PUTRAJAYA, Dec 5 — The shortage of court interpreters in Malaysia is due to the salary levels offered, Chief Justice Datuk Seri Wan Ahmad Farid Wan Salleh said today.

Wan Ahmad Farid, who is the highest-ranking judge, said the judiciary faces the challenge where court interpreters is viewed as a job which is “not that attractive”, as they could earn more by working as an interpreter in the private sector. 

“In so far as the court interpreters are concerned, I have to admit that the salary is not that attractive, and we are trying to recruit more interpreters, but there is no response.

“So what we have to do is we have to farm out, we have to appoint interpreters from outside the system, which is quite costly. 

“And those who are in the government, they tend to resign early because being an external interpreter is more lucrative,” he told the media in a group interview at the Palace of Justice here in conjunction with his 100 days in office as CJ.

Currently, he said court interpreters are given monthly incentives for each language they can command, which can be up to RM150 per language or dialect.

It is understood that the monthly allowance can range from RM90 to RM150 per dialect or language, depending on which one is mastered by a court interpreter.

“As to the increment, we leave it to the government,” Wan Ahmad Farid said.

Wan Ahmad Farid was asked for his opinion on the lack of interpreters at the lower courts in Malaysia who know Chinese and Tamil, and whether the judiciary would ask the government to consider increasing the salaries of court interpreters.

According to information listed on the Public Services Commission (SPA) website and based on an 2024 circular, an SPM school-leaver can expect starting wages starting from RM1,500, with annual increment of RM100 and maximum wages of RM4,680.

The SPA website also has a circular from 2002, which lists down the amount that court interpreters can get every month for languages and dialects mastered, such as Chinese, Tamil, local dialects and foreign languages such as Arabic and Japanese.

Previously on November 8, national news agency Bernama reported Court of Appeal President Datuk Abu Bakar Jais as saying that he supports calls for the government to consider giving court interpreters a pay rise, to honour their contributions and to attract more people to take up this work.

On July 15, 2024, Deputy Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department (Law and Institutional Reform) M. Kulasegaran said there have been court cases that had to be delayed due to lack of interpreters and lawyers have had to hire their own interpreters.

Kulasegaran had said that there were 1,000 vacancies for court interpreters advertised that year but only 300 persons had applied, and the reasons given were that court interpreters’ job scope nowadays involve multitasking and go beyond mere interpreting of languages.

He noted that the “ridiculous” salary offered to them also discouraged people from applying for this job.