QUESTION:
“Good afternoon. …[our court] is trying to find a Quiche interpreter for a pending criminal case. Quiche or K’iche is a Mayan language spoken in the central highlands of Guatemala. We’ve tried courts in major metropolitan areas, NAJIT, major universities, Language Line, and even the Guatemalan embassy in Washington, DC. I noticed in a Google search that a court in Louisville, Kentucky tried to find a Quiche interpreter in 2000 — not sure if they ever found one. There are also a few appellate cases out there that talk about exhausting all efforts to find a Quiche interpreter, so I know we’re not the first court in this situation. We even tried my brother, who happens to be a theology professor at Biola University, who happens to know Bible translators in obscure South and Central American dialects, which led us to a possible translator at a university in Texas, but now that seems to be falling through. We even priced a plane ticket from Guatemala to Sioux Falls ($697, much less that I thought), but we have no contacts there and the embassy could not offer any.”
“If anyone has any leads or suggestions on a Quiche interpreter, we’d be very grateful. “