Progress, limitations and prospects of police interpreting professionalization in China

Abstract Police interpreting has received minimum scholastic attention in China. This study systematically researched the accreditation, training and employment of interpreters in police interviews in China. The current translator and interpreter accreditation tests in China adopt a generic approach that has generally failed to meet the public service interpreting needs. Uncertified bilingual officers or freelance interpreters without prior legal interpreting training are usually employed to assist with police interviews. The recent development of Master of Translation and Interpreting (MTI) programs, Master of Legal Translation and Interpreting (MLTI) programs and Foreign-related Policing programs have made little difference in easing the shortage of certified police interview interpreters. It is suggested to reform the current accreditation tests: to include a police interpreter accreditation sub-division. Bilingual officers should not be excluded from assisting police interviews. They should be assessed for their linguistic skills and interpreting skills and be certified either as interpreters or as bilinguals. Closer collaboration among police forces, law schools and foreign studies colleges would help develop more pragmatic training materials and better train trainers on police interview interpreting. Meanwhile, a national register system of police interpreters with different levels of credentials should be established to ensure the proper administration of justice. China’s development patterns in the police interpreting accreditation, training and register systems might be of significant reference value to some other countries.


Introduction
There are great discrepancies in recognizing the importance of public service interpreting around the world.According to Ozolins's (2000) spectrum of responsiveness to Interpreting/Translation (I/ ABOUT THE AUTHORS Jianlan Xia is a lecturer in the Foreign-related Policing Department at the Beijing Police College.She specializes in applied linguistics, international police liaison, foreign-related policing and police translation and interpreting studies.Xiaoyan Bao is an associate professor in the Foreign-related Policing Department at the Beijing Police College.She specializes in applied linguistics, police intelligence management, international police liaison, foreign-related policing and police translation and interpreting studies.T) needs (Figure 1), the responses of different countries range from None Comprehensiveness to Ad Hoc Services, to Generic Language, or Optional Legalistic Approach, and to Full Comprehensiveness.At first thought, it is difficult to assess China's place on this spectrum.In the past two decades, a total of 16 various I/T accreditation tests have been launched and promoted around China, most of which take a generic language approach (Huang & Liu, 2017).However, most public service interpreters are uncertified interpreters employed on an ad hoc basis.Therefore, China might still be in the ad hoc phase of public service interpreting.This is typically true for interpreting in police interviews.
Legal interpreting is considered one of the most difficult types of interpreting.An interpreter working in legal settings needs both some knowledge of the laws and a high standard of interpreting skills (Rennie, 1999).Moreover, as Benmaman (1997) illustrated, the wide discrepancy between the educational levels of the parties in legal settings requires the interpreter "to manipulate a broad spectrum of speech styles from the most formal and articulate to the least coherent non-standard variety in both languages" (pp.185).Police jargon, the intimidating atmosphere of police stations, and anxious and suspicious suspects, shocked witnesses, or frightened victims make the task of finding the equivalent meaning between the source language and the target language even more daunting.This paper will assess and analyze the progress and limitations of China's police interpreting and discuss the prospects, which might be of some reference value to some other countries with a growing multi-lingual population.Abbreviations and acronyms are used in this study.A list of them will be found appended at the end of this work.

Literature review
Most research on police interpreting has been carried out as part of more general research into public service interpreting, or legal interpreting.One of the most frequently cited works on public service interpreting is The Critical Link: Interpreters in the Community (1-6, Benjamins Translation Library) compiled after the leading public service interpreting research international conference which is held every three years since the first conference in Canada in 1995, in which interpreting in the police environment was often discussed together with other forms of public service interpreting for their common aims to assist the linguistically disadvantaged immigration groups with their access to public services.
More attention has been paid to public service interpreting and police interpreting in the UK and Australia.Projects and training programs carried out in these two countries have boosted research in this field.For instance, there are publications for public service interpreters and trainers like Interpreting and Access to Public Service by Rennie (1999) and Basic Handbooks for Trainers of Public Service Interpreters by Adams et al. (2010) --with specific references to the legal options and police interpreters.There are also books concentrating on interpreting in the legal process, such as Interpreters and the Legal System by Laster and Taylor (1994) and Interpreters and the Legal Process by Colin and Morris (1996), Interdisciplinarity: public service interpreting in the Legal Context by Hale (2007).A few books devoted exclusively to police interpreting have also been published: Interpreter-mediated Police Interviews: A discourse-pragmatic Approach by Nakane (2014), Police Investigative Interviews and Interpreting by Mulayim et al. (2015) and Ethic for Police Translators and Interpreters by Mulayim and Lai (2017), etc.

Generic Language
None Comprehensiveness In other words, research on police interpreting has caught more attention in the last two decades.Goodman-Delahunty et al. (2020) reviewed the contemporary research on interpreted police interviews and identified several research gaps, such as the optimal interpreting mode in police interviews, the interpreter's role, assessment of interpreting performance, maintenance of investigative interviewing strategies, remote interpreting, and the effects of interpreting on witness credibility, and so on.The entry threshold for police interpreters around the world is not thoroughly investigated.Hale et al. (2019) pointed out that different jurisdictions had different requirements for interpreters in community settings ranging from a simple self-evaluation of language competence to passing a certification or accreditation test.The use of untrained interpreters in police interviews had been widely reported in countries like the US (Berk-Seligson, 2000;Filipović, 2022), Canada and Israel (Morris, 2008), Spain (Herraez & Rubio, 2008), Korea (Lee, 2014), and Belgium (Vandenbroucke & Defrancq, 2021).This research is the first to examine the issue of police interpreter qualification in China.
There is a wide gap in the research on police interpreting in China.Police interpreting, the backbone of legal interpreting, is grossly overshadowed by more visible court interpreting (Gamal, 2017).When reviewing public service interpreting research in China, Hu (2018) reported that 19% of research had focused on court interpreting --police interpreting was either neglected or not reported due to a scarcity of relevant literature.A search of "court interpreting" on China's most used academic database website CNKI.NET produced 237 journal papers and 635 theses/dissertations covering a wide range of issues such as roles of interpreters, interpreting strategies, interpreting case studies, interpreter training, and so on.A search of Tishen (trial/ interrogation) interpreting 1 on the CNKI.NET retrieved 23 theses/dissertations, 18 of which are case study reports of police interview interpreting.A search under the term of Shenxun (interrogation) 2 interpreting produced 3 journal papers and 14 theses, 8 of which are case study reports of police interview interpreting by MTIs from various universities in Beijing, Shanghai, Shenyang, Guilin and Nannin.
Pioneering research efforts on interpreter-mediated police interviews had been made by these MTI students who had worked for the police.In their faithful account of interpreter-mediated police interviews, linguistic challenges and corresponding strategies won the most attention.For instance, instead of verbatim interpreting, the strategies of information reformulation, paraphrasing and rephrasing were recommended in police interrogations (Fu, 2022;Li, 2019).The ethical dilemmas of Chinese interpreters in police interviews are also discussed.Zhang (2020) noted that the interpreters could be in dilemmas of interpreting questioning strategies, turn-taking and power relations due to linguistic and non-linguistic transfer issues.Hua (2018) and Qin (2019) investigated work safety concerns partly caused by the direct interaction with suspects.Such fear is shared by police interpreters in other countries as was reported by Baixauli-Olmos (2013).
Apart from the above-mentioned MTI freelance interpreters, bilingual police officers are extensively used as interviewers or as interpreters in China.Though interpreter training for police cadets majoring in Foreign-related Policing has aroused some concern, but in a different direction.Su et al. (2020) proposed to use different teaching methods in English-Chinese interpreting training in police colleges.However, the police interpreting training material used focuses mainly on policing multilingual communities and mediating international police cooperation rather than assisting with police interviews.
Interpreting accreditation sub-division possibilities have been proposed and explored (Huang & Liu, 2017;Pu, 2013).The need to certify interpreters in legal settings is recognized (Xu & Qu, 2014).Nonetheless, a further accreditation sub-division to certify police interpreters has never been mentioned.

Methodology
In this research, descriptive and comparative analyses and a validity study were carried out based on online information, publications and insider's knowledge.The research is divided into three parts: collecting and analyzing data about the accreditation practices in some Western countries and in China; investigating the validity of interpreting training programs; analyzing the dilemma of employing bilingual officers as interpreters.This research could be traced back to the researchers' interviews and discussions with experienced interpreters who worked for Metropolitan police and Metropolitan police officers who worked with interpreters more than a decade ago.Since then, the researchers has been studying the practices in the UK, such as the National Register for Public Service Interpreters (NRPSI) and Qualifications Level 6 Diploma in Police Interpreting (DPI).The gap between China and immigration countries in certifying police interpreters was analyzed, using the methods of descriptive analysis and comparative analysis.Information was retrieved from the official websites of accreditation tests, newspapers, and research papers, as well as through the researchers' personal experience as a test-sitter.Among the 16 translation and interpreting accreditation tests, the two major tests of the China Accreditation Test for Translators and Interpreters (CATTI) and the Shanghai Interpretation Accreditation (SIA) were typically analyzed.Another test the Legal English Test (LEC) was also examined for its value in cultivating police interpreters.The prospects of an accreditation sub-division of police interpreters were explored and assessed.The effects of different approaches in interpreter accreditation were analyzed, especially the legalistic approach adopted by the US and the specialized approach by the UK.The latest development in the accreditation system and police interpreter employment procedures in the UK and Australia was also investigated.A reform of the interpreting accreditation system in China was proposed based on these comparative analyses.
Next, a validation study of the different educational programs for potential police interpreters (namely, MTI programs, MLTI programs and Foreign-related Policing programs) were conducted using online data, academic literature, and the researcher's insider knowledge and observation as a foreign language graduate, a translator and interpreter for international police training sessions and international police cooperation conferences, and a trainer of Foreign-related Policing majors.Both progress and limitations in these programs were discussed.
After discussions with police officers from the Exit and Entry Department of the Beijing Public Security Bureau, a feasibility analysis of the practice of using bilingual officers in police interviews was carried out.Specifically, the risks of neglecting the code of practice and losing neutrality were discussed, weighing the possibility of untrained bilingual officers switching between different roles.In the meantime, legislation or position paper about the use of bilingual officers in the US and the UK was investigated and practices in these different jurisdictions were discussed.
Last, the importance of establishing a national register system was illustrated through a case study of procedural changes in the UK police's booking of interpreters.And the prospect of a similar national register system to the Police Approved Interpreter & Translator (PAIT) of the UK was examined.

Investigation results about the interpreting accreditation tests
China's current interpreting accreditation tests mostly take a generic approach and give more emphasis to conference interpreting, covering a variety of topics of business and trade, finances, social issues, diplomacy, cultural exchange, education, human rights, sports, and so on.Different from the practice in Australia, the US and the UK, none of the Chinese interpreting accreditation tests are oriented toward public service interpreting.

Interpreting accreditation in Australia, the US and the UK
Immigration countries like Australia, the US and the UK have long recognized the importance of certifying public service interpreters to ensure the accessibility of public service to linguistically disadvantaged immigrants.
Established in 1977, the National Accreditation Authority for Translators and Interpreters Ltd (NAATI)'s certification system of Australia has evolved into one of the most developed and mature translation and interpreting accreditation systems, which adopts a generic approach --a certified interpreter is qualified for all public service interpreting settings.A recent development was the Certified Specialist Legal Interpreter (CSLI) accreditation, which was introduced in December 2019 to certify interpreters who are competent "to interpret complex, highly specialized, expert-to-expert communication" such as "sentencing remarks by a judge, expert witness statements or testimony, or presentation of legal arguments" (National Accreditation Authority for Translators and Interpreters NAATI, n.d.).
In the US, law enforcement language service relies on certification tests, credentials and references arranged by the federal (the Federal Court Interpreter Certification Exam, FCICE) and state courts, associations such as the National Association of Judiciary Interpreters and Translators (NAJIT) and American Translators Association, and private sector language companies (Curtis, 2006).The use of non-professional interpreters in US police departments is still common and problematic (Filipović, 2022).
In the UK, the Diploma of Public Service Interpreter (DPSI) accreditation organized by the Chartered Institute of Linguistics (CIOL) has a variety of health, legal, and local government options, including the DPI.A Metropolitan Police Test (MPT) that particularly required candidates' familiarity with police terminology used to be organized by the Institute of Linguists (IoL) in conjunction with the Metropolitan Police Service.After the DPI was introduced by the CIOL and promoted nationwide, the MPT was terminated.However, DPI was also temporarily withdrawn in August 2022 due to the decline in the number of candidates for the DPI (Chartered Institute of Linguistics, n.d.-a).

Limitations in China's current interpreting accreditation tests
The current certification system is still far from meeting the demands of the increasingly segmented and subdivided interpreting market.Of all the 16 accreditation tests in China (some are withdrawn), the most established and accepted ones are the SIA and the CATTI.Initiated in 1995, the SIA has 42 testing centers in 33 cities and tests English and Japanese interpreting on the intermediary and advanced levels (the elementary certificate accreditation was terminated in 2013).The CATTI was established in 2003 and has been promoted nationwide, with test centers opened around China and overseas (China Accreditation Test for Translators and Interpreters, 2019).The testing languages include English, French, Japanese, German, Spanish, Russian, Arabic, and Korean on four levels, namely levels 1-3 and senior translators.However, both the SIA and the CATTI are not designed to cope with the translation and interpreting needs in legal, healthcare, or other public service settings.Linguists proposed SIA sub-divisions in the areas of business, finance and law almost two decades ago (Yan & Dong, 2005), which yet had not been implemented.

Investigation results about police interpreters from different backgrounds
In the professionalization of public service interpreting, immigration countries enjoy greater advantages given their big bilingual immigrant populations that could be more quickly trained to serve as interpreters regularly.In Australia, a NATTI certificate would be a bonus point for immigration applicants.For non-immigration countries like China, its foreign population is composed mostly of foreign experts, investors, traders, and students staying in China for just a short time, rather than permanent residents --Only around 10,000 individuals received permanent residence status between 2004 and 2016 (Haugen & Speelman, 2022) since Measures for the Administration of Examination and Approval of Foreigners' Permanent Residence in China was introduced in 2004.Nevertheless, the 2020 census of China counted a sizable overseas resident population (jingwai renyuan) of around 1.4 million in mainland China, including 845,697 foreign nationals (National Bureau of Statistics, 2021).Many a colony of expatriates had been established in big cities like Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and so on.To better serve these communities, graduates with a degree in foreign languages (4 years of undergraduate education or plus 3 years of postgraduate education in foreign studies) are employed as bilingual officers by the Entry and Exit Departments, Immigration, Border Control, and Foreign Affairs Departments of police forces.Freelance interpreters are also hired on an ad hoc basis, usually with a language certificate but not an interpreting certificate.For bilingual officers, the only interpreting training or workshop available is "placement and observation".Field experience and observation of the "practice of older police interpreters" helped newly recruited officers familiarize themselves with the routines of interviews.But the problem is that such experience is not necessarily trustworthy and scientific.For freelance interpreters, it is just self-instruction and briefings of cases before interviews (Figure 2).
The last decade saw the rapid development of MTI programs in foreign studies colleges and universities, MLTI programs in law schools and Foreign-related Policing majors in police colleges, which might provide an answer for the professionalization of police interpreter teams.Deng and Wen (2012) interviewed 42 foreigners from 20 countries who had been assisted by interpreters with their access to public service in China and rated the interpreting quality of foreigners speaking fluent Mandarin and Chinese who majored in foreign languages the highest.

Foreign language undergraduates and MTI postgraduates
In mega cities like Beijing, third or fourth-year undergraduate students majoring in foreign languages are employed to assist with interpreting police calls, which is termed as Telephone Interpreting Service (TIS).As this paper focuses on police interview interpreting, TIS is not discussed in more detail hereby.A majority of police interview interpreters are MTI students.By April 2019, a total of 249 MTI degree programs had been established in the language of Chinese coupled with English, French, Japanese, Russian, German, Korean, Spanish, Arabian, Thai, and so on around China (Mu, 2020).However, these MTI programs have not yet geared up in training to meet the demands of interpreting in public service sectors.Hua (2018) reported that MTI students hired as interpreters by Guangzhou police received no prior police interpreting training.Several papers by MTI student interpreters for police interviews showed that it is a common practice for the interpreter to acquire police terminology by searching online or through experience (Meng, 2020;Pei, 2017;Yin, 2015).In other words, they could only rely on self-instruction or gained experience.Xu (2017) held that MTI teaching in China is and will long be encumbered with problems such as inadequate training hours and a shortage of good trainers.
According to the 2018 MTI Degree Development Report initiated by the Academic Degrees Committee of the State Council, 59.5% of MTI graduates pursued a career related to language services (Mu, 2020).Most MTI graduates prefer stable jobs in governmental agencies or schools to the profession of freelance interpreting.Therefore, there is a high turnover rate among freelance police interpreters.Generally speaking, active freelance interpreters for police are young students rather than experienced older interpreters.

Law students proficient in foreign languages and MLTI majors
Various attempts had been made to cultivate Interdisciplinary talents with both linguistic and legal qualifications.
Before the 2008 Olympics, Beijing Public Security Bureau selected police officers with a master's degree in law and a language proficiency certificate of CET6 3 to assist with police interview interpreting.After some crash English and interpreting training, these police officers were dispatched to the Department of Preliminary Interrogation to assist with police interviews.These bilingual officers catered to the surging police interpreting needs during that particular period time.However, none of them remained in the department after the 2008 Olympics due to various reasons including the challenges in interpreting tasks and the lack of promotion opportunities.
By the year 2021, a total of 8 Chinese universities have launched MLTI programs.China University of Political Science and Law (CUPL) has both an I/T undergraduate program (Legal I/T Experimental Class) and an MTI program (China University of Political Science and Law CUPL, 2022).Interdisciplinary talents with both linguistic and legal qualifications are popular with overseas offices, international organizations and companies, international law offices, and also foreign affairs departments of government agencies, courts, procuratorates and police forces.Ma's (2017) employment statistics of MLTI graduates showed that they are mostly employed in education, law firms, courts, financial institutions, governmental agencies and other areas.Their employment in the police force was not evaluated.
A national exam of Legal English Certificate (LEC) test was created to help select candidates with both high legal English proficiency and good command of American law knowledge (National Legal English Certificate Test Advisory Committee of China, 2019).On the one hand, holders of this certificate are popular with multinational corporations and law firms.Being a freelance interpreter in legal settings is a preferred career choice for them.On the other hand, interpreting skills are not tested in LEC.The test contributed very little to the professionalization of police interpreting.

Police cadets majoring in foreign-related Policing
A total of 7 police colleges in China have introduced Foreign-related Policing programs.Take Zhejiang Police College 4 as an example, the program is targeted at cultivating bilingual police officers (with both foreign language proficiency 5 and skills to police multi-lingual communities) and international police cooperation liaison officers (Zhejiang Police College, n.d).There are no mandatory requirements for the Foreign-related Policing majors to pass the Test for English Majors 4/8 (TEM4/8) 6 or to acquire I/T qualifications.Some researchers noticed the limited or minimal police interpreting training in the curriculum and proposed to construct an English-Chinese police interpreting course (Jia, 2015;Zhang, 2014).In recent years, a course on police I/T has been incorporated into the curriculum for Foreignrelated Policing majors of the above 7 police colleges.Nevertheless, the top priority of such courses was still to facilitate foreign-related policing and international police cooperation.And the practicing hours are far from the standard specified by the Translators Association of China. 7In Jiangsu Police College (2018), interpreting practice accounts for only 16 class periods (12 hours).Some police colleges also send foreign-related policing majors to foreign studies colleges for interpreting training sessions, which nonetheless are not about interpreting in legal settings.
Moreover, it is a routine practice in China for newly graduated police cadets to be assigned to front-line police stations and work for a minimum of five years.The bilingual and interpreting skills of Foreign-related Policing majors are seldom used after graduation, which might quickly retrogress and hinder their career development both as bilinguals and as potential police interpreters.

Prospects for police interpreting accreditation
The path of police interpreting professionalization lies in the prospects of more scientific accreditation of both freelance interpreters and bilingual police officers.Pu (2013) noted that CATTI certificates made no big difference or little difference in the certificate holders' job hunting, as 80% of the surveyed companies do not require a "CATTI certificate" in their employment of interpreters.Though the situation is changing, CATTI certificates have gained little visibility in police forces either due to the low professional interpreter supply or the low correlation between CATTI and legal interpreting.

A further sub-division in legal interpreter accreditation
In 2011, 29 members of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference jointly proposed to register qualified translators and interpreters and certify legal translators and interpreters (Huang, 2017).Xu and Qu (2014) among other experts further suggested establishing a legal translation and interpreting certification system.Specifications for Judicial Translation and Interpreting Services has laid down that translators and interpreters in legal settings should be certified or sufficiently trained (Translators Association of China, 2021).It is expected that a legal I/T accreditation test is around the corner.
But will a legalistic approach do for police interpreting?Should there be a further accreditation sub-division for police interpreters?A generic approach to certification does not help interpreters in legal settings much (Laster & Taylor, 1994), and the path of a legalistic approach in accreditation might also be strewn with brambles.The FCICE held in the US since 1980 is respected for its high and strict standards in testing court interpreting proficiency but is also criticized for its low passing rate --an expensive test that leaves the courts with an interpreter shortage.The National Center for State Courts (NCSC) remedies the situation by offering state-level written and oral I/T examinations.And ad hoc interpreters were said to be used in the police investigative phase in California, Florida and New York (Berk-Seligson, 2000).The shortage has not been eased with the immigration population ever growing in the US.More recently, Filipović (2022) compared the practices in the US and the UK, finding that non-professional interpreters were used in the US police interrogations while professional interpreters were employed in the UK.In comparison to the legalistic approach of the US, the UK adopted a more sub-divided approach.From the Metropolitan Police Test to the DPI, the police interpreter accreditation sub-division contributed greatly to the professional development of police interpreting in the UK.This is of some reference value to China and many other countries.Laster and Taylor (1994) pointed out that generally the interpreters are employed by administrative staff who themselves are not trained assessors of language proficiency and the need for an interpreter.There is equally true in courts and law enforcement agencies in China particularly as there is currently no accreditation for interpreters in legal contexts.Police officers' inability to assess the accuracy of interpreting might result in distrust of interpreters (Wilson & Walsh, 2019).Therefore, some police officers prefer to use bilingual officers in place of a professional interpreter (Shaffer & Evans, 2018).Therefore, bilingual officers are widely used to assist in police interviews in China.Many linguists and jurists hold different views about the use of bilingual officers in interpreting.One of the major concerns is interpreting quality.In one case, a judge in the US ruled that one sufficiently Spanish-English bilingual police officer was "without the proper training and skills to have acted as an effective interpreter" (Beym, 2014).Another issue is the impartiality of interpreters.

Accreditation of bilingual officers as interpreters
The loyalty of the interpreter is a central issue in criminal cases (Rennie, 1999).For bilingual officers, the point of "whose" side they are working on might not be as clear as non-officer interpreters.They may subconsciously or intentionally switch between the roles of an interpreter and interviewer, plus as a witness statement taker, investigator, legal adviser, advocate, representative, and so on, to help to obtain a confession.After examining police interviews assisted by bilingual officers, Berk-Seligson (2009) concluded that a bilingual officer as an interpreter in a custodial interrogation may jeopardize Miranda rights.Considering the conflict of interests in police interviews, police officers and staff with relevant language skills are specifically excluded from assisting a suspect to obtain legal advice from a solicitor in the UK (Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984: Code C, C.13.9, 2019).The British National Police Language Services (NPLS) prescribes that police officers or staff members with language skills are to be used to benefit day-to-day policing activity, yet "must not act as an interpreter for another investigator to obtain evidential statements or information" (National Police Language Services, n.d.-a, p.6).
Legislation on the use of bilingual officers varies in different jurisdictions.Bilinguals in the USA and Australia are not legally prevented from working as interpreters (Hale et al., 2019).The NAJIT demanded that "bilingual personnel without prior training should not be expected to function as interpreters" in the US, but tested and documented bilingual officers "can conduct police business in a foreign language in emergencies when no exchange of sensitive information is required" (Curtis, 2006, pp. 1-2).
But the roles of freelance interpreters, and the collaboration between freelance interpreters and police could be just as complicated.In Drugan's (2020) investigation about police interpreting in the UK, contracts were signed to "embed" interpreters in an investigative team and linguists were frequently asked for comments on whether the interrogated was avoiding the point or lying about something.It is easy for interpreters to be caught in interpreting dead ends, especially for interpreters without regular and proper training.
Just as police officers need to be trained to work with interpreters (National Police Language Services, n.d.-b.), bilingual officers could also be trained as professional and impartial interpreters under the guidance of the code of ethics for interpreters.On the other hand, it is unrealistic for Chinese police institutions to exclude bilingual officers from interpreting police interviews at present when a police interpreter accreditation sub-division is not in place and there is no steady supply of qualified freelance legal interpreters from colleges.As an old Chinese saying goes, "distant water cannot quench present thirst", if tested and certified bilingual officers could ensure smooth communication in police interviews and the administration of justice, they could certainly "quench the present thirst" for qualified police interpreters in China.

Differentiated accreditation of bilingual officers
In the 1990s, police forces in the UK began to employ bilingual Police Liaison Officers, Community Affairs Officers, or Community Relations Officers, whose jobs may include some interpreting as well as liaison work (Rennie, 1999).Front-line bilingual police officers and staff of the Metropolitan Police Service in London could apply for a CIOL Qualifications Level 3 Certificate in Bilingual Skills-Police (CBS Police), which includes role-play and sight translation 8 (Chartered Institute of Linguistics, n.d.-b).
A similar diploma for bilingual officers should be developed in China to help Foreign-related Policing majors in China plan for their career development, meanwhile enabling the police forces to dispatch bilingual officers to police stations within multilingual communities.The differentiated certification of bilingual officers and interpreter officers would also help to allocate bilinguals of different linguistic levels to corresponding roles and in turn, facilitate the professionalization of the police interpreter team.

Training trainers of interpreters for police interviews
An experimental study conducted in Australia found that trained interpreters performed significantly better than untrained bilinguals (Hale et al., 2019).Currently, no professional training in police interview interpreting is available in China.Interpreting courses in police colleges focus on daily policing and international police cooperation, with police interviews accounting for a minimum of 3.5 hours (Su et al., 2020).Interpreting courses in MTI programs are homogenized --interpreting needs in different public service sectors are not addressed (Mu, 2020).MLTI interpreting courses could cover only a limited range of laws (Xu, 2017).What's more, police interview interpreting is not a priority for MLTIs.Chen and Deng (2015) found that legal I/T training is lagging behind, compared with translating and interpreting training programs for other special purposes.Above all, the shortage of professional trainers is the biggest problem.Mu (2020) pointed out that most trainers of MTI students are not professional interpreters themselves, but academic researchers without much practical interpreting experience.Colleges and universities put too much emphasis on the trainers' educational backgrounds while failing to recognize their interpreting achievements.Experienced freelance interpreters should be invited to participate in the training of interpreters.
According to an analysis of the Development Report of MTI Degree (Mu, 2020), the CATTI pass rate is relatively low among MTIs from law schools.One of the reasons may be the unavailability of documented and recorded police interviews or court interpreting for training.Other reasons remain to be investigated.There is no ready answer to the fundamental questions like "what to teach" and "how to teach"", but training trainers of interpreters through either mock procedures or real scenarios should be the first crucial step.Police colleges, police forces, and foreign studies universities, especially MLTI programs should seek closer collaboration not only in the employment of qualified freelance interpreters but also in the development of training materials using anonymized recorded police interviews.Experienced interpreters should be invited in to observe and study the recorded police interview interpreting process and to serve as trainers of police interpreters.Such real-scenario training material and mock procedures would fundamentally change the training mode in both MLTI programs in law schools and foreign studies colleges, and Foreignrelated Policing programs in police colleges.

A national registry of interpreters with different credentials
As was mentioned earlier, the DPI was withdrawn by the CIOL in August 2022 due to the decline in the number of DPI candidates (Chartered Institute of Linguistics, n.d.-a.).The decline might be related to changes in the way British police forces book interpreters after the police budget cut.Before 2012, British police forces book interpreters directly through recommended registers.New outsourced interpreting provisions led to the opt-out of a proportion of trained interpreters who had been until then working in the justice system on a freelance basis (Kredens, 2017).The ESPO 402_16 Interpretation, Translation and Transcription Services framework introduced by the Ministry of Justice between 2016 and 2017 continued with translator and interpreter bookings via intermediaries (Drugan, 2020).As a consequence, more use of unqualified or underqualified interpreters was reported, which led to operational difficulties in the administration of justice (Justice Committee, 2013).Likewise, police forces in China mainly book an interpreter through either a private company or from foreign studies colleges and universities.Qin (2019) surveyed 51 MTI students who worked as police interpreters and found that 60.78% of them were employed by translation agencies, 9.8% directly by police forces, and 29.41% through other means.Outsourcing might lead to wage reduction for interpreters (Drugan, 2020) or opt-out of qualified police interpreters (Kredens, 2017), impeding the development of a more professional interpreter team.
In 2020, the UK police introduced the Police Approved Interpreter & Translator (PAIT) scheme and the previous NRPSI register or other lists of interpreters were shifted to the PAIT list.This move might be a solution to the problem caused by outsourced interpreting.Another successful example is the nine credentialing levels used by the National Center for State Courts (NCSC) of the US, namely certified, registered, master, qualified, provincial, approved, conditionally approved, eligible and non-credentialed (Palma, 2021).A tiered payment scheme for registered and unregistered interpreters could serve as a quality control gate.Therefore, it is suggested to establish a national register scheme of interpreters with different levels of credentials in China, which could facilitate the direct booking and increase efficiency and might also recommend trainers to further boost training and improvement of interpreter professionalism.

Conclusion
In the last two decades, globalization and the growth of the immigration population increased the need for public service interpreting.Though great progress had been made in the creation of different interpreting accreditation tests in China, these tests are limited in sub-division: None of the accreditation test cater to the specific purpose of public service interpreting.The demand for police interview interpreters in China far exceeds the supply of qualified and certified individuals available.The key to police interpreting professionalization is accreditation.The current police interpreter accreditation, training and register systems need to be reformed and updated to have more sub-divisions, including a police interpreter accreditation sub-division.The MPT, the DPI and the CBS Police of the UK are successful examples of sub-division in accreditation.Meanwhile, tested and certified bilingual officers should not be excluded from assisting police interviews at the current stage as certified and trained freelance legal interpreters are still in great shortage.Instead, bilingual officers should be certified either as interpreters or bilinguals.As for training, closer collaboration should be sought among the police, foreign studies colleges and law schools with MLTI programs --to jointly develop real scenario training materials and cultivate qualified police interpreting trainers.Furthermore, the development of a national register system of interpreters with different levels of credentials is fundamental to the professionalization of a police interpreting team.It could not only increase efficiency but also encourage the use of more certified interpreters and ensure the administration of justice.In all, more and more countries have recognized the importance of building a professional police interpreter team to serve the growing multilingual communities and to tackle the increase of transnational crimes.And the study of China's progress, limitations, and prospects of reforming the accreditation, training and register systems would be of some reference value to these countries.interpreting produced no results.This is caused by the vagueness and sometimes confused use of the terms of interview, interrogation and trial in Mandarin.
Interrogation is used to refer to both interrogation in detention houses and on courts."Tishen" refers to only court trials according to its Mandarin definition, but is translated as interrogation and misused by the interpreting students without training on legal knowledge, which also demonstrates the non-professionalism of the police interpreting team and the relative ignorance of police interview jargon.
Figure 2. The contrast between immigration countries and China in the development pattern of police interpreter team.
Citation informationCite this article as: Progress, limitations and prospects of police interpreting professionalization in China, Jianlan Xia & Xiaoyan Bao, Cogent Social Sciences (2023), 9: 2248749.Notes 1.More papers are retrieved under the search topic of "fating kouyi" (court interpreting), covering a wider range of court paper translations, court interpreting literature translation reports, comparative studies of Chinese practices and overseas practices and reflections based on court interpreting practices.The term of "tishen" (trial on court or interrogation in detention houses) narrowed the search range to mainly interpreting practice.2. A search under the term of "xunwen" (police interview) 3. College English Band 4 and 6 are national level English proficiency test for college students in China.A score of 650 in CET4 (Full score 710) or a score of 550 in CET6 is said to be equivalent to 6.0 in IELTS.4. The Foreign-related Policing major of Zhejiang Police College is ranked the first among those of the seven colleges.The overview includes training objectives, faculty qualifications, courses, labs and collaboration with Beijing International Studies University and Zhejiang International Studies University. 5.The foreign language training available for the foreignrelated majors are basically in the language of English.Some colleges like Zhejiang Police College is seeking to cover a wider language variety by collaborating with foreign studies universities, but on a very small scale and limited scope of Spanish and Korean.6. Test for English Majors 4 and 8 are national level English proficiency test for English majors in China.7. According to the Specifications for Judicial Translation and Interpreting Services (Translators Association of China, 2021, p. 4), to be qualified for legal interpreting jobs, foreign language majors, law majors, translation and interpreting majors or other majors fully trained in interpreting should have a minimum interpreting practices of either interpreting for 15 conferences, or 50 hours of telephone interpreting services, or 30 days of escort interpreting, or 200 hours of audio interpreting training, or 20 hours of video interpreting training, of which one third is legal interpreting.8.The Certificate in Bilingual Skills-Police was first introduced in 2013.It is an oral-only exam set at foundation level and available for English paired with Albanian, Arabic (MSA), Bengali (and Sylheti/Bengali), Bulgarian, Cantonese (Traditional script), Czech, Farsi, French, German, Gujarati, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Lithuanian, Mandarin (Simplified script), Punjabi (and Punjabi/Urdu), Polish, Portuguese (Brazilian), Portuguese (European), Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Somali, Spanish, Tamil, Turkish, Urdu.