When custody staff book “an Arabic interpreter”, they are booking a language family, not a language. The varieties spoken by a Yemeni, a Sudanese and a Moroccan suspect differ enough that partial mutual unintelligibility is the norm, not the exception.
What is at stake in the interview room
The interview record is evidence. If the suspect only partially understood the questions — or the interpreter only partially understood the answers — the record's reliability is compromised, and defence representatives can and do raise this under s.76 and s.78 PACE 1984.
Three questions worth asking before interview
- To the client: where are you from — and did you fully understand the interpreter at booking-in?
- To the interpreter: which dialects do you actually cover? A professional answers precisely, including what they don't cover. (This practice does not cover Algerian, Moroccan or Libyan Arabic, and says so.)
- To the officer: can the interpreter's registration be verified? Every NRPSI interpreter is on a public register.
The practical fix
Dialect confirmation takes two minutes at booking and saves hours later. If you are unsure what your client speaks, a short call is usually enough to identify it — which is exactly what the free 30-minute pre-instruction consultation is for.