai, Jiangsu, K’iche’ (Quiché), Kannada, Karen (Pwo), Karenni (Kayah), Kazakh, Kikongo, Kikuyu, Kinyamulenge, Kinyarwanda, Kirundi, Kituba, Kizigua (Kizigula), Kosraean, Krahn, Krio, Kunama, Kurdish, Kurdish (Bahdini), Kurdish (Kurmanji), Kurdish (Sorani), Kyrgyz, Lao, Latvian, Lautu, Lingala, Lithuanian, Lorma, Luganda, Luo, Maay-Maay, Macedonian, Malay, Malayalam, Mam, Mandinka, Mara, Marathi, Marshallese, Matu, Mbay, Mende, Mien, Mina, Mixteco (Alto), Mixteco (Bajo), Moldovan, Mongolian, Montenegrin, More, Mushunguli, Navajo, Norwegian, Nuer, Oromifa, Pashto, Patois (Jamaican), Pidgin (Cameroonian), Pidgin (Nigerian), Ponapean/Pohnpeian, Pulaar, Punjabi, Q’anjob’al, Rohingya, Romanian, Samoan, Sango, enthang, Serbian, Shanghainese, hona, Sichuan, Sicilian, Sinhalese, Siyin, Slovak, Slovene, Soninke, Soninke (Sarahuli), Soninke (Sarakhole), Soranî (Kurdish), Sousou, Swahili, Swedish, Sylheti, Tagalog (Filipino), and Taiwanese, Tajik, Temne, Teochew, Tibetan, Toisanese, Tongan, Tosk, Trukese/Chuukese, Ukrainian, Uzbek, Visayan, Wolof, Xhosa, Yiddish, Yoruba, Yup’ik, and Zulu.
Schedule a Meeting with a Mediator to Find Out if Mediation Can Be Helpful
If you know a couple interested in mediating a divorce but English is not the most comfortable language for them, encourage them to learn more by contacting us here. To learn more about how mediation can help during divorce in Massachusetts, no matter what language you speak, contact Josh Hoch at 617-895-4028 or jhoch@mwi.org.
