Police chiefs have spent nearly three million dollars on translation costs to help officers communicate with crime victims, offenders and witnesses over the last six years, according to The Star. Since 2005, officers, detectives and police staff have dealt with people speaking 45 languages other than English. The list includes Albanian, Bengali, Chinese, Czech, Italian, Kurdish, Lithuanian, Polish, Punjabi, Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Somali and Vietnamese.

Interpreters are paid on an hourly basis for face-to-face interviews and the taking of witness statements, and the force subscribes to a telephone interpreting service where interpreters for any language can be found instantly. Translation and interpretation arrangements are needed for these increased amount of languages to preserve the fairness in investigative procedures and gathering evidence.

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