The Final Conference of the LIT Search project (JUST/2013/JPEN/AG/4556) for a European pilot database of legal interpreters and translators was opened with a video message from Commissioner Vĕra Jourová in which she congratulated the consortium on the work done in the past 18 months. Koen Geens, Minister of Justice, then referred to Belgian efforts concerning a national database of legal interpreters and translators. The different needs of lawyers, judges and police authorities concerning the services of legal interpreters and translators were then discussed by speakers from the Netherlands, Germany and the United Kingdom. The afternoon session ended with a report on the Norwegian agenda concerning interpreting in the public sector.
The Tuesday morning session began with an outline of the history and background of the project by EULITA President Liese Katschinka as well as a description of the database and a summary of the lessons learnt from the project. Consortium partner Lalia White presented an overview of the final project report and its contents. InterConnect, the IT company responsible for developing the pilot database, then described its technical features and gave a live demonstration of the LIT Search database. This was followed by a mock trial showing the practical application of a LIT Search query to find legal interpreters with the specific language combinations, required for a hypothetical case of jewelry theft. By way of conclusion, five of the consortium partners commented on their experience with the project and their expectations for the future.
The general tenor of all statements was that a second LIT Search project should be launched so that more EU member states can be invited to join this pilot European database of legal interpreters and translators.
As of 20 November 2015 interested judicial stakeholders will have an opportunity to test the LIT Search database. The login details will be announced on the EULITA website (www.eulita.eu).
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