Currently, there are no free volunteer interpreters for Ukrainian refugees in the district of Tübingen. However, authorities and institutions can use the service of the Caritas Interpreter Pool, informs the press office of the Tübingen District Office. Private individuals, however, cannot make use of this service.
However, anyone who urgently needs a translation of birth or marriage certificates, for example to register with the Tübingen Foreigners’ Office, can contact the Slavic Seminar at Tübingen University (slavistik@uni-tuebingen.de). Based on scans and photos, documents are translated there on a voluntary basis and free of charge—but only those that are urgently needed for registration. “We can’t translate school reports or resumes because we don’t have the staff for that,” says Linda Böhm-Czuczkowski from the Slavic Seminar. Moreover, since the documents are not translated by sworn interpreters, foreigners authorities outside Tübingen may not accept them.
The offer of the Caritas Interpreter Pool is co-financed by the District Office within the framework of voluntary services. Currently, however, the offer is severely limited because too few language mediators are available. According to the district office, however, it is trying to find a solution—especially since the district authorities themselves are dependent on translations. In the project “Intercultural Mediation” of Caritas in the Black Forest-Gäu Region, more than 200 volunteer language mediators are currently involved, who can interpret into more than 40 different languages and dialects. The service has been in existence since 2005.
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Landratsamt in Tübingen. Foto: tünews INTERNATIONAL / Mostafa Elyasian.
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