Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Justice has decided to recruit translators with a sound knowledge of English, Sinhala and Tamil from Sri Lanka, Arab News reported.

 

The Ministry of Justice is taking steps to expedite the settlement of disputes in cases involving expatriate workers by strengthening its translation and interpreter services at courts across the Kingdom.
 

With this view, the ministry has decided to recruit translators with a sound knowledge of English and Tamil (India, Sri Lanka), Urdu (India, Pakistan), Swahili (Pakistan), Bangla (Bangladesh, India), Singhalese (Sri Lanka), Pashtu (Afghanistan, Pakistan), Thai (Thailand), Tagalog (Philippines), Bahasa (Indonesia), Vietnamese (Vietnam) and Amharic (Ethiopia).

“The Ministry of Justice has begun recruitment of these language translators and has invited applications from interested Saudi candidates to apply for the job starting next Sunday through Thursday,” Mohammed Abdullah Al-Aqeel, director for administrative and financial affairs in the Justice ministry announced in a statement on Thursday.

He said that the translators will be employed in special courts as well to speed up litigation procedures which are often delayed owing to a language barrier.

The appointment of translators is aimed at safeguarding the rights of the litigants irrespective of race or language so that they can effectively communicate in court,” Al-Aqeel said.

The applicant should be a graduate with good translation abilities or have a secondary school qualification with a minimum of three years of experience in translation. The selected candidate will receive a monthly salary of SR4,000 including transport allowance.

“The applicant will be required to have an excellent command of both Arabic and the second language with good interpretation and translation skills,” the director said.

Currently, there are some non-Saudis working as translators in courts but the ministry wants to replace them with Saudi citizens in line with the ongoing nationalization drive to employ more Saudis in all departments.

Foreign diplomatic missions in the Kingdom, Asian commissions in particular, have locally hired translators to assist their nationals at court hearings.