Presently 167 languages are being spoken in the Republic of Ireland, according to data of the National University of Ireland Maynooth. This is placing great obstacles before the justice, education and especially health systems.
Rwandan interpreter Deo Ndakengerwa, 36 years of age, spends a better part of his day trying to settle differences and clear up confusion between non-English speaking patients and hospital staff. These days he is in great demand. He tells of a Cameroon woman who kept complaining that she couldn’t stop running. Her doctor failed to see why that was a problem until he was informed that this expression meant she was suffering from diarrhea.
The language gap sometimes has minor, but sometimes serious consequences. They can range from children being asked to translate for their parents or people taking the wrong pills to doctors misunderstanding symptoms.
The Irish government can hardly amend the problems between English and Irish, much less the demands arising from a polyglot population with dozens of languages. It seems a futile task.
Initial efforts do not give cause for optimism. There has been progress in some fields, but most linguists agree that services for the multilingual community are disorganized and the policies thereof lack future perspective. For one, translations in the field of public service are not regulated or standardized. No unified body is authorized to identify language needs in Ireland. The policies are not coherent or cohesive, and this may constitute grounds for legal action in the future. The language situation in Ireland has been aptly likened to the Tower of Babel, ready to collapse at any minute. Recent statistics show that around 6000 primary school children in Ireland do not speak English. In some schools the ratio between foreign students and native English speakers is 1:1. Teachers who aren’t bilingual have a hard time. Many linguists are concerned that the education system may not have capacity to ensure teachers skilled in teaching English as a foreign language and interpreters.
Last year District Court Judge John Neilan hinted in a statement before the media that it would be unwise to waste taxpayers' money on interpreters for defendants from Eastern Europe. Another issue in the field of justice is finding interpreters trained in translating difficult legal terminology.
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