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Interpreters for Police Interviews

If the police want to question you and your English is not good enough for that conversation, you are not expected to bring your own interpreter: the police arrange the interpreter for their questioning. What matters is that you say you need one, and that you understand your rights before you answer anything. Here is what the rules say, what goes wrong in interpreted interviews, and when a defense lawyer books an interpreter of their own.

If the police are questioning you, the police arrange the interpreter

If you are questioned by the police and do not understand English well, ask for an interpreter and for a lawyer, in your language, before you answer; the department arranges the interpreter it uses, and you are not expected to hire one. Rights warnings only protect you if you understand them: the Supreme Court held that a person may waive the right to silence and to a lawyer only if the waiver is made "voluntarily, knowingly and intelligently" (Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436). A warning read in a language you do not fully understand is the first thing a defense lawyer will ask about.

Some states write the duty into law. Minnesota's statute covers anyone who cannot fully understand the charges because of difficulty with English (Minn. Stat. 611.31); after an arrest, the officer must obtain a qualified interpreter at the earliest possible time, explain the charges and the detention through them, and make the interpreter available before and throughout any interrogation (611.32, subd. 2). The agency that requested the interpreter pays (611.33, subd. 3). Other states leave it to department policy.

At the federal level, the Justice Department rescinded its 2002 language access guidance for state and local recipients of its funding in March 2025. Its notice says recipients still must comply with Title VI (42 U.S.C. 2000d) and that denying language assistance can be evidence of national origin discrimination under certain circumstances. So: ask the department. Who books us is defense attorneys, for their own conversations with a client around an interview, and agencies that need an interpreter for a scheduled interview in a language they cannot cover. If you require a credential, tell us when you request; we confirm whether we can staff it before you book.

What an interview asks of the interpreter

A police interview is consecutive, recorded and adversarial. Questions are often built to pin something down — leading, repeated, two questions in one — and the interpreter has to render each exactly as asked, without simplifying it into the question the officer probably meant. Answers go back word for word in the first person, including hesitations and corrections. The differences that end up mattering are small: "I don't know" and "I don't remember," "I was there" and "I used to go there," a verb tense that says whether something happened once or every day.

The interpreter is also the person who renders the rights advisement, the consent-to-search form and any written statement the officer prepares in English for signature. Each of those is sight translation, and each should be read in full, not summarized. A Spanish-language rights card handed to someone whose first language is Mam, K'iche' or Q'anjob'al is not an advisement in their language; nor is a phone app.

Why not a relative, a child or a bilingual officer from the case

In a criminal investigation the interpreter has to be neutral, and the shortcuts are not. A relative or friend may be a witness, may be protecting someone, or may be the person the police are really asking about. A child interpreting for a parent in a police station is in an impossible position. And an officer who is investigating the case cannot also be the neutral voice of the suspect's answers: their questions and their rendering of the answers come from the same side of the table.

The interview is usually recorded, and the recording outlives everyone's memory of it. If the interpretation was poor, it shows up later in the transcript, at a suppression hearing or at trial, when it is too late to ask the question again properly. That is a reason for agencies to plan a qualified interpreter for scheduled interviews, and for defense lawyers to have a recorded interview checked by someone independent of the police.

If you are the defense lawyer

• Before a scheduled interview, meet the client with your own interpreter, in private, so the advice is understood before anyone from the police is in the room.
• At the interview, your interpreter can sit with you for private conversations during breaks. Whether the police use your interpreter for the questioning itself is their decision.
• Do not use the police interpreter to talk to your client about the case, and do not use your interpreter as a witness to the interview if you can avoid it: use a different one later to review the recording.
• Afterwards, review the recording with the client through an interpreter, segment by segment, and note where the questions or answers were rendered differently from what was said.
• Name the language precisely: country, region, and any Indigenous or minority language, so the interpreter we send is the right one.

Booking around an interview

A preparation meeting with the client by video or phone is $80 for the first hour per interpreter, no travel. Accompanying a client to a station for a scheduled interview is in person: $110 an hour with a two-hour minimum, billed from the scheduled start, so a morning from 9:00 to noon is $330 plus travel at $0.70 per mile from the interpreter's location, confirmed before you book. Reviewing a 90-minute recording with the client takes longer than the recording; a two-and-a-half-hour session by video is $200.

Send the language and region, the date and place, whether the client is in custody, and the recordings or documents you will go over. Police reports and foreign records that need to be in English are written translation, a separate service at $24.95 per certified page; see court certified translation. For the defense work that follows, see interpreters for criminal defense and jail visits.

By video, by phone or in person

Virtual interpreting runs on Zoom, Google Meet or Microsoft Teams, or over the telephone. It is quicker to arrange, costs less and carries no travel charge, and it suits appointments, calls and most meetings.

In person is what venues with their own rules tend to expect, and the right choice when documents are being signed or several people are speaking at once. Tell us the platform, or the city and the venue, when you send the request.

Languages

The standard-availability languages are: Spanish, Portuguese, French, Mandarin, Cantonese, Arabic, Russian, Korean, Vietnamese, Haitian Creole, Polish, Italian, German, Japanese, Hindi, Urdu, Persian, Turkish, Ukrainian, Tagalog, Bengali, Punjabi, Gujarati, Tamil, Armenian, Greek, Hebrew, Romanian, Serbian, Bosnian, Somali and Nepali. Every other language we offer carries the 25–30% limited-availability rate. If a language is not on that list it is not because we cannot do it — it is because the pool of qualified interpreters in the United States is small enough that we will not promise a date without checking.

Each language has its own page on what to watch for — dialects, names, dates, who the speakers usually are: see interpreters by language.

What it costs

Rates are per interpreter, per hour, and billed from the scheduled start time rather than from when everyone actually arrives.

• Virtual — $80 per hour, one-hour minimum. Zoom, Google Meet, Teams or telephone.
• In person — $110 per hour, two-hour minimum.
• Limited-availability languages — add 25–30%. Which languages those are is listed below rather than left vague.
• Travel for in-person work — $0.70 per mile from the interpreter's location.

How the travel charge works out

Travel is charged at $0.70 per mile from the interpreter's location, which means you can work it out rather than wait for a quote: a 20-mile round trip is $14, a 60-mile round trip is $42, a 150-mile round trip is $105. There is no separate call-out fee on top.

We will not pretend to know in advance where the interpreter will be coming from — that depends on the language, the date and the venue. What we do is confirm the interpreter and the exact travel figure before you book, so it is never a surprise on the invoice. Virtual assignments carry no travel charge at all, which is one reason most of what we do is virtual.

How booking an interpreter works

• You send the request with the form below: the language, the setting, the format, the date and how long it should last.
• We confirm before you commit: the interpreter, the exact price and the travel figure if there is one. We reply the same business day, and no payment is taken at this stage.
• You confirm, and the interpreter is booked for your date.

What to have ready

The more of this comes in the first message, the fewer exchanges before you have a price:

• The language, the date, the start time and how long it should run.
• Virtual or in person: the platform, or the city and the venue.
• The setting and the subject matter.
• How many people need interpreting for.
• Any credential the venue requires of the interpreter.

Request an interpreter

Tell us the date, the language and the setting and we will come back with the interpreter, the exact price and the travel figure if there is one — before you commit to anything.

Sources

What this page says about the rules was checked against these official sources on October 28, 2026. Rules change; the source is always the authority.

• Supreme Court of the United States — Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436 (1966) (LII)
• Minnesota Statutes 611.31 — Person disabled in communication (Office of the Revisor of Statutes)
• Minnesota Statutes 611.32 — Proceedings at time of apprehension or arrest (Office of the Revisor of Statutes)
• Minnesota Statutes 611.33 — Interpreter qualifications, fees and privilege (Office of the Revisor of Statutes)
• U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division — Notice of Rescission of 2002 LEP Guidance, 90 FR 15721 (April 15, 2025; applicable March 21, 2025)
• 42 U.S.C. 2000d — Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (LII)

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