SANTA FE, N.M. — Judge David Segura of Santa Fe County Magistrate Court called his first housing case of the day, a disagreement between Gabriela Herrera and her landlord over a rental payment. In Spanish, Ms. Herrera — born in California, raised in Mexico and a resident of this city for six years — recounted her side of the story, fixing her eyes on the judge, whose eyes, in turn, kept shifting to the interpreter translating her words into English in a booming baritone.

It was a typical interaction in the adobe courthouse here, where a rotating cast of interpreters bridges the language divide in housing disputes, traffic infractions, drunken driving hearings and a host of other matters. It is also such a costly enterprise that for five of the past six fiscal years, the courts in this state — where roughly one in three residents speaks a language other than English at home — have run out of money to pay not just the interpreters, but also jurors and expert witnesses, whose compensation comes from the same fund.

Last month, in what has become an annual practice, Arthur W. Pepin, director of the state’s Administrative Office of the Courts, pleaded with the state’s finance board for more money. He said that since he could not stop paying interpreters — they would not work if they were unpaid — he would have to start giving jurors an i.o.u. because the relevant fund was running out of cash.

Mr. Pepin got the extra money, but the problem, he knows, will persist. Even though the fund’s budget has increased by roughly 76 percent since the 2004 fiscal year — to $7.4 million from $4.2 million — demand for interpreters continues to grow faster than the budget’s confines.