Two Interpreters, One Record: The New NAJIT Guideline on Team Interpreting
In May 2026 the National Association of Judiciary Interpreters and Translators issued new guidelines on team interpreting for legal proceedings. For attorneys who book interpreters for depositions, arbitrations, and mediations, the guidelines put numbers on a standard the profession’s earlier papers stated only in general terms: two interpreters past a defined threshold, in court or out of it, with arbitrations and mediations now named alongside depositions.
What NAJIT Is
NAJIT is the National Association of Judiciary Interpreters and Translators, the primary professional organization for court interpreters in the United States. It publishes a Code of Ethics and Professional Responsibilities that many court interpreters follow alongside their own jurisdiction’s rules, and its position papers set professional standards for the field. When NAJIT issues a position paper, it carries real weight with courts, judges, and language access coordinators, and it gives counsel and agencies a clear professional benchmark for staffing decisions.
NAJIT has addressed team interpreting twice before, in 2007 and in 2020. The 2026 paper replaces general recommendations with thresholds by mode and guidance for the people who schedule.
What the Guideline Says
NAJIT’s position is that a team of two interpreters should be assigned to any legal proceeding, in court or out of it, that may involve more than 30 minutes of continuous simultaneous interpreting or more than 60 minutes of continuous consecutive interpreting. The paper names depositions, arbitrations, and mediations alongside trials, evidentiary hearings, and sentencings.
In team interpreting, two interpreters of the same language pair alternate between an active role and a support role, switching every 15 to 20 minutes. The support interpreter monitors the rendition for accuracy, looks up terminology as needed, and is ready to take over. Both interpreters are serving the proceeding, not a party, which NAJIT distinguishes from the separate practice of assigning one interpreter to each side. That arrangement, in NAJIT’s view, removes any independent check on either rendition and creates procedural risk if an error occurs on one side’s record.
When a team cannot be arranged, NAJIT says the presiding authority should be notified that the interpreter will need frequent breaks throughout the proceeding.
What Was Already There
The team interpreting standard is not new to courtrooms. It has been the recognized professional standard for spoken language court interpreters in lengthy proceedings for nearly two decades, and the federal courts and several states have it in writing. The federal judiciary’s Guide to Judiciary Policy recommends teams for trials and lengthy hearings, noting that the physical and mental stress of interpreting over a long period may lead to a reduction in accuracy. Georgia’s rules for legal interpreting state that team interpreting is the recognized standard in the field as best practice to prevent errors. Indiana’s rules direct interpreters to recommend a team for trials, complex proceedings, proceedings over two hours, and testimony lasting one hour or more.
What has been uneven is the adoption of that standard across jurisdictions and, more significantly, its application to proceedings that take place outside a courtroom.
What Is New
In a courtroom, a judge or language access coordinator has authority and institutional obligation to notice when interpretation quality may be at risk. Court rules create at least the framework for a team to be assigned. A deposition room, an arbitration hearing, or a mediation session has none of that. The attorney controls the booking. Nobody else in the room has an obligation to monitor interpreter fatigue or flag a staffing problem. If the interpreter does not raise the issue, the record simply reflects what was rendered, and nobody knows the afternoon was worse than the morning.
NAJIT’s 2026 paper addresses that gap directly. Its 2020 paper had already listed depositions. The new one adds arbitrations and mediations, sets the thresholds by mode, and for the first time writes its guidance to the administrators and service providers who make the staffing decision. That is the meaningful development for litigation practice.
Why the Thresholds Are Not Arbitrary
The 30 and 60-minute thresholds are grounded in research, not professional preference. NAJIT cites a 1998 pilot study published in the journal Interpreting by Moser-Mercer, Künzli, and Korac, which measured quality degradation and physiological stress in interpreters over prolonged turns and found meaningful accuracy decline within the range now defined as the threshold. A 1997 article by Mirta Vidal in NAJIT’s journal, Proteus, reported the same conclusion for legal interpreters. The 30-minute simultaneous rotation also matches the existing standard in American Sign Language interpreting, which has used a 30-minute switch for decades.
What Counsel Can Do
Give the agency the real length. The estimated time on the record, the number of witnesses who need interpreting, and the technical complexity of the subject matter determine whether an assignment requires one interpreter or two. An agency that asks those questions before confirming is applying the standard.
Send materials to both interpreters. NAJIT calls for the team to align on terminology, proper names, and consistent renderings before the assignment starts. Preparation that helps one interpreter helps two.
Take it seriously when an interpreter asks for support on the record. An interpreter who determines they cannot continue at the required standard has a professional obligation to say so on the record. The appropriate response is a second interpreter, a break, or a continuance. A single interpreter who works through a full day without raising concerns is not evidence the standard was met.
Plan ahead for arbitration and mediation. Both are now explicitly on NAJIT’s list. Hearing days in arbitration run long and mediation sessions routinely run longer than scheduled. In both, the staffing decision rests entirely with whoever books the interpreter.
A second interpreter is quality control on the one part of the record nobody else in the room can independently verify. Kaplan Interpreting Services staffs teams of court-certified interpreters for depositions, arbitrations, and mediations, and asks about length and subject matter before confirming for this reason.
Not legal advice. Standards vary by jurisdiction.
CEO & Founder
Born in Dallas, Texas, Alexandra grew up surrounded by Spanish, English, Arabic, and Italian. After moving to Venezuela, Spanish became her primary language. She holds a Master's in Healthcare Administration from Washington University in St. Louis and is a California court certified and medical interpreter.
She founded Kaplan Interpreting Services after seeing an industry that treated interpreters as interchangeable and clients as ticket numbers. She built a protocol-driven operation where every interpreter is hand-selected and credentialed for the specific setting, every client has a dedicated point of contact, and risk management is built into every assignment.
Her career reached a historic milestone when she interpreted the conversation between President-elect Biden and Pope Francis. That assignment, along with engagements for Nike and the Summit of the Americas, set the standard for every client engagement that followed.
"The same protocols that protected that historic conversation now protect every assignment we handle."