COURT INTERPRETERS' ASSOCIATION,
LG3, SUPREME COURT BUILDING, QUEENSWAY,
HONG KONG
法庭傳譯主任協會 香港金鐘道最高法院大廈低層三樓 * 1 TEL: 5-8214364
Patron:
Mr. David Mudd, M. P.
Miss Maria W.C. Tam, Barrister
Mr. A.M. Niamatullah, Barrister
Miss Audrey Eu
Mr. Francis K.W. Cheung, Solicitor
Legal Adviser:
Mr. Michael Cheuk
Date:
14 JAN 1989
His Excellency Sir David Wilson, K.C.M.G.,
Governor of Hong Kong
Government House,
Hong Kong.
Your Excellency,
PETITION
In the matter of Representation of Members of the Court Interpreters' Association for sympathetic consideration of their career prospects.
We,
Court Interpreters faithfully serving at various levels of the courts of Hong Kong, have long expressed our dissatisfaction over
our poor career prospects and have on repeated occasions made pleas to the administration for improvement. Despite the efforts we made in this regard, we have now grounded to a bleak stalemate. What we have said seemed to have fallen on deaf ears and what we have written been placed before blind eyes. To enable you,
Sir,
to have an understanding of what has transpired, we propose to give you a brief account of the history which has led the Court Interpreters to the present miserable situation.
Before 1974, the Court Interpreters and the Chinese Language Officers were of the same grade, that is to say, the interpreter/translator grade. In 1974, to stop an exodus of interpreters, who preferred not to subject themselves to the stress involved in the difficult working conditions in courts, from the Judiciary to other departments as translators, Mr. J.G. Wilson, the then Deputy Registrar of the Supreme Court, closed the Court Interpreter grade with a view to raising the position of the Court Interpreters by offering better terms to competent interpreters to retain them in the Judiciary. This matter however was not taken further after Mr. Wilson left the office and nobody seemed to have concerned himself with the welfare of the Court Interpreters thereafter.
The structure of the Court Interpreter grade remained unchanged until 1981 when one Chief and four Senior Court Interpreter posts were created as a result of a representation made by us to the authorities during a general review by the Standing Commission on Civil Service Salaries and