To be a California certified and/or a registered court interpreter, a person must be at least 18 years of age and possess applicable language skills. Specifically, an applicant must be able to facilitate communication to flow between the court and court users in a court setting. This includes the ability to interpret with high accuracy and the ability to accurately translate content from one language to another in a judicial setting.
To become credentialed in a certified spoken language you are required to pass the Written Exam and the Bilingual Interpreting Exam (BIE).
Certified spoken languages:
Arabic, Armenian (Eastern), Armenian (Western)*, Cantonese, Farsi (Persian), Filipino (Tagalog), Japanese*, Khmer, Korean, Mandarin, Portuguese, Punjabi (India), Russian, Spanish, and Vietnamese.
*The BIE is not available for this language
To become credentialed in a registered spoken language you are required to pass the Written Exam, the Oral Proficiency Exam (OPE) in English, and the OPE in your target language (if available).
Some registered spoken languages:
Albanian, Bengali, Dutch, French, German, Hindi, Hmong/Mong, Igbo, Italian, Lao, Polish, Somali, Thai, Turkish, Urdu, Uzbek, Wolof, and more.
Interested candidates now have two reciprocity pathways to enroll on the Judicial Council Master List as a credentialed ASL Court Interpreter: The Texas Board for the Evaluation of Interpreters (BEI) Court Interpreter Certification or the Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf (RID) Specialist Certification: Legal.
On May 17, 2024, the Judicial Council approved the launch of the California Court Interpreter Workforce Pilot Program. The pilot program is intended to increase the number of court interpreter employees in the courts.