NAJIT

Language is Evocative

Wed, 17 Jun 2026 16:44:45 GMT

Language is Evocative

“Preocupación” is “worry,” surely. I don’t dispute that. But that is not what WMATA is saying. They are NOT asking riders to be anxious, but to be vigilant.

Security is something to consider and behave accordingly; not something we obsess over and wring our hands about, in a defeatist manner, which is what “worry” implies. To the contrary, security requires getting actively involved.

Forget about the words. Think about what is going on. Hay que ponerse en situación.

Take for instance:

A little girl is distressed, and an adult, referring to his interaction with the child, states: “La estaba sobando.” The meaning is clear: He is “soothing” her, “calming her down.”

We could leave it at that. But, if there is a concern that we are straying away from the source, we can say “I was stroking her,” maybe even “caressing her,” (to calm her down).

But we must be careful not to plant an inappropriate image in the listening audience, particularly if the caregiver is a male figure. We are NOT talking about giving the little girl a massage. We don’t want the audience’s thoughts to lean into the visual that he was “groping” her (manosear).

We see attorneys manipulating the jury all the time. Inappropriately planting a thought that helps their case, and then quickly adding, “strike that.” But, once the thought is planted, there is no removing it, even if the judge instructs the jury to disregard what was said.

As a bonus for the interpreter, thinking about the content requires less mental effort. There is no need to search through our mental rolodex for the right term. It will come to us.

By holding on to the concepts, rather than the words, we gain interpreting speed and create the buffer needed for the times when there is no exact equivalency and we must find a roundabout expression.

Moreover, by thinking in terms of concepts rather than words, we can avoid false cognates.

Keep the Conversation Going

Be a Swan, Not a Duck — What does being a swan, not a duck, look like in your interpreting practice?
The Couch: Is There Still a Lane for Newcomers? — Is there still a strong path into judiciary translation and interpreting for newcomers entering the profession today?
The Conference Between the Sessions — What happens when more than 350 language access professionals come together to learn, connect, and build community?

You can find these and more in our blog archives !

Interested in sharing your insights with our community? Check out Writing for The NAJIT Observer to learn how you can contribute.

The images used in this post are sourced from Unsplash, Pixabay, AI generated, and/or credited to their rightful owner. They are used for illustrative purposes only.

If this topic resonated with you, be sure to check out our previous blog posts for more insights on the realities of our profession, and the evolving world of judiciary translation and interpreting:

An advertising slogan for Pampers in the 80s read:

“ Pampers, toda la sequedad que una madre puede ofrecerle al bebé .” Probably from something like all the dryness a mother can offer.

However, “ una persona seca ” displays no emotion, and that is not a desirable quality in a mother.

How do we translate “arrangement, as in the question of: What was the arrangement?”

We avoid saying ¿Qué arreglo había? because it gives the idea of something shady, sly, dishonest, un chanchullo o tejemaneje . Better say ¿cuál era el plan?

The views and opinions expressed in this post are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position, policies, or views of the NAJIT Board of Directors or the organization as a whole. Content published in The NAJIT Observer is intended to encourage professional dialogue, reflection, and community engagement. Reader discretion is advised where topics may involve complex ethical, professional, or emotionally sensitive subject matter.

There is a frequently used verbal announcement, in Spanish, in the Washington D.C. subway system. “Excuse me — is that your bag? …”

I don’t know what the full message says in English, but I hate listening to Spanish, because it sounds like some hybrid language.

“ Disculpe, ésta es su bolsa? Palabras tan pequeñas . . . . La seguridad es la preocupación de todos.”

This was clearly NOT done professionally. We would say palabras tan sencillas , and it would be la seguridad nos concierne a todos .

By: Ángeles Estrada, M.A., F.C.C.I

Language is evocative. A good part of communication is achieved, not so much by the words themselves, but the image they elicit.

We shouldn’t hold on so tightly to the words, and to the dictionary meaning of a word, because even while interpreting something perfectly well, we may be botching it — by creating the wrong picture in the listener’s mind’s eye, based on usage and cultural expectations.

An example:

I was once asked to edit some Spanish signs for a mechanized manufacturing plant. One of the signs read: “ Pinching point ,” and it had been translated as “ lugar de pellizcamiento .”

The translation made me giggle. It sounded as if, similarly to a designated “smoking area,” this was a place where one could engage in being physically flirtatious without fear of reprisals from HR.

“ Pellizcar ” in Spanish sounds playful. Un pellizco de comida is a morsel of food. The translation omitted the issue in question: “Danger.”

The sign, which was perfectly translated, did not convey the immediacy of the situation; but rather distracted its readers, leaving them to figure out what was meant at a time they needed to be more present.

If I had my druthers, I would have said: “ Zona de Peligro ,” or “ Ojo, brazo mecánico “

As language professionals, we know what works, and doesn’t work, in the other language. And it is our role to bridge that gap for

non-bilingual people.

Don’t be stumped by a word. We are not walking dictionaries; that is not expected of us.

However, if we don’t know a term, we cannot just leave it in English. We cannot sprinkle our rendition with English words, because it will obfuscate meaning.

If the immigrants are hidden in the train, in a “ grain hopper ,” we can simply say “ vagón de grano .” It will, in fact, convey a lot better than “ tolva ,” the technical term. If you don’t have a perfect equivalent, be descriptive.

Now, these grain hoppers have a funnel shaped bottom, with an opening for discharging the grain, which is what undocumented migrants use to enter and stow themselves away. We cannot, wanting to sound sophisticated, call this hole “un orificio,” instead of going with the more ordinary “agujero,” because orifice/orificio, in both languages, refers to small openings (such as one made by a bullet or a drilling hole), and is primarily used in anatomical terms.

So, in this case the defendant understood the interpreter only because he knew what he had done. And the image that was planted — if not in the defendant, certainly for those listening to the consecutive in the courtroom — as coming out of an orifice, must have been unpleasant.

Compromise means •agreement, middle ground, mutual concession, commitment; but it also means •to weaken and make vulnerable.

Compromise will sometimes mean avenencia, but others it will be menoscabar, poner en peligro. As in the sentence . . .

“This decision does not bar or compromise any claim pending or that may be made against your client.”

Translation software has made great strides in recent months, but for now, we have the advantage of better reading the context. Words don’t always translate the same way. We cannot have a knee jerk reaction when translating or interpreting.

Also, when thinking in terms of content, instead of word equivalencies, we question the meaning of the source and see the red flags.

I once interpreted at a seminar for a think tank in Arlington, VA, and the entire presentation by one guest speaker was based on a mistranslation.

This was at the time of Plan Colombia, and there was a lot of talk about the FARC.

One speaker’s contention was that young people joined the FARC because they were “bored.” This conclusion was based on a survey in which a good number of recruits had stated: “ estamos aburridos .”

Now, those of us who have Colombian friends and colleagues know that “aburrido” in Colombia is the equivalent of “harto” in most other countries. So, these young men were “fed up” with their lot in life and were looking for options.

If something doesn’t jibe, we must first make sense of it.

Now, how do we go about promoting a conceptual approach in our work? Well, clearly that is what we do, day in and day out, when interpreting. I am not reinventing the wheel here. Except, obviously, for the times when we hold on too tightly to the words.

I once asked an ASL interpreter, how did she do it? I was referring to my understanding that, for sign language, you have first to establish the setting, and then work concentrically to the essential idea. And her answer was: “I just rewind and playback.” “ Yo le paso la película .”

And that is the best definition I have yet to hear for interpreting, because it works the same for spoken languages. We get context immersed and replay the message, while being careful not to get tripped up by the words.

Angeles Estrada passed both her Federal Court Interpreter Exam and her Virginia certification in 1997. Before that she worked for 11 years as the official translator and interpreter for the Embassy of Mexico. She is a cum laude graduate from Loyola University, has an M.A. in Creative Writing from GMU, as well as translation certificates from Georgetown University (in both directions). She lectured in translation at Georgetown (3 semesters), as well as in translation, sight translation, and writing at UMD (two semesters); has been qualified by the State Department as a seminar interpreter and translator (also in both directions), and is ATA accredited. Ms. Estrada has previously published in The Jerome Quarterly, and The Chronicle.

The Conference Between the Sessions

Wed, 10 Jun 2026 16:31:33 GMT

The Conference Between the Sessions

Session rooms were filled with attendees eager to learn, ask questions, and engage with new ideas. Vendors and exhibitors looked sharp and ready to connect with conference-goers. Hallways became chambers of conversation between sessions and during coffee breaks, and more than once I worried my short stature might work against me as I navigated through the crowds.

But what stayed with me most was the energy.

Keep the Conversation Going

Wait… So What’s the Difference Between The Blog, Cybernews, and Proteus? — Ever wondered what the difference is between The NAJIT Observer, CyberNews, and Proteus?
Be a Swan, Not a Duck — What does being a swan, not a duck, look like in your interpreting practice?
The Couch: Is There Still a Lane for Newcomers? — Is there still a strong path into judiciary translation and interpreting for newcomers entering the profession today?

You can find these and more in our blog archives !

Interested in sharing your insights with our community? Check out Writing for The NAJIT Observer to learn how you can contribute.

The images used in this post are sourced from Unsplash, Pixabay, AI generated, and/or credited to their rightful owner. They are used for illustrative purposes only.

If this topic resonated with you, be sure to check out our previous blog posts for more insights on the realities of our profession, and the evolving world of judiciary translation and interpreting:

This year, NAJIT welcomed more than 150 first-time attendees, joining our returning members and bringing conference attendance to more than 350 people . While that number is impressive on its own, what stood out to me most was watching those attendees become part of the conference experience in real time and seeing our members embrace newcomers with such warmth and generosity.

This is what I saw as I worked to make sure Proteus found its way into the hands of every person who attended:

I saw people introducing themselves to complete strangers.

And honestly, those little moments became something much bigger for me.

A disco sticker started a conversation.

A disco tattoo sparked a laugh.

An eraser buddy somehow managed to find its way into countless pockets and conference bags. What surprised me most was how much joy those tiny erasers created. I watched people dig through the collection with genuine excitement, searching for the one that felt just right. For a few moments, seasoned professionals and first-time attendees alike stood side by side comparing favorites, trading stories, and sharing a laugh. It was a tiny reminder that sometimes the smallest things create the biggest connections.

Educational opportunities were everywhere, too.

By: Julli Jaramillo

As I walked through the conference this year, I kept noticing something happening over and over again…

People were showing up.

To be more specific, they were present.

They were showing up for themselves, for their colleagues, and for the profession.

I saw attendees walk into sessions alone and leave with new connections, colleagues, and sometimes even new friends.

I saw professionals reconnect after time apart. The hugs were some of my favorite moments to witness.

I saw many of you step outside your comfort zones, join conversations, ask questions, and share your experiences.

I saw people fully present .

Because of my role within NAJIT, I had the privilege of moving freely throughout the conference between registration, sessions, exhibitor tables, and hallways. In many ways, I became an accidental witness to countless small moments of conference joy.

I saw people dancing during Zumba at 6:00 a.m.

I saw people gathering around tables and introducing themselves.

I saw attendees making a conscious effort to be present, curious, and connected.

For many of our first-time attendees, this may have been their first opportunity to experience NAJIT not just as a professional organization, but as a community.

And that matters.

Professional organizations grow because people choose to participate. They grow because experienced professionals share their knowledge, newcomers bring fresh perspectives, and individuals decide that showing up is worth it.

And at this conference, I was genuinely amazed by how many of you decided that NAJIT was worth your time, energy, and willingness to embrace the experience.

Thank you to everyone who attended!

As the conference came to a close, I found myself feeling incredibly grateful.

Grateful to everyone who traveled to Atlanta to make space for learning, connection, and the exchange of ideas in support of language access in judicial settings, in support of NAJIT.

Grateful for NAJIT’s community and leadership for continuing forward through both opportunities and challenges with so much determination to push NAJIT into a better tomorrow.

And grateful for every attendee who chose to spend a few days learning, connecting, and investing in this profession.

To our first-time attendees: WELCOME TO OUR COMMUNITY. WE ARE SO GLAD YOU’RE HERE!

We hope this was the first of many NAJIT conferences.

To our returning attendees: THANK YOU FOR YOUR CONTINUED SUPPORT. WE WOULD NOT BE ABLE TO GROW WITHOUT YOU!

And to everyone: if you happened to leave with a disco tattoo, an eraser buddy, a passport full of QR codes, a Proteus issue, a few new professional connections, limited-edition stickers, or simply a smile when you think about the conference, then I would say the conference was a success!

Let’s run it back next year?!

Julli Jaramillo is the Publishing Coordinator and Editor-in-Chief for NAJIT. She holds a master’s degree in Translation from NYU and has extensive experience in quality assurance, content development, and strategic growth. Passionate about NAJIT’s mission to uphold ethical standards for judiciary translators and interpreters, she is dedicated to driving the organization’s growth while ensuring its publications meet high-quality standards and adapt to evolving industry demands. In her free time, Julli enjoys baking and creating art.

Feel free to reach out to her (editor@najit.org) to chat about the NAJIT Observer or Proteus—she is excited to collaborate!

The Couch: Is There Still a Lane for Newcomers?

Thu, 04 Jun 2026 16:14:51 GMT

The Couch: Is There Still a Lane for Newcomers?

If you’re new to The Couch series, check out some of our previous posts:

Overcoming Imposter Syndrome (February 2025): A colleague is seeking advice on overcoming imposter syndrome and building confidence while navigating the demands of interpreting and translation.
Starting Fresh – Advice for New Graduates (January 2025): A recent graduate seeks guidance on breaking into judiciary translation and interpreting
The Couch: Are “Translator Headphones” Giving You the Ick Too?(March 2026): A conversation about “translator headphones” sparks an uncomfortable realization about how the public misunderstands interpreting and what that could mean for the field.
For more posts, please explore: The Couch Series

These discussions continue to shape our understanding of best practices in judiciary translation and interpreting.

Seeking Guidance: Breaking Into the Profession

A question from one of our readers:

Hello NAJIT Community,

I currently work as a lash technician, but my long-term goal is to become a language access professional.

I’ve started reaching out to local court systems to learn more about opportunities and pathways into the profession, but I haven’t had much success connecting with the right people.

One challenge I keep running into is the experience question.

I understand that certification is an important step, but many opportunities seem to require experience. At the same time, gaining experience can be difficult when you’re just starting out and don’t have a formal educational pathway into the field.

I have a few questions for the NAJIT community:

How did you gain experience when you were first starting out?
What resources, training programs, or opportunities helped you build your skills?
What advice would you give someone looking to transition into language access from a completely different career?
If you were starting over today, what would you do first?
Where do you see the profession heading over the next few years?
Do you believe there is still a strong lane for newcomers entering the field today?

Thank you for any guidance you can share. I hope to learn from your experiences and one day join you in the field.

Thank you to this week’s Couch contributor!

Keep the Conversation Going

Finding Your Clan — In a profession that can feel isolating, how do we build the trusted networks that help us grow, survive, and thrive together?
Wait… So What’s the Difference Between The Blog, Cybernews, and Proteus? — Ever wondered what the difference is between The NAJIT Observer, CyberNews, and Proteus?
Be a Swan, Not a Duck — What does being a swan, not a duck, look like in your interpreting practice?

You can find these and more in our blog archives !

Interested in sharing your insights with our community? Check out Writing for The NAJIT Observer to learn how you can contribute.

The images used in this post are sourced from Unsplash, Pixabay, AI generated, and/or credited to their rightful owner. They are used for illustrative purposes only.

If this topic resonated with you, be sure to check out our previous blog posts for more insights on the realities of our profession, and the evolving world of judiciary translation and interpreting:

A Brief History of The Couch Series

A symbolic representation of interpreters and translators fostering understanding, depicted by a figure on a couch and another actively listening.

Since its debut in 2017 , The Couch has been the place to provide our members with the space to discuss dilemmas, help one another, and network within our field. Past discussions have tackled ethical challenges, professional growth, and best practices, offering valuable insights to judiciary interpreters and translators alike.

The Couch is a place to exchange ideas and brainstorm, not only for its contributors, but also for our readers who engage in the ensuing discussions.

At The Observer, we celebrate the strength of our community and the knowledge we share.

Thank you for contributing your expertise to help our colleagues succeed in their professional endeavors.

Collaborating in a professional setting, fostering ideas and understanding

Do you have insights to share or your own professional dilemma to discuss?

Complete this submission form to participate in the discussion!

Join the dialogue today and help us continue fostering meaningful conversations and connections within our professional community!

Thanks for reading, and stay tuned for the next submission!

Be a Swan, Not a Duck

Thu, 28 May 2026 21:55:34 GMT

B e a Swan, Not a Duck

A recent discussion with a colleague, a fellow NAJIT member, prompted me to think more carefully about how interpreters must “hold it together” even when they feel close to succumbing to pressure. The feeling that I have experienced myself even as a seasoned interpreter. My colleague spoke about one of the presentations given at the NETA¹ conference, where the lecturer² presented under the topic “Reimagine Visibility: From Booth to Screen.” While the presentation was geared more towards conference interpreting, it was also relevant to court interpretation. Court interpreters must maintain decorum in front of a courtroom audience while being exposed to multiple stress factors. In some cases, there are more than just the officers of the court and counsel. High stake cases can come with a gallery filled with the press and spectators.

Court interpreters must interpret graphic details of crimes, abuse or tragedies without allowing their own emotions to compromise their impartiality. Prolonged or repeated vicarious trauma can significantly affect an interpreter’s mental health and overall well-being. Interpreters who are regularly exposed to distressing narratives—such as accounts of violence, abuse, war, persecution, medical emergencies, or traumatic loss—may gradually absorb the emotional weight of those experiences even though they are not the direct victims.

The aforementioned items are a few of the stress factors that court interpreters must endure. As someone who interprets in both settings (conference and legal) I can attest that the act of having to “hold it together” really exists, and is important.

Interpreters are often expected to remain calm and composed even when they are internally struggling with stress, emotional exhaustion, or difficult input that is challenging to process. In many settings, interpreters must continue facilitating communication accurately and neutrally despite hearing distressing stories or witnessing intense emotional situations. This outward calm is usually not a sign that they are unaffected. Rather, it is a coping and professional performance strategy developed through training, experience, and repeated exposure to stressful environments. Many interpreters learn techniques such as controlled breathing, emotional compartmentalization, focused listening, and maintaining attention on accuracy and task completion instead of their personal feelings in the moment.

Developing strong interpreting skills also means developing sustainable coping strategies. Regular debriefing, continued training, mindfulness practices, and community support can help interpreters protect both their accuracy and their mental health over time.

References

New England Translators Association
Ozum Arzik-Erzurumlu, PhD

Keep the Conversation Going

Let’s Test Your Ethics: The AI Summary — When unofficial AI-generated courthouse summaries begin shaping perception of interpreted testimony, where does ethical responsibility begin—and where should it end?
Finding Your Clan — In a profession that can feel isolating, how do we build the trusted networks that help us grow, survive, and thrive together?
Wait… So What’s the Difference Between The Blog, Cybernews, and Proteus? — Ever wondered what the difference is between The NAJIT Observer, CyberNews, and Proteus

You can find these and more in our blog archives !

Interested in sharing your insights with our community? Check out Writing for The NAJIT Observer to learn how you can contribute.

The images used in this post are sourced from Unsplash, Pixabay, AI generated, and/or credited to their rightful owner. They are used for illustrative purposes only.

Ann (Jiraporn) Heath-Huynh

Blog Writer

Hi, all, I’m Ann (Jiraporn) Heath-Huynh, and I grew up in a bilingual Thai-English household, seamlessly navigating both languages from an early age. Living on four continents has shaped my global perspective, but the U.S. is where I now call home. My journey in the language field began after the birth of my daughter in 2010, evolving from a part-time job into a career I deeply love. Since joining the Maryland Judiciary’s roster of interpreters in 2015, I have embraced various opportunities, including Department of State Conference Interpretation for Thai and English. Although I primarily work as a conference interpreter, I hold a special connection to Maryland courts, where I’m proud to accept assignments and wear my first-ever interpreter’s badge. I’m eager to share my experiences and insights to enrich and inspire our professional community.

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By Ann (Jiraporn) Heath-Huynh

If this topic resonated with you, be sure to check out our previous blog posts for more insights on the realities of our profession, and the evolving world of judiciary translation and interpreting:

While cognitive load and speed is an overlapping area where legal interpreters may share with conference interpreters, one of the challenges in interpreting in the courtroom is overlapping conversation on top of the speed. Furthermore, rendering language with precision and conveying jargon is not optional, but a requirement that can lead to ethical dilemmas if not followed precisely. Another element that can add to a court interpreter’s ability to “hold it together” in public, that may not get discussed frequently enough, is vicarious trauma.

The presenter in this case, Ms. Ozum Arzik-Erzurumlu, Ph.D, used the analogy of a swan, a graceful creature that glides over the surface of the water with poise and calmness. No one knows if there are any struggles beneath that water. In her presentation, she graphically illustrated the concept in a way that was so clear to those who saw it. As someone who did not have the pleasure to listen to her firsthand, I understood the idea as soon as I saw the drawings. It was such a brilliant observation that was easy to relate to. I liked this concept so much, I emailed to ask her permission to write about it.

(Excessive) preparation is also one tool that I personally use to calm what I call my “inner bunny,” where my heart bounces up and down, like a bunny hop. Knowing that you know your subject/ material can reduce stress and empower you when faced with situations where you feel like you are in survival mode.

However, this should not be conflated with a lack of professionalism arising from avoidable or self-inflicted circumstances. During my most recent conference assignment, an interpreter from another booth was complaining that the client never gave her any information or vocabulary list for the event and it was extremely frustrating. The client was a large company that is publicly known and has information on nutrition that basic terminology could have been researched within seconds.

As professional legal or conference interpreters, and as responsible adults, we should take a proactive approach before accepting or entering into any assignment. This includes preparing thoroughly, understanding the subject matter, clarifying expectations, assessing potential challenges, and ensuring that we are mentally, emotionally, and professionally equipped to carry out our responsibilities effectively. Professionalism requires not only linguistic competence, but also composure, foresight, and accountability in managing situations before they escalate.

As Dr. Ozum Arzik-Erzurumlu, Ph.D said, “Colleagues, be a swan (not a duck). May grace and composure always be with you.”

The author was granted permission to discuss and reference the presentation discussed in this article.

Wait… So What’s the Difference Between The Blog, CyberNews, and Proteus?

Thu, 21 May 2026 21:44:58 GMT

Wait… So What’s the Difference Between The Blog, CyberNews, and Proteus?

Dear Readers,

We need a record scratch moment…

[record scratch]

I know that when I started my role with NAJIT, I merged lanes at 70 miles per hour. Many things were things I needed to know yesterday, and now that I finally feel a little warmer in my role, I wanted to create a small break in our usual blog flow to have a bit of a house meeting about the publications I oversee because honestly, what better way to dissect this than with a blog post? ��

At some point over the past year, many members have probably opened an email, seen a blog post, heard someone mention looking for me at the conference to grab a copy of the latest Proteus issue, spotted CyberNews in their inbox, and quietly wondered:

“Wait… aren’t these all kind of the same thing?”

Now listen, some of you already know the difference and are probably reading this like:

“Julli… we know.”

And honestly? Those who’ve already had it all sorted; thank you for being our seasoned navigators.

But for everyone else quietly trying to figure out where everything lives, fair question.

And actually… no.

One of the best things about NAJIT having multiple publication platforms is that it allows the organization to support the profession in different ways instead of trying to force every type of conversation into one single space.

Some things need to be quick updates.

Some deserve open conversation.

Some need room to breathe, analyze, research, and live beyond the moment.

CyberNews

CyberNews serves a completely different purpose.

CyberNews is designed to keep members informed and connected to what is actively happening within NAJIT and the profession.

Instead of long-form discussion, CyberNews focuses on clarity, updates, opportunities, and visibility.

This is where members can quickly find information about:

conference updates
webinars
deadlines
committee work
advocacy efforts
member opportunities
announcements
organizational news

One of the major benefits of CyberNews is that it helps members stay plugged into the profession without having to search for information themselves.

It acts almost like a central monthly checkpoint:

“What’s happening right now, and what should members know about it?”

And in a profession where many of us work independently or remotely, that consistent communication matters.

Proteus

Then there’s Proteus .

Proteus gives the profession something incredibly important: depth.

Some topics cannot be fully explored in a short blog post or organizational update. They require research, analysis, historical context, professional reflection, and space for deeper examination.

That’s where Proteus comes in.

What makes Proteus especially interesting is that it has evolved over time alongside the organization itself. Before CyberNews existed in its current form, Proteus also carried many of NAJIT’s organizational updates and announcements. Over the years, as NAJIT’s communication ecosystem expanded, Proteus evolved into something more layered; part professional journal, part magazine, part organizational archive.

Today, Proteus allows contributors to explore:

research and analysis
language access issues
policy discussions
evolving professional standards
industry shifts
long-form professional commentary

At the same time, it also serves as a historical snapshot of where the profession and organization are during a particular moment in time.

One of the biggest benefits of Proteus is that it helps preserve professional thought, organizational evolution, and community discussion over time.

It creates a professional archive of conversations, ideas, milestones, and challenges shaping the field beyond the immediate moment.

Why Having All Three Actually Matters

The truth is, all three platforms support each other.

The blog creates conversation.

CyberNews keeps members informed.

Proteus preserves deeper professional exploration and organizational archives.

Different formats.

Different purposes.

Different reading experiences.

But together, they create something much bigger: a stronger, more connected professional community.

And honestly, that’s the real goal behind all of it.

Thank you all for showing up to our quick house meeting for publication updates.

Now, tell me how you would like to contribute to our community?

Keep the Conversation Going

You can find these and more in our blog archives !

Interested in sharing your insights with our community? Check out Writing for The NAJIT Observer to learn how you can contribute.

The images used in this post are sourced from Unsplash, Pixabay, AI generated, and/or credited to their rightful owner. They are used for illustrative purposes only.

Feel free to reach out to her (editor@najit.org) to chat about the NAJIT Observer or Proteus—she is excited to collaborate!

By Julli Jaramillo

If this topic resonated with you, be sure to check out our previous blog posts for more insights on the realities of our profession, and the evolving world of judiciary translation and interpreting:

The Observer is probably the most conversational of the three.

This is the space where members can reflect, question, share experiences, explore ethical dilemmas, discuss trends in the field, and sometimes simply talk about the human side of this profession.

One of the biggest benefits of the blog is accessibility.

Not every meaningful contribution needs to sound academic or formal. Sometimes the profession grows because someone shares a personal experience, asks a difficult question, or starts a conversation other people were already thinking about but had not said out loud yet.

The blog creates space for:

dialogue
storytelling
guest voices
reflections
ethical discussions
timely conversations
community engagement

In many ways, The Observer helps remind us that interpreters and translators are not just professionals. We are also people navigating a constantly evolving field together.

The NAJIT Observer (The Blog)

Finding Your Clan

Thu, 14 May 2026 06:20:45 GMT

Finding Your Clan

We are immersed in a society that values independence, however, learning the value of developing a tight-knit web of people around you might just be what we need as professionals and as humans. Life has given me several reminders recently on the importance of surrounding yourself with a group of humans who share a common interest and care for each other. In other words, having a clan . What I mean by clan, is that smaller cluster of humans within your professional nation whom you consult, trust and may even share a friendship with.

Here are some things that have worked for me.

I hope you find some of them useful.

1. Reach Out

It might go against your nature if you’re an introvert but believe me it is worth the effort. You’ll be surprised how many people are willing to connect if you simply ask, “Can we meet for coffee?” I know we’re all busy running our own businesses and working staff jobs, but making time to connect with colleagues is also an important part of our professional growth.

If you’re new to the profession, find a mentor. Many seasoned interpreters are willing to take the time to guide you as you make your way into this ecosystem. Did you move? Get connected with interpreters in your new area. Find out how they operate so you’re not swimming upstream.

If you’re a seasoned interpreter, you already know each courtroom runs slightly differently to the next, not to mention the variation between counties and states. These days, many of us are working remotely in more than one state. Even if you haven’t moved, reach out to colleague in the new state or county you’re working in. It’s like moving into a new neighborhood. You’ll be regarded as a good new colleague if you introduce yourself and try to find out more about the new environment you’re entering. Learn about the business side, professional challenges of your new colleagues and achievements they’ve had as a group. Often, interpreters in certain states or counties have a group on social media or use phone apps to communicate, ask to get added. With a few exceptions, I have found people are receptive to a new interpreter reaching out.

2. Identify Key Players

We are all key players in this profession!

Identify who are your go-to people when it comes to matters of policy, standards, particular linguistic tools, business and emotional support. Every one of our colleagues is a key player in a certain domain in our field. Keep an open mind when you interact with other interpreters. We may not agree on everything with everyone, but most of the time we can support each other in a certain area. Be intentional in brewing a collaborative culture with interpreters in your circle and beyond.

3. Trust and Support

Sometimes we trust and support people or causes that don’t deserve it. Don’t let that discourage you. I’m willing to bet the more you trust others, the more you support others, your clan will show up for you. Ours is a profession where there are constant challenges. We do a job not many can comprehend, we face constant vicarious trauma, sometimes we navigate uncertain waters as independent contractors, and on top of that, the work we do is mentally exhausting. Few people will understand that and support you. We are a resilient crowd, nevertheless, we would all benefit from a network of trust and support. Be mindful of offering that safety net to your colleagues.

Some people like to keep personal and professional matters very separate. Some people don’t mind commingling those areas of life. Whichever you prefer, today is a good day to start looking for your clan.

I’m so grateful I have a clan to lean on. They are my trusted colleagues, my business advisors, my sounding boards, and dear friends.

To all of the people in my clan, ¡Gracias!

You know who you are.

Together we steer our ship to shore.

༄ ⋆｡˚ ⚓ ˚｡⋆༄

Keep the Conversation Going

Dreaming of Federal Certification — What does it really take to move from practicing interpreting to performing at a federally certified level?
This One Feels Different: The NAJIT 2026 Conference — What happens when people who carry this work mostly alone finally get to be in the same room together?
Let’s Test Your Ethics: The AI Summary — When unofficial AI-generated courthouse summaries begin shaping perception of interpreted testimony, where does ethical responsibility begin—and where should it end?

You can find these and more in our blog archives !

Interested in sharing your insights with our community? Check out Writing for The NAJIT Observer to learn how you can contribute.

The images used in this post are sourced from Unsplash, Pixabay, AI generated, and/or credited to their rightful owner. They are used for illustrative purposes only.

Reme Bashi

Blog Writer and Proofreader

Hello, everyone, I’m Reme Bashi, and I have been a certified court interpreter in Wisconsin since 2008. My career began in Mexico, where I majored in pedagogy at the University of Veracruz and transitioned from language teaching to interpreting and translation. Over the years, I have gained experience in education, manufacturing, legal, and community settings, including conference interpreting for media and government events. I’m passionate about continuous learning, which I believe is essential for growth in our profession. Recently, I have ventured into areas like hospitality, urban gardening, and ancestry research, enriching my perspective as an interpreter and writer. I look forward to contributing content that sparks dialogue and deepens our understanding of the field.

By Reme Bashi

If this topic resonated with you, be sure to check out our previous blog posts for more insights on the realities of our profession, and the evolving world of judiciary translation and interpreting:

Before I found my way to judiciary interpreting, I walked other professional paths. Most of these jobs naturally created spaces for people of the same profession to spend time together and share work concerns as well as establish personal connections. The teacher’s room and the newsroom are good examples of spaces where conversations about work flow and friendships develop. Court interpreting, on the other hand, can often be an isolating profession. We are traveling to assignments or have no dedicated space for private conversations with colleagues. We often work with a partner but sometimes don’t get much interaction time. I strongly believe a profession without strong networks of people is like a ship without a crew—adrift at the mercy of the ocean for direction. So, how can we build these much-needed relationships and how can they give our ship direction?

Let’s Test Your Ethics: The AI Summary

Thu, 07 May 2026 09:17:30 GMT

Let’s Test Your Ethics: The AI Summary

The NAJIT Observer Team

Welcome to “Let’s Test Your Ethics”

Keep the Conversation Going

Peer Observation and the Interpreter — What would change in our work if we stopped fearing observation and started using it?
Dreaming of Federal Certification — What does it really take to move from practicing interpreting to performing at a federally certified level?
This One Feels Different: The NAJIT 2026 Conference — What happens when people who carry this work mostly alone finally get to be in the same room together?

You can find these and more in our blog archives !

Interested in sharing your insights with our community? Check out Writing for The NAJIT Observer to learn how you can contribute.

The images used in this post are sourced from Unsplash, Pixabay, AI generated, and/or credited to their rightful owner. They are used for illustrative purposes only.

If this topic resonated with you, be sure to check out our previous blog posts for more insights on the realities of our profession, and the evolving world of judiciary translation and interpreting:

A busy courthouse begins experimenting with AI-generated summaries of interpreted proceedings for internal administrative use. Court staff clarify that the summaries are:

“not official records”
“just productivity tools”
“meant to help clerks and attorneys quickly review hearings”

At first, the summaries seem harmless.

The nuance was lost in the AI-generated summary.

The attorney shrugs and replies:

Reflect on This:

At what point does an “unofficial” summary begin influencing official outcomes?
Does the existence of AI-generated summaries create ethical responsibilities for interpreters, translators, even when interpreters/translators are not generating them?
How much meaning can be lost when AI reduces interpreted testimony into condensed summaries?
Should efficiency ever outweigh linguistic precision in legal settings?
Would your response change if the summaries appeared accurate most of the time?

Share Your Response

We’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments!

Over time, however, attorneys and court staff begin casually referencing them during scheduling discussions and case preparation.

One afternoon, after a hearing you interpreted, an attorney approaches you and says:

“The AI summary says the defendant admitted knowing about the weapon.”

You explain the distinction.

“Well, it’s close enough.”

How would you approach this situation?
Have you encountered growing reliance on AI-generated summaries or notes in your jurisdiction?
Where do you believe the line should exist between administrative convenience and ethical risk?

Disclaimer

The scenarios presented in this series are fictional and intended solely for discussion and educational purposes within our professional community. They are not based on real events or specific cases but are designed to foster engagement and dialogue about ethical dilemmas that may arise in the field of judiciary interpretation and translation.

Thank you for reading!

Let’s Test Your Ethics Series Archive

Explore previous ethical dilemmas in our ongoing series:

As professional interpreters and translators, we often navigate challenging situations that test our ethical judgment. Whether it’s balancing confidentiality with transparency or maintaining impartiality in emotionally charged settings, these dilemmas are part of our work’s complexity.

This segment, “ Let’s Test Your Ethics ,” is designed to spark thoughtful discussion and provide a platform for our community to engage with hypothetical yet realistic scenarios. By exploring these challenges together, we can deepen our understanding of ethical principles and share insights that strengthen our collective professionalism.

Remember, there’s rarely a one-size-fits-all solution to ethical dilemmas. Your unique perspective, shaped by your experiences and values, is invaluable to this conversation.

Ethical Dilemma: The AI Summary

The Situation

You immediately recognize the problem.

The defendant never stated they knew about the weapon. The actual testimony was far more uncertain. The defendant stated they suspected the weapon might be present.

The AI summary is not part of the official record.

Yet people are beginning to rely on it anyway.

Weeks later, you notice attorneys quoting AI-generated summaries more frequently in conversations surrounding interpreted hearings.

Some court staff argue the tool saves time and improves workflow efficiency.

Others quietly express concern that the summaries flatten nuance, certainty, and tone in ways that could shape how limited English proficient individuals are perceived.

The summaries continue circulating internally.

Unofficially.

But consistently.

Question:

Should you raise formal concerns about the growing reliance on AI-generated summaries , even if they are considered “unofficial,” or do you accept them as administrative tools outside the interpreter’s professional responsibility?

The NAJIT Observer Team

Confidential Conversations — Should you uphold your obligation to maintain confidentiality, knowing the information cannot be acted on, or do you report the confession in the interest of justice and public safety?
Public Record vs. Confidentiality — Should you redact confidential information before translating, or follow instructions exactly despite potential harm to vulnerable individuals?
The Digital “Assist” — When AI-generated courtroom transcripts begin influencing perception in real time, where does ethical responsibility begin?

As this series continues to grow, each scenario builds on the layered realities of our profession and invites thoughtful dialogue within our community.

Interested in proposing a future ethical dilemma? Contact The NAJIT Observer Team .

This One Feels Different: The NAJIT 2026 Conference

Thu, 30 Apr 2026 08:45:59 GMT

This One Feels Different: The NAJIT 2026 Conference

As I think about June, I keep coming back to the conference and how different it will feel to walk into the NAJIT 47th Annual Conference this year.
Not because it’s a conference.
We’ve all been to those.
Because of who is going to be in the room.

Keep the Conversation Going

Rethinking Reputation — Is reputation built by titles, or in the quiet moments where presence and empathy meet?
Peer Observation and the Interpreter — What would change in our work if we stopped fearing observation and started using it?
Dreaming of Federal Certification — What does it really take to move from practicing interpreting to performing at a federally certified level?

You can find these and more in our blog archives !

Interested in sharing your insights with our community? Check out Writing for The NAJIT Observer to learn how you can contribute.

The images used in this post are sourced from Unsplash, Pixabay, AI generated, and/or credited to their rightful owner. They are used for illustrative purposes only.

By: Julli Jaramillo

If this topic resonated with you, be sure to check out our previous blog posts for more insights on the realities of our profession, and the evolving world of judiciary translation and interpreting:

As spring sets in and we look to summer, many of us are starting to think about the FCICE exams offered this year. The opportunity for federal certification is available to Spanish interpreters hoping to achieve this sought-after credential and expand their client base. The Written Exam will be offered next month, and the Oral Exam will be held in August.

The time to start preparing is NOW!

Most of the time, our work is just us.
We are the interpreter, the translator, and we are also our own coworkers. We’re the ones catching things in real time, adjusting, deciding, holding the standard, and carrying it through. Different courts, different expectations, different pressures, and we move through all of it largely on our own.

And I get to take up space too.

I’m looking forward to that more than anything, being in our own space and seeing what conversations actually take shape once we’re all in the same room.

And yes, Disco Night fits right into that.

Not just as something fun to do, but as part of that same energy. After everything we carry during the day, we get a moment to just be there together without the weight of the work and dance the night away until 11, because we got an extension :).

And also everything around it.

So being in one place with people who actually understand the work changes things.

For me, I get to meet others who genuinely love the work. I get to hear about their path and see how their journey brought them into the room.

I get to connect with people in a way that doesn’t happen in our day-to-day life. Conversations that go beyond surface level. Conversations that stay with you. And laughter too, the kind that makes your stomach hurt because these people understand who you are in this field without needing much explanation.

In a place where my ideas and my voice can contribute to something bigger, where I can help facilitate community and be part of the change happening in our field and organization.

This year, you can feel that it’s centered on members, on making sure people feel seen, supported, and actually cared for, because this work can be isolating, and moments like this remind you that you’re part of something that actually holds you in it.

I’m not even overthinking it. I already know it’s going to be fun, informative, community-focused, and overall a remarkable experience.

If you’re going, I think it’s worth thinking about what you want to get out of it before you even walk in.

If you’re on the fence, hop on over, rise with the phoenix, and join NAJIT in Atlanta.

I will be available to all members during the conference, so if you see me, come say hi and let’s connect. Let me know how you want to be part of what we’re building. NAJIT belongs to all of us, and we’re all responsible for its growth and continuation.

See you in Atlanta!

Feel free to reach out to her (editor@najit.org) to chat about the NAJIT Observer or Proteus—she is excited to collaborate!

Dreaming of Federal Certification

Wed, 22 Apr 2026 08:23:43 GMT

Dreaming of Federal Certification

Dear Readers,

Keep the Conversation Going

A Matter of Due Process — When attorneys challenge not just accuracy but the process of interpreting, where does due process begin and end?
Rethinking Reputation — Is reputation built by titles, or in the quiet moments where presence and empathy meet?
Peer Observation and the Interpreter — What would change in our work if we stopped fearing observation and started using it?

You can find these and more in our blog archives !

Interested in sharing your insights with our community? Check out Writing for The NAJIT Observer to learn how you can contribute.

The images used in this post are sourced from Unsplash, Pixabay, AI generated, and/or credited to their rightful owner. They are used for illustrative purposes only.

Athena Matilsky fell in love with languages the year she turned sixteen. She majored in Spanish interpreting/translation at Rutgers University and also studied French. After graduation, she taught elementary school in Honduras and then returned home to begin freelancing as a medical and court interpreter. She later became a staff interpreter for the NJ judiciary. She has gone on to earn certifications as a healthcare interpreter and a federal court interpreter for Spanish and as a court interpreter for French. Most recently, she received her Master’s Degree in Conference Interpreting from Glendon at York University. She currently works as an interpreter and teacher, training students to acquire the skills necessary to pass state and federal interpreting exams. When she is not writing or interpreting, you may find her practicing acroyoga or studying French.

By Athena Matilsky

If this topic resonated with you, be sure to check out our previous blog posts for more insights on the realities of our profession, and the evolving world of judiciary translation and interpreting:

Happy Spring! We’ve gone from sleet and ice to muddy rain up here in Canada, but this week marks the beginning of warmer weather, and it’s possible we’ve almost seen the last of the snowflakes! I hope that wherever you are, you’re enjoying some flowers and sunshine.

The time to start preparing is NOW!

If you are not a Spanish interpreter, I still encourage you to read on for tips and tricks for levelling up your interpreting skills. Sadly, there is no magic pill to be had that will make us a better interpreter, but passion, discipline and dedication will make the difference.

THREE TIPS FOR LEVELING UP YOUR INTERPRETING SKILLS:

Pick your materials wisely. Look for study materials that have been curated for interpreters using simulated court proceedings by a reputable and properly credentialed member of our profession. Choose materials that have both transcript and audio, using the audio to interpret and the transcript to check your work.
Use your materials wisely! The number one mistake I see students make is to only interpret a practice lab one time. That first time is a valuable “blind run” moment, when you practice your skills and see how good you are at handling unknown topics. You should treat those blind runs seriously, trying not to pause in the middle or spiral when you make a mistake. Practice breathing and keeping your composure. Expect mistakes, and carry on anyway.
However, once you finish, you are NOT done. You must then listen to your recording, look for patterns to your mistakes, note your strengths and weaknesses and then integrate what you have learned, again and again until you have developed new muscle memory and your brain knows what it feels like to interpret smoothly and faithfully. You can repeat a lab 10-15 times and still learn from the experience. I call this step
Pace yourself! You won’t get very far if you only practice once a week. However, you also won’t get very far if you burn out. Find colleagues in the community with similar goals. Join Facebook groups with others studying for the same thing to find others dreaming of federal certification. Take classes. Hold yourself accountable. Ask for feedback, listen carefully to the feedback and integrate the feedback.

The final thing I’ll say is, don’t take “no” for an answer.

The year I passed the federal exam, a colleague was taking it for the fifth time. If she had stopped at four, she wouldn’t have made it. These skills take time and discipline to develop. They are not easy, and there is no shortcut. If you don’t care enough, find a different goal. But if this is your passion, go for it! I will be rooting for you.

Do you have other tips and tricks for levelling up your skills?

Share what has worked for you in the comments!

Peer Observation and the Interpreter

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 07:47:14 GMT

Peer Observation and the Interpreter

I have at times been frustrated with myself and my performance when working with a colleague on a case and being overcome by nervousness that ultimately affects my performance in such a way that I’m afraid that the other interpreter will be left with an erroneous impression of my knowledge and skills. On the other hand, I often observe colleagues who could do with some advice or even corrections and I later regret not having helped my colleague avoid an error that could go uncorrected for the rest of their professional careers. Sometimes, we might feel obliged to “walk on eggshells” around certain colleagues to avoid an uncomfortable situation. What’s more, from a non-interpreter’s point of view, we might only be as good as our last interpretation. As we battle this discomfort and anxiety, we should remember that it is not in our interest to shrink from these obvious avenues to self-improvement by surrounding ourselves with a useless moat of hypersensitivity.

If an interpreter chooses to be observed, I propose that he have the option of choosing who is going to be his observer. When we work in the same courthouse day after day, we might perceive different strengths and weaknesses among our colleagues and different proceedings might require different knowledge or skills. Some interpreters might excel in a proceeding replete with complex legal arguments because their stronger language is not English, or most of their formal education was in another country or simply because they excel at non-English simultaneous interpretation. If observation is mandatory, interpreters should be able to choose the colleague or colleagues who will observe them even if they’ve mutually agreed to present an excessively positive report in advance. The point is for the interpreter to grow accustomed to being observed and, eventually, to receiving some constructive criticism. Allowing interpreters the freedom to select the observer may be a more productive choice than observation by a supervisor who might be too busy with administrative duties or have less experience/knowledge than the subordinate he or she is observing. Additionally, if interpreters have the option of being observed by more than one person, this approach may yield a more balanced assessment.

Interpreters may also want to avail themselves of the option to observe their colleagues. Obviously, permission should be asked beforehand. If you feel you might have some helpful observations to offer the person observed, you might want to ask the other interpreter if she would like your input. She might not.

I propose that the observing interpreter review the “ Rules for Peer Observation ” each time before engaging in this exercise. The observing interpreter should write down any passage that she finds erroneous or long-winded or just strange and, if possible, provide an alternative. Once the observation has concluded, the observed interpreter should have the option to submit it to his/her supervisor or not. As stated, the idea is to get used to being observed and ultimately, critiqued. Ideally, any interpreters who choose to abuse or bypass this process will ultimately conclude that they are simply undermining and hindering their own professional development by avoiding this opportunity for improvement.

Finally, it might be in the observee’s interest to choose an observer with whom the former does not have an amicable relationship. Daniel Kahneman in his book, Thinking Fast and Slow, found that colleagues who liked each other also formed favorable perceptions of each other’s work performance. A more courageous interpreter might choose a colleague who does not inspire great affection or maintains a certain distance to provide a more genuine assessment.

In a legal environment where any proceeding may extend beyond expectations, an interpreters office might habitually hire more interpreters than what would appear to be initially necessary in order to always have interpreters available. I’m sure many of us have found ourselves with nothing to do, especially later in the afternoon. This assessment would be a constructive way to spend these idle hours. Indeed, prosecutors and defense attorneys come and observe their colleagues at hearings and trials. If we compare our rather performance-based profession to other similar ones, we’ll see that the actor has his fellow actors, director and audience to provide feedback. A professional athlete has other players, his coach and a stadium full of observers to guide him. A musician also has an audience yet we interpreters go it alone…to our detriment. Let’s make peer observations part of our job duties and work together to improve ourselves and others.

See Suggested Guidelines_Peer Observation , and let us know what you think

and if there is anything you would change?

Keep the Conversation Going

What’s Going On in Our Field Right Now? — A lot is shifting in our field right now, and it’s time we start talking about it together.
A Matter of Due Process — When attorneys challenge not just accuracy but the process of interpreting, where does due process begin and end?
Rethinking Reputation — Is reputation built by titles, or in the quiet moments where presence and empathy meet?

You can find these and more in our blog archives !

Interested in sharing your insights with our community? Check out Writing for The NAJIT Observer to learn how you can contribute.

The images used in this post are sourced from Unsplash, Pixabay, AI generated, and/or credited to their rightful owner. They are used for illustrative purposes only.

Jordan Fox has been a court interpreter for 26 years.

He has worked in state and federal courts in New York, New Jersey and California.

By: Jordan Fox

Guest Post

If this topic resonated with you, be sure to check out our previous blog posts for more insights on the realities of our profession, and the evolving world of judiciary translation and interpreting:

As interpreters, we are judged for a performance that may reflect or belie our experience and knowledge in varying degrees. Any number of factors that are not necessarily a reflection of our knowledge or skills such as the witness’s accent, an unfamiliar environment, or the acoustics of the courtroom may affect our interpretation. Our own personal lives may also play a part. For example, our sleep may have been disrupted the night before, we might be concerned about a close family member, we might not be feeling well, or we simply did not have time to drink our morning coffee. What’s more, we may go through periods in our professional lifetime where we have more time and a greater desire to further our knowledge, improve our skills, or simply rest on our laurels. Both the observer and “observee” should be aware of these factors and not rush to judgment regarding one’s skills or knowledge. We should consider this observation an opportunity to improve or even reignite our interest in engaging in research, something we might not have done since taking classes years ago.

Rethinking Reputation

Thu, 09 Apr 2026 07:04:03 GMT

Rethinking Reputation

Growing up in an Asian household, I believe that many of us were taught how to behave in such a way that we build and retain a good reputation in the eyes of society. Simply put, “Face-saving value is a cultural value prioritizing the preservation of dignity, reputation, and social harmony by avoiding public embarrassment, shame, or confrontation. It involves managing public image to maintain “face” (social credit/respect) and often necessitates indirect communication, emotional restraint, and diplomatic conflict resolution, particularly in high-context, hierarchical cultures.” ¹

Sometimes, it’s the little moments in life that make us memorable.
How we listen to others, how we make them feel seen or heard, how we validate their existence as a person in society.

Continuing with the idea from my last post ³ —how to use “finite thinking” in our practice as legal interpreters—when we are mindful of our actions, we become more intentional and present. When we approach our personal and professional lives this way, our interactions become more meaningful. Instead of being distracted or simply going through the motions, we engage fully in the moment and with the people around us. This shift moves us away from a transactional mindset, where interactions are just tasks to complete, and toward a more thoughtful and human-centered way of connecting.

Small gestures of kindness, such as showing patience, offering reassurance, or displaying empathy, can have a significant impact on how people feel. When individuals feel cared for and supported, it enhances their emotional state. Happier individuals tend to be more cooperative, open, and willing to engage, improving the quality of interaction and collaboration.

In the context of interpretation, kind and considerate actions by interpreters—such as attentively listening, clarifying information with sensitivity, and responding with respect—can significantly enhance the comfort and emotional well-being of the people we assist. This not only helps reduce stress and anxiety, but also facilitates more effective communication, greater trust, and a smoother exchange of information. In essence, the interpreter’s small acts of empathy create an environment that supports both understanding and cooperation.

In these small actions, we demonstrate emotional intelligence. And emotional intelligence is what makes us truly memorable.

Research shows that emotionally rich interactions, positive first impressions ⁴ , and perceived similarity all enhance how well we remember others. Individuals with high emotional intelligence naturally create these conditions—by being present, empathetic, and attuned—making their interactions more meaningful and ultimately more memorable.

All of this requires no prestigious title and no financial investment.

Just be there.

You will be remembered more for your emotional impact than your words alone.

Keep the Conversation Going

The Couch: Are “Translator Headphones” Giving You the Ick Too? — What does it mean for our field when tools like “translator headphones” are embraced by the public without a clear understanding of interpreting?
What’s Going On in Our Field Right Now? — A lot is shifting in our field right now, and it’s time we start talking about it together.
A Matter of Due Process — When attorneys challenge not just accuracy but the process of interpreting, where does due process begin and end?

You can find these and more in our blog archives !

Interested in sharing your insights with our community? Check out Writing for The NAJIT Observer to learn how you can contribute.

The images used in this post are sourced from Unsplash, Pixabay, AI generated, and/or credited to their rightful owner. They are used for illustrative purposes only.

Ann (Jiraporn) Heath-Huynh

Blog Writer

By:Ann (Jiraporn) Heath-Huynh

If this topic resonated with you, be sure to check out our previous blog posts for more insights on the realities of our profession, and the evolving world of judiciary translation and interpreting:

You may recall a song in Mulan, ² “Honor to Us All,” which highlights the societal pressure on women to become ideal and obedient in order to find a “good husband.” This type of belief teaches us to focus on reputation and how it can affect us in both our personal and professional lives. But can we rely on impressive titles or a killer marketing strategy, or the external façade of an individual, to shape someone’s reputation?

References

¹ Erving Goffman. (1967). Interaction ritual: Essays on face-to-face behavior. New York, NY: Pantheon Books.
Stella Ting-Toomey. (1988). Intercultural conflict styles: A face-negotiation theory. In Y. Y. Kim & W. B. Gudykunst (Eds.), Theories in intercultural communication (pp. 213–235). Sage.
Geert Hofstede. (2001). Culture’s consequences: Comparing values, behaviors, institutions and organizations across nations (2nd ed.). Sage.

² Cook, B., & Bancroft, T. (Directors). (1998). Mulan. Walt Disney Pictures.

³ Huynh, J. (February 12, 2026). Playing The Infinite Game In Your Interpreting Career . https://najit.org/playing-the-infinite-game-in-your-interpreting-career/

⁴ Lass-Hennemann, J., Kuehl, L. K., Schulz, A., Oitzl, M. S., & Schachinger, H. (2011).
Stress strengthens memory of first impressions of others’ positive personality traits

A Matter of Due Process

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 16:37:00 GMT

A Matter of Due Process

Lady Justice stands as a timeless symbol of fairness, impartiality, and the authority of the law

Because of the solo nature of the work, I didn’t have the chance to collaborate with my paisana (countrywoman) until much later, when we found ourselves assigned to a high-profile felony case involving multiple victims and deeply sensitive sexual content. The case was particularly controversial due to the notoriety of the defendant and his family ties to one of the victims.

During the victim’s testimony, the defense attorney delivered questions in rapid succession, sharp, relentless, and often forceful. Seasoned interpreters know how exhausting this can be. The pace alone is demanding, but when paired with emotionally charged subject matter and aggressive delivery, the challenge intensifies significantly.

I was working in the passive role when my colleague, the active interpreter, asked the judge on a couple of occasions for permission to consult with me. The terminology was complex and highly sensitive, and we needed to ensure both precision and consistency. These brief consultations were essential to maintaining accuracy.

A hub of academic excellence—training the next generation of interpreters and translators

After one such exchange, during the defense’s questioning, the ADA suddenly interrupted. He told the court that he was “somewhat familiar” with Spanish, having grown up in a Hispanic neighborhood, and that he felt we were not interpreting accurately. Both my colleague and I stood firmly by our renditions. The judge promptly admonished the attorney for relying on a vague claim of familiarity rather than expertise.

The judge then excused the jury to address the issue.

Once the jury was out, the defense attorney raised his own objections. He challenged not only our interpretation but also our collaboration. He argued that the passive interpreter should not assist the active interpreter in any way, no whispering, no notes, no input whatsoever. In his view, we were “both interpreting at the same time,” which he claimed was improper.

Then came the most startling moment: he requested that both interpreters be sworn in as witnesses and subjected to questioning.

We were stunned.

Neither of us had ever encountered anything like this. In that moment, I drew on my professional background, my experience as a NAJIT and the New York Circle of Translators board member, along with my certifications and credentials, to explain the mechanics and ethics of team interpreting. I outlined why brief consultations are not only appropriate but often necessary to ensure accuracy, especially in complex cases.

It made no difference.

The defense attorney pressed on. He demanded to know exactly what we had discussed, what alternative terms we had considered, and how we had arrived at our final choices. He framed it as an issue of due process.

Effective communication and collaboration are key to successful teamwork

At that point, the judge, clearly growing weary of the argument, read portions of the Language Access Plan into the record. Still, she acknowledged that the defense had raised questions worth considering and adjourned the case for the day, as it was already past 4 p.m.

The next morning, the judge returned, having conducted extensive legal research. She cited relevant precedent (which I’ll omit here to preserve anonymity) and ultimately overruled the defense’s objections.

We resumed the trial without further incident.

Afterward, both my colleague and I were commended for how we handled an extraordinarily difficult and unprecedented situation. More than anything, it reinforced how valuable it is to have the support and trust of your colleague , the judge, the coordinator, and the program manager.

I’d be very interested to hear if others have faced similar challenges. How did you handle them? And if you haven’t encountered this situation, what would you do? I always appreciate hearing about the resourcefulness and strategies others bring to this work.

Keep the Conversation Going

Language Access on the Biggest Stage — When the world is watching, language access still has to show up
The Couch: Are “Translator Headphones” Giving You the Ick Too? — What does it mean for our field when tools like “translator headphones” are embraced by the public without a clear understanding of interpreting?
What’s Going On in Our Field Right Now? — A lot is shifting in our field right now, and it’s time we start talking about it together.

You can find these and more in our blog archives !

Interested in sharing your insights with our community? Check out Writing for The NAJIT Observer to learn how you can contribute.

The images used in this post are sourced from Unsplash, AI generated, and/or credited to their rightful owner. They are used for illustrative purposes only.

Hilda Shymanik
Blog Writer and proofreader

Hilda Zavala-Shymanik is a state-certified and approved Spanish court interpreter with extensive credentials, including certifications in NY, NJ, IL, WI, TX, and CCHI performance-tier certification.

A prominent leader in the National Association of Judiciary Interpreters and Translators (NAJIT), she has served as Vice Chair, Board Member, Director, Treasurer, Chair of the Nominations Committee, Chair of the Elections Committee, Chair of the Conference Committee, Chair of the Advocacy Committee, member of the Education and Training Committee, member of the Advocacy Committee, member of the Conference Committee, Co-Chair of the Conference Committee, interim TNO Editor and current TNO writer and editor. She also served as President of the New York Circle of Translators. Hilda works with the courts in Illinois and Wisconsin. Born in Chicago and raised in Mexico, she brings deep bicultural insight to her profession.

About six years ago, I met a colleague during a short-lived, recurring five-day full-time freelance assignment, a 40-hour-a-week two-year contract. We were both Mexican and new to that courthouse, as was the coordinator. It was also a courthouse where team interpreting was not common, despite ongoing efforts to move toward best practices.

By Hilda Shymanik

If this topic resonated with you, be sure to check out our previous blog posts for more insights on the realities of our profession, and the evolving world of judiciary translation and interpreting:

What’s Going On in Our Field Right Now?

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 18:31:00 GMT

What’s Going On in Our Field Right Now?

There’s a lot shifting right now, and it’s not all happening in one place.

You see it in courts, in policy, and in the work itself. Some of it is being tested. Some of it is already in use. Some of it is still being debated.

But it’s all connected.

We’ve been having conversations about this in our field.

But now, it needs to be a real topic of discussion.

This isn’t something that’s coming later. It’s already here.

There are proposals to allow AI in court interpreting, including legislation being discussed in Wisconsin that would allow AI to be used in proceedings. At the same time, other courts are setting clear limits. In places like Ohio, guidance is already moving toward restricting AI from anything that affects the official record.

So now we’re seeing both directions at once.

Some places are opening the door. Others are setting boundaries.

And this isn’t happening in isolation either. National organizations like ours have already raised concerns about the impact of AI on accuracy, accountability, and due process in legal settings.

All of that brings us back to a real question:

If AI is used, even in a limited way, who is responsible when it gets something wrong?

Not just a word. The meaning.

Because that’s what we’re responsible for every day.

Shortages Are Driving a Lot of These Changes

And you can see the impact of that across different states.

Courts still have to move cases forward, so they’re adapting.

When justice speaks, it echoes with power, purpose, and responsibility

In places like California, demand continues to outpace supply, even with investment in training. In others, like Wisconsin, shortages are part of what’s driving conversations around AI. And across multiple jurisdictions, remote interpreting is being used more often to keep things moving.

This isn’t random.

It’s pressure.

And systems are responding to it in real time.

The question is what that does over time.

Are these changes strengthening access…

or changing what we accept as enough?

Remote Interpreting Is Becoming Part of the Structure

You see it across courts now, not just as a backup, but as part of how things are being done.

It helps with access. It helps with scheduling. It keeps cases moving.

And that’s why it’s sticking.

At the same time, states like Wisconsin are already building it into broader conversations around how proceedings can be handled, including in trials.

So this isn’t just about convenience.

It’s becoming part of the structure.

And there’s still something we’re figuring out.

What changes when the interpreter is not physically in the room?

Not technically.

In how communication is actually received.

That part doesn’t have a clear answer yet.

Another shift you can see is how interpretation is being looked at in legal settings.

It’s not just about obvious errors anymore.

Attorneys are paying closer attention. They’re preserving recordings, comparing transcripts, and looking at patterns.

Not one big mistake.

Smaller ones that build over time.

There’s already movement toward arguing that those smaller errors, taken together, can affect the outcome of a case.

And if that continues, interpretation doesn’t stay in the background.

It becomes part of what gets examined.

All of this circles back to us.

We’re working in spaces where technology is part of the process, where expectations are shifting, and where decisions are being made in real time about how language is handled.

So now we’re asking different questions.

What do we do when something doesn’t sound right?
What do we do when the conditions affect accuracy?
What does responsibility look like when more than one system is involved?

These aren’t abstract anymore.

They’re part of the work.

All of this is happening at the same time.

AI is being tested and debated.
Shortages are pushing systems to adapt.
The structure of the work is evolving.

And we’re in it while it’s happening.

Which is why this moment matters.

Not because everything is figured out, but because it isn’t.

And because of that, we need to be part of these discussions.

That’s why coming together right now matters.

Not just to listen, but to actually talk to each other.

To hear what others are seeing in their courts.
To compare what’s working and what isn’t.
To ask questions that don’t have clear answers yet.

Because these decisions are not happening in isolation.

They’re shaping the conditions we all work in.

And if we’re not actively part of those conversations, together, as a field…

then those decisions still get made.

Just without us in the room.

Keep the Conversation Going

If this topic resonated with you, be sure to check out our previous blog posts for more insights on the realities of our profession, and the evolving world of judiciary translation and interpreting:

AI Is Already Being Placed in the Work

Interpretation Is Starting to Show Up in the Record

So… Where Does That Leave Us?

Warts and All — Read about the ethical and practical challenges translators face when working with letters from incarcerated defendants
Language Access on the Biggest Stage — When the world is watching, language access still has to show up
The Couch: Are “Translator Headphones” Giving You the Ick Too? — What does it mean for our field when tools like “translator headphones” are embraced by the public without a clear understanding of interpreting?

You can find these and more in our blog archives !

Interested in sharing your insights with our community? Check out Writing for The NAJIT Observer to learn how you can contribute.

The images used in this post are sourced from Unsplash, AI generated, and/or credited to their rightful owner. They are used for illustrative purposes only.

Feel free to reach out to her (editor@najit.org) to chat about the NAJIT Observer or Proteus—she is excited to collaborate!

The Role of the Interpreter Is Expanding

I’ve been keeping up with what’s been happening in our field, and I think now is a good time to update everyone.

By Julli Jaramillo

We all know there’s a shortage of judiciary interpreters.

Remote interpreting isn’t temporary anymore.

The Couch: Are “Translator Headphones” Giving You the Ick Too?

Thu, 19 Mar 2026 03:13:00 GMT

A symbolic representation of interpreters and translators fostering understanding, depicted by a figure on a couch and another actively listening

Since its debut in 2017 , The Couch has been the place to provide our members with the space to discuss dilemmas, help one another, and network within our field. Past discussions have tackled ethical challenges, professional growth, and best practices, offering valuable insights to judiciary interpreters and translators alike.

The Couch is a place to exchange ideas and brainstorm, not only for its contributors, but also for our readers who engage in the ensuing discussions.

If you’re new to The Couch series, check out some of our previous posts:

New Member to NAJIT (December 2025): A new NAJIT member feels unsure how to break into an already-established community and is seeking advice on how to connect, participate, and find their place.
Overcoming Imposter Syndrome (February 2025): A colleague is seeking advice on overcoming imposter syndrome and building confidence while navigating the demands of interpreting and translation.
Starting Fresh – Advice for New Graduates (January 2025): A recent graduate seeks guidance on breaking into judiciary translation and interpreting
For more posts, please explore: The Couch Series

These discussions continue to shape our understanding of best practices in judiciary translation and interpreting.

A question from one of our readers:

Thank you to this week’s Couch contributor!

At The Observer , we celebrate the strength of our community and the knowledge we share.

Thank you for contributing your expertise to help our colleagues succeed in their professional endeavors.

Collaborating in a professional setting, fostering ideas and understanding

Complete this submission form to participate in the discussion!

Join the dialogue today and help us continue fostering meaningful conversations and connections within our professional community!

Thanks for reading, and stay tuned for the next submission!

If this topic resonated with you, be sure to check out our previous blog posts for more insights on the realities of our profession, and the evolving world of judiciary translation and interpreting:

I was recently having a conversation with someone who only speaks English but loves to travel to non-English-speaking countries.

He brought up a new pair of glasses that can supposedly translate conversations in real time and spoke about them like they were a breakthrough. Then he mentioned “translator headphones” and how useful they are.

Easy.

Practical.

Something that would let him move through conversations without needing anyone else, giving him autonomy and language access, as he described it.

Throughout the conversation, he kept calling it “translation,” even when what he was describing was clearly interpreting; which immediately stood out to me as a red flag.

I corrected him pretty quickly.

He paused and asked me what the difference was. And in that moment, it hit me that maybe most people outside of our field don’t actually know there’s a difference, or why that difference matters.

And I think that realization is part of what gave me the ick.

I’ve been seeing more of these lately, and it’s not the technology itself that stands out.

It’s the framing.

“Translator.”
“Seamless.”
“No person interpreter needed.”

We know what gets flattened when it’s described that way.

For those reading this, I have a few questions that hopefully, I am not alone in:

Do you get that same icks, or am I alone on this?
How do you see tools like these shaping the future of our field?

Self-Care as an Ethical Necessity — A reflection on why self-care, setting boundaries, and managing workload intentionally are essential for interpreters/translators to maintain both personal well-being and professional accuracy
Warts and All — Read about the ethical and practical challenges translators face when working with letters from incarcerated defendants
Language Access on the Biggest Stage — When the world is watching, language access still has to show up

You can find these and more in our blog archives !

Interested in sharing your insights with our community? Check out Writing for The NAJIT Observer to learn how you can contribute.

The images used in this post are sourced from Unsplash, AI generated, and/or credited to their rightful owner. They are used for illustrative purposes only

A Brief History of The Couch Series

Language Access on the Biggest Stage

Thu, 12 Mar 2026 03:11:00 GMT

Language Access on the Biggest Stage

The halftime show interpreter helped ensure that the show remained accessible, and it was truly a beautiful thing to witness.

This year’s Super Bowl once again highlighted how language access plays a role even in the most widely watched event.

Celimar Rivera Cosme: Interpreting Culture on the Super Bowl Stage

During the Super Bowl halftime programming, Puerto Rican interpreter Celimar Rivera Cosme helped bring language access and cultural representation to the broadcast through sign language interpretation.

Rivera Cosme is a Deaf interpreter and performer known for interpreting large-scale musical performances. Her expressive and rhythmic style reflects the energy of live music while maintaining linguistic clarity for Deaf audiences.

During the Super Bowl broadcast, she incorporated Puerto Rican Sign Language (LSPR) into the interpretation, highlighting the linguistic diversity within the Deaf community while making the performance accessible to viewers who rely on sign language.

Her work demonstrated how interpreting can extend beyond spoken communication. It can also carry rhythm, emotion, and cultural identity in ways that allow audiences to fully experience live events.

Rivera Cosme’s participation in the Super Bowl drew my attention not only because of the scale of the event, but also because it highlighted the importance of representation and accessibility in global entertainment broadcasts beyond the courtroom.

At first glance, interpreting during a Super Bowl halftime performance may seem very different from interpreting in a courtroom.

One environment takes place on a stadium stage and is broadcast to millions of viewers. The other unfolds in courtrooms where legal proceedings can profoundly affect people’s lives.

Both environments require interpreters to listen carefully, process meaning quickly, and reproduce language with accuracy and clarity. In both settings, interpreters must keep pace with rapid speech, shifting content, and high-pressure situations where communication must remain precise.

Preparation also plays a critical role. Just as court interpreters study case terminology and legal procedures, interpreters working in live performances must become familiar with lyrics, rhythm, tone, and the cultural context of the performance they are interpreting.

Another shared element is visibility, though it manifests differently in each setting. In courtrooms, interpreters aim to remain unobtrusive so that the focus stays on the proceedings and the speakers themselves.

During live performances, however, visibility becomes part of the experience. In the context of the Super Bowl halftime show, the interpreter is not hidden in the background. Instead, the interpreter becomes a visual bridge between the performance and Deaf audiences.

For Deaf viewers, the interpreter is often a central part of the moment. Through movement, expression, and rhythm, the interpretation carries the music and energy of the performance into a visual language. In that sense, interpreters like Celimar Rivera Cosme are not merely facilitating the event. They are participating in it, interpreting the show into a form that allows Deaf audiences to experience the halftime performance in real time.

The stakes may differ, but the responsibility remains the same: ensuring that meaning crosses linguistic boundaries clearly and faithfully.

While many interpreters work in courtrooms, hospitals, and community settings, interpretation also plays a role in cultural broadcasts watched by millions around the world. These moments expand public awareness of the profession and highlight the importance of accessibility in spaces where audiences gather to share experiences.

As interpreters and translators, noticing these moments matters. They remind us that language access is not confined to one field or setting. It travels wherever communication needs to reach across languages, cultures, and communities.

Events like the Super Bowl offer an opportunity not only to celebrate interpreters like Celimar Rivera Cosme, but, also, to continue advocating for accessibility wherever people come together to listen, watch, and participate.

Source: Information about Celimar Rivera Cosme and her participation in the Super Bowl was reported by HOLA!, “ Celimar Rivera Cosme makes history at the Super Bowl with Bad Bunny ,” January 2026.

If this topic resonated with you, be sure to check out our previous blog posts for more insights on the realities of our profession, and the evolving world of judiciary translation and interpreting:

But behind the spectacle, another professional quietly helped ensure that communication remained accessible: the interpreter of the halftime show.

Yet many of the core skills are remarkably similar.

Events like the Super Bowl remind us that interpreting appears in many places people might not initially associate with language access.

Let’s Test Your Ethics: The Digital “Assist” — When technological “assistance” begins shaping courtroom perception, are interpreters ethically obligated to adapt—or to raise concerns?
Self-Care as an Ethical Necessity — A reflection on why self-care, setting boundaries, and managing workload intentionally are essential for interpreters/translators to maintain both personal well-being and professional accuracy
Warts and All — Read about the ethical and practical challenges translators face when working with letters from incarcerated defendants

You can find these and more in our blog archives !

Interested in sharing your insights with our community? Check out Writing for The NAJIT Observer to learn how you can contribute.

The images used in this post are sourced from Unsplash, AI generated, and/or credited to their rightful owner. They are used for illustrative purposes only.

Feel free to reach out to her (editor@najit.org) to chat about the NAJIT Observer or Proteus—she is excited to collaborate!

Last month, millions of viewers tuned in to watch the Super Bowl Halftime show. As always, the spotlight was on the teams, the halftime show, and the commercials that quickly became part of the cultural conversation.

By: Julli Jaramillo

Warts and All

Thu, 05 Mar 2026 16:43:00 GMT

Warts and All

Punctuation marks, capitalization, and paragraph breaks are often non-existent. A second reading may shed new light on the intended content, revealing a nuance, or even a change in meaning depending on the reader’s intonation.

Sorting through all the above takes time, and once that is done, the quandary becomes whether to present the judge with a sanitized version of the letter, or to reproduce the disruptive elements of the source.

As translators, we are required to preserve meaning while ensuring that the reader does not lose sight of the defendant’s educational level. But how should this be handled? We don’t want the English reader burdened by the same undecipherable writing we struggled with in doing the translation.

The clutter-in-clutter-out approach is not an option. We cannot preserve the awkwardness of the source, because no judge would read something so cumbersome. Additionally, we must consider whether, in keeping to the source — warts and all— we are doing the defendant any service. I suggest that the principle of faithfulness must be re-examined, since the first objective is communication.

As a comparison and reference, consider how we interpret testimony at the witness stand. We refrain from reproducing the witness’ body language to avoid introducing errors (pointing to the wrong body part, misstating the speaker’s emphasis or disparagement, or adding our own gestures). Mimicking is also avoided so as not to appear to be mocking or disrespectful. But, most importantly, we want to focus the audience’s attention on the message.

Admittedly, a letter lacks the visual cues of oral testimony, but, as with testimony, we must not undermine the integrity of the message by deliberately rendering the translation in a confusing manner, to reflect the defendant’s lack of schooling.

I believe that anything that detracts from the message is an encumbrance to be avoided, and, as language professionals, we have a duty to write well and clearly.

It takes work to produce something that is eminently readable while adhering to the source; retaining the casual and the flowery, the gaucheness, without inviting derision. The fact that these letters are often written by unschooled persons does not justify a slapdash effort by the translator.

In terms of signaling to the judge the defendant’s educational level, suggestions from other translators are welcome regarding the comments below.

We might begin with an obvious disclaimer, such as:

Translator’s note: The source document is full of run-on sentences, spelling mistakes and lack of punctuation. Orthographic errors have been corrected and punctuation added for clarity, and to facilitate reading.

Another suggestion with which I am not totally pleased is to interject brackets within words, to indicate the abundance of spelling errors, without misspelling the words ourselves.

. . . and his brother was sa[y]ing that it was an un[n]eces[s]ary e[x]pense . . .

This, of course, is a dubious practice, since we are not using the same words. However, the presence of the brackets does break up the text sufficiently to convey the disruptions in the source. Our Translator’s note should then include: Brackets indicate spelling errors.

I would like to hear from other colleagues on how they are handling such translations, so that we can benefit from their experience and perhaps establish some criteria among ourselves.

Keep the Conversation Going

Ángeles Estrada, M.A., F.C.C.I.

Because of the literacy level of most defendants, their letters are laden with spelling mistakes and frequently as cryptic as license plates; a gibberish that only makes sense when sounded out. Apart from a general disregard for the orthographic use of g/j, s/c/z, b/v, r/rr, i/y, c/qu/k, y/ll, gue/hue/ue, n/m, and a lack of accents, people who only use language verbally are altogether unsure of where a word begins and ends, and, in writing, they often transfer a first, or last, syllable to the immediately preceding or following word.

The writing is full of clichés –a jarring admixture of the grandiloquent and the colloquial– as well as religious references.

Similarly, when translating letters by defendants, and character letters sent to the judge by their relatives and acquaintances, we must consider the orthographic elements as extraneous to the message.

Playing The Infinite Game In Your Interpreting Career — Legal interpreting invites us to think beyond the case in front of us and commit to protecting meaning, due process, and the long-term strength of our profession.
Let’s Test Your Ethics: The Digital “Assist” — When technological “assistance” begins shaping courtroom perception, are interpreters ethically obligated to adapt—or to raise concerns?
Self-Care as an Ethical Necessity — A reflection on why self-care, setting boundaries, and managing workload intentionally are essential for interpreters/translators to maintain both personal well-being and professional accuracy

The letters written to the judge by Spanish-speaking defendants in U.S. penitentiaries are hard to read and time consuming to translate.

By Ángeles Estrada, M.A., F.C.C.I

If this topic resonated with you, be sure to check out our previous blog posts for more insights on the realities of our profession, and the evolving world of judiciary translation and interpreting:

Self-Care as an Ethical Necessity

Thu, 26 Feb 2026 14:33:00 GMT

Self-Care as an Ethical Necessity

Rest is not a luxury—it’s a necessity.

I hope I don’t need to convince anyone that in order to do our best, whether as interpreter or in any other role, we need to keep our mind, body and spirit in tip-top shape. If we are sleep-deprived, we will impact the accuracy of the record in court. If we are hungry, we will make careless mistakes. And if we are treating ourselves worse than even a nightmare boss might do, we and those around us will suffer accordingly. Stretched too thin, we will end up letting somebody down no matter what. In other words, self-care is not a luxury; it is an ethical necessity.

I know I am not alone in this. A colleague recently turned me down after I offered her a business opportunity, because she was sensing burnout and knew she needed a break. Although disappointed, I appreciated her transparency; I would rather she say “no” to me now than bite off more than she can chew and fail at her job later. Most small business owners I know (which includes the majority of interpreters as well) are overworked and overburdened. Bogged down with our to-do lists, we feel constantly as though we are playing catch-up. Reversing this takes discipline, and is ironically harder, at times, than simply saying “yes” to every opportunity that comes our way.

Saying, “no” is a form of self-love.

Here are my top 3 tips for implementing the kind of self-care you need to be the best boss you can to yourself. Even if you are a full-time employee, these tips will help you to make the most of the time that you have.

1. SAY NO.

Next to each project I put a symbol of a happy face or a frowny face, indicating which situations brought me joy and which ones caused me anguish. Then, I put a dollar sign next to the ones that were economically advantageous. Finally, I drew a big fat line through half of the projects I was involved in.

Maximize financial reward. Maximize fulfillment. Minimize stress. You don’t have to burn bridges, but you are allowed to say “no” when there is too much on your plate. In fact, ethically, you should.

2. BUILD IN BUFFER TIME.

What does that mean for me? My best example is one I gave last year at NAJIT’s annual conference where I led the workshop, How to Be Your Own Best Boss. I described how during tax season last year, I took myself out to my favorite restaurant, laptop in tow. The waiter didn’t mind me sitting there while I went through the tedium of organizing receipts, tracking expenses and getting all those numbers down. Of course, don’t display private information for anybody to see, but there are screen protectors for that. I’m planning to do it again this month.

I’ve also done business planning from a blanket at the park. Sky’s the limit; just get creative and make the terrible stuff slightly less terrible.

If you can’t get the task done somewhere fun, then reward yourself later. Schedule in your downtime and do something for you. You’ll be glad you did it, and the people around you will benefit, too.

What about you?

How will you be your own best boss?

Keep the Conversation Going

Have you ever found yourself skipping lunch, losing sleep and working 12-hour days even though you were your own boss? A few years ago, I had a bit of an epiphany. I, like many of us freelance interpreters, was working for myself. Yet my days were far more grueling than any assigned schedule I had ever received from an outside entity. Why, I asked myself, was I receiving the worst possible employer treatment from myself? In the years since, I have endeavored to be the best boss I can.

By: Athena Matilsky

Be kinder to yourself. Then let your kindness flood the world. -Pema Chödron

We cannot excel at a million projects at once. When I first sat down to be a better boss to myself, I wrote a list of every single project I was involved in; work projects, volunteering, family… everything. Spoiler alert: There were a lot of projects.

This can be as simple as allowing for a full fifteen minutes between assignments; remembering to factor in commute time; planning for lunch. I had to remind myself last week that just because I am hyper-focused on my computer doesn’t mean I should stay that way. I’ve started setting alarms so that I get up to stretch and look out the window so I don’t succumb to screen fatigue and constant stress headaches.

3. MAKE HARD STUFF MORE FUN.

If this topic resonated with you, be sure to check out our previous blog posts for more insights on the realities of our profession, and the evolving world of judiciary translation and interpreting:

Not An Infallible Technique, After All — A trusted courtroom technique that usually ensured smooth interpretation failed in one high-pressure moment, forcing a reassessment of judgment, timing, and courtroom dynamics.
Playing The Infinite Game In Your Interpreting Career — Legal interpreting invites us to think beyond the case in front of us and commit to protecting meaning, due process, and the long-term strength of our profession.
Let’s Test Your Ethics: The Digital “Assist” — When technological “assistance” begins shaping courtroom perception, are interpreters ethically obligated to adapt—or to raise concerns?

You can find these and more in our blog archives !

Interested in sharing your insights with our community? Check out Writing for The NAJIT Observer to learn how you can contribute.

The images used in this post are sourced from Unsplash. They are used for illustrative purposes only.

Let’s Test Your Ethics: The Digital “Assist”

Thu, 19 Feb 2026 05:57:00 GMT

Honoring the Lunar New Year

For many communities around the world, this celebration marks renewal, reflection, and the beginning of a new cycle. It is a time grounded in tradition, family, and forward movement.

In a profession centered on language and culture, moments like these matter. They remind us that our work exists within living communities shaped by history, identity, and shared experience.

As a new year begins for many of our colleagues and the communities we serve, we extend our wishes for prosperity, clarity, and continued growth.

Welcome to “Let’s Test Your Ethics”

This segment, “ Let’s Test Your Ethics ,” is designed to spark thoughtful discussion and provide a platform for our community to engage with hypothetical yet realistic scenarios. By exploring these challenges together, we can deepen our understanding of ethical principles and share insights that strengthen our collective professionalism.

Remember, there’s rarely a one-size-fits-all solution to ethical dilemmas. Your unique perspective, shaped by your experiences and values, is invaluable to this conversation.

Ethical Dilemma: The Digital “Assist”

Exploring ethical principles: A foundation for professional integrity in translation and interpretation

You are told:

The AI transcript will not replace your live interpretation.
It will generate a parallel English text display “for transparency.”
It may help identify “efficiency patterns” and “accuracy trends” over time.

The judge refers to it as “the direction the profession is moving.”

The judge refers to it as “ the direction the profession is moving. ”

At first, it seems manageable.

However, during proceedings, you begin noticing concerns:

- The system struggles with regional accents.
- Legal terminology is occasionally mistranscribed.
- Qualifiers such as “allegedly,” “approximately,” or “attempted” sometimes disappear.
- The AI’s partial “ translation ” appears on a courtroom monitor visible to attorneys and court staff.

In one hearing, the AI renders a defendant’s answer in a way that subtly shifts tone, making the statement appear more confrontational than it was. You observe the judge glance at the screen mid-interpretation.

No one formally addresses the discrepancy

Weeks later, you learn that administrators are reviewing AI transcripts alongside interpreter performance metrics “to evaluate modernization outcomes.” You are not informed how discrepancies between human and machine output will be analyzed.

Additionally, a newer interpreter expresses support for the system, stating that it provides reassurance during high-pressure hearings. Some experienced colleagues disagree privately but choose not to voice concerns publicly.

You continue interpreting.

But the technology is present,

visible,

and not logging off anytime soon.

Question:

Does the presence of a parallel AI transcript compromise the integrity of interpretation, even if your live interpretation remains accurate?
At what point does cooperation become endorsement?
Are interpreters ethically obligated to adapt to technological shifts, or to challenge implementations they believe may undermine due process?
Would your decision change if objecting meant risking steady assignments?
How should generational differences in comfort with technology factor into this discussion?

Share Your Response

We’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments!

How would you approach this situation?
Have you encountered similar technology in your jurisdiction?
What principles guide your decision-making when innovation intersects with ethics?

Disclaimer

Thank you for reading!

The NAJIT Observer Team

Let’s Test Your Ethics Series Archive

Confidential Conversations — Should you uphold your obligation to maintain confidentiality , knowing the information cannot be acted on, or do you report the confession in the interest of justice and public safety, risking ethical and legal repercussions?
Public Record vs. Confidentiality — Should you redact the confidential information before translating, adhering to ethical obligations but potentially facing repercussions from the agency, or do you translate the documents exactly as instructed , fulfilling your professional duty but risking harm to vulnerable individuals?

As this series continues to grow, each scenario builds on the layered realities of our profession and invites thoughtful dialogue within our community.

Interested in proposing a future ethical dilemma? Contact The NAJIT Observer Team .

Keep the Conversation Going

Let’s Test Your Ethics: The Digital “Assist”

The NAJIT Observer Team

Before we turn to this month’s ethical discussion, we want to pause to recognize the Lunar New Year.

The Situation

An AI-powered speech recognition and “ translation” system is introduced in your courthouse as part of a pilot program. Court administration describes it as a “support tool,” not a replacement for certified interpreters.

Your interpretation remains accurate.
Yet a second, visible version of the language now exists in the room.

Reflect on This:

A dictionary: a vital tool for interpreters and translators in navigating linguistic precision

Explore previous ethical dilemmas in our ongoing series:

If this topic resonated with you, be sure to check out our previous blog posts for more insights on the realities of our profession, and the evolving world of judiciary translation and interpreting:

On Verbatim — If “verbatim” really means word for word, why does taking it literally in court sometimes get the truth wrong?
Not An Infallible Technique, After All — A trusted courtroom technique that usually ensured smooth interpretation failed in one high-pressure moment, forcing a reassessment of judgment, timing, and courtroom dynamics.
Playing The Infinite Game In Your Interpreting Career — Legal interpreting invites us to think beyond the case in front of us and commit to protecting meaning, due process, and the long-term strength of our profession.

You can find these and more in our blog archives !

Interested in sharing your insights with our community? Check out Writing for The NAJIT Observer to learn how you can contribute.

The images used in this post are sourced from Unsplash. They are used for illustrative purposes only.

Should you continue participating in proceedings under these conditions, trusting that your role remains intact, or do you raise formal concerns about the ethical implications of parallel AI output influencing courtroom perception?

Playing The Infinite Game In Your Interpreting Career

Thu, 12 Feb 2026 05:46:00 GMT

Playing The Infinite Game In Your Interpreting Career

By : Jiraporn-Ann H. Huynh

With Special Credit To Contributor and Editor: Hilda Shymanik

In Carse’s Argument:

“There are at least two kinds of games: finite and infinite. A finite game is played for the purpose of winning, an infinite game for the purpose of continuing the play. Finite games are those instrumental activities – from sports to politics to wars – in which the participants obey rules, recognize boundaries, and announce winners and losers. The infinite game – there is only one – includes any authentic interaction, from touching to culture, that changes rules, plays with boundaries, and exists solely for the purpose of continuing the game. A finite player seeks power; the infinite one displays self-sufficient strength. Finite games are theatrical, necessitating an audience; infinite ones are dramatic, involving participants ¹ …”

At this point, you might be wondering where I am heading with this blog. With Sinek’s adaptation from Carse’s theory, in his book, “The Infinite Game,²” he suggested that some games, those with fixed rules, known players, and clear winners, are finite. Infinite games are those with no finish line, players come and go, and the goal is “to keep playing well.”

In His Book, The Infinite Game’s Five Principles Are:

(1) Pursue a Just Cause beyond profit

(2) Build Trusting Teams

(3) Learn from Worthy Rivals

(4) Embrace Existential Flexibility to adapt boldly, and

(5) Have the Courage to Lead with long-term values.

Sinek emphasizes that the “Infinite Mindset” is necessary to be able to succeed in business for the long term. Business leaders should prioritize building a strong, sustainable organization over competing to win or be the best.

Existential Flexibility → Adapting Without Losing Integrity.

The role has been moving. One of their partners for years of the pandemic, and legal interpreting is changing even faster. Various new methods have been introduced to the interpreting landscape, along with modern technologies and artificial intelligence.

The legal system itself often feels finite (cases, verdicts, deadlines). But legal interpreting is very much like an infinite game, where your main goal is to keep improving = keep playing well.

When we apply Sinek’s framework to legal interpreting, we can map input in such a case that:

Just Cause → Language Access As a Justice Component

Through the infinite lens: The goal isn’t just to “get through today’s hearing.” It’s to protect due process and equal access to justice for people who don’t speak the court’s language.

In practice, a few things that interpreters can do are to focus on accuracy, completeness, and neutrality, even when no one is watching. Do not be afraid to say “I need to clarify” rather than guessing, as well as advocating for proper conditions (breaks, sound quality, prep time). One thing to always keep in mind is that your cause isn’t speed or convenience; it is conveying meaning in a precise and contextual manner.

Trusting Your Teams→ Psychological Safety in Courtrooms

Legal interpreters perform best when they feel safe to ask for repetition or clarification and flag cultural misunderstandings.

Infinite behavior can be demonstrated through normalizing interpreter interventions as quality control, not disruption, and supporting fellow interpreters instead of competing.

Worthy Rivals → Peer Excellence, Not Undercutting.

Learn from colleagues with stronger legal registers or courtroom presence and avoid underbidding or cutting corners that degrade the profession.

Keep in mind that the “win” is a stronger profession, not a single assignment.

Remote and Hybrid Hearings

AI-assisted tools can be used to assist in remote/ hybrid hearings to increase caseloads and language diversity. This can have both a positive and a negative impact.

To have an infinite mindset, interpreters will have to adapt to technology without compromising standards and push back when conditions make accuracy impossible. We should be willing to walk away from work that violates ethics—even if it costs short-term income.

Courage To Lead → Ethical Backbone

Leadership isn’t a title; it’s a behavior. Leadership is defined by your actions, not just empty words.

For interpreters, courage can look like:

Correcting the record when a mistake is made
Interrupting when the meaning is being lost
Refusing to “summarize” or soften testimony
Educating legal professionals about proper interpreter use

Finite vs Infinite Thinking in Legal Interpreting

Legal interpreters aren’t just service providers—they are guardians of understanding in an infinite system of justice.

The case ends. Trust endures.

Keep the Conversation Going

If this topic resonated with you, be sure to check out our previous blog posts for more insights on the realities of our profession, and the evolving world of judiciary translation and interpreting:

Beyond AI, Beyond the Conference — An invitation to help shape ongoing discussions about AI, ethics, and the human role in interpreting and translation.
On Verbatim — If “verbatim” really means word for word, why does taking it literally in court sometimes get the truth wrong?
Not An Infallible Technique, After All — A trusted courtroom technique that usually ensured smooth interpretation failed in one high-pressure moment, forcing a reassessment of judgment, timing, and courtroom dynamics.

You can find these and more in our blog archives !

The images used in this post are sourced from Unsplash and/or Pixabay . They are used for illustrative purposes only.

Not An Infallible Technique, After All

Wed, 04 Feb 2026 04:09:00 GMT

Over the years, I’ve relied on a specific technique that has proven effective for me. When an attorney asks a question and immediately launches into another while I’m still interpreting the first, I gently raise my voice to catch their attention. Usually, once they realize I’m still speaking, they pause and let me finish. This allows me to resolve the issue without interrupting the flow of the proceedings. If it happens again, everyone, the attorneys and the judge included, is already aware of the dynamic.

When It Works, It Works Beautifully

The technique works particularly well in this court because the coordinator has ensured that judges and attorneys are trained to work with interpreters and understand the challenges of speed and accuracy.

When It Didn’t, The Embarrassment Was Great

The following day, however, brought an unexpected turn. During a detention hearing, the state’s attorney was speaking at breakneck speed. I raised my voice as usual, but instead of slowing down, she sped up! I raised my voice again, and this time she stopped, but so did everyone else. The state’s attorney, defense attorney, and judge all turned to look at me. Not a good sign.

With all eyes on me and the judge wearing a displeased look, I had to explain why I was trying to get their attention: the pace was too fast to interpret accurately. The judge, clearly disappointed, instructed me to interrupt directly in the future. The message was unmistakable.

After the hearing, I apologized to the court and all parties involved for handling the issue poorly. My apology was graciously accepted.

Second Chances Are Not Always Great

Since then, I’ve discussed the incident with close colleagues. Most agree that just because a tactic fails once doesn’t mean it should be abandoned, especially if it has worked well in the past. Still, for me, disappointing the “boss” isn’t worth the risk. Perhaps I can continue using this technique, but now I know that if it doesn’t work the first time, it’s best to abort the mission—interrupt, state that the pace is too fast, and wait for further instruction from the judge.

It’s also a matter of reading the room. This particular judge is stern, inflexible, and maintains tight control over the proceedings, something I should not have overlooked. I pride myself on being a good judge of character, but in this instance, I relied too heavily on past success. That was clearly my mistake.

Doubt can be loud, but it doesn’t mean it’s true. Trust in your skills, your work, and the journey that brought you here

Your Take

How do you handle situations like this? Do you interrupt when the pace is too fast? If you work with a partner, do you switch more often? Have you found yourself opting for pronouns over repeating names to streamline your interpretations? I’d love to hear your experiences and best practices in the comments below.

Keep the Conversation Going

You can find these and more in our blog archives !

The images used in this post are sourced from Unsplash and/or Pixabay . They are used for illustrative purposes only.

Hilda Shymanik
Blog Writer and proofreader

Hilda Zavala-Shymanik is a state-certified and approved Spanish court interpreter with extensive credentials, including certifications in NY, NJ, IL, WI, TX, and CCHI performance-tier certification.

Not An Infallible Technique, After All

By Hilda Shymanik

Just recently, I was telling some colleagues how, since I started freelancing regularly in some of the best and interpreter-friendly courthouses in the area, I’ve found fewer topics to blog about. The reason? I rarely encounter situations that seem ripe for improvement or that make for compelling stories until today, when I found myself questioning whether I handled a situation as well as I could have.

In fact, just the day before the incident I want to share, I used this technique successfully during a trial. On that occasion I only needed to do it twice subtly, and a colleague observing me commented on how clever and unobtrusive it was. Later, she, an excellent interpreter preparing for her certification exam, and our interpreter supervisor both expressed their approval.

If this topic resonated with you, be sure to check out our previous blog posts for more insights on the realities of our profession, and the evolving world of judiciary translation and interpreting:

Stepping Into the Open House — A blog about NAJIT’s Open House and how they introduce members to educational offerings, community resources, and organizational initiatives.
Beyond AI, Beyond the Conference — An invitation to help shape ongoing discussions about AI, ethics, and the human role in interpreting and translation.
On Verbatim — If “verbatim” really means word for word, why does taking it literally in court sometimes get the truth wrong?

On Verbatim

Thu, 29 Jan 2026 05:10:00 GMT

Verbatim is a Latin expression that means “word for word,” and it is the golden rule for court-reporters whose charge it is to preserve the record. But, what about court interpreters?

An interpreter’s oath is different from the court reporter’s oath. We are sworn to “render accurately and faithfully.” And it could not be otherwise, for we are going into a separate language.

Our rendition is conceptual verbatim . As an example, the expression “sticky fingers” (meaning someone with a propensity to steal) in Spanish would be “ mano larga ,” which says nothing about fingers nor stickiness.

However, court interpreters cannot disregard the emphasis that judges place on verbatim. It is a reminder of the demand for exactness this profession requires, as compared to other interpreting fields. Court interpreting involves a meticulous attention to detail that must be exercised with utmost diligence.

We must be familiar with idioms in both languages. When a judge asks the defendant, “Why did you do it?” and he responds “ Fui un inconsciente ,” it does not mean he was unconscious, but rather “I didn’t think it through” or “I was blind,” as in the song “ A veces fui ” by Mexican singer-songwriter Aleks Syntek. “ Estar inconsciente ” (be unconscious), and “ ser un inconsciente ” (follow a blind impulse) are as diametrically opposed as the verbs “ ser” and “ estar” are in Spanish, no matter that in English both translate as “to be.”

Conversely, even when providing the idiomatically equivalent, we sometimes make less-than-appropriate choices. The question “Have you had an opportunity to review the pre-sentence report?” simply asks the defendant whether he has in fact seen and reviewed the report.If the interpreter states “¿ ha tenido tiempo de ver …?”, she is introducing a new element: “have you had time,” which invariably makes the defendant grumble about feeling rushed. Judges, particularly if they are conversant in both languages, will pick up on this issue immediately. It does not matter that, colloquially, we say in Spanish: “ ha tenido tiempo . . .,” and mean nothing by it, other than to give the other party an out if they had neglected to do something.In court, our word choices do matter.

A seasoned interpreter is aware of these pitfalls and avoids them. There is no excuse to be sloppy with recurrent expressions, and a hesitation on the interpreter’s part with phrases that come up often may undermine her credibility with the Court.

As language professionals, we are cognizant of the requirements of our job and must appraise the Court of language issues that may not be apparent. Clarifications by the interpreter from the witness are sometimes necessary to provide the correct rendition. The same expression can mean different things regionally. A large sign above a store reads: “ Ya abrimos .” This in Spain translates as “we are already open for business;” while in Mexico it is: “opening soon.”

In a capital murder trial, when answering how the victim was found, the witness for the prosecution stated: “ estaba agonizando .” The on-duty interpreter translated the statement literally as “she was agonizing.”However, after consulting with the stand-by interpreter, the record was corrected to: “She was dying.” Agonizando , in Spanish, means simply “dying,” without any implications of tortuous death, which might have added aggravating elements to the killing.

A dictionary: a vital tool for interpreters and translators in navigating linguistic precision

Translation and interpreting usually require syntactical transpositions and grammatical adjustments. One could argue that English and Spanish are not so different for our rendition into the target not to mirror the source, except for the dreaded false cognates and those pesky idiomatic expressions. “ Palabras mayores ” is not “big words;” it means “serious talk.”

However, language is not a preordained word arrangement, a catalogue of terms, or a series of static equivalencies. Similar sentence constructions and words are not necessarily the better choice, and no translator or interpreter worth her salt would choose her rendition on that basis.

The ability to capture and convey meaning in split-second decisions rests not just on the interpreter’s capacity to parallel process, her cultural sensitivity, and language knowledge –– whether academic, field-specific, or conventional usage. What is most important is the interpreter’s freedom to reach for and make language choices that communicate readily and accurately. What we do when interpreting is almost intuitive; and if the immediacy of that process is constrained and interfered with by requirements of unduly adhering to form, meaning will suffer.

When justice speaks, it echoes with power, purpose, and responsibility

In a written text (translation), the language professional has the time to carefully ponder, research, abridge, and formally adhere to the source. In interpreting we are flying by the seat of our pants, communicating in a more organic and less contrived way, and prioritizing content. However, interpreting is not less accurate than translation. Rather, interpreting has the clear advantage of better capturing the source, because the interpreter is context-immersed and has additional input from tone and body language, as well as the opportunity to ask for clarification.

Having said this, neither the written nor the spoken medium is preferable to preserve the source when moving into a foreign language, or the other way around. In either case, the target must be fashioned to read/sound natural and fluid, with as little tell-tale as possible of the language transference, so there is no disruption to the thinking process of the receiving public. The result should be clearly understood.

In 1999, Holly Mikkelson wrote Verbatim Interpretation: An Oxymoron ,which was not published at the time and only came out in 2021. In it, she states that “There is an inherent conflict between the legal profession’s expectation of ‘ verbatim ’ or ‘literal’ interpretation and the standards of functional equivalency and meaning based translation.” ⁵

Twenty-plus years later, the conflict and misconception remain, and the interpreter’s professional duty is still to be vigilant and earnest in adhering to her oath of “accurate and faithful.”

Roseann D. G., Vásquez, V. F., & Mikkelson, H. (2012). Fundamentals of Court Interpretation: Theory, Policy and Practice. Carolina Academic Press, 2nd ed., p. 17.
Gonzalez et al. (2012). Op. cit. , p. 1025.
Gonzalez et al. (2012). Op. cit. , p. 17.
Roseann D. G., Vásquez, V. F., & Mikkelson, H. (2012). Fundamentals of Court Interpretation: Theory, Policy and Practice , p. 15.
Mikkelson, H. (2021). Verbatim Interpretation: An Oxymoron. Acebo. Accessed at : https://acebo.myshopify.com/pages/verbatim-interpretation-an-oxymoron

Keep the Conversation Going

You can find these and more in our blog archives !

The images used in this post are sourced from Unsplash and/or Pixabay . They are used for illustrative purposes only.

Ángeles Estrada, M.A., F.C.C.I.

On Verbatim

By Ángeles Estrada, M.A., F.C.C.I.

“Verbatim (word for word) interpretation is not the goal of the court interpreter, although it is a common misconception [. . .]. Not only is word-for-word, or literal interpretation, impossible because of the lack of one-to-one correspondence in word equivalence between languages, but it usually distorts the speaker’s meaning and misrepresents actual testimony.” ¹

“A verbatim or literal translation can yield an almost meaningless product.” ²

Unlike the court reporter, our oath also requires that we preserve what are called “ paralinguistic elements, such as hesitations, false starts, hedges, and repetitions […] in the corresponding points of the target language,” ³ for they have a bearing on the credibility of the speaker. We keep flippant tones. A disrespectful “yeah” is not preserved by the court-reporter in the record, which may only show the informal form of “yes,” but an interpreter’s duty is more immediate, and specifically for the ears of those present in the courtroom, though they may balk.

“Interpreters are obliged to mirror the voice of the defendant or witness by transferring the message … as it was originally spoken.” ⁴

The interpreter has a duty to alert the Court as to how a literal rendition may skew testimony.

If this topic resonated with you, be sure to check out our previous blog posts for more insights on the realities of our profession, and the evolving world of judiciary translation and interpreting:

Carrying the Work Forward: Welcome 2026 — An overview of how NAJIT continues its work into 2026 through the ongoing efforts of its members, volunteers, and leadership.
Webs of Learning in Practice: Webinars — An inside look at NAJIT’s webinar programming and how ongoing learning is shaped through participation, adjustment, and shared professional experience.
Stepping Into the Open House — A blog about NAJIT’s Open House and how they introduce members to educational offerings, community resources, and organizational initiatives.
Beyond AI, Beyond the Conference — An invitation to help shape ongoing discussions about AI, ethics, and the human role in interpreting and translation.

Beyond AI, Beyond the Conference

Wed, 21 Jan 2026 04:37:00 GMT

AI is already part of our professional reality. Not as a concept we debate in the abstract during dinner, but as something that shows up in conversations about tools, ethics, training, expectations, and the future of our work.

A conference, however, can only hold so much.

That’s where The NAJIT Observer and Proteus come in.

These publications exist to extend conversations beyond events. The Observer offers room for reflection, perspectives, and timely discussion. Proteus provides space for deeper analysis, research, and long-form exploration. AI touches both. How we approach it going forward shouldn’t be decided behind the scenes or in one singular space.

So this is an open invitation.

Before the conference takes place, we want to hear what you want to see explored next. Not just at the conference, but in the months that follow. Not polished proposals, just honest direction.

What questions about AI are already showing up in your work?
What feels unclear, unresolved, or under-discussed?
What kinds of conversations would actually be worth continuing in the blog or in Proteus ?

Share your thoughts in the comments below. Short ideas are fine. Specific questions are fine. Unfinished thoughts are fine. These comments will help shape future NTO posts and potential Proteus pieces, including opportunities for contributors who want to develop ideas further in either space.

The conference is one moment in a much larger conversation.

Let’s keep it going in multiple facets together!

Feel free to reach out to her (editor@najit.org) to chat about the NAJIT Observer or Proteus—she is excited to collaborate!

If this topic resonated with you, be sure to check out our previous blog posts for more insights on the realities of our profession, and the evolving world of judiciary translation and interpreting:

You can find these and more in our blog archives !

The images used in this post are sourced from Unsplash and/or Pixabay . They are used for illustrative purposes only.

Beyond AI, Beyond the Conference

Julli Jaramillo

That context is what makes the theme of NAJIT’s upcoming Annual Conference, Beyond AI: The Irreplaceable Human Element , feel timely. The response to the Call for Proposals reflects that many people in this field are already thinking seriously about where AI fits, where it doesn’t, and what still needs to be examined more closely.

A conference, however, can only hold so much.

Sessions end. Time runs out. Some questions get explored deeply, others barely surface. And many ideas need more space than a single presentation allows.

Keep the Conversation Going

Carrying the Work Forward: Welcome 2026 — An overview of how NAJIT continues its work into 2026 through the ongoing efforts of its members, volunteers, and leadership.
Webs of Learning in Practice: Webinars — An inside look at NAJIT’s webinar programming and how ongoing learning is shaped through participation, adjustment, and shared professional experience.
Stepping Into the Open House — A blog about NAJIT’s Open House and how they introduce members to educational offerings, community resources, and organizational initiatives.

Stepping Into the Open House

Thu, 15 Jan 2026 04:48:00 GMT

It was a cold Wednesday evening, the kind that settles in after a long day and makes it tempting to close the laptop and call it a night. Despite that pull, I joined the NAJIT Open House shortly after it began and was welcomed by the chair of the Membership Committee, then introduced briefly before the session moved forward. Even coming in a few minutes late, the tone was immediately clear. The Open House was well facilitated, and it was evident that care had gone into how the time and conversation were structured.

An open invitation to learn, ask questions, and step into the conversation

The Open House was hosted by the Membership Committee. Nanme Zheng (Chair) welcomed participants and set an open, steady tone, alongside committee members Lionel Bajaña and Jingshu Sun Zmachinsky , who were present and engaged throughout the discussion. Questions were encouraged early and often, and the space felt genuinely receptive. There was no sense of rushing people through a script or limiting participation. Instead, the focus remained on listening, responding, and making the session useful for those attending.

I want to thank the Membership Committee for their thoughtful work in hosting the first Open House of the year on behalf of NAJIT.

The PowerPoint was intentional and informative. It did not overwhelm, and it did not drift. It kept NAJIT membership at the forefront by clearly outlining what membership offers, how people engage with the organization, and where opportunities for involvement and connection actually exist. Rather than framing membership as a transaction, the presentation emphasized participation, professional development, and community.

An invitation to step inside and learn what’s behind the door

There were approximately thirty-five to thirty-eight people on the call, which felt meaningful. More than the number itself, what stood out to me was the level of engagement. The conversation was abundant. People asked thoughtful questions, shared where they were in their careers, and spoke honestly about what they were hoping to find or better understand. The discussion moved easily, without long pauses or forced prompts, which speaks to how comfortable participants felt contributing.

What stayed with me most was how grounded the session felt. It was not performative, and it was not rushed. It felt like a genuine introduction to the organization and to the people behind it. There was room for curiosity, for practical questions, and for real dialogue about what membership can mean at different stages of a professional journey.

For those who are curious about NAJIT or considering membership, these Open House sessions offer a straightforward way to learn more. They provide space to ask questions, hear directly from members, and get a clearer sense of how the organization functions and where people can plug in. Whether you are new to the field, returning after time away, or simply exploring your options, the Open House creates a low-pressure entry point into the community.

Upcoming Open House sessions are scheduled for the following dates:

Wednesday, January 14, 2026
7–8 PM ET / 6–7 PM CT / 4–5 PM PT
Register Here for January 14th

Tuesday, January 27, 2026
8–9 PM ET / 7–8 PM CT / 5–6 PM PT
Register Here for January 27th

Monday, February 16, 2026
9–10 PM ET / 8–9 PM CT / 6–7 PM PT
Register Here for February 16th

Each session covers similar foundational information, so attendees can choose the date that best fits their schedule.

Participation does not require prior involvement with NAJIT, only curiosity and a willingness to listen and engage.

Keep the Conversation Going

Can Translation Be the Only Route? — Can translation stand on its own as a profession? A legal translator writes on sustainability, specialization, and choice in our field.
Carrying the Work Forward: Welcome 2026 — An overview of how NAJIT continues its work into 2026 through the ongoing efforts of its members, volunteers, and leadership.
Webs of Learning in Practice: Webinars — An inside look at NAJIT’s webinar programming and how ongoing learning is shaped through participation, adjustment, and shared professional experience.

You can find these and more in our blog archives !

The images used in this post are sourced from Unsplash and/or Pixabay . They are used for illustrative purposes only.

Feel free to reach out to her (editor@najit.org) to chat about the NAJIT Observer or Proteus—she is excited to collaborate!

Stepping Into the Open House

Julli Jaramillo

If this topic resonated with you, be sure to check out our previous blog posts for more insights on the realities of our profession, and the evolving world of judiciary translation and interpreting:

Webs of Learning in Practice: Webinars

Fri, 09 Jan 2026 06:39:00 GMT

Professional development matters in our field. The work changes, the courts change, and the expectations placed on judiciary interpreters and translators continue to evolve. Staying competent is not something we do once through training or certification; it is something we return to, again and again, throughout our careers. For me, webinars are one of the ways that ongoing learning actually feels accessible. They create a shared space to step back from the day-to-day demands of the courtroom and focus on the craft, the ethics, and the realities of the work.

My perspective on these offerings is also shaped by experience. Our first round of webinars did not go perfectly. There were technical issues, coordination challenges, and moments where it became clear that we were still figuring things out as we went. At the time, that was frustrating. No one likes when things feel disorganized or unfinished. But that experience was also revealing. It highlighted how much planning, coordination, and troubleshooting happens behind the scenes to make professional programming work at all.

As we move forward, we are continuing to refine how these webinars are organized and delivered. That includes transitioning into new management systems designed to improve communication, coordination, and overall experience for everyone involved. These kinds of transitions take time, and they require patience. They also reflect an investment in doing things better, not just faster.

I encourage you to take a look at the upcoming webinars on our calendar and consider joining us. Whether you attend to learn something new, revisit a familiar topic, or simply connect with colleagues, your participation matters. We appreciate your patience as we continue to improve our systems, and I look forward to learning alongside you in the sessions ahead.

JANUARY 24, 2026
11:00 AM–2:00 PM EST
Bridging Legal Words: Essential Terminology for U.S.-Brazilian Court Interpreters
NATALIA PATERSON, PhD

FEBRUARY 21, 2026
11:00 AM–1:00 PM EST
Self-Care for Interpreters and Translators
NIERY BARDAKJIAN, PhD & LILI SELDEN, PhD

MARCH 12, 2026
7:00–8:00 PM EST
Intro to Forensic Transcription/Translation
JAVIER CASTILLO

APRIL 25, 2026
12:30–2:00 PM EST
To-MAY-to, To-MAH-to: State Laws, State Lingo, and the Interpreter’s Dilemma
JASON KNAPP

A radiant and confident portrait of a woman embracing bold style and elegance

Feel free to reach out to her (editor@najit.org) to chat about the NAJIT Observer or Proteus—she is excited to collaborate!

If this topic resonated with you, be sure to check out our previous blog posts for more insights on the realities of our profession, and the evolving world of judiciary translation and interpreting:

Going out with a Bang! — A tribute honoring Rob and Susan Cruz and the decade of leadership, stability, and community-building they brought to NAJIT.
The Couch: New Member to NAJIT — A new NAJIT member reflects on the uncertainty of stepping into an established professional community and asks how others found connection, confidence, and belonging within NAJIT.
Can Translation Be the Only Route? — Can translation stand on its own as a profession? A legal translator writes on sustainability, specialization, and choice in our field.
Carrying the Work Forward: Welcome 2026 —An overview of how NAJIT continues its work into 2026 through the ongoing efforts of its members, volunteers, and leadership.

You can find these and more in our blog archives !

The images used in this post are sourced from Unsplash. They are used for illustrative purposes only.

Webs of Learning in Practice: Webinars

Julli Jaramillo

That is why I am genuinely looking forward to attending more of the webinars we are offering this year. Not only as someone involved in the organizational side of things, but as a participant. There is value in simply being in the room, listening to colleagues, hearing how others approach familiar challenges, and being reminded that many of the questions we wrestle with are shared. Webinars allow for that exchange without requiring travel or time away from work, which makes participation possible for more people.

What that first round taught me is that strong programming is built through iteration. It takes feedback, adjustment, and sometimes a willingness to acknowledge what did not work so it can be improved. That learning process is not always visible to participants, but it is essential. It reminded me that progress in an organization does not always look smooth, especially during periods of growth or transition.

Below are the upcoming webinars:

Stay tuned for further details!

Keep the Conversation Going

Carrying the Work Forward: Welcome 2026

Fri, 02 Jan 2026 21:01:00 GMT

When people talk about nonprofits, they often talk about them as if they are abstract things. Structures. Boards. Logos. Missions. But the longer I’ve worked with NAJIT, the clearer it has become to me that this organization moves because people move it.

I’ve seen the work happen up close.

That is how NAJIT keeps going.

There are people in this organization who hold pillars. Longstanding advocates, educators, and leaders whose labor has shaped the profession in lasting ways. Their contributions are structural. They are visible in the standards, the policies, the training, the history itself.

And then there are those of us who carry something smaller, but still necessary.

I often think of my own role that way. I am not holding up the structure. I am holding a candle. A steady light meant to illuminate, to document, to reflect, to make space for conversation. It is quieter work, but it belongs to the same purpose. And I am honored to be able to do it alongside people who have been carrying this organization forward for so long.

What has stayed with me most during my time with NAJIT is the consistency of effort. The fact that even when the profession feels under pressure, the work does not stop. Committees continue. Ideas are debated. Drafts are revised. Advocacy continues, sometimes slowly, sometimes imperfectly, but always with intention.

That persistence comes from people who care deeply about language access, about professional integrity, and about one another.

As we enter a new year, I don’t see it as a reset. I see it as a continuation. An opportunity to keep building on what already exists. To support growth without losing grounding. To remain open to change while honoring the work that made that change possible.

I look forward to seeing what the new year brings for NAJIT. Not because I expect easy answers, but because I trust the people who will keep showing up to do the work.

And that, more than anything, is what gives me confidence in what’s ahead.

NAJIT is shaped by the people who show up to do the work. If you’ve witnessed moments of resilience, continuity, or care within this community, I invite you to share them in the comments.

Thank you for being part of this work, and for carrying it forward into the new year.

A radiant and confident portrait of a woman embracing bold style and elegance

Feel free to reach out to her (editor@najit.org) to chat about the NAJIT Observer or Proteus—she is excited to collaborate!

Keep the Conversation Going

You can find these and more in our blog archives !

The images used in this post are sourced from Unsplash. They are used for illustrative purposes only.

Carrying the Work Forward: Welcome 2026

Julli Jaramillo

I’ve seen it continue during busy seasons, during uncertain ones, and during moments when it would have been easier to pause or pull back. Instead, people showed up. They showed up to meetings after long days. They stayed with conversations that required care and patience. They gave their time, their expertise, and their attention not because it was convenient, but because the work mattered.

I’m grateful to be here. Grateful to contribute what I can. Grateful to stand among people holding pillars while I hold my candle, knowing that both forms of work matter.

If this topic resonated with you, be sure to check out our previous blog posts for more insights on the realities of our profession, and the evolving world of judiciary translation and interpreting:

Going out with a Bang! — A tribute honoring Rob and Susan Cruz and the decade of leadership, stability, and community-building they brought to NAJIT.
The Couch: New Member to NAJIT — A new NAJIT member reflects on the uncertainty of stepping into an established professional community and asks how others found connection, confidence, and belonging within NAJIT.
Can Translation Be the Only Route? — Can translation stand on its own as a profession? A legal translator writes on sustainability, specialization, and choice in our field.

Can Translation Be the Only Route?

Wed, 17 Dec 2025 03:46:00 GMT

In our last conversation on Judiciary Translation vs. Judiciary Interpretation: Which Path Resonates with You? We explored the question many of us encounter early on: which path should I choose? The responses, both spoken and unspoken, pointed to a familiar conclusion. For many of us, the answer is not either-or.

We translate and interpret.

We translate and teach.

Translate and edit.

A myriad of overlapping roles.

A dictionary: a vital tool for interpreters and translators in navigating linguistic precision

We move between modalities as work, opportunity, and sustainability requires.

That discussion, however, opened the door to a deeper question, one that deserves its own examination: if many of us do both, what does that say about each path on its own? More specifically, can translation function as a standalone profession, or has it become something that must be supplemented to remain viable?

I want to be clear about my position in this conversation. I am a legal translator by training, and this piece is written from within that practice, not at a distance from it. I am not arguing for one modality over the other, nor am I suggesting that interpretation is optional or secondary. Rather, I am using translation as the focal point because it is the work I know most intimately, and the lens through which I experience questions of sustainability, specialization, and professional identity.

Accurate interpreting is critical to due process, ensuring fairness in the courtroom.

If we are honest, most of us have already answered part of this question through our own career paths. Very few decisions in this field are made in a vacuum. They are shaped by volume fluctuations, institutional expectations, physical and cognitive demands, and the reality that language work does not exist outside of economic, social, and/ or technological pressure (to name a few). The choice to combine roles is often framed as flexibility, but it is just as often a response to constraint.

Translation, in particular, occupies an interesting position. It is quieter work. Less visible. Less immediate. Its impact is often felt long after the document leaves our hands, when accuracy, tone, and intent either hold up under scrutiny or fall short. Unlike interpretation, translation rarely comes with the same sense of urgency or public acknowledgment, yet the liability is no less real. A mistranslated clause, a misrendered concept, a missed register can carry consequences that ripple far beyond the page.

And still, many of us love this work.

We love the precision. The problem-solving. The deep familiarity with legal systems, terminology, and structure. The satisfaction of getting it right when there is no margin for error. For some, translation offers a kind of intellectual steadiness that interpretation does not. For others, it provides distance from the emotional intensity of live proceedings. These preferences matter, yet they are rarely centered when we talk about sustainability.

The unspoken assumption often becomes that interpretation is where stability lives, while translation is something to be folded into a broader portfolio. But that assumption deserves interrogation. Not because interpretation and translation are in competition, but because allowing one modality to be quietly framed as supplementary shapes how work is valued, priced, and prioritized.

When I ask whether translation can be the only income route, I am not really asking about capability. I am asking about conditions. About access to direct clients, specialization, jurisdictional demand, institutional procurement models, and how much professional risk one is expected to absorb individually. These are structural questions, not personal shortcomings.

So, what do you think? And to add more spark, if in a perfect world you could choose either modality as a true standalone profession, without economic penalty or institutional distortion, which would you choose and why?

That answer, collectively, may tell us more than any market analysis ever could!

A radiant and confident portrait of a woman embracing bold style and elegance

Feel free to reach out to her (editor@najit.org) to chat about the NAJIT Observer or Proteus—she is excited to collaborate!

If this topic resonated with you, be sure to check out our previous blog posts for more insights on the realities of our profession, and the evolving world of judiciary translation and interpreting:

Let’s Test Your Ethics: Confidential Conversations — An ethical scenario on confidentiality, responsibility, and professional boundaries.
Going out with a Bang! — A tribute honoring Rob and Susan Cruz and the decade of leadership, stability, and community-building they brought to NAJIT.
The Couch: New Member to NAJIT — A new NAJIT member reflects on the uncertainty of stepping into an established professional community and asks how others found connection, confidence, and belonging within NAJIT.

You can find these and more in our blog archives !

The images used in this post are sourced from Unsplash. They are used for illustrative purposes only.

Can Translation Be the Only Route?

Julli Jaramillo

Keep the Conversation Going

The Couch: New Member to NAJIT

Wed, 10 Dec 2025 01:01:00 GMT

A symbolic representation of interpreters and translators fostering understanding, depicted by a figure on a couch and another actively listening

The Couch is a place to exchange ideas and brainstorm, not only for its contributors, but also for our readers who engage in the ensuing discussions.

If you’re new to The Couch series, check out some of our previous posts:

The Couch: Starting Fresh – Advice for New Graduates (January 2025): A recent graduate seeks guidance on breaking into judiciary translation and interpreting
The Couch: Coaching the Defendant (January 9th, 2024): Addressing concerns about courtroom behavior, interpreter impartiality, and ethical boundaries
The Couch: Finding Things a Bit Too Funny? (September 18, 2024) : Addressing how interpreters handle moments of humor or the urge to laugh in serious courtroom settings
For more posts, please explore: The Couch Series

These discussions continue to shape our understanding of best practices in judiciary translation and interpreting.

A question from one of our readers:

Thank you to this week’s Couch contributor!

At The Observer , we celebrate the strength of our community and the knowledge we share.

Thank you for contributing your expertise to help our colleagues succeed in their professional endeavors.

Collaborating in a professional setting, fostering ideas and understanding

Complete this submission form to participate in the discussion!

Join the dialogue today and help us continue fostering meaningful conversations and connections within our professional community!

Thanks for reading, and stay tuned for the next submission!

If this topic resonated with you, be sure to check out our previous blog posts for more insights on the realities of our profession, and the evolving world of judiciary translation and interpreting:

Beyond Language, The Expert Interpreter — Examines the interpreter’s role beyond linguistic delivery, highlighting judgment, positioning, and professional assertiveness in the courtroom.
Let’s Test Your Ethics: Confidential Conversations — An ethical scenario on confidentiality, responsibility, and professional boundaries.
Going out with a Bang! — A tribute honoring Rob and Susan Cruz and the decade of leadership, stability, and community-building they brought to NAJIT.

You can find these and more in our blog archives !

The images used in this post are sourced from Unsplash. They are used for illustrative purposes only.

A Brief History of The Couch Series

Seeking Guidance: New Member to NAJIT

I’m fresh out of college and just joined NAJIT because I really want to start building a professional network in the judiciary interpreting and translation world. But… I’m struggling.

Everyone seems to already know one another, the conversations feel established, and I’m not sure how to step in or where to begin. I want to take full advantage of being a NAJIT member, but right now I feel a little lost and unsure of how to plug myself into the community.

For those who’ve been here a while:

How did you find your place in NAJIT when you were new?

What helped you start connecting, participating, and making the most of your membership?

Do you have insights to share or your own professional dilemma to discuss?

Keep the Conversation Going

Going Out with a Bang!

Wed, 03 Dec 2025 02:27:00 GMT

I had the pleasure of working with Susan and Robert (“Rob”) Cruz for more than seven years as a NAJIT volunteer, and like so many others before and after my time, I don’t think I could have done it without the Cruz’s guidance and leadership.

They are, without a doubt, two of the best friends NAJIT has ever had. From July 2015 to January 2025, they served as NAJIT’s management team as co-owners of Comprehensive Management and Consulting, Inc. (CMAC).

When Rob became NAJIT’s Executive Director, he had already served six years on the NAJIT Board of Directors, three of them as Chair. He brought to the role an unmatched combination of institutional knowledge, leadership experience, and passion for the field. Together, he and Susan offered something no other management company could: deep personal understanding of the translation and interpretation professions, unwavering dedication, and genuine love for the community.

CMAC itself is, in many ways, a NAJIT creation—a company born out of the association’s unique needs. Over time, the Cruzes became the guardians of NAJIT’s institutional memory and helped guide the organization through a period of remarkable stability and growth. Under their leadership, NAJIT achieved consistent success after years of financial uncertainty. The annual conference became a premier event for judiciary, medical, conference, and community interpreters and translators, strengthening NAJIT’s standing among the world’s leading T&I associations. They also led the Board to forge key partnerships with organizations such as FIT, ATA, and AIIC, some under the NIAC umbrella.

This dynamic duo went above and beyond the call of duty for nearly a decade. During conference season—the most important financial and professional undertaking of the year—they worked tirelessly to ensure every detail was perfect. CMAC’s dedication turned each conference into more than an event; it was a reunion of colleagues, friends, and professionals bound by mutual respect and affection.

Attendees often showed their appreciation with hugs, small gifts, and heartfelt words. Many lined up at the registration table not just to check in, but to connect personally with Susan and Rob—because before anything else, they made people feel like friends. They never stepped out of their professional roles, yet somehow managed to make it all look effortless and fun. That’s who Rob and Susan are in a nutshell.

There’s so much more that could be said about them, but as a linguist and lover of words, I’ll let their legacy—and CMAC’s continuing success—speak for itself.

Note: I could not include all colleagues’ comments due to posting limitations. Please share your own Cruz experiences and anecdotes below instead.

Blog Letters Scrabble Tiles

So, Where Have We Been?

With the departure of Susan and Rob as our management team, NAJIT fell into a whirlwind of transition: testing our leadership, our volunteers, and the strength of our internal processes.

The NAJIT Observer took a hit.

For a while, our publication paused. We weren’t silent because we didn’t care — we were rebuilding, and learning how to operate without the two people who held decades of institutional memory in their hands.

But we didn’t disappear.
We’ve been reconnecting with bloggers, recruiting new voices, and protecting the heart of this community through change.

A standout gold arrow moves in a different direction from the rest

We are BACK, steady, and intentional.

The NAJIT Observer will now publish every Wednesday — and members will receive notification via e-mail every Thursday !

More importantly, we want to hear from you!

Comment.
Share.
Tell us what you’d like to read about.

Your voice shapes this space. We’re just here to amplify it.

Keep the Conversation Going

If this topic resonated with you, be sure to check out our previous blog posts for more insights on the realities of our profession, and the evolving world of judiciary translation and interpreting:

Beyond Language: The Expert Interpreter — An overview of the competencies, decision-making, and professional standards that define expert-level interpreting.
A Year of Growth, Gratitude, and Community – Welcome to 2025 — A look at NAJIT’s recent accomplishments and the community-focused goals guiding the year ahead.
The Failings of the Ivory Tower — A discussion of the gaps between academic training and the practical realities of courtroom interpreting.

You can find these and more in our blog archives !

Interested in sharing your insights with our community?

Check out Writing for The NAJIT Observer to learn how you can contribute.

The images used in this post are sourced from Unsplash. They are used for illustrative purposes only.

Hilda Shymanik
Blog Writer and proofreader

Going Out with a Bang!

By: Hilda Shymanik

Who are Susan and Rob Cruz?

Rob Cruz, CAE, is a Certified Association Executive and former Executive Director of NAJIT. A Certified Court Interpreter in Tennessee since 2004, Rob has contributed to national and state-level language access initiatives and is an approved trainer for judiciary interpreters. In addition to leading CMAC, he owns RCIT, an interpreting and consulting firm that provides professional services across the language access field.

Susan Cruz, CFP®, is Vice President of CMAC and former NAJIT Administrator. She holds a bachelor’s degree in business administration and—true to her overachieving spirit—earned a master’s in accounting with a focus on taxation during the pandemic. With more than 20 years of experience in financial services, she previously managed more than $200 million in client assets and trained financial professionals in planning and sales. Today, she blends her financial, accounting, and event-planning expertise with Rob’s management experience to lead CMAC with precision and care.

Their legacy in the words of NAJIT members:

“I met Rob when he was a relatively new member of NAJIT and was immediately impressed with his energy and enthusiasm for our profession. We eventually served together on the Board of Directors, and I was confident in his leadership when passing him the reins as Chair. I had already retired when he and Susan took over as Executive Director and Management, but knowing that an interpreter who came up through the ranks, truly understanding the needs of the profession and who had a vested interest in the success of the organization, paired with Susan’s expertise in financial matters, left me no doubt that NAJIT was in good hands. I congratulate them and wish them a happy and fruitful retirement – or whatever their next adventure may be.” — Rosemary Dann

“The departure of Susan and Rob Cruz leaves a void for me, even though I am sure our new teams will do a great job. I always highly appreciated Susan and Rob’s competence, warmth, professionalism, and ability to solve problems quickly and elegantly. I thought it was particularly fitting that Rob, a fellow certified court interpreter, had a leading position within NAJIT, and he always represented us with grace and diplomacy. Susan was so efficient that she made many tasks look almost effortless. I will miss our constant interaction, especially during my years on the conference planning committee, but I am confident that they will excel at their next endeavor.” — Judy Jenner

“One of my biggest regrets is not having learned more from both Rob and Susan, but especially Susan. They were both amazing stewards for NAJIT’s affairs, whether financial, administrative, or any other aspect of NAJIT’s day-to-day life, but while Rob was the sage advice-giver Susan was the magician. Rob had all the answers to the technical questions… Unlike other nonprofits that may need management to do something sporadically… not a day goes by for NAJIT that doesn’t need management to take some action on behalf of the organization.” — Janis Palma

“Rob and Susan Cruz were a force to be reckoned with during their many years of service at NAJIT… They will be sorely missed, and those of us who were a part of the organization during these times will forever be grateful for their service and commitment to NAJIT.” — Francesca Samuel

“Susan and Rob Cruz will forever be part of NAJIT history… Thank you guys, you don’t mark the end of an era, you WERE the era. Good luck and thank you for your friendship.”
— Tony Rosado

Join me in saying farewell to our friends Rob and Susan Cruz Below!

As we honor what they built, we also have to acknowledge how deeply their absence reshaped our daily operations and momentum.

Moving Forward

Let’s Test Your Ethics: Confidential Conversations

Wed, 02 Apr 2025 02:51:00 GMT

This segment, “Let’s Test Your Ethics,” is designed to spark thoughtful discussion and provide a platform for our community to engage with hypothetical yet realistic scenarios. By exploring these challenges together, we can deepen our understanding of ethical principles and share insights that strengthen our collective professionalism.

Remember, there’s rarely a one-size-fits-all solution to ethical dilemmas. Your unique perspective, shaped by your experiences and values, is invaluable to this conversation.

Exploring ethical principles: A foundation for professional integrity in translation and interpretation

You are interpreting during a private meeting between a defendant and their attorney. The conversation is protected under attorney-client privilege, and you are there to ensure accurate communication.

During this meeting, the defendant admits to committing a serious crime that is completely unrelated to the current case. The admission is clear, intentional, and unexpected. You interpret it faithfully in the moment, but the weight of the information lingers afterward.

As you reflect on the situation, you are caught between two conflicting responsibilities:

If you report what you heard , you may violate the ethical obligation to maintain confidentiality and compromise the integrity of the attorney-client relationship—potentially jeopardizing your role and the case.
If you remain silent , you uphold your ethical duty but struggle with the burden of knowing a serious crime has been confessed and unreported.

To complicate matters, the nature of the unrelated crime is severe, and you feel it may involve victims who are unaware of the danger or harm done to them.

Should you uphold your obligation to maintain confidentiality , knowing the information cannot be acted on, or do you report the confession in the interest of justice and public safety, risking ethical and legal repercussions?

1. What would you do in this situation?

2. How do you weigh your ethical duty to maintain confidentiality against your sense of moral responsibility?

3. How does the severity of the unrelated crime influence your decision?

4. Would consulting with a supervisor or legal advisor help resolve the dilemma, or could that complicate things further?

A dictionary: a vital tool for interpreters and translators in navigating linguistic precision

We’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments!

How would you handle this ethical dilemma?
Have you faced a similar situation?
What principles guide your decision-making in scenarios like this?

Thank you for reading!

The NAJIT Observer Team

Keep the Conversation Going

Beyond Language: The Expert Interpreter – Examines the interpreter’s role beyond language delivery, focusing on judgment, ethics, and professionalism.
When to Let Compassion Take the Driver’s Seat – The article explores how court interpreters can balance professionalism with empathy, recognizing when compassion should guide their actions to support those they serve.
Writing for Proteus – Share your expertise and insights with the judiciary translation and interpreting community by contributing to Proteus , NAJIT’s quarterly publication
The Failings of the Ivory Tower — A critical look at the disconnect between academic institutions and the practical realities of the judiciary translation and interpretation profession.

You can find these and more in our blog archives !

Interested in sharing your insights with our community? Check out Writing for The NAJIT Observer to learn how you can contribute.

The images used in this post are sourced from Unsplash. They are used for illustrative purposes only.

Let’s Test Your Ethics

The NAJIT Observer Team

Welcome to “Let’s Test Your Ethics”

Ethical Dilemma: Confidential Conversations

The Situation

Question:

Reflect on This:

Share Your Response

Disclaimer

If this topic resonated with you, be sure to check out our previous blog posts for more insights on the realities of our profession, and the evolving world of judiciary translation and interpreting:

Beyond Language, The Expert Interpreter

Wed, 26 Mar 2025 05:06:00 GMT

“You can sit there,” the judge told me, as he pointed to an empty seat at the respondent’s table. I politely replied: “Thank you, your honor, but I’ll be using equipment and not sitting by the respondent. ” The judge seemed a bit surprised when I didn’t immediately follow his suggestion. And once I was set up and the hearing began, he was pleased to realize I knew what I was doing. The question I would like to explore in this piece is — When is it acceptable to manage your work environment and performance, and when is it necessary to follow the direct orders of a Judge or Commissioner?

When justice speaks, it echoes with power, purpose, and responsibility

There are orders from a judge you simply cannot ignore. They may have to do with the volume of your voice, your position in the courtroom when it interferes with the proceeding, a request to sight translate a document, or to interpret for particular people outside the courtroom. Depending on what the practice is in your jurisdiction, for example, the expectation may be for attorneys to hire their own interpreter to go over a plea questionnaire with a non-English speaking client well in advance of a hearing. Personally, I think that’s the best practice. However, if a judge orders me to step outside the courtroom and interpret for an attorney and client to go over a document, I will comply with the judge’s request.

“Judges” — a word that echoes both biblical authority and modern legal responsibility

On the other hand, on occasion, well-meaning people and judges will try to tell the interpreter how to do their job. I’m sure many of us interpreters have had the experience of getting small orders from mainly male attorneys or judges. To be clear, I have not done any formal research on this topic, I’m speaking from my own experience and based on stories from my female colleagues.

I still remember many years ago, in the infancy of my court interpreting career, at some point in a hearing, I was listening to the judge speak waiting to capture an idea to begin interpreting simultaneously, when the prosecutor, a male attorney who was older than me, loudly said “you’re supposed to interpret that,” while looking towards me. I was so shocked by the comment, that I didn’t know how to react, and I simply interpreted what the prosecutor said and then picked up interpreting for the judge. I was so humiliated and baffled; I don’t know if I ever did anything about the incident.

Lady Justice stands as a timeless symbol of fairness, impartiality, and the authority of the law

As the years have gone by, I hope I’ve improved in managing my work environment to better serve the courts. Most often, the only linguist in a courtroom will be the court interpreter. The person better equipped in matters of language access will be the interpreter. We understand the guidelines, best practices, code of ethics, and even our own limitations and strengths when interpreting. We are the experts and can help everyone in a courtroom have a more productive language access experience when we manage our performance and environment.

As a professional court interpreter, you know what best practices are when it comes to modes of interpretation. You know where you need to position yourself in the courtroom, you might even know what creative solutions to employ when it comes to technology. Don’t be shy when it comes to managing your work environment to provide the courts with the best experience possible when it comes to language access.

I invite you to share your expertise and speak up to provide more efficient practices to court interpreting. A judge is the king or queen of the courtroom. We must comply with a judge’s request unless it involves breaking the code of ethics, but a good suggestion from an expert will most likely be well received.

When we are faced with suggestions or comments from non-interpreters on how we should do our jobs, I urge you to remember, we are the experts when it comes to interpreting in the courtroom. Be humble, be polite, and yet assertive.

If this topic resonated with you, be sure to check out our previous blog posts for more insights on the realities of our profession, and the evolving world of judiciary translation and interpreting:

When to Let Compassion Take the Driver’s Seat – The article explores how court interpreters can balance professionalism with empathy, recognizing when compassion should guide their actions to support those they serve.
Writing for Proteus – Share your expertise and insights with the judiciary translation and interpreting community by contributing to Proteus , NAJIT’s quarterly publication
The Failings of the Ivory Tower — A critical look at the disconnect between academic institutions and the practical realities of the judiciary translation and interpretation profession.
The Couch: Overcoming Imposter Syndrome — Exploring the challenges of self-doubt in the interpreting profession and strategies to build confidence.

You can find these and more in our blog archives !

Interested in sharing your insights with our community? Check out Writing for The NAJIT Observer to learn how you can contribute.

The images used in this post are sourced from Unsplash. They are used for illustrative purposes only.

A woman with a warm smile in the autumn sunlight

Reme Bashi

Blog Writer and proofreader

Beyond Language, The Expert Interpreter

By Reme Bashi

Keep the Conversation Going

When to Let Compassion Take the Driver’s Seat

Tue, 11 Mar 2025 03:36:00 GMT

At least once in a court interpreter’s lifetime, the moment will come when we interpret a hearing with Limited English Proficient (LEP) individual s who are mentally compromised, whether from birth or from a life event that put them in that condition.

While we are taught to appear serious and unemotional, certain situations call for some flexibility. These situations are the ones where compassion and empathy should take the lead in our work.

Compassion is the foundation of humanity—let’s make it a daily practice

We exercise compassion with these people, not because they are LEPs who speak the same language as we do, but because they are human beings.

An acquaintance of mine who was a public defender, and Baltimore County’s DA for over two decades, once told me that, “these people have been through hell and back, they really fought with what they believe to be actual demons, and they are still lost.”

It can be easy to forget that they are, in fact, someone’s daughter, brother, or mother.

Several years ago, I had an old case from long ago that circled back to me. The defendant went through trauma in her marriage which caused her to be institutionalized.

When incidents like this occur, we sometimes hear judgments about weakness or the lack of ability to “handle things.”

Let us all be reminded that we are human beings, and we are all different. Human beings are all unique creatures, different in how we look, think and feel. Each individual processes a different ability to handle each situation differently.

In the world where the spotlight is on AI and automated systems, let us all not forget about the human touch. The manners that humans use to comfort each other are separate from the spoken word. When I refer to compassion in this context, I am not suggesting that we need to stroke their backs or hold their hands while interpreting.

According to the Harvard Business Review’s article from February 2023, “leading with compassion has research-backed benefits.” whether it be to increase loyalty in the organization through “a sense of belonging, feeling valued by their leaders” or to increase better communication with others.

Mental health matters—always. Let’s break the stigma and support one another

Once you (genuinely) deploy some of these soft skills, it is likely that the LEP will feel more connected and is more likely to build rapport with you. I’d caution that this connection is the foundation for relationship-building and outside the scope of your work. This rapport, however, can facilitate better communication and collaboration between you, the interpreter, and the LEP, which can foster better flow during the session. It’s important to note that showing compassion doesn’t mean overstepping professional boundaries. Interpreters should not offer personal advice, comfort beyond their role, or develop personal connections outside their assignment. However, small adjustments in tone, pacing, and body language can make a significant difference in making the LEP feel respected and understood without crossing ethical lines. The research done by the Harvard Business Review also stated that “people’s brains respond more positively to people who show compassion.”

If the fact that compassion can (possibly) make your work a tiny bit easier is not enough, maybe the health benefit factor is something to consider. The same article pointed out that:

“Rigorous research supports that being a giving, others-focused person is linked with a longer life , and can buffer the effects of stressful events on mortality risk . Specifically, kindness can reduce risk factors for cardiovascular disease , including counteracting high blood pressure . Kindness and compassion may also help us maintain vitality and cognitive function as we age. Focusing on selfless acts has even been shown to have pain-relieving effects . Numerous studies show that selfless giving to others is associated with happiness , well-being , resilience, and resistance to burnout , fewer depression symptoms , and better relationships .”

Bad things happen to bad people, and also to good people. It happens to the best of us. Don’t allow life to harden you as a human.

Compassion is not just for the benefit of others—it’s also for our own well-being.

Mental health is not just a buzzword of the 21st century, it’s a real phenomenon that society is finally opening up to. Let our profession be part of the movement that recognizes the importance of mental well-being that we can all benefit from.

A small act of kindness can make a big difference. Share love, always

Source:

https://hbr.org/2023/02/leading-with-compassion-has-research-backed-benefits

If this topic resonated with you, be sure to check out our previous blog posts for more insights on the realities of our profession, and the evolving world of judiciary translation and interpreting:

Writing for Proteus – Share your expertise and insights with the judiciary translation and interpreting community by contributing to Proteus , NAJIT’s quarterly publication
The Failings of the Ivory Tower — A critical look at the disconnect between academic institutions and the practical realities of the judiciary translation and interpretation profession.
The Couch: Overcoming Imposter Syndrome — Exploring the challenges of self-doubt in the interpreting profession and strategies to build confidence.
Listen to Your Body: Rest Now or Pay Later — A reminder of the importance of self-care and recognizing when to rest
A Year of Growth, Gratitude, and Community – Welcome to 2025 — A reflection on the past year and a look ahead at the values shaping our community in 2025

You can find these and more in our blog archives !

Interested in sharing your insights with our community? Check out Writing for The NAJIT Observer to learn how you can contribute.

The images used in this post are sourced from Unsplash. They are used for illustrative purposes only.

A professional portrait of a smiling woman exuding confidence and warmth

Ann (Jiraporn) Heath-Huynh grew up in a bilingual Thai-English household, using both languages in day-to-day life. Having lived on four continents, she now calls the U.S. home. Following the birth of her daughter in 2010, the chance to work in the language field afforded her an opportunity to change career directions; what began as a part-time job became a career that she is passionate about. After being added to the Maryland Judiciary’s roster of interpreters in 2015, many opportunities opened up to her, eventually leading to Department of State Conference Interpretation for Thai and English. Although she works mostly as a conference interpreter, she has always considered Maryland courts to be her home. Whenever an assignment is offered, she is always pleased to accept it and proudly wear her first-ever interpreter’s badge as a Maryland Judiciary Court Interpreter.

When to Let Compassion Take the Driver’s Seat

By: Jiraporn Ann H. Huynh

Keep the Conversation Going

Writing for Proteus: Calling for Submissions

Thu, 27 Feb 2025 06:07:00 GMT

Proteus is NAJIT’s quarterly publication, providing judiciary interpreters and translators with an avenue to explore complex industry topics.

What Sets Proteus Apart?

The NAJIT Observer: A more informal, conversational space for quick insights, personal anecdotes, and community engagement.
Proteus: A formal, reflective publication featuring research-driven articles, industry analysis, and long-form discussions that require structured exploration.

The power of precision—where research, analysis, and expertise come together in written form

For 2025, Proteus will launch its first-quarter issue with a special theme— Past, Present, and Future —honoring its legacy and role in shaping the judiciary translation and interpretation profession. This theme will allow contributors to reflect on NAJIT’s history, celebrate milestones in Proteus , and reintroduce the people behind the work.

Q1: Special Theme – Past, Present, and Future: Reflecting on the evolution of judiciary translation and interpretation, celebrating Proteus and NAJIT’s milestones.
Q2: Global Legal Landscapes: Examining cross-jurisdictional challenges, legal frameworks worldwide, and strategies for working in international judiciary contexts. (Submissions due: May 31, 2025)
Q3: AI and the Future of Legal Language Work: Investigating the role of artificial intelligence, ethical concerns, and the adaptation of professionals in the age of digital transformation. (Submissions due: August 31, 2025)
Q4: Cultural Relaxation and Creative Legal Expressions: Exploring the human and cultural dimensions of judiciary work, from linguistic creativity to storytelling in judiciary interpretation and translation. (Submissions due: November 30, 2025)

Contributors are also welcome to propose topics beyond these themes!

Contributing to Proteus allows authors to shape discussions within the field of judiciary translation and interpretation. It is a space for thoughtful analysis, scholarly discussions, and impactful storytelling.

Bringing ideas to life—brainstorming, analyzing, and refining concepts in the creative process

Experienced professionals sharing advanced insights and research findings.
Emerging scholars and students offering unique perspectives on legal language work.
Interdisciplinary voices interested in law, technology, ethics, and linguistics.

Enhance Your Professional Profile – Establish yourself as a thought leader in the judiciary interpretation and translation industry.
Contribute to Professional Development – Help shape best practices and industry standards through well-researched articles.
Expand the Community’s Knowledge Base – Provide valuable insights that may inform policy, practice, and advocacy efforts.

While the newsletter structure is evolving, we hope to incorporate sections that ensure consistency and relevance:

Editor’s Letter – Introducing the quarterly theme and its significance.
Feature Articles – Long-form explorations of relevant issues within judiciary translation and interpretation, following quarterly themes.
SSTI Corner – Highlights from the Society for the Study of Translation and Interpretation (SSTI), including research and ongoing projects.
Book Reviews & Letters to/from Editors – In-depth critiques of industry-related publications and open correspondence that fosters discussion, debate, and professional engagement within the judiciary translation and interpretation community.
Creative and Visual Elements – Cultural spotlights, infographics, and interactive visuals.
Event Calendars – Upcoming professional development opportunities, training sessions, and networking events.

Submission Guidelines & Style Guide

Prepare your article following the formatting and citation guidelines.
Email your submission to proteus_editor@najit.org with your contact details in the email body.
Submissions are reviewed by the editorial team, and authors will have the opportunity to review final edits before publication.

Please note: Submission does not guarantee publication. Articles are selected based on relevance, quality, and adherence to Proteus ’s editorial standards.

A moment of reflection—engaging with industry news and insights over coffee

Proteus is more than a publication—it’s a collective effort to push the boundaries of judiciary translation and interpretation. Whether you contribute an article, engage with existing discussions, or explore our archives, your voice matters in shaping the future of our profession.

We encourage professionals, educators, and students to contribute their insights to Proteus or The NAJIT Observer .

If you or someone in your network is interested in contributing, please reach out at editor@najit.org to discuss ideas.

Start writing today, your insights could be the next Proteus feature!

If this topic resonated with you, be sure to check out our previous blog posts for more insights on the realities of our profession, and the evolving world of judiciary translation and interpreting:

The Failings of the Ivory Tower — A critical look at the disconnect between academic institutions and the practical realities of the judiciary translation and interpretation profession.
The Couch: Overcoming Imposter Syndrome — Exploring the challenges of self-doubt in the interpreting profession and strategies to build confidence.
Listen to Your Body: Rest Now or Pay Later — A reminder of the importance of self-care and recognizing when to rest
A Year of Growth, Gratitude, and Community – Welcome to 2025 — A reflection on the past year and a look ahead at the values shaping our community in 2025

You can find these and more in our blog archives !

Interested in sharing your insights with our community? Check out Writing for The NAJIT Observer to learn how you can contribute.

The images used in this post are sourced from Unsplash. They are used for illustrative purposes only.

Writing for Proteus: Calling for Submissions

By: The NAJIT Observer

While both Proteus and The NAJIT Observer serve NAJIT’s mission of promoting professional excellence, they differ in tone, content, and purpose:

Quarterly Themes, Editorial Focus, Submission, and Deadlines

Writing for Proteus: A Deeper Commitment to the Field

Who Should Write for Proteus ?

How Writing for Proteus Benefits You

Potential Sections in Proteus

To ensure consistency and readability, all Proteus submissions must follow NAJIT’s editorial standards. Articles should be approximately 2,000 word s, adhere to The Chicago Manual of Style , and be formatted in 12-point Times New Roman, double-spaced, with no paragraph indentations . For full details on formatting, citation requirements, and submission procedures, please refer to the Proteus Submission Guidelines .

Submission Process

Be Part of the Conversation

Keep the Conversation Going

The Failings of the Ivory Tower

Thu, 20 Feb 2025 03:51:00 GMT

When I was 18, I decided I wanted to be an interpreter. Ever the logical goal-setter, I consulted professors in the field and reached out to friends of friends who might know something about this career—one that most people seemed to confuse with ‘translation’ or believe was only for ‘native speakers’ ( native speakers of what, exactly? ). The people who kindly guided me were my future colleagues, offering that first helping hand when I had no credentials—just a budding fluency in French and Spanish, and a dream.

A hub of academic excellence—training the next generation of interpreters and translators

You could say that my dream was achieved the day I first interpreted in court. But perhaps it was actually the day I became certified as a medical interpreter, or the day that I reached federal court certification. Or perhaps I’m not there yet, and I’m waiting until some nebulous day in the future?

Likely as not, there’s some truth to all those possibilities.

The truth is, dreams are achieved in stages. Certainly, one big, important moment was the day I earned my Master’s in Conference Interpreting (MCI)) from Glendon College of York University in Toronto, Canada. I have kept close ties to the university, serving as Healthcare Interpreting Field Coordinator and as an instructor in court interpreting for their MCI. The program helped me to solidify my skills and become the interpreter I am today.

Sadly, the Glendon MCI is now under threat from its own university as funds are cut, and impossible demands are placed upon its directors and administrators. University officials who don’t understand why an English instructor is not the appropriate teacher for a Mandarin-specific interpreting cohort, are pressuring the program to cut out all languages other than French and English and terminate contracts with their team of world-renowned international professors. The entire first year of the program, where the fundamentals of court and medical interpreting are established, is under threat as well. York University officials citing budgetary concerns seem not to recognize that their MCI has made them a global contender, placing the institution on the forefront of important international organizations that offer academic excellence second to none.

The foundation of interpretation and translating —knowledge, ethics, and lifelong learning

Now, not all of us can afford the luxury of a 2-year degree program, and I know many incredible court and medical interpreters—even some conference interpreters—who do not have a Master’s degree. However, even those of us who have not spent time in academia to achieve our interpreting credentials are benefiting from programs like the Glendon MCI; we attend webinars hosted by their graduates, we read their textbooks, and we train with their study materials even when we don’t realize it (think of the training that Holly Mikkelson received before creating her ACEBO trainings). The ethics and standards of our profession, the advocating for good working conditions and the factors that influence our pay are all impacted by what happens in those ivory towers.

Throughout North America, there are very few programs like Glendon’s—so few that you can count them on one hand. These intensive two-year programs offer a deep dive into all three branches of interpreting-medical, court and conference. Students from around the world are trained in theory, ethics and the hands-on skills that make high-level life-and-death interpretation possible. In the case of Glendon’s MCI, just eleven years since its inception, it has become one of the leading training programs of its kind. Their MCI graduates have gone on to the United Nations, the State Department, the European Commission and more. They have also become leaders in the fields of court and medical interpreting.

The implications of this threat are without measure. Programs like Glendon’s educate interpreters, who then facilitate equal access to healthcare and justice for the most vulnerable people in our society.

It was only a few years ago that doctors were asking untrained family members to deliver complicated cancer diagnoses. One horrifying example of what can happen in such circumstances was when somebody who “happened to know the language” mistakenly interpreted the cause of illness and the patient wound up paralyzed from the neck down; that person will spend the rest of their life in a wheelchair ( source ).

Similarly, until very recently, prisoners often arrived in jail not understanding what had landed them there because nobody thought to assign an interpreter. Even if they wanted to find somebody to interpret, nobody had the proper training to interpret correctly. If you were the victim of a heinous crime and the witness in a trial spoke a language other than that of majority, you would just have to hope that the jury got a fair idea of what was being said.

We have come far in a few decades, in part due to programs like Glendon’s MCI, but there is still much further to go. York University is training its Master’s graduates to be leaders in a very, very important field. Even among other academic institutions with similar degrees, the program is unique because of the hybrid nature of its training and the dynamic approach to the three interrelated disciplines. There are very few programs like the one at Glendon.

Dr. Clifford, the Glendon MCI director, has harnessed the best interpreting minds around the world. The teaching team includes veterans of the United Nations, The International Criminal Court, top European organizations, and renowned experts in the fields of community interpreting.

A space where future interpreters and translators refine their skills and expand their knowledge

He has been aided in his efforts by Professor Qjinti Oblitas. Together, they teach most of the classes, coordinate admissions and academic exams and provide instructor support. When there is nobody at the office to respond to emails or pick up the phone, they step in and answer correspondence themselves. Yours truly has seen them at the university in the evenings and on weekends. This program is a labor of love, hard work and determination to provide the absolute best training possibilities to interpreting students all over the world. Shouldn’t an academic institution want to be a bastion of academic quality, bringing our society forward and making the world a better place? Doesn’t York University prize making its mark in history? Isn’t that the true reason for higher education, and not some dollar signs on a ledger?

My hope is that this is just a passing challenge and that York University does not continue to suffocate its own MCI. It is imperative that programs like this continue to exist. We need them, our future colleagues need them, and in a world that is ever more multicultural and multilingual, our society needs them.

We look forward to hearing your thoughts below in the comments!

Thank you for reading!

If this topic resonated with you, be sure to check out our previous blog posts for more insights on the realities of our profession, and the evolving world of judiciary translation and interpreting:

The Couch: Overcoming Imposter Syndrome — Exploring the challenges of self-doubt in the interpreting profession and strategies to build confidence.
Listen to Your Body: Rest Now or Pay Later — A reminder of the importance of self-care and recognizing when to rest
A Year of Growth, Gratitude, and Community – Welcome to 2025 — A reflection on the past year and a look ahead at the values shaping our community in 2025
The Couch: Starting Fresh – Advice for New Graduates in Judiciary Translation and Interpreting — Practical advice and insights for new professionals stepping into the field
Judiciary Translation vs. Judiciary Interpretation – Which Path Resonates with You? — A breakdown of key differences between these career paths to help you find the right fit

You can find these and more in our blog archives !

Interested in sharing your insights with our community? Check out Writing for The NAJIT Observer to learn how you can contribute.

The images used in this post are sourced from Unsplash. They are used for illustrative purposes only.

A confident smile with a vibrant touch

Hi everyone! I’m Athena Matilsky. My passion for languages began when I was sixteen. I loved how different languages opened a door into entirely new cultures. Learning how to speak felt like cracking a code. I chose to major in Spanish interpreting and translation at Rutgers University, while also studying French. After graduation, I taught elementary school in Honduras before returning home to freelance as a medical and court interpreter. I later joined the NJ judiciary as a staff interpreter. Through my journey, I earned certifications as a healthcare interpreter and a federal court interpreter in Spanish, and as a court interpreter in French. Most recently, I completed my Master’s Degree in Conference Interpreting from Glendon at York University. Nowadays, I work as a freelance medical, court, and conference interpreter. I am also a teacher for York University and Athena Sky Interpreting, helping students develop the skills needed to succeed in court, healthcare, and federal interpreting exams. Outside of work, I enjoy practicing acroyoga.

The Failings of the Ivory Tower

By: Athena Matilsky

Keep the Conversation Going

The Couch: Overcoming Imposter Syndrome

Wed, 12 Feb 2025 03:36:00 GMT

A symbolic representation of interpreters and translators fostering understanding, depicted by a figure on a couch and another actively listening

Since its debut in 2017 , The Couch has been the place to provide professionals with the space to discuss dilemmas, help one another, and network within our field. Past discussions have tackled ethical challenges, professional growth, and best practices, offering valuable insights to judiciary interpreters and translators alike.

The Couch is a place to exchange ideas and brainstorm, not only for its contributors, but also for our readers who engage in the ensuing discussions.

If you’re new to The Couch series, check out some of our previous posts:

The Couch: Starting Fresh – Advice for New Graduates (January 2025): A recent graduate seeks guidance on breaking into judiciary translation and interpreting
The Couch: Coaching the Defendant (January 9th, 2024): Addressing concerns about courtroom behavior, interpreter impartiality, and ethical boundaries
The Couch: Finding Things a Bit Too Funny? (September 18, 2024) : Addressing how interpreters handle moments of humor or the urge to laugh in serious courtroom settings
For more posts, please explore: The Couch Series

These discussions continue to shape our understanding of best practices in judiciary translation and interpreting.

Doubt can be loud, but it doesn’t mean it’s true. Trust in your skills, your work, and the journey that brought you here

This week on The Couch , we’re tackling imposter syndrome —that perpetual feeling of self-doubt despite your training and experience. Many interpreters and translators, whether just starting or well into your career, struggle with it. The high stakes of our field can make those feelings even stronger.

A colleague recently reached out, wondering how to build confidence and trust in their abilities to overcome imposter syndrome. Here’s what they’re asking:

Where to Start?
How do you shake off self-doubt and trust that you belong in this field?

Are there training programs or mentorships that help boost confidence?
How do experienced professionals keep growing and trusting their expertise?

How do you deal with moments of hesitation in live courtroom settings?
What’s a realistic way to handle mistakes and keep improving when translating legal text?

What habits have helped you shift self-doubt into self-assurance?
How do you build resilience and keep moving forward, especially when you are struggling?

At The Observer , we celebrate the strength of our community and the knowledge we share. Thank you for contributing your expertise to help our colleagues succeed in their professional endeavors.

Collaborating in a professional setting, fostering ideas and understanding

Complete this submission form to participate in the discussion!

Join the dialogue today and help us continue fostering meaningful conversations and connections within our professional community!

Thanks for reading, and stay tuned for the next submission!

If this topic resonated with you, be sure to check out our previous blog posts for more insights on the realities of our profession, and the evolving world of judiciary translation and interpreting:

Writing for The NAJIT Observer — Want to contribute a blog post? This guide covers submission tips, topic ideas, and more
Listen to Your Body: Rest Now or Pay Later — A reminder of the importance of self-care and recognizing when to rest
A Year of Growth, Gratitude, and Community – Welcome to 2025 — A reflection on the past year and a look ahead at the values shaping our community in 2025

You can find these and more in our blog archives !

The images used in this post are sourced from Unsplash. They are used for illustrative purposes only.

A Brief History of The Couch Series

Seeking Guidance: Overcoming Imposter Syndrome

Building Confidence & Skills

Managing Expectations & Overcoming Doubt

Long-Term Strategies for Growth

Do you have insights to share or your own professional dilemma to discuss?

Keep the Conversation Going

Writing for The NAJIT Observer

Mon, 10 Feb 2025 15:02:00 GMT

Writing for The NAJIT Observer is not only an opportunity to share insights and experiences, but also a powerful way to refine our own skills, uplift newcomers, and honor those who have paved the way for us. Whether you are an experienced interpreter, a legal translator, or someone just beginning your journey in the profession, your voice matters.

Judiciary interpreters and translators help tell the stories that shape justice—what’s yours?

Strengthen Your Writing Skills
As language professionals, we are constantly honing our ability to communicate effectively. Writing about judiciary translation and interpretation challenges us to think critically about our work and articulate our ideas with clarity. Writing helps you organize arguments, clarify concepts, and convey your thoughts in a compelling way, no matter what you’re sharing an anecdote about, a look at legal jargon, or a thought on moral dilemmas.
Contribute to the Advancement of Our Field
Our profession is evolving. Laws change, technological advances, and best practices continue to develop. By writing about the challenges, innovations, and experiences in judiciary translation and interpretation, you contribute to a growing body of knowledge that benefits our entire community. Your blog post might inspire discussions on policy, offer solutions to recurring issues, or shed light on lesser-known aspects of the field. We all have something to contribute to our field.
Support Those Entering the Profession
Many of us remember the uncertainty of starting in this field—navigating certification exams, learning courtroom protocols, or handling difficult encounters with limited-English-proficient clients. Writing for The NAJIT Observer allows you to mentor others by sharing lessons learned, practical tips, and/or career advice. New interpreters and translators rely on the experiences of seasoned professionals to gain confidence and navigate their careers more effectively.
Honor Our Senior Professionals
Judiciary interpretation and translation stand on the shoulders of those who have dedicated decades to perfecting their craft. Writing allows us to pay homage to their contributions, preserving their insights for future generations. Whether by sharing the wisdom imparted to us, reflecting on the evolution of our profession, or highlighting the work of pioneers in the field, we ensure that their legacy continues to guide us.

Preserving the integrity of legal language—writing remains a cornerstone of judiciary translation and interpretation.

If you’re wondering what topics to explore, here are a few ideas to inspire your next piece:

Ethics & Professionalism — Ethical dilemmas in judiciary interpreting and translation, navigating challenging interactions with peers or legal professionals, and maintaining neutrality and professionalism in high-stakes cases
Technology & Innovation — The role of AI and technology in judiciary translation and interpretation, benefits and limitations of AI-assisted legal translation, and how digital tools are changing the landscape of judiciary language work
Legal Systems & Best Practices — Strategies for handling complex or high-profile court cases, differences between simultaneous and consecutive interpretation in legal settings, and understanding legal precedents and their impact on translation and interpretation
Career Development & Certification — Insights into the certification process and tips for new interpreters and translators, preparing for legal interpretation exams and credentials, and essential skills for thriving in judiciary language services
Personal & Professional Reflections — A pivotal moment in your career and what it taught you, the evolving role of translators and interpreters in the judiciary system, and personal stories that highlight the real impact of our work
Cultural & Linguistic Perspectives — The influence of cultural nuances in legal interpretation, creative problem-solving in judiciary translation and interpretation, and the intersection of storytelling and legal language work
Open Topics – Any subject you’re passionate about and want to share with the community, lessons learned from working in different legal environments, or advocacy and the role of interpreters and translators in language access and justice

In legal translation and interpretation, every word matters—write boldly, edit meticulously.

Writing for The NAJIT Observer is a rewarding experience, and we welcome voices from all backgrounds. Whether you’re drafting your first article or you’re a seasoned writer, here are some steps to get started:

Choose a topic that resonates with you — What challenges or insights have stood out in your experience?
Keep it clear and engaging — Aim for a conversational yet professional tone that is accessible to all readers
Share your perspective — Your unique experiences and viewpoints add value to the conversation
Follow Submission Guidelines — Ensure your piece aligns with The NAJIT Observer’s format and length requirements
Submit and share — Once published, share your work with colleagues and networks to spark further discussion

Writing is more than an intellectual exercise; it is a way to connect, teach, and inspire. By contributing to The NAJIT Observer, you help shape the future of our profession, guiding those who come after us while honoring those who came before, and taking your rightful space in our community.

We invite you to add your voice to this collective effort.

What will you write about next?

If this topic resonated with you, be sure to check out our previous blog posts for more insights on the realities of our profession, and the evolving world of judiciary translation and interpreting:

Listen to Your Body: Rest Now or Pay Later — A reminder of the importance of self-care and recognizing when to rest
A Year of Growth, Gratitude, and Community – Welcome to 2025 — A reflection on the past year and a look ahead at the values shaping our community in 2025
The Couch: Starting Fresh – Advice for New Graduates in Judiciary Translation and Interpreting — Practical advice and insights for new professionals stepping into the field
Judiciary Translation vs. Judiciary Interpretation – Which Path Resonates with You? — A breakdown of key differences between these career paths to help you find the right fit

You can find these and more in our blog archives !

The images used in this post are sourced from Unsplash. They are used for illustrative purposes only.

Writing for The NAJIT Observer

By: The NAJIT Observer

Why Write for The NAJIT Observer?

What to Write About?

How to Get Started

Keep the Conversation Going

Listen to Your Body: Rest Now or Pay Later

Thu, 30 Jan 2025 03:35:00 GMT

Living in the Northeast of the United States means tolerating brutal winters, but this year, the cold has felt especially relentless—not just in the air, but in the weight of everything happening around us. Political turmoil, uncertainty, and the ever-present feeling of chaos have made it impossible to ignore the toll it takes on our minds and bodies.

And then it happened— I got sick, so sick that I found myself mentally saying goodbye to my favorite things.

Feeling under the weather? Your body is telling you to slow down—listen to it before burnout takes over!

It wasn’t the kind of sickness that rest and fluids could fix. It was my body waving a white flag, forcing me to stop, to slow down, to listen, and to sleep. And I realized something: If we don’t take breaks, our bodies will force them upon us —without regard for schedules or priorities.

We are living through historic times. The exhaustion, the anxiety, the stress, the feeling of being frozen in place—it’s not just personal. It’s collective. And yet, amidst this, we have to push on. As translators and interpreters, we don’t just live in this world; we help others navigate it . We are linguistic bridges in judiciary spaces, in high-stakes environments where access to language is access to justice and human dignity.

But what happens when we—the ones holding these bridges together—start to crumble?

In my opinion, self-care is not bubble baths and mindfulness apps. It’s a radical act of self-preservation. It’s knowing when to rest before we collapse. Not only that, but it’s setting boundaries. It’s understanding that our worth is not tied to how much we endure, or how much we produce.

Sometimes, the best thing you can do for yourself is to unplug, rest, and recover

Guilt-free pause: Rest is not a reward; it’s a need. Our bodies and minds require recovery, even when our brains are saying we must go on.
Turn off the noise: Continuous exposure to chaos does not make us stronger or better prepared. At some point, we have to protect our peace.
Leaning into community: Isolation makes everything heavier. The support around us, knowing you aren’t alone in your pain and struggles, will remind you there’s help and that people care.
Remembering our impact: The work that we do matters, but we are not machines. Burning out doesn’t serve the communities we care about.
Restoring joy: In hard times, reclaiming joy can be a subversive act. A walk, a song, a book, sharing a laugh with a friend— all count. So, do it often.

We do this work because we care. But to continue being linguistic bridges that so many depend on, we have to take care of ourselves, too. Moments to pause aren’t a luxury— they are a necessity, and we must take them.

We can’t interpret, translate, advocate, uplift if we’re running on fumes. It is not a selfish act to care for oneself; actually, it’s the only way one can keep showing up-for oneself and for our communities.

These are hard times, and they ask a lot of us. But survival is not just about pushing through—it’s about making sure we have enough left to keep going. If you are tired, take that as a sign. Step back, rest, and recover. We need you here, and we need you whole.

And most importantly, pay your body its due now, or you will end up paying for it later.

Rest is not a luxury—it’s a necessity. Prioritize your well-being before your body forces you!

If this topic resonated with you, be sure to check out our previous blog posts for more insights on the realities of our profession, and the evolving world of judiciary translation and interpreting:

A Year of Growth, Gratitude, and Community – Welcome to 2025 — A reflection on the past year and a look ahead at the values shaping our community in 2025.
The Couch: Starting Fresh – Advice for New Graduates in Judiciary Translation and Interpreting — Practical advice and insights for new professionals stepping into the field.
Judiciary Translation vs. Judiciary Interpretation – Which Path Resonates with You? — A breakdown of key differences between these career paths to help you find the right fit.

You can find these and more in our blog archives!

Let’s continue the discussion—drop your thoughts in the comments or connect with us in our community.

How are you prioritizing your well-being in these challenging times?
What practices work for you to balance your well-being and your responsibilities?

Thank you for Reading!

The images used in this post are sourced from Unsplash. They are used for illustrative purposes only.

A radiant and confident portrait of a woman embracing bold style and elegance

Julli Jaramillo is the newest Publishing Coordinator and Editor-in-Chief for NAJIT. She holds a master’s degree in Translation from NYU and has extensive experience in quality assurance, content development, and strategic growth. Passionate about NAJIT’s mission to uphold ethical standards for judiciary translators and interpreters, she is dedicated to driving the organization’s growth while ensuring its publications meet high-quality standards and adapt to evolving industry demands. In her free time, Julli enjoys baking and creating art.

Feel free to reach out to her (tno_editor@najit.org) to chat about the NAJIT Observer or Proteus—she is excited to collaborate!

Join the NAJIT Observer’s vibrant community of contributors! We are seeking passionate writers to share insights on legal translation and interpretation. Email your pitch or draft today and help shape our industry. Visit najit.org/blog for more details.

Listen to Your Body: Rest Now or Pay Later

By Julli Jaramillo

Self-Care in Times of Political and Social Tension

What does self-care look like when the world seems on fire?

The Takeaway

Keep the Conversation Going

A Year of Growth, Gratitude, and Community: Welcome to 2025

Wed, 15 Jan 2025 03:34:00 GMT

As the new year begins, at The Observer, we are excited about what the upcoming year holds. The beginning of a new year offers us a great opportunity to reflect on our past successes, evaluating our present circumstances, and planning for what’s next. It’s also a perfect moment to pause and extend our heartfelt gratitude to the community that keeps the NAJIT blog flourishing— you , our valued readers and contributors.

Guided by passion: Together, we create a path toward growth and success

2024 was a year of growth, resilience, and significant change within our NAJIT community. It was also the year I came onto the NAJIT team.

This past year, at The Observer , we explored a variety of topics, from the cognitive demands of interpreting and the risk of interpreter’s fatigue to the significance of correct name pronunciation for Limited English Proficient (LEP) individuals, as well as the LEP’s right to “hear everything” in court. Whether you participated as a reader, commenter, or guest blogger, your involvement enriched our shared journey and enhanced our collective knowledge.

Some highlights from last year include:

Interpreter’s Fatigue: A Real Threat to Due Process: Hilda Shymanik explored the cognitive demands of interpreting and how mental fatigue threatens accuracy and due process. She shared personal experiences to highlight the importance of advocating for breaks and adhering to ethical guidelines, emphasizing the need for systemic support for interpreters.
The Importance of Being Called by Your Name: Ann Heath-Huynh’s thoughtful piece highlighted the significance of correctly pronouncing names, especially for LEPs (Limited English Proficient individuals) navigating the legal system. Her personal anecdotes and insights underscored the profound impact of this simple act of respect and validation.
The LEP’s Right to “Hear Everything”: Janis Palma’s in-depth piece on the LEP’s (Limited English Proficient) right to “hear everything” in court sparked essential conversations about balancing interpreters’ legal obligations with practical workload management.

With the new year comes a renewed commitment to excellence and growth. Here are some exciting things to look forward to on The Observer :

Expanded Content : We’re broadening our scope to include innovative topics like the impact of artificial intelligence on interpreting and translation.
A Platform for You : This year, we want to continue to amplify more voices from within our NAJIT community. If you have an idea for a blog post, a story to share, or insights to offer, we’d love to hear from you.

The new year is also about personal and professional growth. As interpreters and translators, our work thrives when we support one another. Let’s make 2025 the year we continue to:

Engage Meaningfully : Take part in discussions and share feedback to foster an informed and progressive community.
Learn Continuously : Embrace new challenges and opportunities for professional development.

Celebrating tradition: A Lion Dance performance brings good luck and joy to the Lunar New Year

While many of us ring in the new year on January 1st, it’s essential for me to recognize the variety of new year celebrations around the world. One tradition that holds a special place in my heart is the Chinese New Year, or Lunar New Year. My appreciation for this celebration deepened during my time as a language instructor in a remote English learning program for students in China. Through daily lessons and cultural exchanges, I was immersed in their traditions and heritage.

I’ll always remember how my students expressed their excitement for the holiday—sharing stories about preparing red lanterns, reuniting with family, and the significance of each dish served during meals. A particularly memorable moment was when a student described the joy of receiving red envelopes, which symbolize wishes for prosperity and good fortune, though he admitted he mostly enjoyed the money inside. Even from afar, their enthusiasm, and pride made the celebration feel alive for me, establishing a personal connection to their culture that has led me to celebrate in honor of my ties to Chinese heritage. The Chinese New Year is a powerful reminder of the significance of heritage, togetherness, and renewal—values that resonate deeply within our global community of interpreters and translators.

I want to take a moment to express my heartfelt gratitude to my amazing team of volunteers at The Observer . Your passion, dedication, and hard work are the backbone of everything we accomplish for our readers. You breathe life into the NAJIT mission and enable The Observer to flourish as a hub of growth and connection. It’s your shared commitment that motivates me every day, and I am truly grateful for each one of you.

As we welcome this new beginning, we also want to send our sincerest appreciation to all of you . Your enthusiasm for the blog and support for NAJIT are what keep our community alive, and your efforts transform The Observer into a place where ideas can grow, and connections can deepen.

Here’s to a year full of inspiration, collaboration, and mutual success.

Wishing you all a Happy New Year from everyone at The Observer !

To learn more about the dedicated team behind The NAJIT Observer and the passion that drives our mission, check out our feature: “It’s Always a Good Day to Make New Friends”

Guided by passion: Together, we create a path toward growth and success

Share your professional or personal goals, resolutions, or ideas for the year in the comments below. Let’s start the year by inspiring each other!

The images used in this post are sourced from Unsplash. They are used for illustrative purposes only.

A Year of Growth, Gratitude, and Community:

Welcome to 2025

The NAJIT Observer

Reflecting on 2024

Looking Ahead

Setting Intentions Together

A Nod to Chinese New Year — Lunar New Year

A Heartfelt Thank You

How Will You Celebrate 2025?

The Couch: Starting Fresh: Advice for New Graduates in Judiciary Translation and Interpreting

Thu, 09 Jan 2025 02:24:00 GMT

A symbolic representation of interpreters and translators fostering understanding, depicted by a figure on a couch and another actively listening

The Couch is a place to exchange ideas and brainstorm, not only for its contributors, but also for our readers who engage in the ensuing discussions.

If you’re new to The Couch series, check out some of our previous posts:

The Couch: Coaching the Defendant (January 9th, 2024): Addressing concerns about courtroom behavior, interpreter impartiality, and ethical boundaries
The Couch: Finding Things a Bit Too Funny? (September 18, 2024) : Addressing how interpreters handle moments of humor or the urge to laugh in serious courtroom settings
The Couch: A Guilty Conscience (January 12, 2018) : Navigating ethical concerns in a judiciary setting
For more posts, please explore: The Couch Series

These discussions continue to shape our understanding of best practices in judiciary translation and interpreting.

This week on The Couch , we’re spotlighting a recent graduate eager to launch their career in judiciary translation and interpreting. With their degree in hand, they’re excited about the possibilities, but unsure how to break into this profession. They’re reaching out to our community for advice on navigating the first steps.

Here are some of the questions that puzzle them:

Should they start by applying to agencies, pursuing freelance opportunities, or reaching out directly to courts?
What certification: state or federal court credentials, and so forth-would be critical to build further credibility?

What resources or practice materials would you recommend for the successful mastering of courtroom-related terminology, ethics, and protocol?

Which strategies would you consider the most effective for establishing and building networking relationships with legal professionals, courts, and agencies?

What habits, skills, or strategies are essential for long-term success in judiciary translation and interpreting?

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The Couch: Starting Fresh-Advice for New Graduates in Judiciary Translation and Interpreting

The NAJIT Observer

A Brief History of The Couch Series

Seeking Guidance: Starting a Career in Judiciary Translation and Interpreting

Where to Start?

Finding Opportunities

What are some of the most effective ways for finding judiciary translation and interpreting assignments?

Preparing for Court Work

Building Relationships

Career Growth and Longevity

Do you have insights to share or your own professional dilemma to discuss?

Judiciary Translation vs. Judiciary Interpretation: Which Path Resonates with You?

Mon, 30 Dec 2024 04:58:00 GMT

Language professionals are essential in bridging communication gaps within the judiciary system. As experienced judiciary interpreters and translators, your expertise is vital in ensuring justice and equity for all parties involved. However, many aspiring interpreters and translators often wonder: “ Should I pursue judiciary translation or judiciary interpretation? ” While both careers are very important, they differ in their respective skills and experiences. In this blog, I’ll expand on some key differences, challenges, and rewards of judiciary translation and judiciary interpretation, offering insights to enhance understanding and appreciation of these distinct yet complementary professions, helping you reflect on your strengths and goals in the field, and perhaps, guide those who are interested but unsure which path to choose.

A vintage dictionary used for translation, illuminated by natural sunlight, revealing the beauty of words and shadows

Judiciary translation involves converting written legal documents specific to the judiciary system from one language to another. These documents can include court rulings, affidavits, legal briefs, and procedural documents. Accuracy, cultural sensitivity, and a deep understanding of judiciary terminology in both languages are crucial .

Superb writing and editing skills.
Deep understanding of judiciary systems and terminology.
Detailed attention to accuracy and cultural nuances.

Flexible workplace, often remote.
Specialization in judiciary-specific fields such as criminal or family law, among others.
Contributing to clarity and fairness in the judiciary system by accurately translating legal documents.

Terminology and judiciary systems are complex and usually different in different jurisdictions.
Tight deadlines for crucial court-related documents.
The need to localize legal concepts with no direct equivalents.
The importance of maintaining confidentiality and security.

An interpreter engaged in efficient note-taking, accompanied by a warm cup of coffee

On the other hand, judiciary interpretation focuses on oral communication within the judiciary system. Interpreters aim to provide oral understanding in courtrooms, depositions, arraignments, and client-attorney meetings for non-English speaking parties. Real-time accuracy and fluency are extremely important in this position.

Excellent retention and note-taking techniques.
Quick thinking while remaining calm under pressure.
Exceptional verbal communication and cultural knowledge.

Dynamic, interactive work environment.
Playing a crucial role in facilitating access to the judiciary system in real-time, contributing to the larger process of justice.
Opportunities to work in high-profile judiciary settings.

The emotional intensity of legal proceedings.
The need for continuous concentration and split-second decision-making.
The challenge of adapting to unfamiliar speakers and dialects.
The ethical dilemmas involved in maintaining neutrality.

Which one is for you depends on your strengths, preferences, and career goals.

Ask yourself these questions:

Do you like working with written material or talking to people?
Do you work better independently or in an interactive environment?
Is it the dynamics of the courtroom that appeals to you, or is it an in-depth judiciary text?

It should also be said that the majority of professionals combine a bit of both and, allowing for adaptability, creating many more job perspectives.

In my case, I have focused on judiciary translation due to my passion for the precision of the judiciary language and the written word. Through my interaction with interpreters, however, it has become crystal clear how vital they are in a real-time judiciary setting. Both paths require dedication and commitment to excellence, and I deeply respect those who pursue either or both.

Judiciary translation and judiciary interpretation are both essential to the smooth running of the judiciary system and the administration of justice. Whether you like the precision of written documents or the immediacy of oral communication, there is a fulfilling path waiting for you in this field, especially for those interested in exploring this profession.

For those currently in the field, which path did you take, and why?

Which path do you recommend for those entering the field? Is there something else to consider?

Let us know below! We would love to hear from you!

Thank you for reading!

The images used in this post are sourced from Unsplash. They are used for illustrative purposes only.

A radiant and confident portrait of a woman embracing bold style and elegance

Feel free to reach out to her (tno_editor@najit.org) to chat about the NAJIT Observer or Proteus—she is excited to collaborate!

Judiciary Translation vs. Judiciary Interpretation:

Which Path Resonates with You?

By: Julli Jaramillo

What is Judiciary Translation?

Key Skills:

Rewards:

Challenges:

What is Judiciary Interpretation?

Key Skills:

Rewards:

Challenges:

Choosing Between Judiciary Translation and Interpretation

My Experience and Insights

Conclusion:

Preparing to Do Relay with a Colleague Abroad

Mon, 23 Dec 2024 18:37:00 GMT

Have you ever had to do relay interpreting with a colleague who is outside the United States, and who doesn’t speak English?

Here are some tips to help you achieve the best team interpreting performance.

Effective communication and collaboration are key to successful teamwork

Before I share my tips, I have an embarrassing confession to make. Although I’ve been certified to interpret in state courts since 2008, I only attended my first NAJIT conference in 2023. It was thanks to Hilda Shymanik that I finally got involved with NAJIT, writing for the blog, and attending my first conference. At the conference in Las Vegas in 2023, the topic of my presentation was relay Interpreting for Spanish and Native Language Interpreters. My presentation addressed my experience, together with my co-presenter Rosario Patricio Martínez, a certified Mixe Interpreter from México.

A colleague of ours, in Mexico, has been involved in training native language interpreters, and it was through her, I was able to locate Rosario. At that time, I didn’t know of any resources to be able to connect with Interpreters of native languages of Latin America. Now I know there are several companies in California and recently, a company specializing in Mayan languages has entered the court scene.

If you are going to be working in a team with an interpreter who is possibly abroad and who doesn’t speak English, these are some suggestions to achieve success. These are some of the actions that we took before, and during the hearings where we interpreted in relay from English into Spanish and Spanish into Mixe.

Get to know your colleague and their background: Establish a relationship of trust and let them know you will keep communication open and support them any way you can.
Go over the details of the case together: Give them any names, addresses, acronyms or any other information that may come up that might be common in the United States and not abroad.
Help your colleague to sound out unfamiliar names in English: Reassure them perfection is not expected, as long as they try to pronounce names as best they can.
Explain the Interpreter oath: Even how to raise your hand, because other countries use different hand gestures to be sworn in.
Depending on your colleagues’ experience in US courts, you might have to emphasize the need to always be transparent and interpret anything that is being said: Explain that if they need to speak to the native language speaker to ask for a clarification, it is appropriate to announce the interpreter needs a clarification.
Emphasize the role of the Interpreter in the courts of the United States: Sometimes, interpreters of native languages, particularly from other countries and cultures, are used to being not only an interpreter, and cultural broker, but even somewhat of an advocate.
Keep an open channel of communication: In Latin America and many other parts of the world, certain apps are widely used for communication and information exchange. Take some time to explore and find the app that best suits your needs for staying connected and sharing information effectively.
Before the hearing, make sure your colleague is ready: Make sure they understand American punctuality. If the video session has not started, communicate with them to let them know what is happening and aim to reduce any stress coming from technology issues.
Make sure your native language colleague understands that repetitions, and clarifications are acceptable: Offer them phrases to use such as “ your honor, the interpreter requests a repetition ” or, “ your honor, the interpreter needs to clarify a term. ”
When you can anticipate a term or a name or concept that your colleague might be confused by: Send them a message via the app you both use to communicate.
If you expect to be working in tandem with your colleague in the future, and even if not, take a few minutes to debrief after the hearing: This will help you understand their struggles, and it’s also an opportunity to praise them for their amazing work and hear their feedback.
If you haven’t had the opportunity to connect with your native language colleague days ahead of the hearing: You can always ask the Court for a few minutes to establish contact and go over the basic logistics of working in relay and answering any questions they may have.

While these suggestions are common sense and easy to do, I hope this offers you a simple guide to follow when you face a relay assignment with a remote colleague.

Empowering remote collaboration with a simple and effective workspace setup

Be the supportive teammate your remote partner needs!

Are there any more tips from our community?

Write them below and let us know!

Happy international collaboration!

The images used in this post are sourced from Unsplash. They are used for illustrative purposes only.

A woman with a warm smile in the autumn sunlight

Reme Bashi

Blog Writer and proofreader

Preparing to Do Relay with a Colleague Abroad

Reme Bashi

Interpreter’s Fatigue: A Real Threat to Due Process

Tue, 17 Dec 2024 15:17:00 GMT

Interpreting is a highly demanding and complex activity that requires a great deal of physical and mental effort. When the cognitive load becomes too much, as a result of working for long periods of time without proper rest, it can result in mental fatigue. The Oxford Dictionary defines fatigue as “extreme tiredness resulting from mental or physical exertion or illness.”

Interpreter’s fatigue is real: mental exhaustion can hit hard without breaks or support.

Interpreting without the benefit of a partner, what in professional terms we refer to as “ team interpreting, ” can be physically and mentally overwhelming when hearings last longer than 45–60 minutes. Of course, this all depends on the speed of discourse and the nature of the proceeding. In general, however, research has “demonstrated the effects of progressively prolonged periods of interpreting on the integrity of the rendition. One study concluded that an interpreter’s own judgment of output quality becomes unreliable after increased time on task”.¹

A few months ago, I had been interpreting short and repetitive cases for two hours, back-to-back. When there was a lull in the proceedings, I informed the clerk that I was taking a brief break. The clerk told me the judge wouldn’t like it. I explained that I had been working for two hours without a break, to which she replied, “ So have I! ” I realized that the clerk had no idea what my work entailed, so I tried to explain the cognitive load for the work interpreters do, but I don’t think she was convinced. She nevertheless allowed me to take a break.

Accurate interpreting is critical to due process, ensuring fairness in the courtroom.

Unfortunately, court personnel do not understand the negative effect that mental fatigue can have on the interpreter’s performance even though it is clear to us that if it sets in early in the day, it can have a detrimental impact on your professional performance for the rest of the day.

About six years ago I was working on an assignment by myself, and I had been promised help, but my colleague was stuck in another courtroom. The judge just refused to give me a break. At one point I felt a rush of blood going to my head and I feared I was having a stroke. I have since become more assertive, and I am firm when asking for breaks pointing out that, “the interpreter needs a XX-minute break in order to protect the accuracy of the record… and in adherence to the professional code of ethics,” but even with this caveat judges still challenge the request, and it is common to hear comments about interpreters being “ divas, ” or worse.

The professional code of ethics in one of the states where I work most often not only calls for a high level of accuracy, but also a duty to report any impediments to compliance with the code. Interpreters are specifically required to:

As recently as this past week, I asked the judge for a break as he was reading a decision for the record. Although the judge approved my request in open court and on the record, he added that other interpreters do not ask for breaks and, to make matters worse, they do not convey to the LEP the jurisprudence he cites. They simply say “legal citation.” All I could do was inform the judge that I had been interpreting for more than 17 years, and it was customary to ask for a break whenever an interpreter felt the accuracy of their rendition might suffer due to mental fatigue. Although that judge may have me barred from his courtroom, the real concern for me is knowing that other interpreters have agreed to keep going without asking for a break. That tells me that errors caused by mental fatigue continue to be a threat to due process. We, as professional interpreters, are the ones who must take responsibility for the consequences of mental fatigue on an LEP’s right to due process and abide by our code of ethics. The buck stops with us.

Whose responsibility is it to comply with the code of ethics?
In which specific ways can we prepare for situations like this?
What do we need to become assertive when asking for breaks?
What steps must we make to incentivize coordinators to implement team interpreting?

The images used in this post are sourced from Unsplash. They are used for illustrative purposes only.

¹ Team Interpreting In Court-Related Proceedings , NAJIT Position Paper. Available at

https://najit.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Team-Interpreting-5.2020.pdf

² 63.08 Assessing and reporting impediments to performance . Available at

https://www.wicourts.gov/services/interpreter/ethics.htm

Additional References:

Gile Daniel. (2002) “ Conference Interpreting as a Cognitive Management Problem. ” In F. Pochacker and M. Shlesinger, eds., The Interpreting Studies Reader , Routledge.

Moser-Mercer, Barbara, Alexander Künzli and Maja Korac. (1998) “ Prolonged turns in interpreting: effects on quality, physiological and psychological stress (Pilot study). ” Interpreting 3: 47-64.

Portrait of a woman in a blue blazer and glasses, smiling warmly with colorful tinsel in her hair

Hilda Shymanik

Blog Writer and proofreader

I believe that the honest sharing of our experiences, both from our professional and personal lives, enriches the community and creates bonds that go beyond our association and help grow friendships to last a lifetime.

In my spare time, I spend time with my numerous family, study, practice, read voraciously, and knit all winter long.

Interpreter’s Fatigue: A Real Threat to Due Process

By Hilda Shymanik

“assess at all times their ability to deliver their services. When interpreters have any reservation about their ability to satisfy an assignment competently, the interpreters shall immediately convey that reservation to the appropriate judicial authority. Interpreters should notify the judge of the need to take periodic breaks in order to maintain mental and physical alertness and prevent interpreter fatigue. Interpreters should inform the court when the use of team interpreting is necessary”.²

Please let me know what you think about this subject:

Your comments are helpful, and we all learn from each other, so please share!

Let’s Test Your Ethics: Public Record vs. Confidentiality

Thu, 12 Dec 2024 15:09:00 GMT

Remember, there’s rarely a one-size-fits-all solution to ethical dilemmas. Your unique perspective, shaped by your experiences and values, is invaluable to this conversation.

Exploring ethical principles: A foundation for professional integrity in translation and interpretation

You are translating documents for a public records request related to a controversial legal case. As you sift through the materials, you find sensitive information that was inadvertently included but should remain confidential. The agency has asked for a straightforward translation for public consumption.

As you consider your options, you realize the following:

If you redact the sensitive information , the agency might accuse you of overstepping your role as a translator, which could harm your professional relationship and potentially lead to liability for not following instructions.
If you translate the documents as instructed , you risk exposing private information that could harm individuals involved in the case or compromise the integrity of the legal process.

To complicate matters, the sensitive information includes personally identifiable details about a minor involved in the case, whose safety could be at risk if this information is made public.

1. What would you do in this situation?

2. How do you weigh the agency’s instructions against your ethical duty to protect confidentiality?

3. What role do potential consequences, such as harm to the minor, play in your decision-making?

4. Would consulting with a supervisor or legal advisor help resolve the dilemma, or could that complicate things further?

A dictionary: a vital tool for interpreters and translators in navigating linguistic precision

We’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments!

How would you handle this ethical dilemma?
Have you faced a similar situation?
What principles guide your decision-making in scenarios like this?

Thank you for reading!

The NAJIT Observer Team

The images used in this post are sourced from Unsplash. They are used for illustrative purposes only.

Let’s Test Your Ethics

The NAJIT Observer Team

Welcome to “Let’s Test Your Ethics”

Ethical Dilemma: Public Record vs. Confidentiality

The Situation

Question:

Should you redact the confidential information before translating, adhering to ethical obligations but potentially facing repercussions from the agency, or do you translate the documents exactly as instructed , fulfilling your professional duty but risking harm to vulnerable individuals?

Reflect on This:

Share Your Response

Disclaimer

About the LEP’s Right to “Hear Everything” in Court

Tue, 03 Dec 2024 17:39:00 GMT

The United States Supreme Court building, a symbol of justice and the rule of law

One of the rules of thumb that interpreters often follow in court is the if-then structure, which we should be able to use to make decisions based on Logic. If the English-speaker can hear it, then the non-English speaker has to hear it as well. It is a good principle to uphold when the Limited English Proficient (LEP) is the only defendant before the court. However, in courts where the case loads are exceedingly heavy, judges may group cases that share a common trait, such as the type of crime and type of proceeding. Groups of 10, 14, 20 defendants and even larger than that line up in front of the judge, and they all hear the same script with minor variations tailored to the specific circumstances of each defendant. Sometimes English-speakers and non-English speakers are grouped together, so there will be an interpreter or a team of interpreters for the non-English speakers (I have seen this done with Spanish-speaking defendants only, so I don’t really know if it is done with speakers of other languages). As the judge begins to address each defendant individually during certain portions of the proceeding, I have noticed that some interpreters want to apply the same if-then rule and proceed to interpret whatever the judge is saying to one of the English-speaking defendants in the group, because if the English-speaker can hear it, then the non-English speaker has to hear it as well. But this is a false premise, and I will explain why.

Interpreters should consider each case in the group as a separate case and look at each LEP defendant as if he or she were in court alone, not in a group. This is what the judge is doing, except that we don’t see it from our vantage point. Judges have each case file in front of them and are considering each case individually, separate from one another. No more can the judge conflate the cases than the interpreter can. The obligation imposed by statute and case law on the interpreter is to interpret everything that happens in court as it refers solely to that LEP defendant’s case, not to everything that is unrelated and irrelevant as far as the defendant’s constitutional rights are concerned. The right to hear and understand everything that happens in court is specifically related to a proceeding involving a defendant, where the Fifth, Sixth, and Fourteenth Amendments guarantee that all criminal defendants have a fair trial, are informed of the nature and cause of the accusation against them, have an opportunity to confront the witnesses against them, have the assistance of counsel for their defense and equal protection under the law. The case law in the United States has established the link between constitutional protections and the appointment of an interpreter for an LEP defendant.

Defendants standing in line in a courtroom, awaiting their hearing

Garcia v. State , 149 S.W.3d 135, 140-41 (Tex. Crim. App. 2004).

So even when there are other English-speaking defendants in the courtroom being arraigned, or pleading guilty, or coming for an initial appearance together with the non-English speakers in the same group, the interpreter is there for the LEPs as if each one were there alone standing before the judge. That is the judiciary interpreter’s legal obligation. It is not to interpret everything that happens in other cases unrelated to the LEP; it is only to interpret everything that happens in that LEP’s case .

By extending the LEP’s right to hear and understand what is happening in court to unrelated matters “because the English-speaker would hear it” is merely increasing the interpreter’s cognitive load unnecessarily and, consequently, accelerating the onset of mental fatigue and the risk of mistakes. Whenever we have groups of English-speaking and non-English speaking defendants together, we should take advantage of any opportunity to rest whenever there is a case in the group proceeding that does not require an interpreter. An interpreter’s job is hard enough when there is just one defendant in one case. We don’t need to make it any harder by adding on interpreting duties that neither statutes nor case law have ever required of us.

I realize this may not be what many interpreters have been taught, but I would like to know if, given this legal framework, does this practice make more sense to you than interpreting everything said in the courtroom even when it does not pertain to the LEP’s case?

Thank you for reading!

This post includes some AI-created images, crafted specifically for this content. Additionally, the author has consented to the use of their image in this blog.

Confident and approachable, a professional portrait of an experienced woman

Janis Palma has been a federally certified English<>Spanish judiciary interpreter since 1981. She recently finished a Ph.D. in Language Studies and a Master in Legal Studies (MLS). She also holds an M.A. in literature and history from the Centro de Estudios Avanzados de Puerto Rico y el Caribe. Thanks to her participation in SSTI’s Research Collaborative, her main focus is now on research and is pursuing a second Ph.D. in Rhetoric, Communication, and Information Design at Clemson University. After working for over 40-some years as both staff and freelance in courts around the country, Janis is now retired-ish, living in San Antonio, Texas, close to her daughter and two of her youngest grandchildren. When she is not volunteering for NAJIT, she likes to get creative, whether it’s painting, making soaps, wiring lamps, or re-finishing a table.

About the LEP’s Right to “Hear Everything” in Court

Janis Palma

The Sixth Amendment to the Constitution guarantees an accused in a criminal prosecution the right to be confronted with the witnesses against him. One of the most basic of the rights guaranteed by the Confrontation Clause is the accused’s right to be present in the courtroom during his trial. The right to be present includes the right to understand the testimony of the witnesses. […] We have previously acknowledged that providing an interpreter to an accused who does not understand English is required by the Confrontation Clause.

The Importance of Being Called by Your Name

Mon, 25 Nov 2024 14:47:00 GMT

As the year draws close to an end, we all seem to have different reasons to be scrambling about. Perhaps, in a rush to close business deals or to buy Christmas presents, or planning holiday events.

We get so caught up in our tasks that we may forget the little things in life: such as your name, and the sound of it.

Names painted on a bench as a tribute, featuring ‘Robert Wise’ prominently

I was prompted to write about this topic because of an email I received one morning last week. A colleague of mine here at NAJIT kindly sent an email just to ask me about my preferred name—given that I have a very long and unusual name.

This colleague not only has seniority in terms of age, but also in terms of work experience as a fellow linguist. This is someone for whom I have great respect.

That simple email showed me that he has a superb level of EQ and instilled a sense of gratitude in me. Unless you were born with easy-to-pronounce names like John, Mary, and David, you know very well how having a difficult name to pronounce can be quite embarrassing at times.

It can draw unwanted attention and/or can sound funny when others try to pronounce it. Many of my colleagues in the interpreting world who moved to the U.S. from another country, myself included, may have lived through the waiting room experience, the one when the nurse comes out of the exam room, looks down at the chart and all she can say is “Mr./Mrs.…uh…” That’s when it’s usually you, the one with a name that may be challenging to pronounce, and I mean both first and last names in my case.

For many people, hearing others say your name with the correct pronunciation/articulation may not be that important. Or, even worse, there may be some who have given up and/or gotten used to the incorrect version of their names. Like when my father lived in Thailand and most of the mail he received while he was there came addresses to a Mr. Brian Health. Well, his name was Brian Heath. He didn’t fuss over it and simply got used to it.

Colorful name cards with calligraphy, celebrating individuality

My last name is pronounced “win” as in “win-dow.” But I just roll with everyone pronouncing it “hun”. It’s easier that way. I got used to it. As a matter of fact, it surprises me when occasionally people get it right.

The people that we serve as interpreters, however, those who need our services, are people who speak a language other than English and their names are in another language. Unless it’s a joyous event, like a marriage ceremony, my experience in court with LEPs [Limited English Proficient individuals] are usually to assist them maneuver through the legal process. They are in a room with intimidating figures who are speaking a language that they don’t really understand. While going to court may be another work day for us, but it can be a life-changing event for some. Making a small effort to correctly pronounce their names can make them feel not only heard, but also respected. It is a small way to validate their identities as individuals.

A meeting in progress, with one individual speaking to a group

November is notorious for turkey dinner, pumpkin pie and gratitude.

Sometimes it’s ok to slow down a little. Take a quick stop and smell the roses. A simple act like this could make someone’s day or even change their life.

Thank you for reading!

The author has consented to the use of their image in this blog. Additionally, all other images featured herein are sourced from Unsplash, a platform that offers high-quality photos free for both personal and commercial use without requiring attribution.

A professional portrait of a smiling woman exuding confidence and warmth

The Importance of Being Called by Your Nam e

By: Ann Heath-Huynh

What has been your experience when working with LEPs when their names are not pronounced correctly in court?

Were you able to do something to make them feel that their voices are being heard?

The Day of the Dead: El Día de Muertos – A Lesson in Adapting to Change

Tue, 19 Nov 2024 16:20:00 GMT

A striking portrayal of La Catrina in front of an intricately carved stone archway during El Día de Muertos celebrations

If you are unfamiliar with El Día de Muertos [Day of the Dead], it’s all about honoring, celebrating and remembering loved ones who have left this world. I would like to tell you about my experience with this tradition and why it brings peace and hope to my life: I grew up in a home with a Mexican dad and an American mom. Back in the early 70s in Mexico City, El Día de Muertos tradition was not widely celebrated. However, you can leave it to a linguist’s inquisitive mind, like mine, to recall information from my childhood with great detail.

A vibrant El Día de Muertos ofrenda honoring departed loved ones, adorned with colorful marigolds, candles, sugar skulls, and traditional offerings

I can remember, when my mother, a translator, and interpreter, took an interest in the tradition, and she set up an ofrenda [offering/altar] for those in the family who had passed. After my mother’s first attempt to celebrate the holiday, the whole family gradually began to enjoy it. The family moved to Xalapa, a city in the state of Veracruz, where the tradition was alive and well. There, families would make tamales and other traditional dishes for the festivity. The smell of copal [a type of incense] and cempasúchil [marigold flowers] would fill the air, and the city was bustling with street markets offering fruit, flowers, and papel picado [paper decorations] for the ofrendas: to honor the dead. At school, I would learn about the indigenous roots of the tradition and the meaning of the different elements in the ofrendas. In hindsight, I think about how life is ephemeral, and there are so many of the elements depicting that in an ofrenda for Día de Muertos: The papel picado, cempasúchil, decompose and wither away, and the following year, there will be new cempasúchil, more food, and the chance to create the ofrenda anew, blooming with new energy, carrying forward the memories and love of those who came before.

Nowadays, El Día de Muertos has gained immense popularity beyond Mexico’s borders. Many Latin American countries, along with other parts of the world, have had their own traditions for honoring the dead for centuries. At the same time, people who have recently discovered this tradition have embraced it in various ways—dressing up as skeletons, putting up decorations, or even watching a Día de Muertos -themed movie.

Dancers in vibrant butterfly-inspired dresses celebrate El Día de Muertos during a parade through the historic streets of Mexico City

In stark contrast to the relative invisibility of Día de Muertos in many parts of Mexico City just a few decades ago, the city now hosts a vibrant parade featuring elaborate floats and people dressed as catrinas y catrines [elegantly attired skeletons].

Catrina y catrines [elegantly attired giant skeletons] sculptures decorated for Día de Muertos festivities, showcasing traditional elements like marigolds, musical instruments, and colorful headdresses

In my opinion, there are many reasons to adopt this tradition in a way that works for you and your culture. Taking the time to celebrate your ancestors and loved ones who have passed can be a way of feeling more connected to them. Making food, handcrafting decorations, or simply lighting a candle and pouring a glass of water can channel the need to feel close to those we love on the other side of the veil.

When you’re creating an ofrenda , if possible, try to use items that are either part of your everyday life or are biodegradable and handmade. There is no soul in a mass-produced plastic decoration for El Día de Muertos !

Take out your grandmother’s special china.

Play your loved one’s favorite tunes.

Sip on a beverage as you contemplate your offering to the people you honor and remember. Make a toast.

Then, dance with the living, to celebrate life.

As the offerings of the El Día de Muertos are fleeting and evolving, so is life. Change on all fronts is guaranteed. Remember to harbor hope and find new ways to build strong ties to the people around you.

Reme Bashi’s reflection on Día de Muertos [Day of the Dead] highlights the beauty of adapting traditions over time and how tradition helps us honor those who have passed while celebrating life. As interpreters and translators, embracing cultural practices like this offers more than just a professional advantage—it fosters personal growth too. Understanding the deep cultural significance of Día de Muertos helps us navigate sensitive topics such as death and remembrance with empathy and respect, enhancing our cultural competence.

Reme’s experience of adapting the Día de Muertos celebration to fit her family’s culture reminds us that, like the offerings on an ofrenda , our work is constantly evolving. By respecting and learning from traditions like this, we enrich our ability to connect with the people we serve, providing not just accurate transfers of language but a meaningful, culturally sensitive experience.

In the end, Día de Muertos teaches us that life, like our work, is about building connections— whether through honoring the past or celebrating the living —and that the traditions we engage with, both personally and professionally, can help us navigate the changes we face.

Take a moment to reflect on the cultural traditions you encounter in your work: How can they deepen your understanding and enhance your practice as an interpreter or translator?

Share your thoughts or experiences with us in the comments, and consider how embracing these traditions can help you build stronger connections with the communities you serve.

Thanks for reading, until next time!

Now, go celebrate, make some memories, and remember: life’s for the living—so go dance like it’s a fiesta [party]!

The authors have consented to the use of their images in this blog.

A woman with a warm smile in the autumn sunlight

Reme Bashi has been a certified court interpreter in Wisconsin since 2008. She began her career as an interpreter and translator in Mexico, at the University of Veracruz, where she majored in pedagogy. Being bilingual in English and Spanish lead her to language teaching and then to translation and interpreting. She was a conference interpreter for several years, interpreting for the media and government events in Mexico.

In the Midwest, Bashi has interpreted in a variety of settings – education, manufacturing, legal, and community. When she’s not interpreting, she likes to learn about new subjects, something that she considers pivotal to becoming a more proficient language access professional. Recently she has immersed herself in hospitality, urban gardening, and ancestry research.

A warm expression with a touch of bold color, embracing the natural beauty of a woman

Julli Jaramillo is the newest Publishing Coordinator and Editor-in-Chief for NAJIT. She holds a master’s degree in Translation from NYU and has extensive experience in quality assurance, content development, and strategic growth. Passionate about NAJIT’s mission to uphold ethical standards for judiciary translators and interpreters, she is dedicated to driving the organization’s growth while ensuring its publications meet high-quality standards and adapt to evolving industry demands. In her free time, Julli enjoys baking and creating art.

Feel free to reach out to her ( tno_editor@najit.org ) to chat about the NAJIT Observer or Proteus —she is excited to collaborate!

The Day of the Dead: El Día de Muertos –

A Lesson in Adapting to Change

By Reme Bashi

In a recent blog post, Something We Never Talk About , Janis Palma touched on how infrequently we speak of death and how healing it can be to do it. El Día de Muertos is an invitation to do just that. Singing, sharing food and talking about death is how we navigate loss and celebrate life. It’s all a part of the ritual in late October and early November. In Mexico, the days prior to November 1 st and 2 nd , newspapers publish verses called Calaveras [Skulls]. These are short, playful rhymes about prominent people in a community. The publications can ridicule politicians, criticize leaders, and remind us, no matter who we are or what we do, un día te va a llevar la calaca , [death will take you one day].

Reflection: Embracing Cultural Traditions for Connection and Growth

By: Julli Jaramillo

Breaking Attorney Client Privilege: “Who, Me?”

Wed, 13 Nov 2024 16:51:00 GMT

A glimpse of popular productivity and design tools on a device screen, including Zoom for virtual meetings.

A few months ago, while working remotely during a bond hearing, I was interpreting in the consecutive mode when the judge asked a Limited English Proficient (LEP) individual if he understood what the judge had explained. As we may all know, litigants are not always able, or capable, socially and culturally speaking to give a seemingly logical answer such as a yes or a no.

Instead, at every opportunity of answering that very simple question, he would go on to answer that he did feel guilty, that he considered himself guilty, and all sorts of alternative answers that included the word guilty.

Every time, the judge repeated the question, as soon as the LEP started speaking in narrative style, his attorney shouted over him to tell him to stop and just answer the question, which caused the attorney’s screen to pop up in the forefront, as the conference call was set up to feature the speaker on the screen.

The gavel – a symbol of justice, power, and decision-making.

As the LEP tried to answer the question for about the fifth time, I got the opportunity to interpret before the attorney started shouting because he had momentarily muted his microphone (I could see his mouth moving, but no sound was coming out). What followed was his attorney’s furious shouting at me for interpreting, because according to him, I was violating attorney-client privilege, since his client probably believed that he was speaking to his attorney in confidence rather than to everyone else on the call.

The defendant’s attorney went on to explain that his client had never used or sat in front of a computer before and that this was the first time, that because the counsel’s face was on-screen, sometimes at the forefront or in the back, his client believed he was under the protection of attorney-client privileged communication.
I can imagine that the attorney may have a point, however, warning his client about not saying anything relating to the case at this first hearing was his responsibility. When working remotely, I do not have the opportunity to speak for a few minutes with a defendant before the hearing to inform him that everything he says in Spanish will be repeated for judges and counsel to hear, as I am not involved in how or when they are brought in to court when the hearing is via zoom. I must assume that he already knows that; “But does he?”

Virtual collaboration made easy – participants gathered online via Zoom, working from the comfort of their home office.

I had the chance to consult with a few judges later—not the one in question—and, as we learned from our training, the litmus test is: ‘If the person had spoken in English, everyone would have heard him.’
Of course, the attorney was immediately chastised for trying to pull a fast one, but these things do happen; especially with an LEP person and the level of technical sophistication he had. This is a situation for which no amount of experience prepares you for.

In my opinion, there was nothing for the interpreter to do but interpret unless ordered not to by the one person who could have done that: the judge .

Leave your opinion below and tell me, what would you have done?

Thank you for reading The NAJIT Observer’s Blog!

Portrait of a woman in a blue blazer and glasses, smiling warmly with colorful tinsel in her hair

Hilda Zavala-Shymanik is a state certified/approved Spanish court interpreter and translator with more than seventeen years of experience in legal, medical, corporate, and non-profit settings in New York, New Jersey, Illinois, and Wisconsin and is certified/approved in those four states. Hilda is a former Vice Chair, Board Member, Treasurer, Conference Committee Chair, member of the Training and Education and Advocacy Committees, and current member of the blog team and Chair of the Elections Committee of the National Association of Judiciary Interpreters and Translators, as well as former president of the New York Circle of Translators.

She is an active and voting member of NAJIT, ATA, MATI and other professional groups. Hilda has two certificates in Legal Interpreting in Spanish and English, the latest one from NYU. Hilda is the current staff interpreter of the 23rd Illinois Judicial Circuit, as well as a Cook County (Illinois) Spanish Interpreter employee. Hilda is a former Staff Interpreter at Essex County Superior Court in New Jersey, where she worked for six years. Born in Chicago, Hilda lived for twenty years in Mexico and loves traveling. She continuously looks for opportunities to promote and advance the interpreting profession.

Breaking Attorney Client Privilege: “Who, Me?”

By: Hilda Shymanik

Am I guilty as charged?

It’s Always a Good Day to Make New Friends

Tue, 05 Nov 2024 15:37:00 GMT

Meet NAJIT’s new Publishing Coordinator and Editor-In-Chief, Julli Jaramillo. Her C.V. will tell you that she graduated from New York University with a Master’s in Translation, specializing in Spanish-to-English and legal translation. Her background includes extensive work with nonprofits, and ample experience in quality assurance, content development, and strategic growth. In her free time, Julli enjoys baking and creating art. Beyond what we can read in her bio sketch at the end of a blog, which talks about someone passionate about NAJIT’s mission, growth, and her commitment to high-quality standards, there is a dynamic young woman who has jumped head-first into this new role. This is a first for both NAJIT and Julli, and she already has a 4-week plan and all kinds of great ideas to make The NAJIT Observer (TNO) and Proteus more engaging, more appealing to readers, and certainly more relevant for all of you.

Greetings, everyone! I’m delighted to join you all as the new Publishing Coordinator and Editor-in-Chief at NAJIT. What excites me most about this role is the chance to engage with such a dynamic community of interpreters and translators. I’m eager to foster connections, amplify voices within our field, and spark conversations that matter. My approach is centered on collaboration and ensuring that The NAJIT Observer and Proteus reflect the diversity, expertise, and shared experiences of our readership. I can’t wait to hear from you, learn alongside you, and make our content a place you look forward to visiting week after week.

And as long as we are making introductions, meet the rest of the TNO team! These are the volunteer writers who infuse life into this NAJIT weekly feature.

Our team is made up of experienced professionals, each bringing unique skills and perspectives to the table. Together, we are committed to creating a platform that serves the needs of our community, sparking conversations on industry trends, ethical dilemmas, and the challenges we all encounter in this ever-evolving field. We’re here to inspire, inform, and build a sense of connection that transcends the written word, turning our shared experiences into opportunities for growth and collaboration.

Hi, I’m Hilda Shymanik, and I have worked in the legal, medical, community, and conference fields for eighteen years. I have a background in accounting, administration, and entrepreneurial ventures. As a writer, I’m dedicated to exploring topics relating to ethical dilemmas and finding ways to improve our standing among professionals we interact with, in my case, mostly judges, attorneys, clerks, bailiffs, investigators, expert witnesses, etc. I believe that the honest sharing of our experiences, both from our professional and personal lives, enriches the community and creates bonds that go beyond our association and help grow friendships to last a lifetime. In my spare time, I spend time with my numerous family, study, practice, read voraciously, and knit all winter long. I am truly excited to have the opportunity to contribute to this great team of dedicated volunteers!

Hello! I’m Janis Palma, and I’m excited to contribute to the blog as a writer and proofreader. With a background in language, literature, history, law, and their intersections with interpreting and translation in the legal field, I’m passionate about research and its practical application to further our professional expertise and the recognition we deserve. My goal is to bring a fresh perspective on topics that will challenge you to think outside the box and create content that resonates with you all.

We’re excited to introduce fresh additions and revive beloved content to make The NAJIT Observer more than just an information source—it’s a place where connections thrive. Our goal is to complement Proteus themes while offering practical and engaging content. Here’s what you can look forward to:

Ethics Corner: “Let’s Test Your Ethics” An interactive series presenting ethical scenarios for readers to share perspectives and navigate challenges together.
Cultural Insights Explore global legal traditions and cultural nuances to enrich your understanding and appreciation of diverse communication.
Tools of the Trade Stay informed with reviews of top AI tools and resources that boost productivity and precision in legal translation and interpretation. Whether it’s reviewing new technology or sharing practical uses, this segment keeps you informed on advancements that matter.
The Couch Series Revamped Back by popular demand, The Couch is a space for colleagues to seek advice on challenges they face. This series invites shared insights, fostering a supportive professional community. We welcome new submissions to keep the dialogue lively and meaningful (we have set up a submission form to make it more accessible to our community).
Submit your ideas here: https://forms.gle/ouRXnPQa6yharvxbA

Please note that while we are expanding our content to reflect the evolving nature of our fields, we remain dedicated to the core values and content that have defined TNO. These new segments, alongside our established features, aim to enrich our platform by fostering diversity, engagement, and support for our community, all while honoring our history and commitment to quality.

We have a goal to create a space where interpreters and translators can engage in discussions, share best practices, and stay informed on important issues. The NAJIT Observer is about building connections—fostering friendships, partnerships, and a sense of belonging that empowers us all.

Join us in shaping TNO by sharing feedback, proposing topics, and offering insights. Your voice ensures that this blog stays dynamic and reflects the diversity of our field. Remember, it’s always a good day to make a friend. Let’s grow and learn together as a community. Thank you for being part of this journey with us.

Over and Out,
The NAJIT Observer Team

Please note that all photos included in this post have been provided by our blog contributors

It’s Always a Good Day to Make New Friends

By: The NAJIT Observer

A message from Julli Jaramillo:

Who We Are: The Heart of TNO

Meet the Team:

Hilda Shymanik

Blog Writer and Proofreader

Janis Palma

Blog Writer and Proofreader

Ann (Jiraporn) Heath-Huynh

Blog Writer

Athena Matilsky

Blog Writer

Reme Bashi

Blog Writer and Proofreader

What’s New: Building Connections Through Engaging Content

Our Vision

Looking Ahead

Something We Never Talk About

Thu, 24 Oct 2024 16:01:00 GMT

There’s something we never want to talk about. Not unless it comes knocking on our door. But lately, it’s been knocking on many people’s doors, people I know, people I don’t know, one right after the other: mothers, fathers, leaving us grown children orphaned and disoriented. They were an anchor we never knew was there until it was suddenly lifted and gone. Maybe that’s why we don’t talk about it. Death is like a Beetlejuice incantation: say it three times and it will appear.

Of course, we know better. We are rational and intelligent creatures, are we not? We don’t talk about death simply because it’s not polite. Or is it, maybe, because it’s depressing? Or maybe because we just don’t want to think it will happen to us? Or to someone we love? And then it happens. And we are caught completely off guard, unable to figure out what to do, what to think, what to feel.

The world as we knew it gets turned upside down and right side out. Even when we are face to face with its imminent arrival and think we are prepared to tackle whatever comes our way, we can never be truly prepared to confront Death on its terms. It is an unspeakable vortex that will drain all your tears, it will suck in all your energy and leave you feeling like you just climbed Mt. Everest with no prior training.

You look around you and realize your brain should be firing synapses that are not firing at all. You tell yourself it will pass, but a day, a week, a month goes by, and it doesn’t quite pass. There is still that lingering feeling that something is amiss. Synapses still not firing as they should.

You think to yourself sometimes, “I should be okay by now.” It’s been a month, six months, a year. But the truth is that grief has no timeline, no deadline, grief will take as long as it takes. When someone you love dies, there will always be a very real sense that “something is missing.” You try to put on a brave face, you say, “I’m okay.” But the anchor has been lifted, you know you are adrift. How in the world do you explain that to people who ask, “how are you?”

“I’m okay.”

“How can I help?”

“I’m okay.”

Death will teach you to lie, even if you have never lied before. It will teach you to hide so no one has to talk about it, think about it, or deal with the unpleasantness of Death. Or maybe it will be an opportunity to tear down the metaphorical wall that shields us from facing the possibility of death, the reality of death. We are imperfect and mortal and finite, so death for us is as much a certainty as needing air to breathe. Not that we talk much about needing air to breathe, either. I suppose that’s because a lack of air would lead to the inevitable demise of our corporeal existence. Death. We do not want to talk about it.

No matter what we think about Death or what we believe about the afterlife, it hardly seems something to be avoided in casual conversations. I suspect that if we were to talk more openly about life and death, we would be much better prepared to face the enormous void left in our hearts and souls when a loved one passes away.

I am still caught in that semi-numbness of grief, but I thought it would be good to write about it, to encourage others to talk about it. To all my friends who have lost a parent, a child, or a loved one, I hope they have found joy and eternal peace in their next journey and wish you all the inner strength to anchor your lives again.

__________________________________

Finding Strength and Purpose Through Grief

By Julli Jaramillo

Janis Palma’s “Something We Never Talk About” delves into a deeply personal and universal experience—grief. As translators and interpreters, we often find ourselves navigating emotions not only in our work but also in our personal lives. Janis’s heartfelt reflection serves as a poignant reminder of how loss touches each of us, regardless of our path, age, or circumstances. The inevitability of death can catch us off guard and leave a lasting impact—and that’s entirely natural and it is okay for us not to be okay.

Grief is something we seldom discuss, yet it profoundly shapes how we approach our roles. In our field, we may often find ourselves in moments of deep vulnerability—conveying or living stories of hardship, loss, and transformation. It’s important to acknowledge how our own emotions, especially our experiences with grief, can influence the way we interpret and navigate these situations.

In light of Janis’s reflections, I’d like to offer some additional insights and resources that may resonate with others in our profession. As we navigate the complexities of grief, it’s helpful to explore ways to care for ourselves and support one another. Below are a few suggestions and resources that might provide guidance:

Acknowledge and Share: Just as Janis encourages in her piece, talking about grief can be a path toward healing. Whether through conversations with colleagues or sharing memories with loved ones, openness can ease the burden.
Professional Support: For those of us dealing with grief in the workplace, it may be beneficial to seek out resources specifically aimed at helping language professionals manage emotional stress. The American Psychological Association (APA) offers guidance on grief, which can provide practical steps for navigating your journey.
Self-care and Connection: As interpreters and translators, our work often requires immense mental and emotional energy. It’s important to take care of ourselves, giving ourselves permission to rest and find peace in small moments. Reaching out to others, as Janis highlights, can create a sense of solidarity and healing.
Honor Their Memory: Finding ways to remember and celebrate those we’ve lost can help bring comfort and meaning. Whether through a quiet reflection or a shared memory, keeping their legacy alive allows us to carry their presence forward while continuing to heal.

These resources and reflections serve as a reminder that, while grief is a deeply personal journey, it’s one we don’t have to walk alone.

To further explore this topic, here are two stories from CNN that explore grief and loss:

Together, Janis’s words and these resources remind us that while grief may never fully disappear, we can find ways to live alongside it. Through our memories and our shared experiences, we carry forward the legacies of those we’ve lost while supporting each other.

Thank you, Janis, for bringing such an essential conversation to the forefront. Your voice is a reminder of the strength we all possess, and I hope this piece offers additional support for anyone facing similar emotions.

Janis Palma has been a federally certified English<>Spanish judiciary interpreter since 1981. She recently obtained her Master in Legal Studies (MLS) degree from Arizona State University and holds an M.A. in literature and history from the Centro de Estudios Avanzados de Puerto Rico y el Caribe. Her experience includes conference work in the private sector and seminar interpreting for the U.S. State Department. She has been a consultant for various higher education institutions, professional associations, and government agencies on judiciary interpreting and translating issues. She worked as an independent contractor for over twenty years in federal, state, and immigration courts around the U.S. before taking a full-time job. Janis joined the U.S. District Courts in Puerto Rico as a staff interpreter in April 2002 and retired in 2017. She now lives in San Antonio, Texas, embracing the joys of being a grandmother. She also enjoys volunteering for her professional associations, has been on the SSTI and TAJIT Boards, and is the past Chair of the NAJIT Board of Directors. Contact: palmajanis88@gmail.com .

Jaramillo, Julli , is the newest Publishing Coordinator and Editor-in-Chief for NAJIT. She holds a master’s degree in Translation from NYU and has extensive experience in quality assurance, content development, and strategic growth. Passionate about NAJIT’s mission to uphold ethical standards for judiciary translators and interpreters, she is dedicated to driving the organization’s growth while ensuring its publications meet high-quality standards and adapt to evolving industry demands. In her free time, Julli enjoys baking and creating art.

Feel free to reach out to her ( tno_editor@najit.org ) to chat about the NAJIT Observer or Proteus —she is excited to collaborate!

I cannot say I am a religious person. I am, however, very much attuned to the spiritual, the intangible, the mysterious and, yes, even the magical undertones of our Earthly existence. I had a very dear friend who did not believe in anything after this life. She passed away 20 years ago. I have always wondered what she found when she crossed to the other side of this existence. I had a son who believed in the teachings of Lao Tzu and Buddha. He passed away 10 years ago and I am sure his incorporeal being now lives in eternal bliss. My mother passed away four years ago and a few weeks ago my father passed away. They both believed in Heaven, so I am sure they are both together there right now, eternally happy. That may be one of the positive sides of institutionalized religions: the conversation about the afterlife is always right there, slightly beneath the surface.

The Reminder on Consideration for Team Interpreting

Mon, 14 Oct 2024 17:45:00 GMT

Have you ever been on assignments that booked you for a hearing but turned out to be a full-length trial? One that involves extensive evidence submission and multiple witnesses. These situations are inevitable as sometimes thing changes at the last minute. But what can we do about this? What can we do to raise awareness on the issue so everyone can benefit from having the interpreter in the room?

Even as a seasoned interpreter, solo interpreting over sixty (60) minutes greatly affects the interpreter’s mental capacity. Verbal exchanges between attorneys are not simple conversations between colleagues. They are carefully crafted arguments, probing questions, and legal citations. All of which require the interpreter’s intense concentration to accurately convey the actual meaning from one language to another.

Similarly, a legal procedure is no different. It can affect a person’s life and livelihood. Can and will the judicial system afford that? As administrator of justice, can you afford to have an exhausted interpreter misinterpreting in court? This is something that can be prevented and should be carefully considered if we are doing our best to serve justice to all parties involved.

Citing NAJIT’s position paper, TEAM INTERPRETING IN COURT-RELATED PROCEEDINGS ,

“The length of time an interpreter can effectively focus on processing complex information delivered at high speeds and render it accurately and immediately into another language is finite. An interpreter suffering from mental fatigue is more likely to make mistakes that could negatively affect the integrity of the interpretation which, in turn, could be extremely detrimental to defendants, litigants, witnesses, victims, and the judicial process in general. Having reached the point of cognitive fatigue, the interpreter ’ s ability to self-monitor and self-correct is compromised, thus jeopardizing a faithful and complete interpretation”

NAJIT’s opinion on the issue of interpreters’ mental fatigue is one of many cases circling the web. Yet, at times, it is still an uphill battle for court interpreters to ask for fair work conditions that will foster good results for all parties involved, not set them up for failure.

The interpreter’s commitment to the court and the LEP is to provide a “faithful interpretation” from one language to another, to assist the judicial system to fairly administer justice and to provide the LEP with the constitutional rights (6th and 14th amendments) they are entitled to. Language access is essential to their ability to understand the legal proceedings. Having an incompetent interpreter or one at risk of delivering inaccurate interpretations will not only delay the process for all parties involved but can be seen as an obstruction of a fair trial, due process and language access.

When the situation calls for two interpreters and the court does not schedule for team interpreting, it is the interpreter’s responsibility to point out to the court the importance of a second interpreter. Limitations such as administrative issues, cost, or knowledge of the person assigning interpreters, etc. can be the reason. It is always helpful to check if you have a partner for team interpreting when scheduled to interpret in trials and long hearings. If cases arise when you need to work alone, requesting a break after 20-30 minutes is crucial to protect you and the quality of your interpretation. Don’t feel bad for wanting to do something right as the opposite can cause more unintended harm. A flight delay due to fixing a mechanical error is always better than the pilot taking the chance to fly an aircraft that will put everyone at risk. You cannot make everyone happy but safer is always better.

Ann (Jiraporn) Heath-Huynh grew up in a bilingual Thai-English household, using both languages in day-to-day life. Having lived on four continents, she now calls the U.S. home. Following the birth of her daughter in 2010, the chance to work in the language field afforded her an opportunity to change career directions; what began as a part-time job became a career that she is passionate about. After being added to the Maryland Judiciary’s roster of interpreters in 2015, many opportunities opened up to her, eventually leading to Department of State Conference Interpretation for Thai and English. Although she works mostly as a conference interpreter, she has always considered Maryland courts to be her home. Whenever an assignment is offered, she is always pleased to accept it and proudly wear her first-ever interpreter’s badge as a Maryland Judiciary Court Interpreter. Contact: ann.h.huynh@gmail.com

Main Graphic Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash, Body Photo by NordWood Themes on Unsplash

A report by the Scientific Expert Panel on Air Traffic Controller Safety, Work Hours, and Health outlined that ATCs are not to work alone for over two hours. This is mainly due to the nature of their job which involves the safety of the passengers.

If I Had the Ear of an Attorney or Judge for One Hour

Wed, 02 Oct 2024 13:44:00 GMT

When the topic comes up among my colleagues of discussing our work as interpreters with lawyers and judges, they unanimously and enthusiastically agree that we have a lot to tell them. The following is the gist of what I would say upon such an opportunity.

I would start out with the basics: Translation is all transfer of meaning from one language to another. Interpreting is the oral translation of language. There are three modes of interpreting: simultaneous, consecutive, and sight translation. The simultaneous mode is the most prevalent in court. The interpreter must verbally, or signing, translate everything that is said in a proceeding from the language of the court into the language of the limited-English-proficient (LEP) court user. Although the translation is not literal, it must capture every feature of the original utterance. The consecutive mode is used for question-and-answer exchanges, attorney-client interviews and witness examination being the most frequent settings. The interpreter must usually take notes as a crutch to preserve the original message in her consecutive delivery. Sight translation is a hybrid form of interpreting in which the interpreter orally or through signs translates a written document into the target language. This mode is used mainly when an LEP litigant needs to understand a document in English or if the court needs to understand a document written in a language other than the court’s language of record.

Interpreting is an extremely complex task requiring mastery of many subskills, such as the ability to listen, translate, speak, and monitor the rendition at the same time; native or near-native command of both working languages (at least at the level of two years of college or higher [1] ); an expansive vocabulary in a wide variety of topics; resourcefulness to find translation solutions for novel words and concepts; excellent diction; and the ability to work well under stress, among many others. Interpreters must also be constantly studying new words, concepts, and subject matters.

This goes to my next point: although there are brilliant individuals who are practically born interpreters, this is by no means the norm. You may be born with the potential to interpret, but interpreting is a skill acquired by much practice, study, and dedication to be constantly improving. While there are probably relatively few people in the U.S. who possess sufficient command of two languages to be able to become an interpreter, many fewer will actually become one. I believe this is because the road to mastering this profession is often hard to navigate, the process requires high perseverance, and the associated economic incentives often fall short.

Lawyers do their clients (and others) a great disservice by using non-interpreters to perform this highly specialized task. Interpreting is the most crucial element in bridging language barriers in court and being able to do it requires much preparation and experience. Using the daughter or the wife of a criminal defendant to interpret for the attorney and client is unreliable and may raise ethical concerns. One is the lack of impartiality, another is accuracy, and yet another is the huge burden it imposes on the family member. Research has shown that this act often causes lifelong traumas for the children of LEPs. [2]

Another way of doing LEPs a disservice is by not using team interpreting in proceedings that last over a half hour to forty-five minutes. Studies show that beyond the half hour mark, interpreters progressively make more and more mistakes. The “fabulous” interpreters who claim they never need a partner say so because they become so fatigued that they lose the ability to monitor their own performance. Besides the fact that interpreting with no rest for more than 45 minutes places an excessive cognitive demand on the interpreter, it can also have the unintended consequence of making a mockery of the justice LEPs are entitled to receive. It may even be as bad as having no interpreter at all because, in addition to the inevitable omissions, it may also introduce false and confusing information.

Interpreters need crystal clear sound to do their job adequately. If an interpreter is working in the simultaneous mode and the source utterances are not clear, the interpreter may become delayed in her rendition to the point of losing the thread, while the source language speech continues. Interpreters cannot interpret anything and everything you throw at them. If the source utterance is too fast, it will surely give rise to inaccuracies. Of course, the best interpreters can interpret very fast, but all it takes is one word the interpreter has to think about for an extra nanosecond to cause inaccuracies or omissions. We are not machines.

Also, be mindful that the interpreter has to be adept in the proceeding’s subject matter . If she is not interpreting it every day, she must study it. An “order to show cause,” “prosecution by information,” and “cross-grand jury notice” are not necessarily intuitive concepts that will roll off your tongue in the target language. Interpreters have to research.

Interpreters have an ethically complex job. It may be easy for interpreters to abstain from giving legal advice, but their daily experiences are fraught with ethical dilemmas. Giving an LEP litigant directions to the nearest subway stop is not a dilemma for me. Emphasizing to them on my own initiative the importance of coming back to court during their case is already more dubious. Giving my “reading” of their client to an attorney after their first interview, even more so. (“What’s his issue?”) The existing ethics training for interpreters has often fallen short because it evidently shies away from controversial issues that could present legal liabilities. In short, lawyers, judges, and interpreters should be in ongoing dialogue to facilitate the judicial process.

[1] NCSC. “Court Interpreter Resources.” NCSC, February 13, 2019. https://www.ncsc.org/education-and-careers/state-interpreter-certification.

[2] Pandya, Nishant. “Why We Shouldn’t Ask Kids to Interpret for Their Parents.” Children’s Hospital Association, October 26, 2023. https://www.childrenshospitals.org/news/childrens-hospitals-today/2023/10/why-we-shouldnt-ask-kids-to-interpret-for-their-parents.

Leonard Morin is a state and federally certified Spanish interpreter and a staff interpreter at Manhattan Criminal Court. He previously worked as a freelance translator and interpreter from 2004-2015. Leonard interprets Spanish and translates chiefly legal documents from Spanish, Dutch, and German into English. He served as a Delegate and subsequently as Court Interpreter Chapter Chair of Local 1070, District Council 37, of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), the union that represents court interpreters in New York City’s state courts. Prior to that, he served separate terms as president and secretary of the New York Circle of Translators. He earned a propedeuse degree in law in the Netherlands and graduated magna cum laude with a B.A. in Latin American Studies from Columbia University, where he won the 2004 Dr. Antonio G. Mier Prize for Excellence in Spanish and a Certificate in Recognition of Outstanding Achievement in the Study of German Language and Literature. Leonard also obtained certificates from the University of Arizona Court Interpreter Training Institute and the Southern California School of Interpretation. He has published numerous articles about translation, interpreting, and the T&I industry. Contact: leonard.morin@gmail.com

Main image by freepik

Teamwork in the Courtroom and Beyond

Tue, 24 Sep 2024 17:38:00 GMT

Any seasoned interpreter will tell you why we work in teams on long assignments. There is research on the matter of interpreter fatigue and the negative effect it has on accuracy and appropriate rendition. Team interpreting has been done at least since the Nuremberg trials, which began in 1945. Why, then, are some of us still struggling to adhere to the best practice of team interpreting?

Let’s move over the border just a few miles, into Illinois, where the interpreter certification program is fairly new. The Illinois Court Interpreter Program has taken the initiative to hear interpreters’ concerns and form a language access committee. However, real change can only happen when we all participate in these efforts. Interpreters in Illinois still face the challenge of educating clients on the importance of team interpreting. And while the court interpreter program may prove to be very useful in setting guidelines for court interpreting there, in the end it will be up to interpreters to create a culture of best practice.

When you are offered an interpreting assignment, if your client (the court, an agency, or a law firm) does not understand the need for team interpreting, you can explain that we work in teams to preserve the accuracy of the record. On the NAJIT webpage, in the publications section, you’ll find a position paper on team interpreting. Share it with clients or cite it in your communications. If all attempts to educate your client fail, you will have to decide if this is an assignment you are willing to accept. As language access professionals we understand the relevance of guidelines and professional standards. We cannot force any entity or client to follow these guidelines, but we can choose to adhere to these standards ourselves by turning down assignments that don’t follow the guidelines.

Here’s where teamwork outside the courtroom comes into play. Rely on your colleagues for support and guidance on how to overcome the challenges of the environment you work in. Nobody—unless they’ve been an interpreter—will be able to understand the mental fatigue we experience when our workload is improper. I’ve never done any other job that exhausted my mind more than interpreting, and I’m sure most of you can relate to the experience. Get together and have conversations, because when we work together, we can come up with solutions to the challenges we face. Join professional organizations and seek opportunities to gather with people who share our profession.

Set aside unnecessary competition and team up to support each other’s work. Focus on your colleagues’ strengths. Collaboration is the answer for a successful team interpreting assignment, and for anything else we set out to do as a profession.

Reme Bashi has been a certified court interpreter in Wisconsin since 2008. She began her career as an interpreter and translator in Mexico, at the University of Veracruz, where she majored in pedagogy. Being bilingual in English and Spanish lead her to language teaching and then to translation and interpreting. She was a conference interpreter for several years, interpreting for the media and government events in Mexico.

I work and live in Wisconsin, where very few professional interpreters would agree to accept a long assignment without a teammate. In Wisconsin courts, this would be even more rare—if not impossible—to find. Not to brag, but Wisconsin has done a vast amount of work to ensure certified court interpreters understand and comply with the code of ethics, guidelines and standards for court interpreting. This work has given the courts a much better understanding of the intricacies of interpreters’ work, while underscoring the importance of proper training for the judiciary body and for interpreters themselves.

Language Access Virtually – meeting people where they are

Thu, 19 Sep 2024 18:40:00 GMT

The cat is out of the bag. You can’t un-ring a bell. These are a couple of sayings we hear to express the concept of not being able to go back. This is our reality with remote interpreting in court. Many courts have found tremendous benefits by allowing virtual hearings. Virtual hearings allow some court staff to work remotely, allows attorneys to be present without travelling to remote areas and it allows litigants to appear even when they can’t get a day off of work or they don’t have childcare, or live out of the jurisdiction or even in another country. The greater availability of hybrid or virtual options allows people with disabilities to participate more fully. There is no going back. The biggest question is how to move forward and how to do it well.

I’m very proud of the collaboration of interpreters all over the country and all over the world in the face of a worldwide pandemic, and in taking on remote interpreting and assuming our role as experts. I am personally forever grateful to Ernest Niño-Murcia and Tamber Hilton for their partnership and teamwork during the pandemic and in the years following as we learned, tested, and then taught remote interpreting best practices on platforms such as Zoom and Webex. One of the biggest things we have pushed for is for courts to find and implement tech solutions that allow the Limited English-Speaking participants to be fully engaged in the proceedings just like all other participants. If English speaking participants can see and hear the judge and attorneys and be heard and seen, then the same should apply for those who need the assistance of an interpreter. We cannot let technical limitations force people into lesser conditions. This is at the core of everything we have shared over the past four plus years. This is the context that also led me to expand my tech skills for other sectors. The software and hardware I have used for other types of interpreted events such as focus groups finally found its perfect use for one particular case in court.

What do we do when a court user cannot connect to Zoom? This was the exact situation that came up recently where a person had a very sensitive case in New Jersey family court but was located in Guatemala and unable to access Zoom. The only application this person was able to use was WhatsApp. As some of you may know, there are phone plans in Central and South America that include unlimited WhatsApp, but not necessarily unlimited data. Their access to data or Wi-Fi can affect whether or not they can connect via Zoom. How should a court proceed with a case that will be heard on Zoom, if the party is only able to use WhatsApp? One solution could have been to have the person simply call in to listen to the hearing. A different solution used by some courts would be to have the interpreter call the party directly, but then the court would only see and hear the interpreter and not the actual LEP party, which is fraught with problems we are well aware of. I proposed a complex tech solution to bridge WhatsApp into Zoom to allow the party to hear the simultaneous interpretation on the Spanish channel and to see and hear the court and be seen and heard by the court. I won’t get into the exact technical configuration, but I will try to explain what this looked like and why it was important.

If you’re familiar with WhatsApp video calls, you know that the small image on the top right is usually your self-view. In this case, I was feeding her the Zoom gallery view rather than my camera. (This was made possible using a separate computer and a video capture device).

This is what the Zoom gallery view looked like (selecting the option to hide non-video participants). For this demonstration, we can imagine that this is the court’s Zoom meeting. The video of Lorna with the blue background was the video I was injecting into Zoom directly from WhatsApp.

From the LEP’s perspective, this time with Katty Kauffman as our LEP, this is what she saw on her mobile device. She saw her self-view in the top right corner, but the big image on her screen was the Zoom gallery view. The square with the blue background was her WhatsApp video call being inserted into Zoom, and she was able to speak directly with all zoom participants while only being connected to WhatsApp.

This was not a simple tech solution. It did require quite a bit of software, hardware, and a very powerful computer. I would also like to be clear that I am not proposing that interpreters should somehow all become tech gurus and try to help the courts bridge in LEPs for all types of cases on a regular basis. I would however like to encourage the courts themselves to not limit their view of what is possible. Courts have a responsibility to provide equal access regardless of language needs. There are occasions when the courts need to meet people where they are and make it possible for them to truly access the court process, truly equal access, without limiting the court’s ability to see and hear them, or their access to see and hear the court.

Aimee Benavides is a federally certified interpreter and court certified in California, New Jersey, and Louisiana. She currently serves as Chair of the Executive Committee of ASTM F-43, Language Products and Services. She is a former NAJIT Chair and Board member. Over the past 5 years, in addition to interpreting she has also expanded into tech related services that ethically facilitate language access and proper working conditions for interpreters. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7482-5182

A Balancing Act

Wed, 11 Sep 2024 15:03:00 GMT

My colleagues are great, the judges treat me well and are accommodating when I ask for a short break or for someone to slow down so I can catch up. But I haven’t worked a single half-day trial or the kind of grueling weeks-long or months-long trials that I used to encounter quite often when I worked as a staff interpreter in Essex County Superior Court in New Jersey. Back then I worked trials almost every week, even short ones or at family court, although my favorite are criminal trials.

The constant challenge and the networking with colleagues provided enormous opportunities to improve my skills and the creation of glossaries, the product of collaboration among a great crew of staff colleagues and freelancers alike.

Priorities

As I grow older, I am interested in stability but, at the same time, I long for adventure. How can I explain? I would be happy to get a full-time job, where I will be challenged constantly, enjoy paid time off, holidays, and benefits. On the other hand, I am always daydreaming about quitting it all and flying to Mexico, South America, or Europe to live from a backpack (well, in my case a suitcase), to visit the world, and work remotely. Dollars can go a long way in other countries, and this may be my last opportunity to do it before age or infirmity prevents me from traveling.

My dad passed away eight years ago, and my mom is getting older. I would be happy to take Mom with me wherever I go and just enjoy her company, but then my sisters may not be in favor of having Mom far away because the clock is moving for them, as well. So, it all gets complicated.

When I accepted this contract in which I only have Wednesdays off, I was thinking of my family and thought I would leave those days open to do things with them or catch up with all my work at home, like paying bills, setting up appointments, etc. That way I’d be able to clear my weekends for family and friends. But here’s the catch: this ongoing assignment is not challenging enough, so now I find myself working on those Wednesdays that were supposed to be my days off. Those are the days when I can book more challenging assignments that keep me on my toes. So there goes my extra time for family.

Job security at the expense of skill?

So, to summarize, I have the following choices at this time:

Go back to being a full-time freelancer again, where I can find more challenging work, select assignments with the right partners (meaning team interpreting), where I will have different colleagues every day to learn from, to network, and interact with. I could work in choice courthouses within metropolitan areas with big caseloads. The pay is good but there is a great deal of traveling involved and that can be tiring and overwhelming.
Accept a challenging full-time job again. Unfortunately, this will force me to move out of state because there are no such properly compensated full-time jobs locally. Plus, I would be far from my closest family members.
Remain in this long-term contract and be close to my sisters, sons, and grandkids, working my easy job, challenging myself on Wednesdays, or taking my day off for courses or training programs like Athena Matilski’s and Virginia Valencia’s, SCSI, José Varela’s, the National Center for Interpretation, Castillo Language Services, etc. Again, that would mean I’d have to sacrifice the time with my family that I crave so much.

But one thing is for sure. To continue with my current course of action means that my skills will decline due to a lack of work that truly challenges me. If my skills start to decline, I will not be able to do the work I truly love. This is the best profession as far as I am concerned, and the truth is that no one can have a fulfilling life if they are not doing what they love. Without a fulfilling life, we cannot be a positive influence in our community, much less on our families and friends. In short, it’s a lose-lose situation.

So, dear colleagues, what are your thoughts? What would you do if you were in my shoes?

Hilda Zavala-Shymanik is a state certified/approved Spanish court interpreter and translator with more than seventeen years of experience in legal, medical, corporate, and non-profit settings in New York, New Jersey, Illinois, and Wisconsin and is certified/approved in those four states. Hilda is a former Vice Chair, Board Member, Treasurer, Conference Committee Chair, member of the Training and Education and Advocacy Committees, and current member of the blog team and Chair of the Elections Committee of the National Association of Judiciary Interpreters and Translators, as well as former president of the New York Circle of Translators.

Over a year ago, I landed a great gig. I work four days a week under an open-ended long-term contract and have been happy there. However, the job is unexciting and repetitive.

However, I have family and grandkids in the Chicagoland area and Mexico, so I need to balance my personal wants with that aspect of my life as well. I was raised in a close-knit family that values our relationships and I don’t want to be away from them.

In the end, none of those choices gives me what I want, which is more family time.

She is an active and voting member of NAJIT, ATA, MATI and other professional groups. Hilda has two certificates in Legal Interpreting in Spanish and English, the latest one from NYU. Hilda is the current staff interpreter of the 23rd Illinois Judicial Circuit as well as a Cook County (Illinois) Spanish Interpreter employee. Hilda is a former Staff Interpreter at Essex County Superior Court in New Jersey, where she worked for six years. Born in Chicago, Hilda lived for twenty years in Mexico and loves traveling. She continuously looks for opportunities to promote and advance the interpreting profession. Contact: hshymanik@yahoo.com

The Curious Interpreter

Wed, 04 Sep 2024 16:33:00 GMT

In a prior blog, I wrote about the interpreter’s qualifications from a Human Resources perspective. Today I would like to share my thoughts as an interpreter and tell you about some ways I think we gain knowledge and experience, aside from formal education.

I’ve been an interpreter most of my life. My mother is an interpreter and translator, and from an early age, I was able to interact and observe interpreters work and carry on in their daily lives. I’ve met interpreters who had graduate studies, like my mother, and others who have gained their knowledge from independent study. From what I’ve observed over the years, all interpreters who excel in their profession, regardless of their level of formal education, have two qualities in common- an inquisitive mind and passion for the profession.

Interpreters are good listeners and attentive observers of the world surrounding them. In our daily lives, we encounter all sorts of new words and language usage. No matter where we go or what we’re doing, we are always curious about how to say things and how something works. After all, you never know when that knowledge will come in handy at a trial or a conference. Often, interpreters have worked in several fields and have picked up knowledge that will serve them when performing as conference or legal interpreters.

We are constantly adding new words and understanding to our mental database, information we’ll use to better perform when we’re interpreting. We read, travel, and talk to people about their lives, jobs and anything in between. Always gathering different jargon, idiomatic expressions, and technical information, interpreters also participate in professional training whether it is a requirement to maintain certification or not. However, I believe a great deal of professional growth also happens beyond formal training. This growth, as I said before, is fueled by an inquisitive mind and the love of language.

I hope you can comment on this post and share some of the ways you continuously nurture your professional growth. I’d like to share a couple of examples.

In early Summer I traveled to Mexico. While I was grocery shopping for my dad, I engaged in conversation with two women who were working at the store. I was buying eggs, and I asked them if the eggs were sold by the carton, weight, or by the piece. In Mexico, this can vary. I also asked what they called a carton of eggs. They gave me three different names! And I added this to my notes on the phone. I keep glossaries on my phone’s notes app. Writing words down helps me remember them.

During that visit, I also learned people in Colima don’t use an herb called Epazote or Spanish tea in their cooking. I was surprised to find out this herb which is so common in other areas was practically unknown there. And then I got curious about what it is called in English and added the name to my glossary.

Besides feeling happy with my gardening efforts, I picked up a few gardening terms in English and Spanish during my research. I sometimes interpret for gardening summits, and I’m sure these additions to my mental database will come in handy at some point.

I can’t think of another profession where no matter what you’re doing, you’re on a permanent pursuit of knowledge whether in formal academic settings or in everyday life. Interpreters are, without a doubt, curious lifelong learners.

In Colima, in my dad’s back yard, I also found wild peppers. Small, red, berry-like peppers called Chiltepines in central and northern Mexico, and Chilpayas in southern Mexico. In English, as far as my research took me, they are called by the Spanish name. My curiosity drove me to learn that all peppers in the world are offsprings of Mexican peppers, and the common ancestor of all peppers is this tiny, hot and flavorful wild pepper I discovered in my father’s backyard. I went online to research how to grow them and I’m now harvesting a second crop. I was also able to grow a particular variety of Epazote I enjoy.

Brain Marathon Training

Tue, 27 Aug 2024 12:22:00 GMT

Dear Readers,

Happy September! I’ll never understand how, but time just keeps whizzing by. I hope that you have all enjoyed your summer. I spent mine in the trenches of remote interpreting (and attending Co>Lab, a peer study group for interpreting nerds!) but that will be a story for a different blog.

Today I’d like to write about brain marathons, which is an apt label for most of the challenges we interpreters take on. Our brain muscles truly do get a workout, and like any good gym rat, we need to make wise choices to stay healthy and on top of our game.

This topic feels particularly relevant right now because the FCICE oral exam is slated to happen next spring. That may feel far away, but the best time to start preparing is right now. If you’re not a Spanish interpreter trying to crest that particular metaphorical summit, my words of advice can still aptly apply to any big project you may be trying to undertake.

Preparing for a huge goal is a process that necessitates preparing body, mind, and spirit. We need to identify our goal and the path we’ll take to get there. What tools will we need on our journey? Which things should be done first? And most importantly, how will we make the time?

Identify your motivation: Why are you studying for this particular exam, or training for this particular achievement? Do you want more money? Freedom? The ability to have quality time with your family? Take time. Ask yourself Then ask yourself why again. Once you have that deep-seated reason, write up your “why,” decorate it with pretty colors, and post it somewhere prominent that you will see it on a daily basis: The wall behind your desk; the refrigerator; your bathroom mirror. This is the reason behind all your hard work and sacrifices, and you’ll want to keep it close to your heart when you feel like throwing in the towel.
Identify the things that will take the longest to accomplish: When studying for an interpreting exam, we need to consider the skills that take time and training to achieve. For instance, note-taking is not a skill you can develop overnight. It takes time to change and develop habits. So, if you know that your consecutive note-taking is lacking, now is the time to begin. But only pick one or two things to study this far in advance so you don’t get burnt out before true crunch time even starts.
Identify the things you like doing least, and do them first: Schedule these things on your calendar. Schedule them for early in the week. Schedule them for early in the day. Get them out of the way first. If you wait until the last minute, it will be too easy to keep procrastinating, until “later” becomes “tomorrow” which becomes “next week” which becomes “the week after” which becomes “next month” which becomes “never.”
Identify the things you can say “no” to: We all have tremendously busy lives. If we want to make room for some things, we will have to make space. I like to write out a list of every single project I am involved in, personally and professionally. Then, I take a hard look at that list. What is making me money? What is bringing me joy? What is stressing me the heck out? What can I delegate? And if there’s really nothing that can budge from your list, it may just not be the right time to try to join the brain Olympics or hike Brain Everest.
Reward yourself with down time and brain breaks: Rest your brain muscle at least once a day for a little while, and at least once a week for a couple of hours. Let yourself integrate everything you’ve been doing. Then, schedule things you can look forward to. This can be as simple as a bubble tea/fancy coffee or as luxurious as a spa day.

Most goals we have as professional interpreters are extremely taxing and require a tremendous level of mental fortitude and emotional endurance. We have to study a lot. We have to be ready for glitches during exams and for judgy court staff at assignments. We have to be ready to put our professional integrity before our ego, eat humble pie, and constantly try to be better. These things are all possible, but they are certainly not easy. Hopefully, keeping some of the “Brain Marathon Training” tips in mind will help you go the distance. Feel free to share your own ideas in the comments below!

What follows are some pieces of advice that will serve us all well no matter what we are trying to accomplish.

All photos for this blog post designed by Freepik

Reflect the respect that you deserve

Wed, 21 Aug 2024 19:14:00 GMT

To quote Shakespeare, “apparel oft proclaims the man”.

It has taken me over a year to finally have the courage to write this blog. The reason for my delay was that I did not wish to offend anyone. I realized that many interpreters believe that their skills and professional etiquette are sufficient for any presentation.

But is that enough?

Many times, in the past, I have witnessed interpreters entering the venue with attire that, in my opinion, was “less than par.” There’s no question that our skills and services are the most important part of our profession. But how can you expect people to treat you professionally when you don’t look professional? How can you expect your clients to pay you according to the standard that we are all trying so hard to raise when you can’t meet one of the basic requirements, which is to look professional?

On one occasion, a dear friend of mine, one who works in a different field altogether, attended one of the big conferences where I was working. My friend mistook a fellow interpreter for the venue service personnel, apparently due to her attire.

A question that followed was “Do interpreters not see themselves as professionals? Because if they do, they sure don’t show it.” That statement made me think. Maybe some interpreters are not doing their due diligence in this respect.

In the corporate world, what was previously known as “casual Friday” has somehow taken over the other days of the week. This was exacerbated by the pandemic, which forced society to work from home. But once the pandemic was over, the casual culture remained.

A colleague from NAJIT, David Gilbert, summed it up beautifully “There are a range of possible reasons for some interpreters adopting a casual attitude, but it is my opinion that one cannot expect to be paid and treated as a professional unless one acts and presents themselves as a professional.”

Of course, the court is not a runway and there are no spectators in our booths. However, when we are on a judiciary assignment, we are officers of the court. We are professionals working amongst other legal professionals who make an effort to look business-like when at work. This should apply to us as well.

To follow, here are two examples of dress codes in particular courts:

The guidelines of the District Court of New Jersey state that “interpreters should dress in a manner that reflects the dignity of the court.”

District of Columbia Court clearly cited in their Professional Code of Conduct and Courtroom Protocol that

“All freelance interpreters are expected to maintain a professional image at all times while performing official duties at the court or in the community. It is, therefore, necessary for each interpreter to be well-groomed and appropriately dressed so as to engender the respect of co-workers and the public for that interpreter and for the District of Columbia Courts.

Proper Attire for Women

A business suit, pants suit, dress, or a skirt/slack ensemble with blouse or sweater top is considered proper attire. Sundresses and open-back, off-shoulder, or single-shoulder clothing styles are not regarded as appropriate attire. Athletic shoes or slippers are not appropriate in the workplace.

Proper Attire for Men

A business suit, or dress slacks and sport jacket, with a dress shirt and necktie or dress slacks with a sweater or dress shirt and tie is considered appropriate. A man ’s attire also includes socks and dress footwear. Cloth top or athletic shoes, slippers and sandals are not appropriate in the workplace”

It’s pretty straightforward and clear-cut, right?

So why do many of us still fall short of this simple requirement?

One can’t deny that there’s a bias towards beauty in every culture and well-dressed people usually benefit from that bias in different situations. We all know that a job interview can be influenced by how good one looks when showing up for the appointment. Regardless of how skilled you are at work; would you wear sweatpants to a high-profile hearing that is going to be on national television?

Dressing professionally doesn’t just affect people’s perception of who you are. It can boost self-confidence and help individuals feel more capable and ready to tackle challenges.

I am an outfit capsule junkie and tend to have one prepared for different occasions or work trips. I suggest that you pick out a combination of five business outfits that you can grab and go without having to think about mix and matching when you get called in for court work. The reason for five is so you will have enough to take you through the week if you have to work for that long. Not to mention that these advance preparations may even help stay in control of your busy personal life.

Not keen on mixing and matching or running out of ideas about what and how to pair up different pieces? Pinterest is a good place to check. There are many boards and blogs on Pinterest that offer you a good selection of ideas. Some may have links for you to purchase the items directly from the website.

Other places where you can find some good outfit pairing advice are the retail catalogues that many of us consider to be junk mail. For women’s attire, different retailers like J. Crew, Ann Taylor, and Banana Republic are affordable and fun to browse through. Favorites for men’s attire would be Charles Tyrwhitt, Brooks Brothers, and Johnston Murphy. You may find that you already have something in your closet that is similar to their stylist’s selections.

Another tip that never fails me is to have an all-around jacket in the car. I usually opt for a plain navy blazer with gold buttons that is very conservative and will go with anything. If challenged by a long commute or public transportation, a sweater blazer, a cardigan, or a trench coat are also good options.

Last but not least, don’t forget that footwear is also part of the entire package. I am a fan of comfy shoes and always wear them when walking to the courthouse. After years of searching, I finally found a great “courthouse shoe” that is now part of my “uniform.” There may be times when I don’t have them within reach, therefore, I always carry an additional pair of work shoes.

Personally, creating a capsule wardrobe puts me in the mindset of having a work uniform, which I find really saves me some time having to think about what to wear.

In a nutshell, I think the saying “overdressed is better than underdressed” is a good one. So, when in doubt, just dress up. We may work mostly in booths or in a corner with our portable devices, but we are still walking to and from that workstation. For all of us who are contract interpreters, we never know when the next all-star client or career opportunity will show up. Be ready for it.

Main Graphic Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash , Body Photo by NordWood Themes on Unsplash

For those who’d like to take advantage of this “beauty bias,” here are a few tips for you to create a capsule work wardrobe that can simplify the process of dressing professionally and be easily integrated into your normal routine

A history of the code of ethics for judiciary interpreters

Tue, 13 Aug 2024 14:22:00 GMT

Let me begin with a disclaimer: documentation about the early codes of ethics for judiciary interpreters, also called codes of professional responsibility, is scant or lost altogether. I am writing mostly from memory and some documents I have been able to track down, which means that what you are about to read is “ a history,” not “ the history.” The earliest version of a Code of Ethical Practices I have found is the one published by the Court Interpreters and Translators Association (CITA) in 1981. It was probably written sometime between the creation of the association in 1978 and a publication called “Yearbook 1981.” CITA’s was a code with fundamental principles: to interpret and to translate with the greatest fidelity and accuracy, to maintain professional discretion, to accept no assignment for which one is unqualified, to share professional knowledge, to refrain from any action likely to discredit the profession, and to be loyal to colleagues and the profession. The Code was a reflection of the state of the profession at that time.

In terms of the interpreter’s performance, I find CIAG’s Canons 8 and 11 especially revealing. Canon 8 says, “Official court interpreters fulfill a special duty to interpret accurately and faithfully without indicating any personal bias , avoiding even the appearance of partiality.” Canon 11 states: “Official court interpreters shall perform to the best of their ability to assist the court in providing due process for parties . […] They preserve the level of language used, and the ambiguities and nuances of the speaker, without editing. Implicit in the knowledge of their limitations is the duty to correct any errors of interpretation…” [Emphasis mine.]

The concerns in the 1980s and early 90s were the direct outcome of a practice in the U.S. courts that had remained unregulated since the early 1700s. In a 19 ^th century case in Texas, for example, “The bill of exceptions shows that the witness had to be examined through an interpreter, and the interpreter stated, in open court, after the witness left the stand, that he thought the witness had been misunderstood.” Goins v. State , 41 Tex. 334 (1874). In other cases, witnesses were used to interpret for other witnesses, non-interpreters impersonated interpreters, co-defendants were used to interpret for defendants and, overall, there were a lot of incompetent people performing the functions of an interpreter.

The Codes by CITA and CIAG are expressions of an incipient profession that is just starting to “find its voice,” as evidenced by the reference to the practitioners’ “ knowledge of their limitations. ” There is also enough of a concern about interpreter bias to warrant a specific reference right after the “special duty to interpret accurately and faithfully.” The CIAG Code is also the only one where I have found a specific mention of due process as part of a canon. It hints at judges having their say in the drafting of this document, but also fixes its historical context.

The trigger for the Court Interpreters Act to be considered by Congress and approved in 1978 was precisely the case of a non-English speaker whose due process rights were violated because he never had an interpreter appointed by the trial court. Rogelio Nieves Negron sat in court unable to understand what was happening during his trial or to communicate with his lawyer, who did not speak Spanish. Between 1978 and 1979 SUNY-Albany Professor Carlos Astiz looked into the interpreting services that were being provided in state courts and found that there were no quality standards for interpreters and very little interest among them to improve their skills and knowledge.

Astiz provided empirical evidence on the prevalence of incompetent persons acting as interpreters and even engaging in the unlawful practice of law by advising LEP defendants on how to proceed with their cases. With this background, in 1995 the National Center for State Courts published a Model Code of Professional Responsibility for Interpreters in the Judiciary . This was no longer the product of practicing interpreters setting standards for members of the profession. This was a set of institutional guardrails to prevent the horror stories that by the late 20 ^th century continued to plague state courts. That Model Code has been adopted by almost every state and the federal judiciary to one degree or another. Case law had given judges discretionary authority to appoint and qualify interpreters, which meant they could call the restaurant cook to interpret and appellate courts would be hard pressed to reverse for abuse of discretion or plain error. So, if you could not control the judges… control the interpreters?

Since 1995, however, there have been many appellate opinions “fine-tuning” the LEPs’ right to a competent interpreter. In the last 30 years we have also witnessed many changes in the field of judiciary interpreting. We have publications, research, academic programs, and a vast body of knowledge we did not have 30 years ago. We have grown as a profession, but that Model Code has not. I believe it’s time to work on a Code of Professional Practice and a separate Code of Ethics that reflect the state of the profession at this particular moment in time, written by and for judiciary interpreters.

Header photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash . Article body photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

The next version I found was drafted sometime before 1990 by the Court Interpreters Advisory Group (CIAG), intended to be part of the Guide to Judiciary Policy . CIAG was a small group of staff interpreters that the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts had in the early days of the federal certification program. That Code of Professional Responsibility also listed very fundamental principles in 14 canons, including court decorum, confidentiality, and impartiality. A few of the canons, however, are different from the CITA Code and address considerations such as working unobtrusively, not accepting remuneration, and refraining from giving advice or expressing personal opinions. This one also reflects the profession’s state at that particular moment in time, but the Codes are also enlightening about their target audiences. CITA’s was aimed at judiciary interpreters and translators in the field, whereas CIAG’s was aimed at interpreters working in the federal courts.

The Interpreter Shortage in Wisconsin Courts

Tue, 06 Aug 2024 12:58:00 GMT

Introduction

As an interpreter with over 22 years of experience, I have witnessed the evolving dynamics within our profession. In Wisconsin, there is a shortage of court-certified interpreters. However, this shortage is not due to a lack of potentially qualified professionals but rather a failure in recruitment efforts and fair compensation practices by court administrations. The only significant recruitment effort I witnessed was when Attorney Ernesto Romero managed the Interpreter Coordinating Office in Milwaukee County. Unfortunately, when the grant for his office ended, so did the recruitment efforts, and in the past 22 years, there has been no comparable effort that I have witnessed.

Decades of Neglect and Current Desperation

Following decades of neglect, court administrations now find themselves perplexed by their inability to recruit new interpreters—a problem caused by their own negligence. In a desperate attempt to avoid paying fair wages to Wisconsin interpreters, some courts have resorted to bringing in interpreters from Illinois and neighboring states. These interpreters often come from states with lower remuneration expectations and standards, exacerbating the issue.

Upholding Professional Standards: A Necessity

It is crucial that our colleagues who come to work in Wisconsin recognize the importance of maintaining and building upon our professional standards. This includes:

Team Interpreting: Essential for ensuring accuracy and preventing fatigue during trials of any length, and hearings lasting more than 30 minutes

Adequate Breaks: Necessary to maintain focus, accuracy and precision in our work. These breaks are needed by both the active and passive interpreter. They should also increase in duration in proportion to the length of the assignment.

Time Between Cases: Vital for reviewing complaints, reports, and other materials to provide accurate interpretations.

Additionally, the practice of case stacking—scheduling multiple cases in a single session without adequate interpreter support—should be fully rejected unless there are 2-3 interpreters available to assist.

The Impact on LEP Community

The people who suffer from these practices are the LEP (Limited English Proficiency) community members who depend on our services. When interpreters are overworked, underpaid, and forego minimal standards, the quality of interpretation declines. This inevitably leads to mistakes which can result in unjust outcomes. LEP individuals depend on accurate interpreting to fully understand and participate in the legal process. It is our duty to ensure that this need is met in accordance with our professional standards and code of ethics.

New interpreters entering a new jurisdiction must be aware of certain pitfalls that can undermine their efforts and the profession at large. Here are three critical areas to watch out for and how to avoid them:

Working Alone on Trials: Refusing to advocate for team interpreting can lead to fatigue and inaccuracy. Always ensure you have a partner for lengthy sessions.

Neglecting Adequate Breaks: Accepting long hours without breaks can compromise your performance. Insist on taking necessary breaks to maintain high-quality interpretations throughout the day.

Accepting Case Stacking: Agreeing to multiple cases back-to-back without adequate support can lead to errors and burnout. Stand firm against such practices and advocate for additional interpreters to be brought in when needed.

Conclusion

The claim of a court-certified interpreter shortage in Wisconsin is a misdirection from the real issues of poor recruitment efforts and low compensation. By standing together and upholding our professional standards, we can ensure that our profession remains strong, and that justice is accessible for all. Let’s continue to maintain the integrity of our work and ensure that every LEP user receives the accurate and fair interpretation services that they deserve. The stakes are high, and it is ultimately the LEP community who pays the price for inadequate interpreting services. Working together with court administrators and supporting each other’s efforts we can ensure equal access to justice for all Wisconsin residents.

Dawn Perez Maldonado was certified by the state court in 2004 and has since built a distinguished career as both a conference and court interpreter. With a wealth of experience interpreting for international delegations, The White House, U.S. Senatorial debates, and the President of the United States, Dawn has established herself as a leading interpreter in high-stakes environments.

In 2002, Dawn founded Bylyngo Interpreting and Translation, headquartered in Milwaukee, WI, with other offices around the United States. As the Director, she has led Bylyngo to serve a diverse clientele across the United States, Canada, Mexico, and South America. A certified Project Management Professional (PMP), Dawn has leveraged her skills to create complex translation management platforms and manage intricate localization projects.

Currently pursuing a Masters in Business Administration and IT, Dawn is committed to furthering her knowledge and expertise to drive innovation in the translation and interpreting arena. Her dedication to advancing language access and maintaining high professional standards has made her a respected figure in the interpreting community.

Pitfalls and How You Can Avoid Them

The Court Interpreter Job Under the Human Resources Lens

Tue, 23 Jul 2024 15:56:00 GMT

In Wisconsin, the State Court Interpreter Program and certification are turning twenty years old in the Fall of 2024. The first staff interpreter jobs in our state were created shortly after the certification became available. Recently, a few counties have advertised jobs in this category. Here are my opinions on the job descriptions and salary offerings I have seen for court interpreter positions.

Qualifications

Fortunately, it seems like people in Wisconsin have come to learn that “almost doesn’t count except in horseshoes.” The postings I have seen do require State Court certification. In contrast, the minimum education level required is high school. The people who are certified and have no college education are a minority and anyone who has become certified has invested time, money, and effort to do independent study to get certified. It would make more sense for the minimum education requirement to be State certification and the preferred qualification to be an undergraduate or graduate degree in a related area or other certifications. “High school” as a requirement is a turn-off for applicants who have had years of study beyond high school to become interpreters, whether they have degrees or not.

Photo by scottsnyde on Freeimages.com

Job Description

Unfortunately, my colleagues and I have had some good laughs with the Court Interpreter job descriptions. As you read some job descriptions, it becomes evident Human Resources did little or no research into what our profession entails. Most job descriptions have a slew of tasks that have little or nothing to do with court interpreting. Tasks that would be better suited for clerks, translators, language access coordinators, interpreter schedulers, and others. It almost seems as if court interpreting was not enough. When you look at other highly specialized professions, you will have a hard time finding a job description filled with duties that are unrelated to the particular job or skills. When you hire an expert, you are paying for their expertise, not their time. It seems these court interpreter job descriptions aim to fill up time with unrelated tasks. I have to wonder why this does not seem to happen with other specialized jobs. A well-thought-out job description speaks about the respect and importance a position has in an organization. For someone considering a position, this is a first impression- it will lure you, or make you walk away slowly. Wisconsin HR, you have room for improvement here.

Salary and Benefits

When a human resources professional decides how much money to offer for a job, they look at similar positions in the area to find out the corresponding salaries. In the case of counties, they are looking at other interpreter jobs in counties, but they seem to not be considering the income an independent interpreter can earn. Even when you factor in the cost of benefits a job offers, independent interpreters have the potential to earn much more money than a staff interpreter. Besides a decent income, people are also looking for work-life balance and a good work environment. An independent interpreter can take more time off, has flexibility in their schedules and the freedom of accepting out-of-court work that may be more rewarding professionally and financially. An independent interpreter sells a highly specialized service to clients. They usually do not offer to do anything outside of court interpreting. On the other hand, staff interpreters are sometimes expected to do things other than court interpreting. This does not tip the balance in favor of an HR department trying to fill a court interpreter position.

If you’re considering accepting an interpreter position, it’s important to realize the responsibilities of a job, the conditions and the salary are negotiable. It is up to the candidates for the position to accept or reject conditions or salaries that are appropriate for the unique skills court interpreters hold. It will also be up to the Human Resources departments to tailor offers that will make it more likely for a job candidate to accept the position they are attempting to fill.

The idea that there are not enough candidates for court interpreter positions in Wisconsin has been mentioned frequently in recent months. If the salaries and the conditions offered were right for the high-level skills of interpreters, would more people be interested in applying for these jobs? Even beyond the current jobs available, would more people be attracted to the profession in the future if the pay and conditions were better?

Saved by the Bell

Mon, 15 Jul 2024 15:43:00 GMT

Many times, I am saved by the bell. Last week I was in court, on time waiting for my early morning case to start. As we waited over 90 minutes, the ADA, judge, sheriff’s officers, clerks, and LEP defendant were understandably frustrated. The practice in that courthouse is to call in advance to find out if the case is ready to be heard. I usually do not call because it feels a bit pedantic to imply “I am too important to go to wait like everyone else”. And yes, I know my skills as an interpreter are unique, but I do not believe it creates good feelings among colleagues if you are the one person who must be called in when everyone is ready. All courthouses are different, but in this one in particular, I normally know someone, and because I go regularly, I choose to manage things in this way.

In this instance, I regretted not calling because 90 minutes is enough time to:

1. Review a lesson (the eternal study/practice we all must deal with, to keep our bilingual level)

2. Write a blog

3. Organize my study materials, or

4. Send pending invoices or

5. Pay bills

By the time counsel for the defendant arrived, cases were being continued and rescheduled to make room for the trial after our plea. Now that the defendant’s attorney had arrived, he had to review the plea agreement forms with his client with my assistance. We had not finished the first form when they came for us. Counsel said we needed three minutes. With his experience and mine, we knew that was not about to happen. The more he tried to rush me through it, the more I needed repetitions, and the more we delayed. I must emphasize that I was not purposely delaying the interpretation. It was just that I was not about to skip anything in those forms because that was my responsibility.

SIGN, SIGN, SIGN!

When we were called in for the last time and the judge denied us more time, the attorney just said, sign here, repeatedly, and we went inside the courtroom.

Right before we started reviewing the forms with the judge, it became clear that the agreement was floundering because the ADA wanted the defense to stipulate to imposing restitution, and the plea fell apart.

I thanked the forces that be for not being put in a situation where I was asked anything about the reading/interpreting of the forms. These are the scenarios that came to mind:

A) What if the judge had asked the plaintiff if the attorney had reviewed the forms with LEP with the help of the interpreter?

Since the judge is not asking me, I do not believe that I have an obligation to contradict the LEP or attorney since I am not speaking for myself, however, it is one of those tricky things that I would not feel comfortable doing since there is some ambiguity to the situation.

B) What If the judge had specifically asked if they had reviewed the form with the assistance of Ms. Shymanik? Then what?

If the judge is not addressing me, do I have a responsibility to clarify that I did not interpret all the forms to the defendant? I am not 100% sure.

C) What If the judge had specifically asked the interpreter after seeing the look of confusion or indecision on the LEP’s face?

I cannot answer that question without violating the code of ethics as that interlude is covered by attorney-client privilege, correct?

A CONFUSING MATTER OF ETHICS

I went to my coordinator, and she was not sure either. She suggested I go to the person in charge of the certification program, but I thought it would make for an interesting blog post.

I know that if a crime is not being committed in my presence, and I am not talking about perjury, as we witness some form of those on occasion, but a crime of a violent nature, there is nothing for me to do. As I understand it, unless my client is talking about a plan to kill or harm someone, I am not supposed to intervene. So, my position would be that I would not reveal under any circumstances that the forms had not been read/sight translated/interpreted for the client, because that would be breaking attorney-client privilege.

Please share with me what you think.

She is an active and voting member of NAJIT, ATA, MATI and other professional groups. Hilda has two certificates in Legal Interpreting in Spanish and English, the latest one from NYU. Hilda is the current staff interpreter of the 23rd Illinois Judicial Circuit as well as a Cook County (Illinois) Spanish Interpreter employee. Hilda is a former Staff Interpreter at Essex County Superior Court in New Jersey, where she worked for six years. Born in Chicago, Hilda lived for twenty years in Mexico and loves traveling. She continuously looks for opportunities to promote and advance the interpreting profession. Contact: hshymanik@yahoo.com

The hidden cost of remote interpreting: is it really a cost-saving solution?

Mon, 08 Jul 2024 15:10:00 GMT

After Covid, everyone scrambled to adapt to the new way of life, trying to restore a certain level of normalcy. Life as we knew it disappeared, at least for a while, and although the world is slowly returning to a greater degree of familiarity, certain things remain in that 2020 lockdown mode.

Many organizations had to think outside the box looking for ways to compensate for the loss of business during the pandemic. Some decided to cut operating costs, while others went into survival mode because they could not persuade people to return to their physical offices. Pandora’s box had been opened; employees could work from home and produce just as much with less overhead costs to the business. In many cases, these changes have brought advantages, but not for all. A simple example is the large number of office maintenance staff in Washington, D.C., and New York who have lost their jobs.

Let’s consider this from the interpreter’s point of view. According to a 2020 report from Nimdzi Insights, the oldest method of remote interpreting is over-the-phone interpreting (OPI), which dates to the 1970s or 1980s ^1.

Admittedly, I am also guilty of enjoying the convenience of remote hearings. Interpreting from the comfort of my own office and dodging the long hours of traffic congestion in the DC metro area can make a workday much less stressful. But without a universal playbook for virtual hearings, each court in each state has its protocols and practices. There are no clear guidelines for the parties involved. In my opinion, sometimes hearings are held in such a mediocre and confusing manner because of small ‘technical issues’ that are deemed unimportant.

There are many training courses out there to help interpreters learn about these platforms. However, these courses are done in a ‘one size fits all’ manner without consideration of the learner’s level of IT literacy, let alone the type of devices and equipment knowledge of the learner, who is usually participating remotely. Also, one of the most important elements is consideration of the different kinds of learning styles for everyone – for example, whether the person is a visual, auditory, or kinesthetic learner. I have seen people who have undergone such training courses and still have comprehension problems just because the knowledge never ‘clicked.’

Court audio settings and systems also vary by location. In certain instances, these differences can prevent interpreters who are supporting remotely from being able to hear everything. Of course, the proximity of the attorneys to the microphones and the size of the room are also contributing factors that make remote hearings difficult. It is already quite hard to get the attorney’s attention in the courtroom, let alone from a remote location. So, when these obstacles occur and prevent interpreters from fully participating in the hearing, are we doing any justice to the LEPs?

In some cases where simultaneous interpreting is needed for the hearing, interpreters have to toggle between a cell phone and Zoom. The cell phone will function like the transmitter that LEPs would use in court to listen to the interpreter. When they need to respond in their native language, the interpreter will then listen to them from that cell phone and relay them to the courtroom via Zoom. When two devices are used to conduct simultaneous interpreting in a virtual courtroom, the microphone on Zoom will have to be muted so the interpretation (that’s going into the cell phone) doesn’t interfere with the proceedings. The microphone would only be turned on when the LEP needs to respond to the court through the interpreter. I admit that this type of proceeding doesn’t happen frequently but when it does, it creates an extra load on the interpreter whose primary focus should be the essence of the language he or she is interpreting instead of playing the role of the courtroom’s disc jockey. Add to that any technical issues, and that interpreter has to assume the additional role of tech support as well.

Again, when this happens, no matter how proficient an interpreter is at multitasking, all the side jobs take away attention from their main duty: to deliver an accurate, complete, and impartial interpretation. Again, the question arises: Are we doing any justice to the LEP?

These examples are just situations that we commonly find in court settings, but sadly I am seeing a fast-growing trend towards using remote interpreting where it would be best to have interpreters present on location, such as mediations, inspections, ‘hands-on’ training, certain medical procedures, etc. Looking at this solely from a cost-cutting perspective is short-sighted. Are values like human interactions, quality products, and upholding the highest standards no longer part of this new high-speed world?

¹ https://www.aieti.eu/enti/remote_interpreting_ENG/#:~:text=According%20to%20Braun%20(2015a)%2C,to%20prevail%20(Braun%202015b).&text=Remote%20interpreting%20is%20a%20sub%2Dtype%20of%20distance%20interpreting .

² Interpreter’s oath

With the advancement of modern world connectivity and high-speed internet, Remote Simultaneous Interpreting (RSI) was heavily adopted during COVID-19 to bring back large group meetings. With RSI, interpreters can work from the comfort of their home office, and attendees, too, can be in their own homes or large conference rooms. There’s a dedicated team of technical support personnel online and/or onsite to provide help around the clock to troubleshoot various problems, ranging from connectivity issues to sound quality. But is this enough to carry out a successful event? That depends on the definition of success, beyond money alone.

One more reason why the judiciary interpreters code of professional responsibility needs to be revised

Mon, 01 Jul 2024 08:15:00 GMT

The United States District Courts and Circuit Courts of Appeal have said time and again very clearly that Limited English Proficient (LEP) criminal defendants have a right to understand . This is the only reason for interpreters to have a significant place in the U.S. system of justice as officers of the court. For example, the Courts have ruled as follows:

S. ex Rel. Negron v. State of N.Y. [1] – the Second Circuit Court of Appeals held that a defendant who spoke no English, and “s[a]t in total incomprehension as the trial proceeded,” was not sufficiently “present” to satisfy the dictates of the Sixth Amendment.
S. v. Cirrincione [2] – the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals held that due process requires that what is told to defendant is comprehensible .
In re Mendoza [3] – the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals held that “[a] criminal defendant is denied due process when he is unable to understand the proceedings due to a language difficulty.”
S. v. Tapia [4] – the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals held that when an LEP defendant is inhibited from comprehending the proceedings or the testimony given against him in English, such failure makes the trial fundamentally unfair.
S. v. Mayans [5] – the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals held that “[t]he right to an interpreter was deemed crucial to a non-English-speaking defendant’s ability to participate in his own defense, and all rights emanating from this, such as the right to counsel and the right to cross-examine witnesses, would be eviscerated without the defendant’s complete understanding of the case against him.”

Unfortunately, no one has defined what “understanding” means for the LEP and we all assume that by providing words in their native language, understanding will follow. The fact of the matter is that the cognitive functions involved in how we perceive meaning when we hear someone else speak are more complicated than the mere attribution of a specific sense to a specific word.

Cognitive functions are the mental skills we use to reason, acquire knowledge, and manipulate information, so whether an LEP individual understands what the interpreter says is going to depend on that individual’s capacity to perform these cognitive functions. [6] We don’t need to be neuroscientists to surmise that someone with a third-grade education who just arrived in this country from some remote village in Central America is likely to have low-level cognitive functions.

That is the process of understanding from a cognitive perspective. From a philosophical perspective, to understand is to make sense out of something, not merely acknowledge its existence. Knowing something is not the same as understanding something. [8] A speaker and a hearer must have an equivalent reserve of general knowledge into which they can incorporate whatever new information is exchanged before they can understand each other. Whereas the interpreter may have this general knowledge that is shared with the English speaker, there is a very high probability that the LEP will not and, therefore, will be unable to merge any previously isolated yet interconnected bits and pieces of information to form a unified perception of whatever new information is being provided.

Finally, we have semantic understanding. Before we can understand what the dictionary tells us a word means, language theory tells us we need some organized mental structures called schemas , which allow us to interpret and understand the world based on our past experiences. We have schemas for everything we need to understand in our daily lives: people, building structures, animals, vehicles, travel, government, entertainment, etc. When we hear the word “dog” our animal schema is activated and everything we know about dogs that we have stored in our long-term memory becomes available for us to make the necessary connections to whatever new information we are about to receive concerning dogs. Likewise, when we hear the word “sentence” our brain’s attentional resources will discard the irrelevant schema—i.e., grammar—and focus on the legal schema. Everything we know related to legal—i.e., court—sentences will become available for us to incorporate any new information received. But that is not all we need to understand semantic meaning.

Semantic meaning explores the distinction between sense —the ideas and concepts associated with an expression—and reference— the object to which an expression points. If one or the other is lacking, an utterance can be meaningless for the person hearing it. For example, if someone hears the phrase “Empire State Building” but they have never seen or heard anything related to that referent, then that phrase will have no meaning for that person. Words have meaning in context, so we need to have the proper context to know that “bench” means where the judge sits and not where people sit in the park. We need to have the knowledge to infer any implicit information in the source speaker’s discourse, so when we hear “we are recommending a 2-level reduction” we know that the speaker is referring to the sentencing guidelines and that the recommendation is for a reduction in the sentence imposed. And let’s not forget that context can shift, maybe due to new technologies or maybe due to social changes. Now “challenged” has a distinct meaning it did not have just a few decades ago, and “aliens” are now “undocumented non-citizens.”

There are so many factors involved in the process of understanding linguistic meaning, that in the realm of judiciary interpreting it is clearly not as easy as taking the dictionary meaning of words and translating them for the LEPs. When we are transferring the original speaker’s intended meaning to the LEP’s language, our responsibility is to factor in all the cognitive and linguistic considerations that can facilitate or hinder the understanding LEPs are entitled, by law, to receive.

Reference :

[1] U.S. ex Rel. Negron v . State of N.Y., 434 F.2d 386, 388 (2d Cir. 1970).

[2] U.S. v. Cirrincione , 780 F.2d 620, 634 (7th Cir.1985).

[3] In re Mendoza , 755 F.3d 821, 827 (7 ^th Cir. 2014).

[4] U.S. v. Tapia , 631 F.2d 1207 (5th Cir. 1980).

[5] U.S. v. Mayans , 17 F.3d 1174 (9th Cir. 1994).

[6] See, Wszalek, Joseph. 2017. “Ethical and Legal Concerns Associated with the Comprehension of Legal Language and Concepts.” AJOB Neuroscience , 8:1, 26-36.

[7] Oberauer, Klaus. (2019) “Working Memory and Attention – A Conceptual Analysis and Review.” Journal of Cognition , 2:1, 36-59.

[8] Grimm, Stephen, “Understanding”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2021 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.)

The other requirements to understand what someone else is saying are working memory and attentional resources. As interpreters we have often heard of working memory as it applies to the consecutive mode of interpreting. It is the portion of our short-term memory that holds new information in place so the brain can work with it briefly and connect it with other information we have stored in long-term memory. We know that working memory has a limited capacity, so our LEP listeners must be able to process new information quickly before it is forgotten. Attentional resources combine with working memory so we can select the information that we want to prioritize, focus on, and process while we tune out irrelevant details. [7]

NAJIT’s 45th Annual Conference

Sat, 30 Mar 2024 13:46:00 GMT

I came to the profession as many of you did, if you started your interpreting career ten or more years ago. I had a 15-minute phone interview with an agency owner, and I was hired on the spot and given very few instructions.

I started interpreting for mental evaluation appointments, some ILDHS (Illinois Department of Human Services) assignments, arbitrations, sworn statements, and depositions in short order. It all went well, for months really, until an attorney that spoke “some” Spanish challenged my interpretation, and I was asked to leave and the session was rescheduled to replace me with a “proven” interpreter. Certification was not on the table then in Illinois.

When I called the agency and spoke with one of the owners, he asked if I stated on the record that I stood by my interpretation. Of course, I had not! I didn’t know I had to. That is when I realized that “repeat everything the participants say in the first person and do not interject anything yourself” was not enough training to work in a judiciary capacity. A lot of things had to happen before I was allowed close to those types of assignments again. But you do not have to go through such an embarrassing experience. You have options.

That is where the NAJIT 45 ^th Annual Conference comes into play!

Pre-Conference Workshops:

Friday, May 17, 9:00 AM – NOON EDT

One of my favorite presentations of all time, and one that continues being a must, is Judy Jenner’s “ ANATOMY OF A DEPOSITION [ETHICS] with ethics CEUs. ” I believe anyone who is entering the judiciary field or is planning on working for the first time as an interpreter at a deposition should attend this very valuable presentation. It is a three-hour workshop “about the role of interpreters in depositions, and this workshop will provide an overview of the structure of depositions, the parties, the objectives, the terminology, etc. Attendees will receive plenty of real-life advice on how to manage the flow of information, how to deal with difficult situations, and exactly what to expect during the course of the deposition.” Whatever you do, do not accept a deposition assignment without this very practical learning tool. I did, and it was not a good experience. At that time, I wasn’t even aware that such specific classes were available. This workshop is language neutral, so everyone is welcome.

https://najit.org/najit2024/pre-conference-workshops/

Working depositions requires specifically the skill of consecutive interpretation, which as we know, is the best mode for question-and-answer colloquies, with few exceptions.

Friday, May 17, 2:00 PM – 5:00 PM

Well, as a perfect follow up to Judy’s workshop, we are fortunate that Javier Castillo is presenting that same afternoon on “ IMPROVING YOUR MEMORY .” So fitting!

Those two presentations go hand in hand as depositions and consecutive interpretation are inextricably linked. Therefore, team them up for a fantastic deposition-consecutive well-rounded training program.

“In this workshop, participants will learn key techniques to improve their memory and recall. The strategies learned will aid both their short- and long-term memory. Being able to interpret long passages from the witness stand as well as all the items on one’s grocery list will better all aspects of life.”

Interestingly enough, these presentations on memory are unforgettable! I still remember the samples used in one I attended ten years ago. I am serious.

Another element of consecutive interpreting is notetaking. Notetaking does not refer to the writing down of all and every single word you hear the LEP or attorney utter, but signs or words that can help jog your memory. Small clues if you will. Creating a notetaking system, based on symbols or words, can take a lifetime, but we must start somewhere. That place can very well be the NAJIT 45 ^th Annual Conference where Ellen Wingo will be presenting a three-hour workshop on this topic.

“BUILDING A NOTE-TAKING SYSTEM FROM THE GROUND UP”

Friday, May 17, 2:00 PM – 5:00 PM

I have struggled with notetaking my whole professional life and have finally come to the conclusion that although I never learned a specific system, I have a system of my own. Therefore, I could not agree more with this description Ellen shares with us.

“Rather than limiting participants to any particular method, this course introduces elements from many different note-taking techniques, allowing them to knit together a system that works best for them. They will learn how to adapt their system to any length of speech.” This language neutral workshop takes place during the afternoon schedule, so take advantage and pair this with Judy Jenner’s “ANATOMY OF A DEPOSITION [ETHICS] with ethics CEUs” for a well-rounded Depo Bootcamp.

Now, whether you are a beginner or an experienced interpreter, Janis Palma’s insights into language ought to be a requirement for certification. As we all know, communication is made up of many different elements, some verbal, some non-verbal. Janis goes in depth into these and other elements of meaning. In Janis’s own words: “This workshop is designed to provide interpreters with the resources and strategies to acquire an expert’s command of the most basic instrument at our disposal, language, through concrete examples and practical exercises.”

Friday, May 17, 2:00 PM – 5:00 PM

LANGUAGE BUILDING BLOCKS FOR EXPERT PERFORMANCE IN THE SIMULTANEOUS MODE AND BEYOND [ETHICS]

If you are in search of your annual or biennial ethics requirements, you can choose the Judy Jenner – Janis Palma combo for a total of 6 ethics CEUs.

One of NAJIT’s hallmarks is our (yes, our – we, you and I, are also NAJIT) advocacy of certification. We know that not all languages have a certification program, but for all of those that do, as professionals of the most common languages we must make sure to take advantage of the privilege to obtain our available credentials.

I just recently learned that the last state exam in one of the sates where I am certified did not yield a single certified interpreter, at a time when that state, with thousands of Spanish cases in its dockets, has only twenty state certified interpreters available to freelance.

I have heard of many potential reasons for this. Number one could be the lack of knowledge as to what the test entails. As bilinguals, we probably think this is a matter of language skill, and since we have a high level of bilingualism, we imagine that is all it will take.

I have been very lucky in that after that uncomfortable experience I told you about earlier, I attended two college programs with a total of 36 credit hours, and I have since taken four state certification exams, passing them all on the first try, written and oral. But it is not an easy feat, and I prepared for all of them. To have the best chance to succeed, I recommend:

Friday, May 17, 9:00 AM – NOON

“HOW TO PREPARE FOR AN INTERPRETING EXAM” lead by Corinne McKay. Exam results are not always a reflection of our knowledge. They also reflect our state of mind at the time of the test, whether we are nervous, tired, agitated, hungry, anxious, etc. That is why I suggest “preparing to prepare” for a test. A plan is necessary, and Corinne will give you the basics for that. As the objectives of this workshop state: “Attendees will learn how to create a robust training plan for an interpreting exam (with a focus on, but not limited to, court interpreting exams), how to make the best use of available preparation resources, and how to set the stage for a successful exam day.”

Friday, May 17, 2:00 PM – 5:00 PM

As far are exams go, the one administered by the Southern California School of Interpretation on behalf of SOSI to work at the Executive Office of Immigration Review is among the few that are offered for free the first time. But if you fail it, the second time around you must pay both for the course and the exam; why not have the best chance possible by attending “ MASTERING THE COURTROOM: A COMPREHENSIVE GUIDE TO IMMIGRATION PROCEEDINGS [SPONSORED BY SOSI]” presented by Francesca Samuel (NAJIT’s very own Vice-Chair, Treasurer and Chair of the Social Media Committee)?

It has been debated whether simultaneous or consecutive interpretation is more taxing, harder, or more complex. I have always felt that simultaneous is the more difficult of the two, but I am sure opinions will differ.

Having already addressed the consecutive mode, simultaneous can be addressed by
INTERPRETING AT THE SPEED OF COURT: TECHNIQUES TO KEEP PACE WITH FAST SPEAKERS [ETHICS], a workshop presented by the legendary James Plunkett III.

Friday, May 17, 9:00 AM – NOON

“To accomplish the goal, interpreters will understand the reason for fast speech in court settings, understand fast speech in English at rates of up to 180 words per minute, develop analytical skills with guided exercises, manage pauses, work with omissions, use more concise target language, and build up speed by interpreting short passages at rates of up to 180 words per minute. Students will record their renditions, review them, make corrections, and plan new strategies to improve their accuracy and completeness at higher rates of speed.”

Wait a minute, what was that all about? Omissions are acceptable in judiciary interpreting? As I have learned from Janis Palma, as long as we do not omit meaning, some of the repetitive words can be omitted. But to help you decide how to do this in a way that allows you to comply with the code of ethics, attend James’s presentation.

I would personally pair James’s and Janis’s presentations together for a solid understanding and management of simultaneous interpretation with three ethics CEUs.

However you choose your sessions and workshops, there will be something for everyone.

Now, if you need additional enticement, think of all the networking opportunities that you will have during these three magical days.

Free participation on Thursday, May 16: ASTM Meetings – OPEN to all from 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM to learn what is happening in our profession from a standards point of view.
Photographer onsite for headshots NOON – 6:00 PM on Friday, May 17.
The Welcome Event , where all attendees are welcome! Friday, May 17, 5:30 PM – 7:30 PM.
For early risers, our yearly Zumba bash on Saturday, May 18, 6:00 AM – 6:45 AM.
Keynote Speaker and Conference Welcome 8:00 AM – 8:45 AM on Saturday, May 18 for all main conference attendees.
Our delicious and informative “Annual Luncheon” for all main conference attendees.
NAJIT’s Annual Meeting, open to all NAJIT members and non-members.
More headshots! Photographer onsite for headshots NOON – 6:00 PM on Saturday, May 18.
Our now staple “ Saturday Evening Reception” from 6:30 PM to 8:30 PM on Saturday, May 18.
For all main conference attendees, the annual Town Hall 8:00 AM – 8:45 AM, Sunday, May 19.
And last but not least, “ Open meeting of the NAJIT Board of Directors (limited seating) on Sunday May 18 from 3:00 PM to 5:00 PM.

Questions? Reach out to NAJIT headquarters at hq@najit.org

She is an active and voting member of NAJIT, ATA, MATI and other professional groups. Hilda has two certificates in Legal Interpreting in Spanish and English, the latest one from NYU. Hilda is the current staff interpreter of the 23rd Illinois Judicial Circuit as well as a Cook County (Illinois) Spanish Interpreter employee. Hilda is a former Staff Interpreter at Essex County Superior Court in New Jersey, where she worked for six years. Born in Chicago, Hilda lived for twenty years in Mexico and loves traveling. She continuously looks for opportunities to promote and advance the interpreting profession. Contact: hshymanik@yahoo.com

Featured photo by Camilo Jimenez on Unsplash . Text-body photos: watch-your-step sign by rfind at pixabay ; Water On The Deck by Peter Griffin at PublicDomainPictures.net .

Want other combos? I would pair Corrine’s workshop on test taking with Javier Castillo’s memory workshop.

Take advantage of the EARLY-BIRD special rates before the April 1, 2024 deadline!

The Assignment of My Dreams

Mon, 11 Mar 2024 13:12:00 GMT

Well, folks, I did it! I got my dream assignment. Perhaps surprisingly, it wasn’t for the United Nations, or for any other important governmental (or non-governmental) entity you may have heard of. What was it, you ask? Well, can you guess? What would your dream assignment be?

This winter, I got to be… wait for it…drum roll… a circus interpreter!

The whole thing started by accident a couple of years ago while I was on vacation in Central America at a circus camp.

I’m not kidding.

In fairness, I have told you about my enthusiasm for acrobatics before. If you don’t remember, here’s a blog I wrote about Acroyoga back in 2014 which we reposted a couple of years ago. But these two aspects of my life (interpreting and flying through the air on a trapeze) just don’t generally…blend. Until 2022, that is, when I found myself at circus camp attending a workshop. I could see the presenter struggling to find his words in English as he tried to explain how he and his colleagues have created a network of community circus projects that provide support and resources for children.

“Next time, would you like an interpreter?” I offered after the presentation was over. I couldn’t help myself; I blurted it out and then hoped he wouldn’t take offense. Instead, relief flooded his face.

“Please! I like for to speak English, but sometimes, when things get, you know, too complicated, I cannot express myself,” he said. “Please, help.” And just like that, I stepped into the assignment of a lifetime.

This year I returned as a full-fledged member of the team, complete with my simultaneous interpreting equipment and three receivers. (Before you get too excited, I should confess that I was still a paying participant, volunteering my services in exchange for a bit of a discount.)

I interpreted for one gentleman who, as a child growing up in extreme poverty, had fallen in with gangs. His life may have gone in a very different direction if he hadn’t happened upon a charitable circus project, started by a man who wanted children to learn arts and get to see their country. (Many children in their country have never even left their hometown, and art is not taught in school. There are no extracurricular music groups or theater clubs. Until now.)

The project turned this young man’s life around, and he has dedicated his life to paying it forward. He helped build the “ casa de las botellas ,” the house where he and his colleagues live and perform for the local community. The home was constructed with over 30,000 plastic bottles otherwise destined for the landfill. There, they offer support to local children on a daily basis throughout the year, providing not just free acrobatics classes, but also homework help and a safe space. Their home contains an enormous permanent circus tent (“la palapa”) where they can launch each other high in the air and explore aerial arts with apparatus hanging from the ceiling. They live entirely off donations and grants, and for them there is no separation between work, play, and personal life. They live and breathe social circus.

When they presented, I interpreted into English for the rest of the team. When they participated, I interpreted simultaneously into Spanish.

I interpreted their social-circus presentations in the consecutive mode, barefoot in yoga pants and a tank top, a notebook in my lap. The work got less formal from there! During the opening circle I interpreted tarot-card readings. That vocabulary was definitely the hardest, full of metaphors and ambiguity. I also interpreted for aerial-arts classes, teacher meetings, and show planning sessions. I interpreted jokes and songs. Once, I sight translated a children’s book! My accumulated glossary is hilarious.

The assignment was like a hybrid between conference interpreting, community work, and interpreting for your friend at a party. Not only was I bridging language gaps, I was also supporting the team in navigating systemic challenges. Plus, I was living, working, and collaborating with my “clients” (who were also becoming my friends), so boundaries were certainly a bit blurred.

Because of key power dynamics, the need for systemic navigation, and cultural differences, the ethics of cultural brokerage and advocacy did apply (like when I fought to get them air conditioning in their living quarters like all the other teachers had. I was partially successful.) As a general rule, I helped make sure that their needs were attended to and their voices were heard.

All photos for this blog post courtesy of the author.

I fulfilled the role informally for two years running; I would be attending a class with the aforementioned presenter when he would announce with no warning, “Athena will interpret for me now.” Then he would launch into a rapid-fire speech about how to channel your emotions while clowning, and I was suddenly interpreting long consecutive on the fly. You have to warn the interpreter so she knows to bring her notebook!

I also re-learned a few valuable lessons. Similarly, having some kind of pre-session was more important than ever before. I made sure that everybody knew the basics of how to work with an interpreter, and that they stuck to one language when working with me. I made it clear that when I was interpreting, I should be considered an interpreter and not a participant. After one extremely chaotic meeting left me with a pounding headache, I reiterated that I can only interpret for one person speaking at a time . I clarified boundaries and worked hard to maintain the necessary professionalism even when the circus became… well, a circus. Then, at the end, I flew in the circus!

The experience was amazing, and I hope to bridge these two worlds a bit more in the future; I spent the month learning the ins and outs of Nicaraguan slang, and I foresee a workshop in our future. ��

Emergency Medical Coverage Funds

Wed, 06 Mar 2024 15:10:00 GMT

Several weeks ago, a friend and freelance colleague fell in the cafeteria of the courthouse where some of us work. The floor was wet and the “wet floor signs” were out of her line of vision. Once she was embarrassingly sprawled on the floor, the signs were pointed out to her, where they were pushed completely out of the way and facing different directions. As she fell on the wet floor, the cafeteria staff, before even inquiring as to her physical well-being, were insisting that the floor was not wet, despite the fact that my friend had a wet dress under her!

Needless to say, she was not offered any help to get up from the cafeteria workers and would have had to stay on the floor if not for a helpful offer from someone who appeared to be an attorney.

The cafeteria employees may have been under precise instructions not to intervene. Nonetheless, my friend is basically traumatized by the terrible experience she suffered and from not having received any help when the incident occurred.

She suffered a broken hip and has been convalescing for the last seven weeks. She is recovering nicely thanks to her good metabolism and overall fitness, but the experience kept her and her husband from earning money during a great part of those weeks. They are also facing pretty serious expenses for doctors, hospitalization, medicine, and more, and some of those expenses will have to come out of pocket.

A family member that recently started working as a freelance interpreter after working for years in corporate banking was telling me that the income for interpretation doubled the employment one. Well, I had to suggest that all the extra money should be held in the business checking account to pay for all the extras that we as freelancers do not have access to, such as vacation, holidays, sick days, retirement funds, health insurance, and taxes due at the end of each year.

The collective experience reminds us that as freelancers, we must add to our fees a cushion to cover all these sorts of additional expenses, such as medical and disability insurance or attorney fees if litigation becomes necessary. The level of skill required to be an interpreter does not need explanations as to why we charge the fees we charge; however, it is good to have these additional expenses in mind the next time we raise our fees.

If we are lucky and share expenses with a loved one, such as a husband, wife, other family member or partner, it would not be as hard as facing these health issues alone, but there are many of our colleagues who are single or not sharing everyday life with someone, and they will have a hard time providing for themselves during emergency circumstances such as the one my friend went through.

The courthouses where we work can also make an effort to send a get-well text, e-mail, or phone call. I know there can be legal implications, but courtesy can never hurt, right? I leave that one to the legal minds. For our part, we as professionals and friends can keep in mind that, since we are not employees, taking an interest in all our per-diem colleague’s well-being can make a great difference to all of us.

She is an active and voting member of NAJIT, ATA, MATI and other professional groups. Hilda has two certificates in Legal Interpreting in Spanish and English, the latest one from NYU. Hilda is the current staff interpreter of the 23rd Illinois Judicial Circuit as well as a Cook County (Illinois) Spanish Interpreter employee. Hilda is a former Staff Interpreter at Essex County Superior Court in New Jersey, where she worked for six years. Born in Chicago, Hilda lived for twenty years in Mexico and loves traveling. She continuously looks for opportunities to promote and advance the interpreting profession. Contact: hshymanik@yahoo.com

Featured photo by Camilo Jimenez on Unsplash . Text-body photos: watch-your-step sign by rfind at pixabay ; Water On The Deck by Peter Griffin at PublicDomainPictures.net .

Having been placed in a chair, the cafeteria personnel proceeded to push her, chair and all, toward the exit door into the corridor. My friend was left there, alone, in pain and scared until she was able to get a hold of one of our colleagues who went in search of the interpreter coordinator and her supervisor who were in a meeting. The coordinator and her supervisor came to keep my friend company while she waited for the ambulance, as she was unable to get up or walk.

For good measure it would not hurt to investigate some type of personalized disability insurance policy.

Quality control or hidden systemic barrier?

Tue, 27 Feb 2024 21:42:00 GMT

I know several interpreters who are terrible with computers yet exceptional with their interpreting skills, and I am sure that there are many more out there. Are some of the rules that we have discriminating against talented interpreters with marginal computer skills?

Like many interpreters working in a limited-diffusion, non-certifiable language, any means to earn extra qualifications or stamps of approval is always appreciated. At least for me. While it does not carry the same effects as the privileges earned by our esteemed colleagues who have been through the long hours of studying for the certification test, having it still gives me a boost of confidence that I am “up there” with all the hard work that I put into my profession.

So, you can imagine how happy I was when my home state came out with the CEU policy requiring continuing education in order to keep a spot on the roster. I thought to myself, here we go, now we have some safeguard against agency interpreters who can just walk in and get a piece of that hard-earned pie . But now, more than half a decade down the road from that policy’s implementation, I am starting to see things from another angle.

Don’t get me wrong, I am a CE junkie, and I love attending classes that help broaden my horizons or sharpen my skills. Never have I missed a year that I did not complete my CEU requirements.

However, sometimes this ‘online’ procedure can leave out some of our seasoned colleagues, those who may be in their older tenure. Some may not be internet savvy, while others may fall through the information gap from not keeping up with the rule that usually comes via electronic communications—again, all of which require a certain level of online literacy. To be honest, for a lot of these colleagues, it’s not something that’s in their generational interest. Some of us who did not grow up in the USA did not have access to computers until 1996!

Furthermore, there may simply be a low perceived ROI or a lack of incentives offered by the courts to motivate quality interpreters. These courses are not cheap, and the number of credits required can make it costly. If your language pair is not requested regularly, can you afford to spend money on this investment?

Given that my language pair is not mainstream and has a very small pool of interpreters in the system, I work with these colleagues regularly and can proudly say that they are all my mentors. They may not attend the online classes, but they are all active interpreters who are competent in both state and federal courts. They have a solid skillset and years of experience that is valuable in the courtroom. But should they be penalized just because they are older and cannot keep up with all the changes in the system?

Of course, I am not saying that every older interpreter should be exempted. This wonderful policy was created with the good intention of keeping our skills high as court interpreters. But I feel strongly that more factors should be taken into consideration before the court decides that they will reach out to agency interpreters before utilizing this group of interpreters who may not be active in the state court roster (but who still may be working with the federal court or DoS) solely because of their local CEU status. Can we afford to lose this talent because of a systemic barrier? These interpreters went through all the tests and requirements to be on the roster to begin with. Shouldn’t skill assessment after a certain period be implemented rather than just relying on online CEU courses? Let us not forget that you can sometimes get a certificate of attendance just by paying the fee. Can it really be the deal breaker that decides on the destiny of an interpreter’s status?

In my humble opinion, this will lead to more and more interpreters opting to just take ‘the easy route’ and remain on the agency roster rather than work hard to be on the court roster. Why should one bother when you just end up getting the job anyway? In this case, it appears to me that the QC policy is backfiring on us.

As for the courts, are you ready to lose this talent pool of those who “fell through the systemic cracks?”

When my dad turned 74, he mentioned how he felt like he was falling behind and could not catch up with the world. I was in my 30s at the time and thought, how can you feel that way? While I have not personally crossed that threshold yet, I now see the essence of his comment. Taking online courses and uploading certificates into your online platform may be a piece of cake for Millennials and all the subsequent generations, but it’s surely not for everyone.

Featured photo: “ Technology old and new ” by user Brenda at flickr , under a CC BY 2.0 license. Text-body photo from “ A Touch of the Universe ” (“ About ” page) by University of Valencia Astronomical Observatory , under a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.

None of this is intended as a personal attack on agency interpreters. However, if the court is relying on the CE-credit rule to decide which interpreter can be active on the court roster, how are agency interpreters qualified to work in court cases? They have not passed the test administered by the court to qualify as a court interpreter nor do they have any CEU requirements of any kind. Not to mention the ethics and procedural knowledge that court interpreters need to know and adhere to.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T

Mon, 19 Feb 2024 17:58:00 GMT

I have to be really honest. Every time I hear about a problem here or there with some client or court who does not want to pay a fair compensation to the interpreter, or someone wondering why the interpreter needs to prep for an assignment or bypassing the credentialed and qualified interpreter for one with no qualifications whatsoever, I feel deeply offended. I guess it’s what you would call vicarious indignation. Even if it is not happening to me, I feel the ripple effects extending far and wide and definitely affecting my professional sensibilities. This widespread lack of respect for interpreters has been around for the entire time I have been a professional interpreter, which is over four decades. You’d think that by now things would have changed, but they just seem to be getting worse in many important ways.

I am not going to itemize the many fronts where interpreters are battling right now for better pay and improved work conditions, but it is encouraging to see all the groups joining forces in different parts of the country and “taking up arms,” metaphorically speaking. The undercurrent is one of disrespect for the individual interpreters and the interpreting profession as a whole. There is no other explanation for the way interpreters are being treated by language-service consumers. Why is that? Why do end users like court, hospital, or school administrators think they can dictate what an interpreter’s service is worth? Well, I think there is enough blame to go around, and I do not hold interpreters harmless, including me. For too long we have limited an interpreter’s “education” to the three basic skills and the most elementary knowledge of specialized terminology, with a “sprinkle” of ethics. The fact is that such training was and still is sorely lacking in the type of knowledge that clearly sets a professional apart from a skilled technician. There are very few educational opportunities for interpreters in all domains—education, healthcare, and law—that foster critical thinking and give interpreters the knowledge-based tools to make judgment calls based on solid theoretical foundations rather than intuition.

We did the best we could with what we had four decades ago, but in doing so we unwittingly relinquished our own agency, our own power to shape our profession within the parameters of each domain: education, healthcare, law. I believe the time has come for us to take back ownership of our profession. I also believe we can do that only by raising the bar in the sort of knowledge we bring to the table. We cannot be “experts” unless we are knowledgeable about language structure and function, language processing in our brains, and the complexities of the work we do. It is up to each one of us. Just like we learn about specialized terminology by researching and creating our own glossaries, we can also learn about the rules of grammar and the essential principles of semantics and pragmatics. It is up to us because there are no graduate programs in judiciary interpreting, or healthcare, or education interpreting. There is an amazing world of “universities without walls” on the internet where anyone can find any subject matter and learn on their own schedule, based on their own needs. It is up to each one of us to become savvy online researchers and master the essential “tools of the trade” that will empower us to assert our place in the universe of work scenarios in which our services are needed and command the respect we rightfully deserve.

Speaking of which, here are a few sources to get you started on your self-guided learning journey:

Syntax

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrqILBzGZVE (Oregon State University)

Semantics

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_3h0fB8Rhg (one of my favorites, a professor at the University of New Mexico, Evan Ashworth . Here’s more information about him: https://cjdept.unm.edu/people/faculty/profile/evan-ashworth.html . I love all his videos on linguistics, so I recommend looking for more of his lectures.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QZWx_XAO1w (The Virtual Linguistics Campus)

Pragmatics

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsPswzOBsK0&list=RDCMUC4NHPS-ApMmYuguXTCZGWPw&index=2

Linguistic Relativity

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwPbDNBFVrc&list=RDCMUC4NHPS-ApMmYuguXTCZGWPw&index=26

For the millennial learners: (this lecturer may be more “relatable”)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGWpbDI11Ik

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9RPueD8wGs

Also:

Noam Chomsky on The Concept of Language: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdUbIlwHRkY (University of Washington in Seattle)

Noam Chomsky on The Structure of Language: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3U6MsdBalg&list=RDCMUCHuLYgw4dGbC2BuZQqPWV1g&start_radio=1&rv=E3U6MsdBalg&t=49

Noam Chomsky on The Function of Language: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzzuPMA8s7k&list=RDCMUCHuLYgw4dGbC2BuZQqPWV1g&index=2

John Searle on The Philosophy of Language: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uk5pIzCNOzU&t=372s (another one of my favorites; he wrote the book titled Speech Acts. This video is the first in a series of lectures at UC Berkeley.)

Featured image (cropped) “ Sign in hallway Respect August 25, 2008 ” by user ChinaFlag at Wikimedia Commons ; photo in the public domain. Text-body photo (cropped) “ Statues of Honour Grand Staircase ” by user Livioandronico2013 at Wikimedia Commons , under a CC BY-SA 4.0 license.

We also have “codes of ethics” galore in every state and every professional association that misdirect an interpreter’s performance towards some distorted idea of what interpreting means. Transferring meaning from one language to another cannot be done without some sort of addition or omission, because we do not transfer meaning word for word. This straightjacket was put in place because interpreters were not expected to have a sufficient structural knowledge about the languages interpreted to make judgment calls about which syntactic and semantic constituents of speech could be rendered differently and still remain faithful to the source language’s message.

The Couch: Register a Business?

Thu, 15 Feb 2024 19:20:00 GMT

The Couch is a place to exchange ideas and brainstorm, not only for its contributors but also for our readers who engage in the ensuing discussions. Sometimes, a person needs to ask a large number of people what the best course of action is to be able to make as wise a decision as possible for their business. Thank you to this week’s Couch contributor!

Thank you all!

Please note: If you have a topic you’d like to see discussed at The Couch , write to the Editor . The comments section here should be used only to reply to the issue under discussion today. When you submit a question or topic for The Couch , we will make sure to remove all information that might make the parties or case identifiable.

Text-body photo from PxHere . Image in the public domain.

A question from one of our readers: I am relatively new to this profession. Some colleagues have told me that it is completely superfluous and unnecessary to set up a business officially, while I see that others have one (mostly LLCs). An LLC is meant to protect your assets from liability, but how likely are you actually to be sued? Can anyone attest to the potential usefulness an LLC? Are there any other business configurations you recommend, or is it all unnecessary in this profession?

Exploring ways to do business: An Interpreter Run Cooperative

Tue, 06 Feb 2024 13:46:00 GMT

We are always writing about colleagues asking us about fees, and we are horrified when we learn of new colleagues being lowballed. This is an everyday issue. Many blog writers and other guests write about this subject, and we tend to despair of ever having interpreter fees accurately reflect our skills. Maybe it is time to think of new business structures?

Today, a colleague offered an assignment in a professional chat, and a few of our friends mentioned that the proposed fee was low. Then the conversation turned from low- to high-range fees and the differences between compensation from law firms, courts, and agencies. One of my colleagues brought up an idea that I have been hearing for the last two years. I believe I first heard about this concept the first time I met Reme Bashi, or perhaps the second. I have since talked to other colleagues about the idea of coming together to open a cooperative run for and by interpreters.

What would it take to create a cooperative? I have been reading on the subject from different websites, including the IRS rules for this type of legal entity, and it does not sound more complicated than what we already do, most of us already being self-employed. Among us are agency owners, former agency owners, and former agency employees. So, what is stopping us from making this dream or goal a reality?

Cooperatives are often created in the context of agricultural production, but they can function for many types of products and services. The University of Nebraska’s Cooperative Development Center defines a cooperative as follows:

One of the reasons I have not attempted this before is that someone needs to take it on and get people organized. There needs to be a leader or a group of leaders. Most of my colleagues (closest friends) are in my age group, and for the most part, we are all set as far as our income and commitments are concerned. Some of us, myself included, are planning to retire within the next five years. We need someone from a younger generation ready to step up to the plate, take this idea, and run with it. I am sure you can get a lot of support from colleagues already doing this. I believe we have one in my neck of the woods, actually!

If you are interested in this idea, it is time to get enough volunteers to research it and see it if it is a viable option for you, to get organized and explore all business possibilities.

She is an active and voting member of NAJIT, ATA, MATI and other professional groups. Hilda has two certificates in Legal Interpreting in Spanish and English, the latest one from NYU. Hilda is the current staff interpreter of the 23rd Illinois Judicial Circuit as well as a Cook County (Illinois) Spanish Interpreter employee. Hilda is a former Staff Interpreter at Essex County Superior Court in New Jersey, where she worked for six years. Born in Chicago, Hilda lived for twenty years in Mexico and loves traveling. She continuously looks for opportunities to promote and advance the interpreting profession. Contact: hshymanik@yahoo.com

Featured photo and text-body photo by rawpixel.com . (Photos free of copyrights under CC0.)

A cooperative is an association of persons (organization) that is owned and controlled by the people to meet their common economic, social, and/or cultural needs and aspirations through a jointly owned and democratically controlled business (enterprise). The people of the cooperative are those who use its products, supplies, and/or services. Profits are also often returned back to the members of the cooperative; however, cooperatives are often more focused on services for members than for investments.

Cooperatives can be created for a number of different reasons or to fulfill a number of different needs: jointly process goods, split costs, split control over work, purchasing power (bulk buys), shared employees, shared wages, etc.

Aside from our language skills, most of us have run businesses of one kind or another. I for example worked in accounting, administration, and human resources for fifteen years before becoming an interpreter. Many of my colleagues have been or are still working as flight attendants, communicators, photographers, graphic designers, professors, teachers, real-estate agents, writers, and more. Therefore, we all have a combined variety of skills that could be very useful for this kind of project, from logos to tag lines and administration, and more.

Did you say you wanted a volunteer interpreter, Your Honor?

Mon, 22 Jan 2024 15:56:00 GMT

In most states, a bilingual individual who wishes to be on the court’s roster of qualified interpreters must meet certain requirements. These are not whimsical or random requirements. The first one is usually an orientation seminar about the court system in the state where the person will be providing his or her professional services. That’s because most lay persons who come in contact with the court system usually do not know the difference between an arraignment and an arrangement . They both sound so much alike that people figure it must be some fancy way judges have of saying “arrangement.” After this seminar, and having now learned about the court system’s structure, jurisdiction, hierarchy, and proceedings (with all the proper legal terminology that entails), the person must then take a written exam , generally to test their proficiency in the languages to be interpreted.

Studies conducted by linguists and others in similar fields of study have determined that a competent interpreter must have a proficiency level in both languages interpreted equivalent to at least 14 years of formal education. That is just the minimal threshold. If the person passes this written exam, thereby demonstrating their language proficiency, the candidate must take an oral exam to demonstrate they can (1) understand the wide range of language levels used in legal proceedings, and (2) transfer the full and correct meaning to the non-English speaking person (also known as Limited English Proficient or LEP individual.) The transfer of meaning can be simultaneous (as one person speaks, the interpreter is processing the information and converting it into the second language), or consecutive (one person speaks in one language, the interpreter processes the meaning of the utterance heard, holds it in short-term memory, mentally processes the equivalent utterance in the other language, and after the first person speaks, the interpreter renders the complete message accurately to the listener.) Once the candidate demonstrates he or she can accomplish this, the state grants a credential that is based on an objective evaluation of the person’s skills and knowledge. The compensation paid to this certified interpreter is a reflection of the special skills and knowledge he or she brings to the table.

Most lay persons do not know the difference between probation , parole , and supervised release ; they are unlikely to know the difference between an information and an indictment , and chances are they won’t know what a judicial confession , a collateral attack , or an advisory sentencing guideline are. That’s not even counting all the nuances of guardianship and conservatorship in family court, or all the other specialized terminology that comes up in civil litigation. Certified interpreters not only know what these technical terms mean, they also know how to translate them correctly into whichever language they are certified to interpret.

Now, the question is, Your Honor, do you still want a volunteer interpreter instead of a certified interpreter?

Featured image (cropped) taken from “ Young people and Volunteering ” by Lily Meszaros at Actuaries Digital , under a CC BY-NC 4.0 license. Text-body photo taken from “ Diaconie et bénévolat ” by Jean-Marc Leresche at Le blog de Jean-Marc Leresche , under a CC BY 4.0 license.

Good interpreters make their work look easy, so maybe that’s why some non-interpreters think anyone can do this work, but it is certainly not enough to have learned a second language at home or have taken some courses in high school or even college. The demands on a judiciary interpreter’s specialized knowledge and skills are directly proportional to the LEP defendants’ right to due process, and litigants’ right to equal protection. Since the historical decision by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in United States ex Rel. Negron v. State of N.Y. , 434 F.2d 386, 390 (2d Cir. 1970), the right to an interpreter has been on par with other Constitutional rights afforded to all criminal defendants in U.S. courtrooms. Furthermore, the right to an interpreter means a right to a competent interpreter. State v. Teshome, 122 Wn. App. 705, 711 (Wash. Ct. App. 2004). It is also a right to have everything that is happening in court interpreted, not just to be provided with a summary. The right to communicate with counsel in order to assist in his or her own defense falls within the protection of the due process clause in both the Fifth and the Fourteenth Amendments.

Promotion or Demotion? The Perceived Value of Interpreters

Tue, 16 Jan 2024 15:57:00 GMT

My heart is racing and the more I think about it, the angrier I get. I was in court, and when the judge called my case, she misspoke and said “Attorney Reme Bashi” instead of “Interpreter Reme Bashi.” The bailiff quickly corrected the judge (an unusual thing), so the judge chuckled and said to me “Oh, I gave you a promotion.” I, in turn, smiled and said, “I actually think it was the opposite, Your Honor. If it were easy to become an interpreter, there would be more of us.”

Looking back on that day, although there were only a handful of people around us, it may have been wiser to keep my thoughts to myself. Luckily, the judge and the attorney who were present did not take offense to my comment, and I later had the opportunity to speak to them and expand on my idea. After my conversations with them, they seemed to understand the complexity of our profession a little more. I have been pondering the actions interpreters can take to make our profession seem more valuable in the eyes of others.

At one point in my interpreting career, I interpreted for Jay Bildstein, a public speaker and sales expert from New York City who offered training sessions in Mexico. I learned a few lessons as I interpreted for him. I often think of how these business ideas apply to how we sell our language services and how they’re perceived.

Going back to the beginning of my story, the judge did not know there were only around forty certified Spanish court interpreters living in Wisconsin, in contrast to thousands of attorneys. What’s more, Spanish-language interpreters in our state don’t make a lot of money, so the perception of the value of interpretation is not high. I thought to myself: Instead of getting angry about how people perceive interpretation, I will take action to change that perception.

This is my dual action plan. First, I will take every opportunity to sing the praises of interpreters and explain how specialized our art is. If we don’t market our talents, no one else will do it for us. Second, I will price my services according to the scarcity and quality of my professional abilities. All professionals establish their fees according to their perception of value. We are no different.

Featured photo taken from “ Business coaching: Employee benefits ” by Jeremy Dawes at Complete Business News , under a CC BY 4.0 license. Text-body photos: “ Craft beer paddle ” by Crystal Luxmore at flickr , under a CC BY-NC 2.0 license; from “ Maple Syrup Cake ” by Evelyn Chartres , under a CC BY-SA 4.0 license.

Consider, for example, if a product or service is scarce, it’s considered more valuable. Since I’m in Wisconsin, let’s think, beer. The famous Milwaukee beer with the blue ribbon is sold at every gas station, and you can find it beyond Wisconsin’s borders. It’s anything but scarce, and the perception of its value is low, as is its price. On the other hand, craft beer made in Dane County, sold only in Wisconsin, is scarce. People perceive that it’s special, and the money they pay for it mirrors that perception.

Let’s now consider perceived value and price. Imagine you’re looking for a birthday cake. You find very similar cakes in a range of prices. The main variation between the cakes is the price, and you have no point of reference to know which cake is tastier than the other. If you were trying to get the tastier cake for your birthday, you would likely base your choice on price and buy the more expensive one. We tend to perceive more expensive items as being of higher quality.

The Couch: Coaching the Defendant

Tue, 09 Jan 2024 19:57:00 GMT

The Couch is a place to exchange ideas and brainstorm, not only for its contributors but also for our readers who engage in the ensuing discussions. Sometimes, you want to “keep calm and keep interpreting,” but external factors make that simple solution difficult to achieve. A thank you goes out to this week’s anonymous contributor for the Couch !

You are interpreting for a rather routine criminal trial on a drug offense. The LEP defendant has been consistently cooperating with their lawyer throughout the proceedings. However, you start to notice that the defendant occasionally whispers to their lawyer during the trial. You can’t hear the content of their conversations, but the body language and urgency seem to suggest that the attorney might be coaching the defendant on how to answer questions or providing instructions during testimony.

Text body photo in the public domain. Taken from rawpixel .

As the interpreter, you want to focus solely on the interpretation, but this behavior is distracting to you. On one hand, it could be a sign of unethical behavior. On the other hand, you don’t want to jump to conclusions and risk creating unnecessary tension in the courtroom. You have concerns about maintaining your impartiality and not overstepping your role as an interpreter.

The person who presented this scenario would also like to add that s/he struggles with shyness and would hesitate to bring to the judge’s attention behavior that s/he finds distracting while the “offender” is in the room.

From Thanksgiving to the New Year

Tue, 02 Jan 2024 13:19:00 GMT

Are you ever surprised by how we go from the Thanksgiving holiday, a season of taking stock of what we have, being grateful for all the good things in our lives, and recognizing the joy we share with our families, to just a few weeks later, on New Year’s Eve, falling into extravagant statements like: I have to change, this is a new year, I am starting over, I have to go on a diet, I am going to work out, I have to move, I should get a better job, I ought to reinvent myself, and so on.

At this time of year, we always talk about New Year’s resolutions. A new year is a new beginning, and there are things we are going to do differently and better from now on. We look back and find all sorts of mistakes and blunders we made over the past year. And we make plans for changes that we consider necessary for a better life.

…All of which is good and valuable. But what about acknowledging that sometimes not changing is the best path, and sticking with things that work just fine, like your job perhaps, or your finances, your marriage, your family, and your home, is the best way forward? Deciding to continue things as they currently are can be as good as any other plan. It does somewhat go against the grain of common expectations, of changing everything in the coming year. While we can certainly do a few things differently and make some modifications where needed, what about analyzing our personal situation and concluding that we are doing many things right already, and making sure we “don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater”?

Reading back on my January 2022 post , I realize that most of the things I was planning on improving were not really in need of “drastic changes.”

As for drastic changes, I plan on none this year. I start taking college classes on January 17 with the goal of getting a degree in history, although that may change in time. I continue to practice interpretation mostly by myself and am searching for a long-term plan to sit for the Federal oral exam when it is offered in 2025.

I think my view is more about acceptance and about loving myself. I am not saying I should not have goals or challenges, or that I will never consider a move. It does not mean settling, but it is more about self-love. If I want to change everything about myself, then I must not like who I am very much. We often hear today, “Before you can love anyone else, you have to love yourself.” You need to be kind to yourself, pay yourself first, take care of yourself so you can then be better positioned to help others.

Things may change in years to come, but for now, this is what my life is, and I am content.

I want to take this opportunity to thank my Blog colleagues, our readership, all NAJIT volunteers, from the Board to all committee members, CMAC (NAJIT’s management company), and NAJIT friends that contribute to make this space our professional home.

Featured photo and text-body photo taken from PxHere. (Photos free of copyrights under CC0.)

Things in my life have remained pretty much the same, and yet I have never felt happier or more fulfilled. The move from the East Coast to the Midwest has had a great effect on my relationships with my family that live in the Chicagoland area. Being physically close to my family has been and continues to be a source of joy. I see my sons, sisters, and their families regularly, and when my mom visits everyone in Chicago from Mexico, I am already here, so I get to enjoy her longer. I have had an impact on my niece’s life, who just arrived from Mexico, and on my son’s as I have encouraged both to become interpreters and both are taking steps to certify. I am still volunteering and involved in small professional projects. Although this year I flirted briefly with becoming a pescatarian, and then a vegetarian, I now eat as healthily as I used to.

Hilda Zavala-Shymanik is a state certified/approved Spanish court interpreter and translator with more than fifteen years of experience in legal, medical, corporate, and non-profit settings in New York, New Jersey, Illinois, and Wisconsin. She is a board member, treasurer, Conference Committee chair, member of the Training and Education Committee and blog team of the National Association of Judiciary Interpreters and Translators as well as former president of the New York Circle of Translators. She is an active and voting member of NAJIT, ATA, and other professional groups. Hilda has two certificates in Legal Interpreting in Spanish and English, the latest one from NYU. Hilda is a former a Staff Interpreter at Essex County Superior Court in New Jersey, where she worked for six years. She now lives and works as a freelance interpreter in the Chicagoland area. Born in Chicago, Hilda lived for twenty years in Mexico and loves traveling. She continuously looks for opportunities to promote and advance the interpreting profession. Contact: hshymanik@yahoo.com

When we advocate for interpreters, are we not also advocating for the LEP population?

Mon, 18 Dec 2023 06:00:00 GMT

I have been turning this question around in my head for a while, since someone raised the question in a social media exchange: am I advocating for interpreters? Or am I advocating for the LEPs we serve? And I just have to wonder, can we separate the two? Advocacy is generally understood to be some act undertaken to support or promote a cause or the interests of a group. In my own advocacy initiatives for interpreters, I am always encouraging interpreters to learn new things, to go outside their comfort zones and find new and better ways to do what they do. My advocacy for interpreters is constantly focused on taking their expertise to the next level, which necessarily has ripple effects on everything else: working conditions, remuneration, respect.

This is my way of advocating for interpreters because raising our performance standards will proportionately raise our leverage to negotiate better working conditions. For example, a colleague of ours, Hilda Shymanik, recently approached me to ask what she could do to educate a judge about appointing two interpreters to a trial. The judge saw no need for two interpreters. By educating that judge and showing him how important it was to have two interpreters working together for long proceedings, she not only advocated for interpreters but also for the LEP defendants, because that improvement in the interpreters’ working conditions would also result in improved interpreting quality for the LEP defendants. It’s hard to keep one act in support of best practices for interpreters from also being an act in support of improved language access for LEPs.

I also tell interpreters everywhere that they cannot simply be repeating what they hear without thinking, without analyzing, and without really understanding what they are hearing. And once they do that, then they have to figure out how they are going to reproduce that message they heard so it can also be understood by the person listening to them. If the person listening to you doesn’t understand what you are saying, then what is the point of having you there?

Interpreting in legal settings is not like interpreting in healthcare or educational settings, and certainly not like conference interpreting, where quite often you don’t even have direct contact with your audience. The legal domain is the only interpreting setting in which the listener has a protected constitutional right to understand what is being interpreted. That is a higher bar than the rights of patients in the healthcare domain or parents in the education domain.

There is a fundamental fairness principle that underscores LEP defendants’ right to an interpreter in every proceeding that takes place during a criminal prosecution. It is not just a matter of making sounds that may theoretically be attributed to a language code the LEP individual is purported to speak and understand. If the string of sounds that are produced by the interpreter fails to convey meaning for the LEP listener, the entire fairness principle falls apart. In fact, the entire construct of a fair and equitable system of justice falls apart.

When the sounds uttered by an interpreter are incomprehensible to the LEP listener, either because they are speaking too fast, or because there is no appropriate intonation and it is all a monotonous rendition, or because there are lexical items chosen by the interpreter that are not part of the listener’s active vocabulary or cultural referents, then the presence of that interpreter is nothing but an act of deception. Mind you, I am referring to the simultaneous interpreting provided to an LEP defendant. When no one else can hear what is being interpreted, and everyone in the courtroom believes the LEP individuals are receiving information in their own language so they can remain informed of everything that is happening during a criminal proceeding against them, so they can confront the evidence and witnesses against them, so they can assist in their own defense, so they can have a fair trial and due process and all those other rights that are supposed to be protected through the appointment of an interpreter, the fact is they are not. Not if they cannot understand what the interpreter is saying.

The long and short of it is that I really don’t think I can advocate for interpreters without also advocating for the LEP population, and vice-versa. They are just two faces of the same coin.

Featured image taken from “ Critique de l’analyse pure de la photographie : plaidoyer pour la lecture naïve ” by Mes formations en ligne : CSIprof at CSI Doc Rock , under a CC BY-NC 4.0 license. Text-body photos: “ Honoré Daumier. 1808-1879. Paris. Les deux avocats. The two lawyers ” by Jean Louis Mazieres at flickr , under a CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 license; “ The Denial of St Peter ” by Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571-1610), found at the Wikimedia Commons – photo in the public domain; “ Justitiemord ,” photo taken by Osvald Hedenström, found at the Wikimedia Commons ; photo in the public domain – source: Lehtikuva .

When I give a presentation somewhere, or a webinar, or a workshop, I talk about things that I hope will inspire my audience to explore beyond the one, two, or three hours they will be with me. Things like cross-cultural communication, discourse analysis, rhetorical and figurative use of language, the difference between semantics and pragmatics, and how adding all these things to your interpreter’s toolbox can make your work not just better but also easier.

Here is where the advocacy for interpreting quality becomes intertwined with the advocacy for LEPs’ rights. When I encourage interpreters to develop techniques in the simultaneous mode that allow them to maintain a good delivery pace—so they don’t have to speak at 250 or 300 words per minute when they interpret—I am advocating for a level of expertise that will provide the interpreter with greater control over their delivery and better management of their cognitive loads. When I show interpreters the advantages of discourse analysis and how to identify and take advantage of linguistic cues through discourse pragmatics and encourage them to use their own judgment to make interpreting decisions, there will be a spillover effect on the comprehensibility of the interpretation delivered to the LEP. The quality of the interpreter’s rendition and the comprehensibility of what the LEP defendant hears go hand in hand.

We cannot simply ignore our listeners because some court administrator somewhere at some point said it doesn’t matter if the LEP defendants understand or not. That is not only absurd in the face of all the case law over the course of the last four decades that affirms the right to an interpreter so the LEP defendants can understand , but it also creates a false perception among judges and lawyers that the LEP’s due process rights are being duly protected through the appointment of a qualified interpreter. Like I said earlier, even the most qualified interpreter will be no more than a fake veneer of due process if the LEP defendant cannot understand the interpreter’s renditions.

Simultaneous Interpreting: Accurate or Timely?

Mon, 11 Dec 2023 22:18:00 GMT

“Elephants have six toes.” “Sally sells seashells by the seashore.” “My friends are named Sam, Stan, Stu, San, Sandy, Dee, and Dan.” What do all these phrases have in common? These three phrases are typically used in the popular children’s game “Whisper down the lane.” In some parts of America, this game is called “Telephone” or “Pass the message.” Children will either sit in a circle or stand in a line; the person in the front of the line will choose a silly or funny phrase, ranging from rhymes, jokes, or tongue-twisters. Each person will whisper the phrase to the person next to them. The goal of this game is for the message to reach the last player, with no mistakes. Typically, the message will end up being garbled or completely wrong, which makes the game even funnier to play.

So, what does this game have to do with simultaneous interpreting? Researchers from the University of Texas conducted a listening study in 1997. The results of the study were quite surprising when it came to word retention. The study showed that people tend to remember 20-25% of what they hear. This study was done on people who were listening, not interpreting simultaneously. One has to wonder how much we can retain if we are both listening and interpreting at the same time.

Oddly enough, a study conducted by Professor Deb Russell from the University of Alberta found that consecutive modes of interpreting in a judicial setting tended to be more accurate than simultaneous modes. In studies from 2002 to 2005, Dr. Russell looked at American Sign Language interpreters in the judicial settings. In several court cases, she noted that the accuracy of interpretation when using simultaneous interpreting was between 83 and 87%. When she conducted the same study on ASL interpreters using consecutive modes of interpreting, the accuracy was higher, between 95 and 98%.

One reason is that simultaneous interpreting saves time. If a court-appointed interpreter were to use consecutive interpreting, it would double or triple the length of the court case. Court calendars are always full and constantly relying on continuation hearings to finish up all their booked cases.

Another reason is the cost. It is more cost effective for the courts to use the simultaneous modes of interpreting. The longer it takes to interpret, the more time is put on the clock. More time on the clock means more money being shoveled out to pay for the court-appointed interpreter’s time.

A third and final reason is that most court cases involve a passive LEP, who will not be speaking a whole lot in their court case. In most of the court cases that I interpret for, the Marshallese LEP is merely listening to the judge, prosecutor, and public defender. The LEP might say a few words here and there, but due to the passive nature of most court cases, the simultaneous mode of interpreting is preferred.

There are certain deviations from the norm, however. For example, consecutive interpreting is used in court when the interpreter speaks Navajo or Dine (the indigenous word for their language and people). Dine is the only language for which consecutive interpreting is required at a federal judicial level. The reason for this is that Dine doesn’t have specific words for certain court terms in English, requiring the interpreter to provide explanation and more wording to explain to the LEP what the words mean. Some courts make allowances for other languages, too. The language that I interpret is Marshallese. Similar to the Dine language, Marshallese doesn’t have an expansive vocabulary for court terms. Therefore, most judges and courts that I work with tend to allow me to use the consecutive mode of interpreting. When court proceedings take place over Zoom, it can also be very difficult to facilitate the use of simultaneous interpreting modes.

Depending on which mode of interpreting you prefer, both have advantages and disadvantages. Regardless of your preferred method of interpreting in a judicial setting, it is interesting to see the studies and statistics provided by research on the matter.

Featured image and text-body photos courtesy of the author.

If studies have shown that consecutive modes of interpreting are more accurate than simultaneous modes of interpreting, then why do courts insist on simultaneous interpreting?

In the end, I expect to hear that Sally is still selling her seashells by the seashore and that your friend group still consists of Sam, Stan, Stu, San, Sandy, Dee, and Dan.

Bethany Fisher has been a professional Marshallese interpreter since 2017. She is qualified and “considered credentialed” as a Marshallese interpreter in North Carolina. She and her family are pioneers for the Marshallese language in the United States, having moved to the Republic of the Marshall Islands in 1989. They currently live in South Carolina. Contact: islandinterpreters@gmail.com .

The Couch: Manipulative and Sly Lawyer

Mon, 04 Dec 2023 20:47:00 GMT

The Couch is a place to exchange ideas and brainstorm, not only for its contributors but also for our readers who engage in the ensuing discussions. Sometimes, to certain people, “keep calm and keep interpreting” may not be enough. A thank you goes out to this week’s anonymous contributor for the Couch !

You are working in a criminal trial involving a serious crime, and the trial has been emotionally charged. You’ve been interpreting accurately and impartially throughout the proceedings and have demonstrated true professionalism.

Now, during the cross-examination of a key witness, it becomes evident to you that the defense attorney is attempting to manipulate the testimony by pressuring the witness and twisting her words. The witness, who speaks limited English, appears confused and intimidated. You realize that the defense attorney is taking advantage of the language barrier in the hopes of securing a lesser sentence for his client.

Remember that you are in open court. Do you continue interpreting accurately and impartially, knowing that it may contribute to an unfair trial, or should you take a more active role in ensuring justice is properly served? If so, how?

Body photo from “ Las Zorras ” by PASTOR SAUL GUEVARA at Reflexiones Con El Pastor Saúl Guevara , under a CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 license.

Your primary duty is of course to accurately interpret all statements made in court, but you recognize the unfairness of the situation. The defense attorney’s tactics are out of line, the witness is being unduly influenced, and the judge does not seem to realize what is going on.

A Judge’s Discretion

Mon, 27 Nov 2023 16:36:00 GMT

Early on in my interpreting career, I learned an important lesson: the Judge is the king or queen of the courtroom. What they say goes. This means that as interpreters, we should address the judge when we need anything. And we do need things, on occasion! Perhaps the prosecutor speaks so quickly that we cannot keep up, or we must seek clarification of a term. In that instance, rather than simply telling the prosecutor to slow down, we defer to the head honcho in the courtroom: the Judge.

“Your Honor, the interpreter is struggling to keep up with the pace of the prosecutor,” we might say. That on its own may be enough for the judge to take the reins and request that the prosecutor slow down. (Beware, though: that darn prosecutor will likely speed up ten seconds later. Habits are very hard to break, and we interpreters can practice dealing with tricky speakers at home so that we don’t have to rely on others changing their speech patterns.)

Here’s the issue with the courtroom hierarchy, though. Judges aren’t always aware of what interpreting involves. Judges are bogged down with a million things, and they don’t have the time necessary to understand the ins and outs of interpreting. They are often monolingual and may not even be aware of all the possible misinterpretations and challenges that can arise.

One day in a Pennsylvania courtroom, my teammate and I were interpreting for a witness. This was still early on in my career, and I was working with a more experienced senior interpreter. We interpreted the witness’s testimony, and I also interpreted courtroom commentary. There was a lot of commentary, because this was a divorce case between two pro se litigants. They were acting as their own attorneys but without any understanding of the law. The judge had his hands full with the angry soon-to-be ex husband and wife shooting accusations back and forth across the room.

According to the judge, his conversation with the pro se litigants constituted a sidebar to which the witness should not be privy. By my ceasing to interpret, we would therefore shield the witness from hearing what should be kept private.

However, there were several things the judge was not taking into consideration. First and foremost: the witness likely did understand some English, as witnesses often do. So, if he wanted to keep things private, he should call an exclusive sidebar, just as you would in the presence of an English-speaking witness.

The judge was probably also unaware that he was asking my teammate and me to break our code of ethics, which says that we interpret everything that is said, exactly as it is said.

Unfortunately, my teammate was also unaware of the intricacies involved, and I was too new to stand my ground, even though I felt that being asked to stop interpreting was the wrong thing to do.

Ten years later, I would change my actions and speak up. I would state for the record what my code of ethics asks of me and why.

In all likelihood, the judge would have agreed once he had had the chance to understand all the elements involved. This has happened to me before; once, a judge actually thanked me for informing her of the need for an interpreting team. She had no idea that it went against best practices to have a single interpreter for a full-day criminal trial. Once I advised her of this, she thanked me profusely (not before I was driven to the brink though, interpreting by myself and completely exhausted).

A lot of my most challenging interpreting moments happened right at the beginning of my career. I had the training to know what the standards of practice should be, but I didn’t always know how to practically implement them, especially when working with other interpreters who did not seem to know our code of ethics and judges who didn’t know what our profession entails.

The important takeaway is that if we can state clearly what our best practices are and why, usually judges will understand, and you’ll have helped push interpreting proceedings onto firmer ground, not just today but for years to come.

Have you ever been asked to do something that was professionally inappropriate? If so, use the comments to tell us how you dealt with it. And if you need a refresher, check out the NAJIT Code of Ethics and Professional Responsibilities!

Featured photo : “ Leipzig war crimes trials, first session ” by Agence Rol, from the Gallica Digital Library , available under the digital ID btv1b53067692c; photo taken from the Wikimedia Commons ; image in the public domain (Bibliothèque nationale de France, BnF). Text-body photos: “ Vintage Hidden Hand Poster ” by Dawn Hudson at PublicDomainPictures.net , photo in the public domain; “ Cour martiale à Athènes, jugement du prince André de Grèce ” by Agence Rol , Bibliothèque nationale de France , taken from the Wikimedia Commons , photo in the public domain.

Then came the moment that I will always remember: I had been interpreting all the commentary, going by the standard I often apply when deciding how to proceed in a given interpreting situation: what would be understood if the witness spoke only English? I was interpreting everything that was said, out loud so the witness could hear it, because an English-speaking witness would have heard everything, too. I continued interpreting… until my senior teammate said I didn’t need to, asked the judge, and the judge asked me to stop.

At the very least, even if the judge still overrules you, you can rest easy knowing you’ve done your due diligence.

Stitches of Connection: The Small, Welcoming, and Tight-Knit Interpreter Community in Puerto Rico

Mon, 20 Nov 2023 16:04:00 GMT

In the heart of Puerto Rico, a hidden treasure, thrives a small, close community of interpreters dedicated to the art of breaking down language barriers. Over the past year, since I embarked on my journey into the world of interpretation and became certified, I’ve had the privilege of experiencing the unique charm of this interpreter community. Its warmth, welcoming spirit, and extraordinary ability to make everyone feel at home have left a lasting impression on me.

What sets this interpreter community apart? Its exceptionally welcoming nature. As a newcomer, I was received with open arms and swiftly embraced by this close-knit group. It is a fantastic group that recognizes and understands the importance of fostering connections and creating a supportive environment for interpreters of all experience levels. Whether you’re a novice interpreter or a seasoned professional, there’s a place for you here.

Collaboration triumphs over competition in this incredible community. While interpreting can be fiercely competitive in other parts of the world, here, my colleagues’ emphasis is on working together. This unique attitude nurtures an environment where the people you work with become more than just colleagues; they become your partners, supporters, and friends, always ready to step in and assist one another. This bond of unity strengthens the very fabric of the community, making it a truly exceptional place to grow as a professional and as a person.

In essence, this small, welcoming, and tight-knit interpreter community in Puerto Rico is a family bound together by their shared love for the craft of interpretation and their shared goal of creating long-lasting connections. Their example will be with me everywhere I go, reminding me that interpreting is not merely about translating words but also about forging relationships that transcend the boundaries of language and culture. It’s a testament to the immense power of unity, collaboration, and the celebration of diversity in a world that can often feel fragmented.

Featured photo (cropped) “ Flags of Puerto Rico and USA ” by Arturo de La Barrera at Wikimedia Commons , under a CC BY-SA 2.0 license. Body photos: “ Ponce Puerto Rico port aerial view ” by Tony Santana, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers , at Wikimedia Commons (photo in the public domain); and “ Catedral de San Juan Bautista de Puerto Rico ” by author Daderot at Wikimedia Commons (photo in the public domain).

Puerto Rico, a land where the blend of Spanish and English echoes in daily life, knows firsthand the indispensable role of skilled interpreters. This enchanting Caribbean island is a melting pot of cultures, a place where languages and traditions intersect, creating a vibrant and multifaceted society. Within this rich cultural mosaic, a unique group of interpreters has emerged, bridging the gap between worlds, not merely as language professionals but as cultural ambassadors.

As I reflect on my journey into the heart of this unique group of interpreters, I can’t help but be grateful. It’s a place where every day is an opportunity to learn, grow, and connect with others from different walks of life. This community’s warm embrace, dedication to inclusivity, and commitment to creating unity out of diversity are a source of inspiration for me. As I put my grain of sand into making our world more connected and harmonious, I will take with me everything I have learned from my Puerto Rican colleagues and remember that the power of unity and collaboration can not only transcend language, culture, and borders but also turn strangers into family.

Dennise A. Serrano was born and raised in a Spanish-speaking household in Puerto Rico. She was the only English-speaking member of her family, and the language-related struggles her family members faced motivated her to become a professional translator and interpreter. She obtained a Bachelor’s Degree in Pre-Translation and a Master’s in Translation from the University of Puerto Rico. She currently works as a freelance translator and interpreter. Contact her at dastranslations@gmail.com .

Outed by AI? How to Right the Wrong

Tue, 14 Nov 2023 21:25:00 GMT

“Your Honor, why don’t we have the interpreter read the script generated by Zoom?” This was a question that came up in one of my latest remote hearing cases. If that was not enough to surprise many of us who are court interpreters, the judge’s answer might have done so: “Sure, let me ask her… madam interpreter, would you prefer reading the script generated by Zoom?”

In addition to surprise, I was taken aback, dumbfounded, and a little angry. In my experience, up until then, such a question had never arisen in a legal setting. As you can all imagine, I politely declined the offer, and I put my job description and ethical responsibility as a court interpreter on the record. I was prepared to be standing up to a challenge rather than doing injustice to the LEP by taking the easy road and reading the computer-generated script.

We cannot deny that we all benefit from the ingenuity and ease offered to us in the form of AI—self-driving vehicles, content creation, or even assistance with medical diagnosis. But let us not forget that AI is created by humans to assist, not to replace. However, a question such as this judge’s is the reason many of us are terrified that AI will soon be doing our work at a much cheaper rate.

With the promising age of AI, the world is set for a shift in how much can be done daily, with more ease and at a reduced cost. It seems that the interpreting field is no exception. Discussions are posted daily about how AI can improve our productivity. Yes, I get it. AI is wonderful. But is it really? And more pertinently, will I be replaced?

Personally, I see AI for now as a mediocre interpreter who can certainly provide word-for-word interpretation for clients. But what about context? AI can certainly do a better job than a bad interpreter. But is that good enough for certain clients? Some may say that it’s cheaper, but we all know that cheaper does not always mean better. You get what you pay for these days, and in my experience the interpreting field is no exception. Good interpreters invest a great deal into their career—this includes time and resources to acquire and maintain or improve their skills, or to travel… and often there is significant spillover into their personal lives.

Many of us are no strangers to Google Translate, including myself. I have used Google Translate to help me while travelling in a country where I cannot speak the language. I have used it out of curiosity, to compare it to my own translation. These experiences have shown me that AI often lacks context. It’s robotic. It’s mechanical. It’s rigid. What AI cannot offer, at least not yet, is the nuances that a human can have in interpreting.

For example, in early October, I was working at an insurance conference in Manhattan. The agency offered to pay me an additional $20 to put together a glossary of insurance terms for the event. It was an offer that both my booth partner and I politely declined. On the day of the event, a glossary was placed in the booth for us. It was quickly obvious to us that the glossary was machine translated. Don’t get me wrong: we must give credit where credit is due. AI did a wonderful job on technical terms like agent, premiums, insurance policy, etc.… But it failed miserably when it came to terms that needed to be in a context to get the appropriate meaning.

For example, “elite” was translated as ผู้ลากมากดี, which is equivalent to the term “aristocrat.” While it is the correct synonym in the English language, for this specific context, the word “elite” (in its English acceptance) is normally used to describe an elite group of customers. “Dynamic” was translated as เคลื่อนที่, which is equivalent to “moving around.” Again, an acceptable term, but not for that context.

Lastly, “adopting” was translated as รับบุตรบุญธรรม, which means “to adopt a child.” Need I say more?

Or consider a more down-to-earth instance: I was in a meeting with a blind individual who described the wonderful world of using assisted technology in mobile-application format on her smartphone to help her read a text out loud.

“It’s useful,” she said, “especially when I check in to hotel rooms. I get to know which bottle is shampoo and which one is conditioner. But that’s because I am aware that those products are placed in the bathroom. Otherwise, you cannot trust them!”

She went on to explain to me how once she was checked into an Air BnB she had never been to before; an unfamiliar environment.

“I found a tube in the owner’s junk drawer, and the darned application told me that it was face wash.” Fortunately, she used a secondary method/device to verify the reading to find out that it was, in fact, wood polish! Another AI blunder showing that it has a ways to go. Perhaps the new world is not here quite yet.

Poger’s post also reminded me about the changes that came about when Covid hit in 2020. The world went into lockdown, and Zoom became the hero of the day. Many of us had to re-strategize our marketing and adopt different service methods. But it worked, and here we are in 2023, offering both in-person and remote services. So, what makes this time around any different? Another challenge, another bump in the road.

Featured photo: from “ Así funciona el piloto automático de los aviones (y por qué ha tardado en llegar a los coches) ” by author Ibáñez at Hablemos un poco de todo , under a CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 ES license. Text-body photos: from “ Las posibilidades de Arduino en el mundo profesional ” by Ruben Beiroa at VERMISLAB , under a CC BY-SA 4.0 license, and again from “ Así funciona el piloto automático de los aviones (y por qué ha tardado en llegar a los coches) ” by author Ibáñez at Hablemos un poco de todo , under a CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 ES license.

A recent post on LinkedIn by Julia Poger was a good reminder to us all that we should NOT be in competition with AI. In Poger’s words, AI is a cheap magic wand that (potential) clients are using as a solution to cut costs. The courtroom incident above may not fall into this category, but nonetheless, it was an idea that was entertained (I tend to think that the attorney was using the interpreter as collateral damage, but that is a topic for another day).

It’s that time again, my friends. Rather than panic before the threat, we must adapt to this fast-changing environment that can make one feel like a character in a 90s sci-fi movie. While the choice lies in our clients’ hands, we can educate the client. We can switch our mindset and move away from the fear of competition to better adapt to the impending invasion of AI. Think about the ways that we can use AI as a tool to show our clients the value that we bring to the table. What we can offer as interpreters are human judgement, expertise, and personal relationships that are not possible with AI. Keep working hard and know your worth! Nosce quanti aestimanda sis.

Whose interpreter is it, anyway?

Mon, 06 Nov 2023 19:27:00 GMT

For a long time, I have wondered why the interpreting profession is respected more in some places than it is in others. I have asked myself how this affects the work we do and the pay we receive for it. I believe part of this greater or lesser perceived value stems from the understanding (or lack thereof) of whom we are interpreting for and why. Allow me to share some examples from my personal experience.

In my time as an interpreter in Mexico, people who had hired my services would proudly introduce me as their interpreter when meeting an English-speaking colleague or guest. It could be that my clients knew that having an interpreter is something not a lot a people can afford, and interpreters (as we know) are highly qualified bilinguals with specialized skills and certifications. In Mexico, people seem to understand that interpretation allows diplomats, public speakers, politicians, and engineers to communicate accurately in many languages other than their own. It also allows them to hear a message spoken in another language without omissions or embellishments. It seems that people in Mexico have a better understanding than the average person in the United States that interpreters make the magic happen—a flow of communication across languages and cultures.

Court interpreters in the Midwest will often be referred to as the “interpreter for the defendant,” or worse, “assisting the defendant.” Ongoing efforts to educate judges and attorneys on matters of interpretation has still a ways to go.

When two people who speak different languages want to have a conversation, they both need the interpreter. The need for an interpreter comes from the fact that people who have a message to convey cannot use the same language.

The need for an interpreter is not swayed by language, nationality, or the geographical area where the communication happens. When two people who speak different languages want to exchange ideas, they both need an interpreter because neither speaks the language of the person they desire to interact with.

Interpreters have existed probably since humans began using a spoken language. If two individuals or two groups of speakers of different languages wanted to communicate, they would need a bilingual go-between person.

Once upon a time, many original languages were spoken across what we now call the United States of America. Have you asked yourself how the different nations communicated? Then came the people from Europe. Once they arrived on this land, did they need interpreters? Yes. And so did the people who were already here. They all spoke different languages.

You need an interpreter when you want to communicate with a speaker of a different language. That’s the only factor that determines who needs an interpreter: the desire to communicate in a language other than your own.

Featured photo: “ Defense.gov News Photo 000205-D-2987S-028 ” by Helene C. Stikkel, at Wikimedia Commons ; photo in the public domain (work of the U.S. federal government). Text-body photos: “ Sidang kasus Angelina Sondakh ,” unknown author, from Wikimedia Commons ; photo in the public domain in Indonesia; photo “ Judge Gavel ” in the public domain, from PublicDomainPictures.net .

You may be the speaker of the dominant language, the language most used in a certain place, but unless you speak the language of the people you want to converse with, you need an interpreter.

An interpreter transfers information back and forth between speakers and languages. Both parties need the aid in communication equally, regardless of which language they speak. We may say we do not need an interpreter if we speak and understand the language of the other party. But even in that case, you may still need an interpreter to perform professional duties.

Why Not Go Wireless?

Mon, 30 Oct 2023 17:39:00 GMT

Using wireless interpreting equipment provides a plethora of advantages. So why are so many of us still not using it? This technology allows interpreters to whisper into a microphone so our interpretation can be heard through headphones. The transmitter and the receiver(s) are not connected by wires, so we are not forced to be stuck together at the hip with the Limited English Proficient (LEP) court users. Why go old school when this technology offers so many advantages? Here are some of the awesome perks:

1. A better understanding of the original message : Not having to whisper directly into the LEP court user’s ear means that we are free to turn our heads to actually look at the people who are talking. We “hear” with our eyes as well, so watching the speakers’ lips and gestures is instrumental to clearly capturing the original message.

2. Interpreter mobility means fewer interruptions: Thanks to the wireless equipment, we may walk around the courtroom (discreetly, of course) to better hear those speakers who mumble and/or talk at a low volume. Hearing everyone clearly means not having to interrupt the proceeding as often to request repetitions. Yay!

3. Clear reception of the interpretation: Courtrooms are noisy. The headphones allow the LEP court user(s) to hear our interpretation clearly with less noise interference. Additionally, semi-bilingual court users often get overwhelmed when hearing the message in both languages, but using the headphones allows them to concentrate solely on our interpretation.

4. Better conditions for the hard of hearing: Whispering into the ear of an LEP court user who can’t hear well simply doesn’t cut it. The interpreting equipment allows those who are hard of hearing to pump up the volume according to their own particular needs.

5. Multiple court users can clearly hear the full rendition at the same time: When the LEP court users are not provided with headphones, they have to huddle together to hear the whispered interpretation. Typically, only the LEP court users who are located right next to the interpreter’s mouth (one or two people at best) are able to hear the full whispered interpretation. The rest have to settle for hearing some parts of the interpretation, but certainly not the full shebang. That simply does not amount to the type of access to justice compared with an English-speaking court user who can hear the entire court proceeding.

6. Efficient use of our human resources: In some cases, an interpreter is assigned to each of the various LEP court users. That’s not the most efficient use of human resources, especially since many courtrooms already have interpreting equipment with which only one active interpreter is needed at a time. Additionally, the cacophony of several simultaneous interpretations whispered at once can be quite distracting and can severely impede each interpreter from clearly hearing the original speech.

8. Lower risk of disease transmission: Using wireless equipment and not having to breathe in anyone’s face protects everyone (us and the people receiving our services) from getting sick… and also, at times, from smelling funky body odors.

9. Fewer safety risks: Some court users can be aggressive and volatile. The wireless equipment allows us to keep a safe distance.

10. A smoother transition from one mode to another: The wireless equipment allows us to seamlessly switch from the simultaneous to the consecutive modes whenever necessary, without missing a beat. Whenever LEP court users testify and when they are addressed, we may render the messages in the consecutive mode at a volume that is audible throughout the whole courtroom. Whenever LEP court users are not speaking and when they are not being addressed directly (for example, during colloquy and objections), we whisper the simultaneous rendition into the microphone. Because the LEP court users are using their headphones, they don’t miss a thing, and we don’t even have to change our body position or lean in towards anyone to be heard.

11. Healthier ergonomics: I am usually much taller than most LEP court users I serve. Having to hunch over to reach their ear level can be quite uncomfortable, painful, and distracting. After a long court proceeding without interpreting equipment, my back, shoulders, and neck always end up begging for mercy.

12. A clear record: Because the microphone is so sensitive, we can whisper at a very low volume and the interpretation will still be audible to the LEP court users through their headphones. Therefore, our voice does not interfere with the record (whether it is voice recorded or taken down by a stenographer). On the other hand, the old-fashioned “huddling approach” requires “loud whispering” to be semi-audible to several LEP court users, which obviously interferes with the record.

13. A loud and clear reception of the original message: Some wireless interpreting equipment offer several channels. One of them transmits our interpretation. Another one plays everything that the courtroom microphones are picking up. This feature is designed for English-speaking court users who are hard of hearing. It allows them to listen to the proceedings while amplifying the volume to their needs. I like tuning into to this “assistive listening” channel using a single earbud. That way, with my free ear I can pick up those who are not talking into the microphones. Even though I have been tested and diagnosed with excellent natural hearing, this technology makes me feel like I have auditive superpowers. I can happily say that I never want to work without it again. If the original message comes in crystal clear, our interruptions plummet, and our chances of achieving accuracy skyrocket.

If you have never tried wireless interpreting equipment or an assistive-hearing option, I urge you not to be afraid to start. You can always play with them when the courtroom is empty. They are pretty simple to use, you’ll probably get the hang of it in no time, your accuracy will improve, and you will love the results.

In short, practicing the simultaneous mode without wireless interpreting equipment is as archaic as doing corrective eye surgery with a scalpel instead of laser. Why settle for sloppy results when the technology available offers less intrusiveness, higher accuracy, greater clarity, more safety, hygiene and efficiency, and painless results?

Virginia Valencia is first and foremost a teacher. When she was only 15 years old, she began helping children do their homework after school and has not stopped teaching ever since. She is also a professional psychologist (Universidad del Valle, Cali, Colombia, 2001). Drawing from her background in psychology, her classes are delivered through student participation, dynamic games, and time-limited drills.

In 2003, Virginia became a certified court interpreter. She has worked in the fields of medical, legal, and conference interpretation. She is also certified by the U.S. Courts (Federal Certification, 2008) and is certified/approved by the Superior Courts of New Jersey (2005), New York (2006), and California (2012).

Over a decade ago, Virginia and her husband, Brad Wilk, founded Interpretrain (www.interpretrain.com). Their training company offers innovative online study tools for interpreters of all levels and all languages, helping many interpreters achieve their professional goals. She currently lives in California, where she works as an interpreter, designs educational materials, and offers online and live trainings for aspiring and professional interpreters. Look up Interpretrain at https://interpretrain.com .

Featured image (cropped) from “ Tangle of colorful electric wires and cables ” from freebie photography , under a CC BY 3.0 license. Text-body photos: from “ Marbella vinculará en Pleno los fondos recuperados de causas judiciales a proyectos elegidos por los vecinos ” by Europa Press at marbella CONFIDENCIAL , under a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license; and “ Los retos del sistema judicial en Colombia ” by Edna Sastoque and Angie Culma at razonpublica , under a CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 license.

7. Opposing (and contentious) parties can stay away from one another: When wearing headsets, parties don’t have to remain close together in order to hear the whispered simultaneous interpretation. If you were the victim of a crime, would you want to huddle close to your aggressor?

14. A more accurate and complete record: If interpreters listen to the hard-of-hearing channel, we can detect whether our interpretation is picked up by the court microphones. Is our consecutive rendition not being captured? We can speak up or come closer to the mic. Is our simultaneous interpretation drowning out the English speakers? We can distance ourselves from the microphones. Is someone not talking into the mic, and will their words not be captured for posterity? We can alert them of this issue. Hearing what the mics pick up enables us to do our part to keep the record intact.

Interpreter as Actor: An Epiphany

Thu, 26 Oct 2023 19:13:00 GMT

All my life I have had a taste for adrenaline rushes and dopamine rewards of the kind you get from things like performing music on a stage, or skydiving, to which I was addicted for ten years. I discovered that interpreting in open court, especially in scenarios like witness interpreting, is a performance before an audience, and that it provided enough challenge, pressure, and excitement to satisfy the adrenaline junkie in me.

A lot of proceedings are largely scripted . I once worked with a defense attorney who, when prepping his client for a plea, spoke of when we go on stage — an expression I adopted and used forever thereafter.

Properly trained interpreters use the same grammatical person as the person whose words they’re interpreting, and in so doing, they are in a sense assuming the identity of that person. Most of us, at least to some degree, reproduce tone and expression, the better to convey the meaning as we understand it.

Often the outcomes in criminal proceedings are all but foregone conclusions, as if preordained, written in a script. Spoiler alert! The verdict is: guilty.

I have rarely encountered any discussion in the professional literature, online forums, or anywhere about how we interpreters and translators, like actors, spend our days and make our livings expressing other people’s ideas and opinions rather than our own. One exception I know of is the novel The Translator by the undeservedly little-known Ward Just, where this issue is mentioned in passing. No wonder so many of us spout off as we do when given the chance!

Formulaic repetition; predictable outcomes; the ritualistic formality with which the players, if you will, play their parts in a courtroom; the way interpreters are constrained to reproduce other people’s thoughts, not their own; their use of expressivity to help get the meaning across: in all these ways, the court interpreter’s job is like acting out a script. But this rather obvious notion of interpreter as actor was recently driven home to me with shocking clarity.

Last spring I succumbed to an urge to audition for the Martha’s Vineyard Playhouse’s production of the Shakespeare comedy Twelfth Night , and I was cast as The Fool. Did I have any real theatrical experience? No. But the director liked my audition, and my musical abilities were useful to the production. Staged in the summer in an outdoor amphitheater, the show was extremely successful and well received . The other cast members were superb. I never had more fun in my life. One thing I found remarkable about this marvelous experience was how completely natural it felt to be on the stage, acting in a play. I have always had my attention-seeking, narcissistic, histrionic tendencies. Even so, this felt unexpectedly, almost absurdly normal. Why?

No, doing court interpreting and doing Shakespeare are not the same. It may not be just one easy step for all interpreters to move from the former to the latter. But are not interpreters located on a continuum that includes almost everyone? At one end, the only people who are their pure, authentic selves all the time are infants (and maybe, people with certain mental disorders); at the other extreme, actual actors. Virtually all of us, to some degree, go through life acting out our various roles. In their professional lives, interpreters are located especially close to the actor end of the spectrum.

As Shakespeare’s character Jaques says in As You Like It :

David Mintz spent most of his interpreting career on staff at the U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, and now enjoys retirement. His personal website is www.davidmintz.org .

Featured image (cropped) “ As You Like It Act III, Scene III ” from the Boston Public Library at flickr , under a CC BY 2.0 license. Text-body photos: from “ TERTULIA 17 DE ENERO: CARLOS BLANCO- ‘La guitarra de principios del siglo XX bajo el prisma de Francisco Calleja’ ” by tienda ramirez at Espacio Abierto Tienda Ramirez , under a CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 ES license; from “ Informe revela: No existe una crisis de refugiados de Venezuela ” by “Mario” at PERIÓDICO ALTERNATIVO , under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license.

Three years ago I retired from thirty years as a Spanish<>English court interpreter. Before that I was a classical guitarist — a good one, but not so phenomenally good as to make a reasonable living out of it. At around age thirty, I quit music and stumbled into court interpreting, thinking it might be an interesting and viable way to pay the bills.

A few weeks after the play closed, I served as interpreter for an unusual event. You may recall news reports from September 2022 about the Venezuelan migrants whom Florida Governor Ron DeSantis used for a political stunt, conning them into boarding a plane bound for Martha’s Vineyard. With no warning whatsoever, members of the local community immediately mobilized to provide services and support. Not only were our unexpected guests well cared for; the same people who handled last year’s surprise invited our Venezuelan friends back to the island for a reunion to mark the one-year anniversary. I was asked to interpret for a ceremonial event — my first time interpreting before an audience in more than three years. When there came a pause in my part of the action long enough for my mind to wander, it dawned on me: I had worked as an actor for thirty years! Of course it felt normal, natural, indeed familiar to perform in a play.

All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely Players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts […]

Does the term Limited English Proficient need rethinking?

Tue, 10 Oct 2023 21:58:00 GMT

As we were reading the Summer 2023 issue of Proteus (a great issue, by the way), we were both struck by an article entitled “Are we comfortable telling someone that they are limited because English is not their language?”, written by Ingrid Oseguera, an experienced court, medical, and community interpreter. “Is there a negative connotation when we use the acronym LEP (Limited English Proficiency)?” asked the author; “How do you feel about this term?” (p. 13). Her sense is that it does have a negative connotation and is a euphemism for people in need of interpreting, invented “to avoid referring to them as a person who simply does not speak English” (p. 13).

Oseguera also cited her students, who said that they wouldn’t like being identified as LEP because it would make them feel uncomfortable and lower their self-esteem. It is not clear, however, whether students whose English was either native or fluent enough to explore Language Access laws were the best audience for such a hypothetical. How would they respond to the same question involving their foreign language in, say, Russian, French, or Japanese? Do Americans compelled to appear in foreign courts bristle when called a limited speaker of Russian or Japanese, or do they embrace a designation that entitles them to the services of an interpreter?

Twisting the hypothetical just a tad reminds us that what matters here is not the connotation, which, in any case, is idiosyncratic. We, for one, do not think of ‘limited’ as negative, only as precise, a good descriptor of Janis’s French and Portuguese or Aneta’s Spanish and French – sufficient to order meals and enjoy movies and books, but woefully inadequate to deal with the court of law. What matters to us is the protective function of the term. It is key to remember that the term LEP did NOT evolve to designate people who do not speak English – their need for an interpreter is apparent from the start. The problem was – and still is! – a common misconception among judges that English proficiency is an all-or-none thing: one either speaks English or does not, and if one can answer basic questions about their name and birth date, one doesn’t need an interpreter. The pioneering nature of the Executive Order 13166 , signed by President Clinton in 2000, is in pushing the government and the justice system to recognize that people who speak some English still require “language assistance that results in accurate, timely, and effective communication at no cost to the LEP individual” (p. 3).

Our own answer is that the term LEP doesn’t require rethinking: it is enshrined in government documents that serve as a legal framework for language access ( www.lep.gov ), it is widely adopted by law enforcement, the court of law, and legal scholars, and it clearly identifies the concern that some people have insufficient English skills to comprehend legal language. Fiddling with terms in this case is a detour from real change. What is disconcerting to us is that nowadays some LEP speakers still go through trials without an interpreter (e.g., Commonwealth v. Diaz , 2020). To promote social justice, we need to advocate for institutional changes, including provision of qualified interpreters in police interrogation, improvements in implementation of Language Access plans, and professional development that constantly reminds defense attorneys and judges that ‘some’ English isn’t enough to meaningfully assist in one’s own defense.

Reference :

Ortega, P., Shin, T. & G. Martinez (2022) Rethinking the term “Limited English proficiency” to improve language-appropriate healthcare for all. Journal of Immigrant and Minority Health , 24, 799-805.

Janis Palma has been a federally certified English<>Spanish judiciary interpreter since 1981. Her experience includes conference work in the private sector and seminar interpreting for the U.S. State Department. She has been a consultant for various higher education institutions, professional associations, and government agencies on judiciary interpreting and translating issues. She worked as an independent contractor for over twenty years in federal, state, and immigration courts around the U.S. before taking a full-time job. Janis joined the U.S. District Courts in Puerto Rico as a staff interpreter in April 2002 and retired in 2017. She now lives in San Antonio, Texas, embracing the joys of being a grandmother. She also enjoys volunteering for her professional associations, has been on the SSTI and TAJIT Boards, and is currently the past Chair of the NAJIT Board of Directors. Contact: palmajanis88@gmail.com

Featured image (cropped) from “ El papel de la terminología en la traducción ” by SUSANNAPUJOLCLI at DE BABILONIA CON AMOR , under a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license. Text body photo by Vanessa Garcia from Pexels .

Having said this, we recognize that the desire to change terms is a good-faith effort. We thank our colleague for raising the issue and bringing to the attention of Proteus readers the article by Ortega, Shin, and Martinez (2022) that deems the notion of a ‘primary language’ ethnocentric, the idea of ‘limited ability’ ambiguous, and the construct of ‘language assistance’ deficit oriented. Unfortunately, their proposed alternatives, such as ‘non-English-preference’ or ‘multilingual learners,’ may work in education but are too fuzzy for legal contexts. In the eyes of a busy judge, a ‘preference’ does not justify interpreting costs in the way limited English does. Their proposal to outsource healthcare communication to clinicians who speak the same language as the patients is similarly unworkable in the court of law. The purpose of the classifier LEP is not to isolate or to denigrate but to identify those who cannot communicate in all registers and to provide equalizing measures so that they could enjoy the same benefits and privileges as those who speak fluent English. Why are we making LEP and ‘language assistance’ into a bad thing?

Aneta Pavlenko is a Research Professor with the Department of Communication at Drexel University, Philadelphia, and Past President of the American Association for Applied Linguistics (AAAL). Her research examines the relationship between multilingualism, cognition, and emotions, including in legal contexts. She testified in several court cases as an expert in forensic linguistics and co-chaired, with Diana Eades, the international Communication of Rights Group that produced the Guidelines for communicating rights to non-native speakers of English in Australia, England and Wales, and the USA (2015). Her studies of comprehension of the Miranda warnings by non-native speakers of English received the 2009 TESOL award for Distinguished Research and the 2021 AAAL Research article award. In 2023, she received the AAAL Distinguished Scholarship and Service Award. Contact:

Don’t whisper, speak up!

Mon, 02 Oct 2023 19:56:00 GMT

Pain in the back of your throat. A pocket full of cough drops. Dry, hoarse coughing. We have all felt this at one point or another in our job as interpreters. Whether we have the flu, a cold, or even laryngitis, the symptoms could point to a deeper health issue: muscle tension dysphonia. Put simply, you have strained your vocal cords.

No other part of your body can accelerate up to 200 hertz as fast as your vocal cords can. Our voices have the ability to go from a whisper to a loud scream within milliseconds. As spoken-language interpreters, our voice is our job. Without our voice, we cannot function in our day-to-day tasks. Therefore, it is imperative that we take care of our voices.

What are some important steps that we as interpreters can take to prevent damage and strain to our vocal cords? For starters, we can do some simple vocal exercises before we begin work each day. The best vocal warm-up guides can be found on YouTube by a speech pathologist named Melissa Grassia Chisholm . One such video is the “Vocal Function Exercise.” Other helpful videos can be found under Dr. Joseph C. Stemple’s name, such as “The Rationale for Vocal Function Exercises.”

Additionally, you can advocate for an interpreter break every 30 minutes. In some circumstances, this isn’t possible, due to our busy schedules as interpreters. Nevertheless, it has been shown that giving your voice a break at 30-minute increments will keep your voice from being overworked.

Still another option is massage therapy. If you have a massage therapist, you can request that they do massage work on your neck, throat, and vocal-cord muscles (and if you are a signed-language interpreter, that massage is still a good idea for your arms, hands, neck, and shoulders). When massage therapy is not an option, you can find videos on YouTube that teach basic laryngeal self-massages. This video from vocologist Karen Sussman titled “Laryngeal massage: de-stress your voice” has some helpful self-massaging techniques.

Another step you can take in protecting your voice is to talk to your medical-insurance provider. You can see if they provide coverage under the disability-insurance clause for your voice. If you plan to make interpreting a life-long career, then you need to make an allowance for that in your medical insurance. Your voice will get wear and tear from years of daily use, just like singers and public speakers. Therefore, it is important to see what sort of vocal injuries your medical insurance can cover.

Alternatively, you can speak to your PCP (primary-care provider) and ask them to clean your ears out. Buildup of earwax can cause blockages which can lead to hearing problems, which in turn leads to your speaking more loudly. Speaking more loudly will cause your vocal cords to become strained. Doctors recommend that a person should get their ears professionally cleaned every six months.

You can also speak to your PCP about getting certain medications to clear your throat of mucus accumulation. Medicines like guaifenesin or acetylcysteine can help to clear thick mucus from blocking your vocal cords.

Lastly, you can use warm water mixed with salt or mixed with tea to calm your vocal cords. For example, instead of clearing your throat manually, by saying “ ahem ” or forcefully coughing, you should gargle salt water. Warm salt water can soothe your vocal cords and break up any phlegm or mucus buildup in your throat.

If you are a spoken-language interpreter, your voice is your moneymaker. Your voice is your identity; without it, your job would cease to exist. So, we must protect our voices, lest we lose them in the cacophony that we face every day as interpreters. In the wise words of the English singer-songwriter Adele, “The voice is a muscle, and it deserves as much attention and care as any other part of the body.”

Featured image: “ UNE VOIX PARTANT DU LIT ” by Phil May , 1911, at TuckDB Postcards, under a CC0 1.0 Universal license. Text-body photos courtesy of the author.

Muscle tension dysphonia (strained vocal cords) can happen when a person is yelling, speaking excessively, or talking in a vocal pitch that is too high. This is a common occurrence in jobs where the voice is used in excess, such as singing, acting, and teaching. Less thought of is the toll that the job of interpreting can take on our vocal cords.

Another way to keep your vocal cords safe is to stay hydrated. Having more water in your system creates thinner vocal secretions. The thinner the vocal secretions, the clearer your voice will be, and the less your vocal cords will be strained.

Another good vocal habit is to drink tea daily. Teas such as chamomile, ginger, and peppermint are good for soothing your vocal cords. However, make sure that the water you use for steeping your tea isn’t too hot or too cold. Room temperature water is the best because extreme temperatures can cause damage to the vocal cords.

Hidden in plain sight: Native Roots

Mon, 25 Sep 2023 13:58:00 GMT

The popular phrase “follow the money” is what people recommend when you are trying to get to the bottom of a suspicious matter. What if, instead, we follow the words? What truths can words reveal? Last night, as I was cooking a huge pot of chili, I realized sometimes a word or a name can reveal a world of secrets that are hidden in plain sight. As court interpreters, sometimes we miss something that may be just below the surface. Someone who has been labeled as a Spanish speaker and might actually be a speaker of one of the many indigenous tongues spoken across the continent we now call America. Let me share with you an anecdote about chili cooking and identifying speakers of Native American languages.

Being a chili enthusiast, I decided to sign up for a chili-cooking competition for a fundraising event. The cooks in this chili cook-off were asked to accompany their dish with a story or with some information for the chili tasters. So, I dove into the web in search of a story for my pot of chili.

I found articles, videos, and podcasts about the origin of chili. I already knew the actual name of the dish is chile con carne , Spanish for “peppers with meat.” Not surprisingly, most sources claim chili was born in Texas when that state was still part of Mexico. I found mentions of a Spanish nun who had some sort of out-of-body experience, crossed the Atlantic to evangelize Natives, and in turn, received a chili recipe from the Jumano people who lived in the Southern United States and Northern Mexico. I had to do a separate search for the Jumano people and found a rich history of several tribes, each with their own language and lifestyle, as well as a controversy about who can be called Jumano. Click here if you want to know more. Other sources point to the writings of Fray Bernardino de Sahagún describing dishes prepared with peppers and meat enjoyed by the inhabitants of Tenochtitlán, a place that is now called Mexico City.

As a court interpreter in Wisconsin, I have encountered many speakers of indigenous languages over the years. They usually come form rural communities in Mexico, Guatemala, and other countries. They grew up having little contact with the Spanish language. Some leave their communities to go to a city where Spanish is spoken, or sometimes they immigrate straight to the United States, where they come into contact with Spanish speakers at work and where they live. The experience of being immersed in three linguistic environments can develop incredible trilingual abilities in some people. I once met a man who grew up speaking Zapoteco (a language of Oaxaca, Mexico), then learned Spanish, and ultimately became fluent in English. He has an outstanding ability for language learning.

Not all speakers of indigenous languages are gifted with a brain that soaks up languages so easily. Or if they do have that type of brain, they may have lacked the proper learning environment. Sometimes, people that have traveled from one linguistic community to another become a sort of language puzzle: they have some comprehension and communication abilities in two or three languages. Comprehension and communication are maximized if they can use every one of their languages in a situation. In court, relay consecutive interpretation works best to ensure comprehension in situations like this.

Pay attention to people’s reactions and listen to their speech patterns. Do they have a different intonation? Can they pronounce all the words? What about the grammar? If something seems a little different, just ask: “ ¿Qué más habla? ” (“What else do you speak?”). Thank you to a Spanish-language Federally Certified interpreter who works in California for suggesting this simple question. I wish I could tell you his name, but I can’t remember it. If somebody reading this attended a presentation about relay interpreting for Spanish at the NAJIT conference in June, maybe you know whom I’m referring to.

Let’s keep this conversation going; there is much work to be done educating the courts, attorneys, and ourselves. And do indicate in the comments section if you want to know how my chili rated at the competition.

Featured photo “ Teotihuacan – Oaxaca ” by Ulf Laube at www.ulf-laube.de , under a CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 license. Blog-post photos: from “ VENTA DE BUEY ” by JUANJO at Pitillas , under a CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 license; “ El sabor de México // Bodegón de Chiles ” by Armando Aguayo Rivera at flickr , under a CC BY 2.0 license.

If you’ve never worked or lived in a place where you frequently encounter speakers of indigenous languages, it might be hard to recognize them. People who speak Spanish as a second language will almost never self-identify as speakers of an indigenous language. Historically, they have experienced racism and have been marginalized for not speaking Spanish. When in court with a Spanish-language interpreter, they are unlikely to come forward and say “Spanish is not my main language” or “I don’t understand.” How should interpreters know, then? Look at the last names. Could those be indigenous last names? Don’t be fooled; people with the most Spanish-sounding names can be non-Spanish speakers.

The Couch: Finding Things a Bit Too Funny?

Mon, 18 Sep 2023 16:31:00 GMT

The Couch is a place to exchange ideas and brainstorm, not only for its contributors but also for our readers who engage in the ensuing discussions. Sometimes, in spite of our needing to be a neutral language processor, our human side comes to the fore, and some traditional advice on ethics may not be enough. Thank you to this week’s anonymous contributor for the Couch !

Lately, I’m not completely sure why, but I’m beginning to find many situations really funny. By no means do I intend to make light of some people’s situations in court as it is undoubtedly the most trying experience of their lives. But sometimes I feel like I am like that man in Mary Poppins , who can’t stop laughing, who floats around the room, for whom “It’s getting worse every year.”

For example, not long ago I was called to interpret in a civil litigation case. During the deposition, the defense attorney seemed abnormally distracted and disorganized. He wouldn’t stop looking things up in his notes, kept forgetting the witnesses’ and parties’ names, and mumbled things to himself several times in a low voice. He kept taking off his glasses and putting them back on.

A normal interpreter might have gently asked him to speak more clearly, etc., but for some reason I had to repress the urge to burst out laughing, and I nearly failed at the attempt – obviously my laughter wouldn’t have gone over well for anyone, least of all myself.

Another time, I found the way a witness had come dressed to court to be irresistibly funny, and this time I let a burst of laughter slip – luckily, no one noticed.

Body photo “ Mimus polyglottos1 ” by Ryan Hagerty at Wikimedia Commons . Image in the public domain.

Again, I know court is serious and most of the time is not a laughing matter. Maybe it’s just the luck of the draw for me where I’m faced with these situations, or maybe I’m just a cheerful character and find more things funny than the average person does. Understand I am not meaning to laugh at people contemptuously nor make fun of them, I just find things, people, and situations funny. What do you do when you have the urge to laugh? We are taught to control our emotions when faced with horrendous crimes or tragic stories, but what about the comical side?

The strive for perfect pitch in tonal languages

Tue, 12 Sep 2023 21:08:00 GMT

You are sure to have encountered jokes concerning non-Thai speakers’ mistakes in their attempts to speak a tonal language. As funny as it may be, these jokes have a firm basis in real life since, from a tonal perspective, Thai is much more complicated than English.

Born and raised in Bangkok, Thailand, I acquired my first language two years before my second, so I consider Thai to be my mother tongue. Even for a native speaker like myself, and for the many immigrants who live away from their motherland, long exposure to another language or a prolonged period overseas can often affect pronunciation of the native tongue. Yes, you start speaking your native language with a foreign accent!

Growing up in a bilingual household, I was able to use both Thai and English in my day-to-day life. This enabled me to learn and retain proper pronunciation in both languages. Unlike languages in the Germanic family, Thai and English have no similarities, the only exception being words or terms used by Thai speakers that are borrowed from English because no Thai equivalent exists.

The official language for more than 70 million people (data as of 2023), and a recognized minority language in several neighboring countries, Thai is the national language of Thailand. Comprised of 44 consonants and 28 vowels, Thai has a total of 72 characters. To make matters worse, the consonants can be divided further into 3 consonant classes (low, mid, and high), 12 long vowels, and 16 short vowels; in this sense, English is much simpler.

Let’s look at an amusing example of using the “wrong tone.”

The syllable ‘ma’ can be pronounced with five different tones, and different tones of this syllable have different meanings.

mā mà mâ má mǎ

come N/A N/A horse dog

So, if a person asked the question, “Where have you been?”, take a look at this Thai translation and transliteration:

ไปไหนมา [pai naǐ mā]

As you can see, the word mā , if you change its tone, can have a variety of meanings.

If a person asks, “Where have you been?”, ma (come) needs to be spoken in the ‘low’ tone.

If one were to mistakenly use the raised tone mǎ , they would be addressing someone as a dog!

In addition to the tonal differences, the small but meaningful distinctions of this type of language include different sounds to convey emotions or certain feelings, depending on the audience.

Featured image (cropped) “ Ayutthaya Thailand 2004 ” by user Evilarry at Wikimedia Commons ; photo released by the author into the public domain. First text-body photo courtesy of blog author; second text-body photo “ the pitch ” by Ed Schipul at flickr , under a CC BY-SA 2.0 license.

Similar to Chinese with its four tones, Thai has five phonemic tones: low, mid, high, falling, and rising. Not every utterance may have a meaning, but in any case, at least two of the five can mean something, and you want to make sure that you have the correct tone when you speak.

I admire the courage and efforts of any language enthusiast who learns the subtleties of the Thai language. A great piece of advice is a quote from Oscar Aulig-Ice, who once said: “Be sure to taste your words before you spit them out.”

Blog post by Ann H. (Jiraporn) Huynh . Contact: ann.h.huynh@gmail.com

How do we do this?

Wed, 06 Sep 2023 15:11:00 GMT

There is a practice in some of the courts where I have worked, in which the judge will call several defendants at the same time for proceedings like initial appearances, arraignments, or guilty plea hearings, each one having a different case. Sometimes they all need an interpreter, but sometimes there’s one, or a few, who do not. I have struggled with this, as I’m sure many of you have, too. I’m going to tell you how I handle those situations, and you tell me what you think and how you handle it. Maybe, together, we can find a good solution.

Then there’s the monkey wrench: after addressing an English-speaking defendant, the judge will turn to the non-English speaker and say, “you heard what I just said…”. I did not interpret what the judge just said, so what now? If the defendant has no idea what the judge just said, I will address the judge: “Your Honor, the prior defendant understood English and did not require the services of the interpreter, so this defendant did not hear what you just said.” If and when that happens, the judge will simply repeat for the LEP defendant’s benefit. I also see it as a way of reminding the judge that these are individuals who are going through a legal proceeding that may be routine for the judge but is not routine for the defendant.

I believe that even when proceedings are conducted en masse , they should be handled as if each one were being conducted individually. If the court were to call each one separately, we would be interpreting only for the one defendant standing in front of the judge. Even if there are LEP defendants present in the courtroom, maybe sitting in the back waiting for their case to be called, I still would interpret only for the one standing in front of the judge who needs my services. I would not be interpreting whatever is happening during the English-speaking defendant’s proceeding just for the benefit of others in the courtroom who do not speak English.

What do you think? How do you handle those massive proceedings with LEP and English-speaking defendants all mixed together? Leave your comments below.

Featured image (cropped) from “ Por la revitalización de las lenguas originarias como un derecho humano ” by Alfredo Seguel at Indymedia Argentina , under a CC BY-SA 4.0 license. Text body photos: “Ministro Luis María Aguilar” from “ Un juez calderonista propone declarar anticonstitucional la consulta para juicio a expresidentes; AMLO responde ” at Rubén Lenguas ENTRE NOTICIAS , under a CC BY 3.0 license; “ Understand Me ” by Juan Carlos at DIGA LO QUE SEA , under a CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 ES license.

I interpret for those in the group who do need an interpreter, using simultaneous interpreting equipment, of course. But when the judge is addressing one of the defendants in the group who does not need the interpreter, I tell the non-English speakers who are not part of the case, over my microphone: “This defendant speaks English, so he does not need an interpreter.” And then I stop interpreting until the next case is called for which my services are needed. Some colleagues tell me that if they could understand English, theNow, the purpose of an interpreter in a courtroom is for the LEP defendants to hear and understand everything that is happening in their case , not in someone else’s case. For example, if the judge addresses an attorney walking in late for some other client, and whatever the judge is saying does not concern the LEP defendant for whom I am interpreting, I simply inform him or her: “The judge is talking to an attorney about another case, not yours.” And, of course, I do not interpret whatever the judge is telling that attorney. I don’t want the defendants wondering if there is something going on that they should know about, but I also don’t want to be interpreting something for them that is not directly related to their cases. Of course, if there are several defendants called in the same case and some speak English and others don’t, the non-English speakers still have a right to hear everything, even if the judge is addressing one of the English-speaking defendants.y would be hearing what the judge is saying to the English-speaking defendants. On the other hand, the English-speaking defendants are not hearing what the LEP defendants are hearing, which is my voice telling them in Spanish what the judge is saying. Is there a difference? Some hear everything in Spanish (which is my language), some hear everything in English.

The case law is clear: the interpreter is there for the LEP defendant to hear and understand everything that is going on in their case , not in other people’s cases. Whether or not the English speakers can hear what the judge is telling everyone else, the appellate courts have said that LEP defendants should hear and understand in their case what an English speaker would hear and understand. To me, that means that nothing pertinent to the LEP defendant’s case can be left out, not that we add to the target language rendition whatever happens in a courtroom that is not pertinent to the LEP defendant’s case.

An Ode to Failure

Tue, 29 Aug 2023 20:07:00 GMT

“Tell me about your mistakes,” Sara Blakely’s father used to ask every night while she and the rest of their family ate dinner. She and her siblings would go around the table, comparing notes, discussing when they had messed up.

“Congratulations,” her father would tell them.

They would celebrate their mistakes. What a novel concept!

Sara Blakeley, by the way, went on to grow up and found a billion-dollar company. I watched her Master Class after earning my post-graduate degree. She had extremely practical tips for entrepreneurs, and celebrating your mistakes was something she advocated.

The thing is, mistakes are what take us out of our comfort zone, and outside of our comfort zone is precisely where we can acquire new skills and learn new information. As my niece would say, “Making mistakes is a sign that you are learning.”

Oh, but doesn’t failure hurt. My goodness, but it hurts.

I just recently learned that a good number of my students have passed the most recent round of FCICE testing. The news is extremely gratifying; they worked so hard, and they persisted in their studies even when it meant enduring long hours of difficult and frequently humbling studies. They deserve to celebrate.

However, the heartbreaking messages are from students who have received disappointing results: the same point breakdowns after a year or longer of intense studying; point breakdowns that have gone backward. News that feels like a smack in the face to all their hard work.

The year I graduated college, I applied to a telephonic-interpreting company. I was told that my Spanish wasn’t nearly good enough to work as an interpreter. The woman actually laughed at me.

In some cases, colleagues and study partners succeeded where I failed. Sometimes, these failures hurt. Of course, it’s not super fun to blog about my failures, but there they are. And know what, at the end of the day, I should be proud of them. We all should be proud, because our failures mean that we dare to dream big.

Our failures mean that we have tried.

Our failures mean that we venture out into scary waters.

Our failures mean we dare to reach for our dreams.

I have been beyond impressed by the attitudes of my students who have not yet passed particular exams but are still trying. They are handling the navigation of their dreams with integrity and grace.

So, I’d like to offer a poem I wrote a couple years back. Please enjoy.

Ode to Failure

Failure spells cool tears streaking down your cheek

Hot pounding clenching in your chest

Dizziness roiling in your belly

Failure is that moment when you are let.

.down.

Failure is energy + expectation

Where you wished the outcome were X, but it is in fact, Y

Failure is attachment to results.

Failure is 99% when you wanted 100.

Failure is subjective.

Failure is the hot shame of humiliation,

The real or imagined judgement that

follows your supposed fall from grace

Failure is embarrassing.

Failure looms in the shadows, sowing panic and despair

Failure makes us refrain from trying—if we don’t try, we cannot fail

Which, in itself, is failure.

Failure makes us cast blame. Failure makes us make excuses.

Blame and excuses are preferable to navigating the obstacle course of shame and humiliation that is failure.

The exhaustion from falling down nine times just so we can get up ten.

Of trying, and trying, and trying and still not getting what we want.

Failure hurts.

Yet those who face failure…

Are the only ones

Who can rise above it.

Featured photo: a collage of images that evoke stubornness – images: “ Lions Family Portrait Masai Mara ” by Benh LIEU SONG from the Wikimedia Commons under a CC BY-SA 3.0 license; image from “ Franck Dion, Capricorne à l’affiche 2014 ” by Franz Narbah at Rictus.info under a CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 license; “ Skog ” from Ikkepedia under a CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 license; “ Âne de bout ” by Mypouss at flickr under a CC BY-SA 2.0 license; “ Bélier Bizet ” by ImAges ImprObables at flickr under a CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 license. Text-body photo from “ Persévérance, la clé du succès – Par une froide journée d’hiver ” by Simon LEE at Stileex – Maths, Data & Information , under a CC BY 4.0 license.

The following year I failed my court-interpreting exam. This one I was expecting; I knew the odds were against me and that I still had things to learn. With some attitude shifts and a lot of additional preparation, I passed it, along with other certifications to follow. But I certainly haven’t passed all the exams I’ve ever taken. My most devastating failures have been a portion of my exit exams (luckily I took extra exams, so it didn’t actually matter, but the blow to the ego and my sense of self as an interpreter was real), my Translation Bureau failure (one day this may allow me to interpret for Canada’s Parliament), and the U.N. interpreting exam (that one I knew was a long shot).

Unleash Your Potential by Volunteering for a NAJIT Committee!

Mon, 28 Aug 2023 16:13:00 GMT

Are you ready to take your career to the next level? NAJIT invites you to empower yourself by joining our vibrant committees. As a member-driven organization, we thrive on the passion and dedication of professionals like you.

Why Serve on a Committee?

�� Connection: Discover the heartbeat of NAJIT and become an integral part of our community.

��️ Influence: Your insights and contributions shape the future of the Association and the profession.

�� Growth: Expand your network, skills, and knowledge in the translation and interpretation fields.

Committee’s Seeking Volunteers:

�� Advocacy Committee: Are you passionate about promoting the unique skills and expertise of judiciary interpreters and translators? Do you want to play a crucial role in elevating the status and recognition of our professions? We’re Seeking dedicated members who can offer their time, skills, and passion to advocate, educate, and inspire change.

�� Membership Committee: Unleash your passion for engagement and outreach! This committee connects NAJIT with diverse stakeholders, promoting membership growth and retention. Work on initiatives that resonate with you, from membership materials to potential member databases.

�� Proteus Editorial Committee: Calling all wordsmiths and content enthusiasts! Join us in shaping Proteus, our quarterly publication that keeps members informed and inspired. Curate articles, proofread submissions, and be part of crafting a must-read source for NAJIT insiders.

�� Social Media Committee: Are you a social media guru with an eye for detail? As part of this dynamic team, you’ll help maintain NAJIT’s online presence. Ensure that our social media platforms align with our Mission, Vision, and Core Values, and take the lead in exciting initiatives like our upcoming APP project.

�� Training & Education Committee: Share your expertise and passion for learning! If you’re driven to provide quality education, this committee is your stage. Develop webinars, workshops, and training opportunities that enhance skills and knowledge within the translation and interpretation professions.

Get Involved Today :

Step into a world of opportunity and impact by becoming an active member of our committees. Committee membership opportunities are extended to all NAJIT members. Make sure you are a member because your voice matters, your ideas count, and your dedication makes a difference. Committee work is flexible and conducted via email and conference calls, tailored to your schedule.

Are you ready to shape the future of the NAJIT community and the interpreting and translation professions? Contact us now to learn more about the exciting possibilities waiting for you. Together, let’s elevate NAJIT and propel our professions to new heights! ��

Click here to access NAJIT’s volunteer form. You can find details about all NAJIT Committees on the committees webpage .

The Juracan Juracan Case

Mon, 21 Aug 2023 16:39:00 GMT

This article will exclusively address the interpretation aspect of the proceedings, omitting other case background and charges, which are readily available online. The defendant, Oscar Juracan Juracan, faces 1 ^st -degree criminal charges before the Hudson County Superior Court in New Jersey and is a speaker of Kaqchikel, a Mayan language. A jury trial in this matter would require relay interpreting between English, Spanish, and Kaqchikel, as no Kaqchikel-English interpreter was found. All pre-trial proceedings were conducted using remote relay interpreting. Despite the Kaqchikel interpreter’s expressed concerns during trial-planning discussions, the trial court ruled that the jury trial should proceed with remote interpretation. The defense appealed, and after the appellate court upheld the decision, the matter went before the New Jersey Supreme Court, where oral arguments were presented on June 1 ^st . The ACLU of New Jersey represented Amici Curiae NAJIT and the ATA, and Latino Justice PRLDEF, a civil- and human-rights organization, also acted as amicus curiae.

Defense counsel advocated for a categorical rule against remote interpreting in criminal trials unless an interpreter’s physical presence is impossible, contending that there is no way to protect the defendant from the frustrations and adverse impressions of the jury caused by the inevitable interruptions. Challenges exist with relay interpreting, whether in person or remotely, but remote interpreting amplifies these issues and would lead to violations of the fundamental notions of fairness and due process. Defense counsel considers that no safeguards could adequately ensure fundamental fairness in a criminal trial with remote interpreting. Some problems inherent to remote interpreting are simply “not fixable” and pose too much risk in a criminal trial. The fundamental distinction between pre-trial proceedings and a trial is the presence of the jury.

Key points from the defense brief:

Inherent practical difficulties with remote interpretation make it unsuitable for a criminal trial;
Proceeding remotely at trial would prejudice the defendant;
To avoid constitutional issues, the Language Access Plan should be interpreted to exclude remote interpretation in criminal trials.

One of the issues of note cited was the defendant’s need to be able to immediately react and have a private conversation with counsel, which, in a remote setup, would be “enormously disruptive” to the proceedings, requiring a virtual breakout room and possibly the attorney physically leaving the courtroom. In this matter, the Kaqchikel interpreter also stated his availability and willingness to come in person as well as his “profound discomfort” with carrying on remotely for a jury trial.

The defense asked the court to formalize what is already status quo in the state with a rule on a matter not previously litigated, as prior to the pandemic, there was not much consideration for holding millions of remote proceedings, nor of holding a jury trial remotely. In rebutting the cost argument, the defense mentioned that this would affect an extremely narrow subset of cases. A very low percentage of defendants proceed to trial and, within that circumstance, even fewer need interpreting, and fewer yet would be speakers of rare languages. In sum, the defense requested strong presumption in favor of in-person interpretation and urged the court to consider the interpreter’s judgment based on established codes of ethics.

Sharing the collective expertise of professional interpreters, the amicus brief presented on behalf of NAJIT and the ATA presented issues in this case that are critically important to ensuring the rights of LEP defendants in criminal trials and to their members’ ability to meet their professional standards. The ACLU, on behalf of the two organizations, argued that remote interpreting in a criminal trial would undermine the accuracy and completeness of interpretation, create serious ethical risks for interpreters, and ultimately impair the courts’ ability to recruit interpreters for criminal trials. The ACLU urged the court to defer to the interpreter’s professional judgment as to whether a proposed plan for interpreting services permits them to meet their professional standards, and also advocated for a per-se rule in favor of in-person interpreting, in line with defense counsel.

Key points from the amicus brief:

Remote interpreting in a criminal trial is incompatible with interpreters’ professional standards, as it poses too high a risk for errors and omissions.
Remote judiciary interpreting leads to cognitive overload and rapid fatigue.
Limited visual access impedes interpreter performance.
Feelings of isolation and alienation reduce interpreting quality.
Audibility challenges, technical errors, and the need to juggle multiple communication channels impact accuracy and completeness.
The trial court judge should have accepted the interpreter’s professional judgment.

An amicus brief, accompanied by oral arguments, was also presented on behalf of Latino Justice PRLDEF , with the stated goal of protecting the rights of a Mayan-language speaker to adequate interpretation during his criminal trial, a right already well established by New Jersey’s courts. Latino Justice firmly asserts that remote interpreting cannot suffice for a criminal trial and that LLD (languages of lesser diffusion) speakers should not be denied constitutional safeguards due to the relative scarcity of local interpreters.

Key points from the Latino Justice PRLDEF oral argument:

(1) Remote interpretation would compromise due process rights and fundamental fairness of the trial. The defendant’s meaningful participation in his defense and access to confidential discussions with counsel are essential elements of due process and fundamental fairness. The logistical intricacies of remote interpretation can jeopardize this aspect of a criminal trial.

(2) Relay interpretation poses unique challenges.

The prosecution assumed a relatively neutral stance, primarily emphasizing adherence to existing language-access plans, adding that fiscal factors should not be the focal point in making such decisions but are only one among various aspects to be weighed. Although the prosecutor did not extensively delve into the subject, acknowledging that interpretation decisions for trials are beyond the prosecution’s purview, she acknowledged the concerns raised by the other parties.

The New Jersey Supreme Court’s ruling remanded the matter to the trial court for reconsideration of whether VRI is appropriate. The Court emphasized the difference between pre-trial proceedings and criminal trials, as well as the obstacles that virtual interpreting may create for defendants to communicate with defense counsel. The Kaqchikel interpreter’s professional judgment, costs, and other factors set forth by the Court should be considered in assessing the propriety of virtual interpretation during a criminal jury trial.

The court ruled that there should be a presumption of in-person interpreting services for criminal jury trials. Trial courts should consider factors such as the nature, length, and complexity of the trial, the availability of an in-person interpreter, the impact of delay in obtaining an in-person interpreter, the defendant’s tentative plans to testify, the financial costs, and the interpreters’ opinions on their ability to fulfill their duties while interpreting virtually. In rare cases where VRI is used, guardrails should be put in place to ensure a fair trial.

Key points of concern and discussion during oral arguments, mainly stemming from the judges’ questions:

to what extent, if at all, should cost be a consideration;
“slippery slope” concerns – other defendants arguing the same about pre-trial proceedings, that they are essential and that remote interpreting cannot be used;
should there be any extremely rare exceptions to allow for virtual interpretation in any criminal trial (the judges were wary of issuing any absolute rule);
if such circumstances allowing for an exception exist, how could a court ensure the maximum extent of fairness.

During the oral arguments presented, a couple of issues during the discussion stood out, showing some limitations in public understanding of interpreters’ work. First, there was a brief exchange regarding team interpreters’ roles, describing one as “resting” vs. the other as “working,” highlighting a lack of information on the roles of active and passive interpreter roles in a team. One point raised that was of particular concern was a mention by one of the justices that freelance interpreters may be motivated to push for in-person trials as a way to increase their hours. This is not the case, and they are likely to spend more time on a remote relay trial troubleshooting issues than if they were in person. The defense did well in countering this argument, mentioning that taking this initial cost can help reduce much higher costs in terms of money and time spent on litigating issues on appeal.

An issue within the text of the ruling consists of references to a “court-certified Kaqchikel interpreter,” though no such certification exists, also highlighting the need to clarify terminology to those who interact with our profession.

There was a great deal of conversation regarding the issues posed, not only by VRI but also by those that are present with interpreting in general. One issue remained unresolved: that there was no second interpreter for Kaqchikel in order to ensure team interpreting. This may also be one of the challenges faced in this trial, having to ensure adequate breaks if a second interpreter cannot be found.

The judges recognized the complex nature of criminal trials as different from pre-trial hearings. They indicated the need to consider whether remote interpreting is appropriate in each particular case, taking into account in this case the complex nature of the two levels of interpreting. The fact that the interpreter himself expressed concerns and stated that he did not believe he could perform this task well, as it had never been done before, further supports this consideration.

Overall, the decision was positive, representing the next best thing to the per-se rule for which the defense and the amici curiae advocated. The court ruled in favor of a presumption against remote interpreting and set forth factors to be considered by trial courts in making determinations, including interpreter input, approval from assignment judges, and consultation with AOC. As a result, the case was remanded back to the trial judge to reconsider if VRI is appropriate.

Stay tuned for an upcoming Proteus article for a more in-depth summary of this important ruling.

Andreea Boscor is a Federally Certified Interpreter for Spanish, an approved interpreter at the Master level by the New Jersey Judiciary for Romanian and Spanish, and an ATA-certified translator for Spanish into English.
Andreea has experience in legal, medical, and conference interpreting, and prior to language work, approximately seven years of experience as a paralegal in insurance defense, commercial litigation, and securities-law settings, both in the private and public sectors. She is an active and voting member of NAJIT and ATA and has formerly served as Assistant Administrator and then newsletter editor for the ATA’s Medical Division.
Andreea resided in New Jersey since moving from Romania during her teenage years, then a new opportunity recently brought her to Southern California, where she currently resides. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Spanish with a major in translation and minors in linguistics and paralegal studies from Montclair State University, as well as a master’s in diplomacy and international relations from Seton Hall University. Andreea is passionate about lifelong education and advocacy for the interpreting and translation professions. Contact: aboscor@najit.org .

Featured photo “ Bergen County Courthouse, Hackensack, New Jersey ” by Ken Lund at flickr , under a CC BY-SA 2.0 license. Text-body photos: first photo “ Mayan Language Map ” at Wikimedia Commons , under a CC BY-SA 3.0 license; second photo “ Appeals Court ” by Nick Youngson at The Blue Diamond Gallery , under a CC BY-SA 3.0 license; third photo taken from “ Naturalistic Aesthetic of the Mayan Civilization ” by Erik Bek at The Golden Assay , under a CC BY-NC 4.0 license.

On August 15, 2023, the Supreme Court issued a ruling remanding the matter to the trial court for reconsideration of the appropriateness of VRI. Further discussion of the ruling will follow after the summary of the arguments.

As to cost considerations, the defense stated that, when constitutional rights and possible decades of incarceration are at stake, subjecting the matter to a cost analysis would not be appropriate. As a practical matter, the defense counsel pointed out that the interpreter’s hourly fee constitutes the bulk of the cost, so the only savings would be travel, lodging and meals. In the long term, this would minimize issues for appeal and avoid other costs in terms of time and money.

The update to New Jersey’s Language Access Plan (LAP) adopted in 2022 during the pandemic now allows VRI for both “emergent and routine proceedings,” subject to judicial discretion. This defendant’s motion for in-person interpretation services during the jury trial was denied, as was the initial appeal. The New Jersey Supreme Court granted leave to appeal and set forth guidelines and factors to assist trial courts in deciding whether VRI should be used during criminal jury trials. The court found this necessary in order to guarantee protections under the Sixth Amendment and its counterpart in the New Jersey Constitution, affording criminal defendants the right to a fair trial, the right of confrontation, and the right to counsel, as well as the due-process right to be present and to fully participate during trial.

Salsa a la Sullivan

Mon, 14 Aug 2023 14:33:00 GMT

The Milwaukee-Chicago urban corridor has a diverse offering of food markets. This summer, I stopped in at the Seven Mile Flea Market in search of fresh fruits and vegetables. Ever since I can remember, I have been curious about two things: language and food. I am sure most interpreters and translators can relate to that experience. Let’s explore a bit of both food ingredients and words together.

“Queso fresco” is a soft, fresh cheese, and pápalo is an herb with a strong flavor that many people love and others hate… sort of like cilantro. I can taste that mix of flavors as the memory floods my mind. During my childhood, my mother was a language teacher and a translator/interpreter. Incredibly, at age eighty, she recently finished the translation of a book, and she’s still cooking, too! Ever since I can remember, she had a passion for preparing all sorts of food, and a keen interest in languages. I think I may have inherited both. My mother has always been a creative cook and an insatiable learner of new words, where they came from, how and when they are used. Of course, this is what we linguists can spend hours on.

If you are a non-Spanish speaker, or even if you are, think of the word “salsa.” It is the Spanish word for “sauce,” and the recipes for salsa are countless. Just like any other sauce, a salsa can be sweet, spicy, or hot and can contain a variety of spices and ingredients. The mash of tomatoes and hot peppers we commonly know as “salsa” in the United States is a recipe that has been in use for thousands of years. Curiously, as popular as salsa is, its original name, the Náhuatl word “chilmolli,” is no longer used. By the way, if you’re a Spanish speaker and are curious about the language of the ancient Aztecs or Mexicas, check out this online dictionary published by the Autonomous National University of Mexico.

The word “quelite” in Mexico is used to refer to a variety of edible greens. I remember my mother saying “papaloquelite” for “pápalo.” When I asked the Mexican vendors at the market what it was called in English, they shrugged their shoulders, and one of them said: Papalation! (we all laughed). Porophyllum ruderale is its scientific name; it’s also commonly known as summer coriander and Bolivian cilantro. I’m sure there are many other names. Please comment if you know one. Lastly, here a few cooking suggestions.

For the best chilmolli or salsa:

- Use the freshest ingredients you can find
- Use more of the ingredients you like, less of the ones you don’t
- Make small quantities you’ll consume right away
- If you can, keep it at room temperature and consume it right away
- Chop, grate, or process your ingredients. If you have a stone mortar (called “molcajete” in Mexico), that makes the best tasting salsa, according to some

Here’s how I made the salsa with pápalo:

- In the “molcajete,” grind a pinch of salt and 2 cloves of fresh garlic.
- Add ½ of a large jalapeno pepper, slivered. Keep grinding.
- Add ¼ small onion, in chunks. Grind some more.
- Add 2 leaves of pápalo; grind more.
- Add 3 small garden tomatoes, quartered. Grind a little more.

Blog-post photos courtesy of the author.

At the market, walking along the vegetable stands on one of those rare, hot Wisconsin days, I spot a bunch of “Pápalo” twigs next to the watermelons. My memory jumps back to my childhood near Cuernavaca in Mexico. My mother, Eileen Sullivan, is handing me a taco she lovingly made with “queso fresco” on a warm corn tortilla with a topping of pápalo leaves.

If you don’t have a mortar, just chop all the ingredients finely or put them in a food processor or blender. You can put them in all at once if you’re not using a mortar. Happy cooking and word discovery!

A Family Affair

Mon, 07 Aug 2023 23:19:00 GMT

When Barb Fisher began interpreting for Marshallese-speaking people in 2011, she would never have imagined her whole family would soon be ushered into the same line of work.

The Fisher family first became acquainted with the Marshallese language when they moved to the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI) in 1989. Eric and Barb Fisher would end up spending twenty-two years in the RMI, where three of their children were born and all four were raised speaking both English and Marshallese. Fast forward to the present day, and the whole family has now moved back to the East Coast.

When Barb first began working as an interpreter for Pacific Interpreters (which was later bought out by a larger language-services provider), Marshallese interpreting jobs were sparse. A decade later, almost two thirds of the Marshallese population have migrated to states in the U.S. like Arkansas, Washington, and California, to name a few. Barb encouraged her second-oldest daughter, Bethany, to become a Marshallese interpreter, too. A few years later, Bethany’s younger sister, Anna, would also become a Marshallese interpreter. Then Eric, Barb’s husband, joined the family bandwagon and began doing Marshallese translation work. Lastly, their oldest daughter, Cherith, started to do translation work with her father in the summer of 2022.

“Marshallese is spoken by fewer than 60,000 people world-wide,” said Eric Fisher, the father of the family. “With such a small population, there are even fewer Marshallese interpreters and translators in the U.S., so it is great that most of our family works in both these linguistic fields.”

Marshallese is a language of lesser diffusion, which makes it difficult to find any language-specific learning resources for Marshallese interpreters and translators. There are no Marshallese language tests for certification in the U.S., a similar dilemma faced by other rare languages such as Chuukese, Yapese, Kosraean, and Pohnpeiian, all of the Micronesian family. These are languages spoken in several sister islands to the RMI, the four island nations that make up the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM).

“We know that island nations in Micronesia face the growing threat of climate change, which will in turn create more climate-change refugees fleeing to the U.S., like the Marshallese people,” said Bethany Fisher, age 32. “It is imperative that we continue to hone our skills and seek resources for lesser-known indigenous languages, so that we can continue to improve our skills as interpreters and translators.”

Some states like Arkansas are working to create a certification test for Marshallese court interpreters. The University of Arkansas has even partnered with members of the Marshallese community in Springdale to begin an educational initiative entitled the MICI ( Marshallese Interpreting for Community Inclusion ) project. MICI works to provide training for in-state Marshallese interpreters.

Presently, the training is available only for Arkansas residents, but they are hoping to broaden their scope to include residents of other states, too. “I took the written exam and attended the two-day court interpreter workshop with Augustin De La Mora in North Carolina,” said Barb Fisher. “I passed the written exam in English, but I couldn’t take the oral exam in Marshallese, since there isn’t one available. Presently, I am ‘qualified’ and ‘considered credentialed’ to work as a Marshallese interpreter in North Carolina. The credentials come from my experience working, living, and interpreting in the Marshall Islands for over twenty years. There are over a dozen different states that have ‘grandfathered’ me in or have granted me reciprocity to work in their courts.”

Although resources for rare languages like Marshallese are very limited, the Fisher family feels lucky to have each other. “It is a point of pride for our family to be able to work together, effecting change and giving back to the Marshallese community that gave so much to us,” said Cherith, the oldest of the Fisher kids. “This work is hard, but we are thankful to have each other.”

Featured image: Eric Fisher working on a Marshallese translation project. Photo courtesy of the author. Body photo courtesy of the author.

“It’s really cool to have so many interpreters and translators in our family, because when we need support, there is always someone there to help,” said Anna, age 28. The family members interpret and translate in realms ranging from medicine to law, finance, and education.

Could we all use a scheduler?

Tue, 01 Aug 2023 16:12:00 GMT

Last fall, I started calculating the time it takes me to do my work including travel time, the courtesy pre-assignment time, the hours of waiting, the hours worked, the time for billing, e-mailing, confirmations, follow up, searching for work, etc. I realized that I was down to almost minimum wage, again. I say again, because I had done this calculation years before when I was quite satisfied with my salary working as an accounting manager, until I realized I worked too many hours for such an amount. So much effort and so little money compared to the number of hours invested. It was just not making sense, and I was disappointed.

A business owner must perform tasks most of us do not like or at least like less than what is directly related to language skills.

Some of these tasks, at least as I have been able to identify them, are the following:

1. Billing
2. Reconciling: bank accounts, payables, and receivables
3. Processing payables and receivables
4. Collections
5. Recording all transactions
6. E-mail follow up
7. Search for new work or new work orders/assignments
8. Promotional and marketing work

On the one hand, there are functions we must perform ourselves, such as the actual language-related work. That is non-negotiable. But there are areas in our business that we can delegate to others who do this specific kind of work daily and who can do it better and faster. More importantly, they can do it at a lower price than it costs us when we do it ourselves.

After my hourly versus income calculation, it dawned on me: I needed to outsource the administrative part of my business. Other than my banking, which I like to do myself, most of the tasks listed above can be done by a contractor just like me.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that mid-level receptionists, schedulers, administrative assistants, and even secretaries earn a fraction of what I do, so it makes sense to hire a professional to do this important work for me.

When I first started freelancing again, I wanted to buy QuickBooks for all my bookkeeping needs, but it did not feel like I had the volume to justify the expense, so I created an Excel worksheet where I recorded all my assignments. With time, that spreadsheet became my calendar. I included everything that I do: vacations, social events, classes, haircuts, doctor’s appointments; it all went in there. That prevented me from double booking my time.

So, when I started using the services of what began as a scheduler, and became a full-fledged administrative assistant, the transition was easy. All I had to do was to share a link of my schedule so that we both could work off the same document. It is my document, but my admin can do all the work there, and I continue to have access and control of it. It is a strange document because the amounts are also kept there as are the invoice numbers, my monthly and annual income, all with formulas and links, as well as all sorts of details about my social and personal life. But it has worked for me so far.

Some of the advantages of this system are the following:

- - It allows me to block personal time before my schedule gets filled with work.
  - I work less and earn more because my time is used in T&I assignments with that kind of earning potential.
  - I no longer miss assignments because I am driving when an assignment becomes available and I am unable to e-mail or text back. Better yet, I do not have to pull over or get distracted looking at my phone while driving or at assignments. That is a great relief!
  - I get to accept the assignments that pay more, take less time, and are closer to home, because the person that makes that decision has all the data at hand and their attention focused on making that decision.

I now have a four-day-per-week recurring contract, so I need only five invoices per month, and I don’t have to be chasing work, and yet I retain these services because they mean that I am now able to concentrate on what I like the most: the fun part of my business!

Another advantage of this is that since my admin bills me hourly, when I have less work, I pay less, and vice versa.

There are great platforms online to find independent contractors who will perform these tasks for you, or even to find work for yourself. You can also consider a family member or someone you know that works from home and does not have a high-pressure job. It can be a win-win situation.

This is a personal business decision, and only you know what’s best for you, but if you do the “minimum-wage test” and are getting close, consider this other option.

Main photo (cropped) taken from “ Trabajar de Asistente Virtual ” at VisitaVirtual.info , under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license. First body photo taken from “ Calc: calendario laboral ” by José Juan at Cosas que pasan , under the CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 ES license. Second body photo “ Reloj Cid ” by Óscar at flickr , under the CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 license.

As T&I practitioners we never cease to educate stakeholders about the importance of hiring a professional; we, however, have not yet taken that important lesson home. There are many areas in which DIY is a good idea. Sometimes in an emergency I do my own manicure but obviously it does not last more than a couple of days, it does not have the quality I like, and it takes me a very long time to do what a pro would have done way better in half the time. Changing your car’s oil could probably save you a few dollars, but the job will take you three times as long, and you risk ruining that nice white shirt or leaving a permanent stain in your garage. The same can be said about dying your own hair or installing the floor in your kitchen. There are pros for everything.

One of the advantages of having this kind of help is that what used to take me ten to fifteen hours a week is done now in five to ten, and all is done on time. My invoices are all now sent the minute I finish an assignment, sometimes before I even make it to my car. Work e-mails started to go straight to my assistant, and now I rarely answer e-mails myself. I still continue to nurture my relationships with my clients and colleagues, but I do not have to do the follow-up work. It also allows for better relationships because I do not have to call on my clients for late payments and thus, I am not the bad guy, although just recently I had to deal with a client that is in fact three months behind, but it is rare that I get involved in anything unpleasant.

NAJIT Joins with More than 500 Organizations to Help Build Tomorrow’s Workforce

Mon, 31 Jul 2023 16:31:00 GMT

Atlanta, GA— NAJIT joined with more than 500 trade associations, professional societies, businesses and employers to form the Tomorrow’s Workforce Coalition, established to build support for the Freedom to Invest in Tomorrow’s Workforce Act (S. 722 / H.R. 1477). The American Society of Association Executives (ASAE) and the Professional Certification Coalition (PCC) lead the new group.

The bipartisan, bicameral Freedom to Invest in Tomorrow’s Workforce Act would expand qualified expenses under 529 savings plans to include postsecondary training and credentialing, such as licenses and professional certifications. The bill would provide valuable tax-advantaged resources for families, students and workers—with or without a college degree—who pursue career growth, mid-career changes or pathways that diverge from a typical academic route.

At NAJIT, we recognize that skilled and well-prepared professionals are the cornerstone of progress and success in the judiciary interpretation and translation domain. As part of this dynamic coalition, NAJIT is committed to the pursuit of members leveraging the power of 529 Educational accounts for their educational pursuits, ensuring they have the necessary resources to embark on a journey of continuous growth and excellence. Here’s why this initiative is important:

Financial Empowerment
Elevating Professional Development
Strengthening Credentials
Networking and Collaboration
Advocating for the Profession

We take immense pride in our commitment to empowering NAJIT members with the tools and opportunities needed to thrive in their careers. The “Tomorrow’s Workforce Coalition” membership is a testament to our dedication to advancing the profession and elevating the standards of judiciary interpretation and translation. Together, we will take a leap toward excellence, unity, and progress!

“The Freedom to Invest in Tomorrow’s Workforce Act can empower workers of any educational background, skill level or age,” said ASAE President and CEO Michelle Mason, FASAE, CAE . “This pragmatic policy would support all industries and professions that rely on employees with specialized training or credentials. Our community is grateful to the Congressional champions for their commitment to supporting our current and future workforce.”

“Knowledge, skills and abilities are essential to help professionals grow their careers and for industries to grow their impact,” said Institute for Credentialing Excellence Executive Director and co-leader of the PCC Denise Roosendaal, FASAE, CAE . “It is a privilege to support the Freedom to Invest in Tomorrow’s Workforce Act, which will help strengthen industries, professions and the broader economy.”

The bill is led by Representatives Rob Wittman (R-Va.) and Abigail Spanberger (D-Va.) in the U.S. House of Representatives and Senators Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Mike Braun (R-Ind.) in the U.S. Senate.

Training and credentialing organizations help expand industry excellence, establish and strengthen professional pathways, increase workers’ earning power, foster marketplace competition and supply consumers with the best products, services and expertise. A member roster can be found at powerofassociations.org .

MEDIA CONTACT: Rob Cruz , CAE, Executive Director

Groups Will Advocate to Help Pass the Freedom to Invest in Tomorrow’s Workforce Act

Qualis Lingua Personae

Wed, 26 Jul 2023 18:29:00 GMT

It is my belief, through my ongoing professional experience as a working California State Certified Court Interpreter, that the missing twin doctrine to habeas corpus is a novel concept that I call “Qualis Lingua Personae,” according to which the Court would be compelled to affirm and confirm the language of the parties appearing in court following a habeas corpus proceeding. “Qualis Lingua Personae” simply means (in Latin) “the Quality of the Language of the Person.”

For the doctrine of “Qualis Lingua Personae” to be applied effectively, the Court cannot merely rely on casual statements by either counsel or a court clerk, or a court interpreter for that matter, on what the language of the person appearing before the Court is under habeas corpus. The Court should be compelled to ascertain the languages of the parties appearing in Court by way of a judicial oath either in open court or in writing under my proposed novel doctrine of “Qualis Lingua Personae.”

In circumstances where any individual party might claim to have “two indivisible native languages,” the Court should once again, by means of an oath (under the doctrine of “Qualis Lingua Personae”), require such an individual to elect which of those two languages that individual will use throughout the entire duration of any particular set of proceedings that are related to a single case.

A judicial oath for the purposes of guaranteeing the application of the doctrine of “Qualis Lingua Personae” could theoretically be crafted and integrated into existing opening oaths in a variety of ways across all jurisdictions in the United States.

For example, a judge (or a justice in a court of last resort) could ask a respondent:

1) Do you swear to tell the truth and nothing but the truth?

2) Do you swear that you speak and understand and intend to use “Language X” throughout the entire duration of the court proceedings pertinent to this case and only this case?

First of all, in the example above, oath 2) is automatically clearly and firmly supported by oath 1) .

Thirdly, both oaths eliminate the possibility of either “judicial imposition” or “administrative imposition” of any particular language(s) on a party appearing before the Court.

And finally, both oaths administered universally to all parties close the door in our jurisdiction to English-speaking parties who might strangely elect to address the Court in a language other than English.

Since I live and work in the epicenter of technological innovation (the San Francisco Bay Area and neighboring Silicon Valley), I often wonder why it is that no new products and no new services emanate from the justice sector (or judicial sector) as we see in the tech, health, commercial, educational, or industrial sectors.

Although “access to justice” is a prominent goal in the justice sector, the overarching professional principle and purpose of all sectors of society (particularly in transactional events between the State and individuals) should be the idea of “access to service.” The “Qualis Lingua Personae” doctrine could undoubtedly be adopted and integrated into the processes of other professional service sectors under the heading of “primary service language” (or “primary care language” in the health sector).

Main photo taken from “ Diversidade linguistica do Mundo ” by Kazimierz Zaniewski at OpenEdition Journals no. 9 (2010) , under the CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license. First body photo taken from “ Juridique et judiciaire, une différence entre ces deux termes ? ” by Koloina Rasoahoby at STILEEX: Maths, Data & Information , under the CC BY 4.0 license. Second body photo taken from “ Le secret professionnel du magistrat ,” “Audience correctionnelle au Palais de Justice de Paris,” in Respecter et intégrer les aspects légaux liés à la protection et à l’accessibilité des données professionnelles at Université de Paris 1 (Panthéon, Sorbonne), Université Numérique Juridique Francophone, under the CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 license.

Experienced court professionals and many ordinary common citizens alike in both the United States of America and the United Kingdom are familiar with the centuries-long doctrine of “Habeas Corpus.” However, ever since the inception of the habeas corpus doctrine, we have never had a complementary concept to affirm and confirm the language(s) of the person who appears before the Court following a habeas corpus proceeding.

Secondly, the two oaths together diminish the likelihood of any party attempting to claim discrimination against them based on language, culture, race, ethnicity, tribe, and/or national origin.

Patrice Binaisa , Patrice Binaisa (B.A., 1983, Spanish, Middlebury College, Vermont) is a Ugandan American Spanish/English court interpreter (State Court certified in California since 2013). He speaks Luganda, English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, and Mandarin. He is also an actor and voice actor. Having left Uganda in 1974, Patrice and his family first found asylum in the U.K., and then moved to the U.S.A. in 1977. His dear late father, Godfrey L. Binaisa QC, was Uganda’s first attorney general (1962-67) and Uganda’s fifth president (1979-80). A member of the USCF (United States Chess Federation) – with a ranking of 1340 –, Patrice is currently studying the Benko Gambit. He has worked as contract interpreter and in U.S. Immigration Court in California, and as a staff interpreter in Northern California State Courts. Find Patrice on IMDB or on Facebook, or write to him at adjustice7@yahoo.com .

On the Witness Stand: How the Federal Rules of Evidence can guide the interpreters’ performance

Mon, 17 Jul 2023 14:35:00 GMT

Direct Examination: Could you please tell us what driving instructions, if any, did you receive from the defendant here, Mr. Delfín?

Interpreter: Puede usted decirnos –

Opposing Counsel: Objection!

Judge: Sustained.

Direct Examination: I’ll rephrase, Your Honor.

Sir, when you were driving the truck with the 20 undocumented persons in the back, did you know where you were going to take them?

Interpreter: Señor, cuando usted iba conduciendo el camión con los 20 indocumentados atrás, ¿usted sabia a dónde los iba a llevar?

Witness: Bueno, a mí me habían dicho que los llevara hasta Houston y que de ahí alguien se los iba a llevar… no sé a dónde.

Interpreter: Well, I had been told –

Opposing Counsel: Objection, Your Honor, hearsay!

There was a question posed for the record that you did not get to interpret for the witness. There was something the witness said that did not get translated and is not on the record. It happens more often than we’d like to admit, and every time it does, we feel like we have failed the Limited English Proficient (LEP) witness. Well, that’s only because we know very little about the rules of evidence. There are 63 different rules in the Federal Rules of Evidence, and most states have adopted very similar rules. As interpreters, we don’t need to know all of them, but knowing at least what rules apply when we are interpreting testimony is going to make our job a little bit easier.

First, as a general rule, the LEP witnesses for whom we interpret are factual witnesses, which means they can testify only about things about which they have personal knowledge. The rules for expert witnesses are different, so let’s look at factual witnesses first.

The testimony offered must also be relevant to the elements of the offense or the issue being litigated. If an objection as to relevance is raised, either when the question is posed or the witness begins to answer, the interpreter needs to stop interpreting as soon as the objection is raised and wait for the judge’s ruling. If the objection is sustained, that’s the end of that: neither the question nor the answer, as the case may be, gets interpreted. The judge has ruled that the evidence is not relevant. Do not insist on finishing whatever portion of a question or answer remained unfinished.

There may be objections to testimony that could be relevant but the effect would be more prejudicial than probative. It is extremely important for jurors not to hear such evidence. Again, if there is an objection along those lines (most likely argued at sidebar) and the judge sustains it, neither question nor answer should be on the record. If there was something said in the foreign language that did not get interpreted, that’s how it must remain.

The objection that may be raised most often with factual witnesses is hearsay . That’s because lay people don’t normally think to narrate ONLY the things they have seen, heard, or otherwise perceived through their own senses. The moment a witness starts to narrate what someone else said, or what they themselves may have said outside of the courtroom, hearsay objections will start to fly. If we know how to recognize hearsay, we can strategize the consecutive rendition to minimize how much foreign language testimony is uttered but never interpreted. Here’s Rule 801(c):

(1) the declarant does not make while testifying at the current trial or hearing; and

(2) a party offers in evidence to prove the truth of the matter asserted in the statement.

It is a pretty straightforward rule. So, if I hear a witness start to answer a question by saying, “ Fulano de tal me dijo… ” [“So-and-so told me…”], for example, I can immediately translate that portion of the testimony and let the attorneys decide whether or not they are going to raise a hearsay objection. If no objection is forthcoming, I will signal the witness to continue with the testimony. If one is raised, I signal the witness to stop answering.

There are also rules about leading questions, which are those questions phrased in such a way that they already suggest an answer, rather than being open questions. Under Rule 611(c), leading questions are not allowed during the direct examination of a witness, except in limited circumstances to help move the testimony along. However, they are allowed on cross-examination or when examining a hostile witness, an adverse party, or a witness identified with an adverse party. Once more, we can’t always anticipate when an objection may be raised or what the judge’s ruling will be, but if you know how to recognize a leading question, you can skip a beat before rendering it for the witness. This strategy will also avoid having foreign language testimony that never gets interpreted because an objection has been raised and sustained.

One final suggestion about expert witnesses. Rule 702 allows a witness who is qualified as an expert by knowledge, skill, experience, training, or education to give opinions when they testify on the basis of their scientific, technical, or other specialized knowledge. These witnesses are meant to assist the court and the triers of fact in understanding the evidence. The rule for expert witnesses was applicable to interpreters prior to 2011, when the Federal Rules of Evidence were amended. Nevertheless, it is the interpreter’s specialized knowledge of languages that allows the court and the triers of facts to understand evidence provided by LEP witnesses. To that extent, interpreters should pay special attention to their education, training, experience, professional credentials, professional affiliations, and all other qualifications that make someone an expert in any given field.

To summarize, questions and answers that do not get interpreted because an objection has been raised and sustained should never be interpreted. If you learn how to recognize certain questions or answers that are likely to raise objections, develop strategies to minimize having questions posed that the witness will never hear, or foreign language testimony that will never be interpreted for the record.

Main photo (cropped) “ Microcosm of London Plate 042 – Guildhall, Court of King’s Bench ” from “Guildhall” in The Microcosm of London or London in Miniature , Volume II, by William Henry Pyne and William Combe (1904) [1809], London: Methuen and Company, Plate 42, retrieved on 13 July 2011. Painting by Thomas Rowlandson (1756–1827) and Augustus Charles Pugin (1762–1832) (after) John Bluck (fl. 1791–1819), Joseph Constantine Stadler (fl. 1780–1812), Thomas Sutherland (1785–1838), J. Hill, and Harraden (aquatint engravers). Painting in the public domain. Digital image taken from Wikimedia Commons . Body photo “ Scientology anti-SLAPP hearing 3 Feb 2014 039 ” by Michael at flickr , under the CC BY 2.0 license.

Now, why would there not be an objection? Because the hearsay rule has at least 23 specific exceptions. If something is offered “not for the truth of the matter,” the hearsay rule may not apply, even if it sounds like hearsay. There are also specific circumstances, such as the admissibility of co-conspirator statements in criminal matters, or prior inconsistent statements made by the witness outside of the courtroom that may be used to impeach a witness and fall within the hearsay exceptions. Since we are not attorneys, we cannot know for sure when something that sounds like hearsay may, in fact, be admitted. This is a high skill in discourse analysis that interpreters would benefit from and would do well to develop because it could minimize witness responses that must not be interpreted under the rules of evidence.

Meanwhile, in Canada…

Mon, 19 Jun 2023 16:18:00 GMT

Much ink has been spilled of late on the issue of court-interpreter pay. Here in Ontario, we’ve had our own bout with the Ministry of the Attorney General (MAG) in Ontario. Much like your states, our provinces each have their own distinct court system with its own set of rules and laws.

There had been no change in court-interpreter compensation in Ontario since 2011. Our group – Professional Court Interpreters of Ontario, PCIO, initially about 60-70 court interpreters coalescing around a series of language groups – carried out a market study and found that we had the lowest pay rate of any subnational jurisdiction in North America (officially, around 25 to 30 dollars per hour). Rural Saskatchewan’s pay rate was much better, and the difference in cost of living between those two provinces is astounding!

We came to realize that, as independent contractors, we could set our own rates and charge accordingly; we didn’t have to be bound by any of these things. Then we asked ourselves: what is a trained, accredited court interpreter worth? We compared our jurisdiction with others in the U.S. and Canada and decided to start by asking what amounted to doubling our pay.

We had to be strategic in our approach and start with languages of interest (Punjabi, Urdu, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and one or two others). We essentially applied labor strategies, and it worked.

In December of 2021, we sent a note to MAG: “As court interpreters, we are independent contractors, and we set our own rates. Going forward, starting Jan. 1, 2022, this is what the going rate will be.”

We received no reply nor acknowledgement of receipt. We provided our statement to the judiciary, the media, the Law Society of Ontario, and essentially all stakeholders. MAG had an advantage: it was unknown just how many court interpreters there are in the province. It was their best-kept secret. It was difficult for us to know if our statement was coming from 10%, 20%, 50%, or 80% of the court-interpreter body. But we had an idea and ran with it.

But this would not work! Any interpreter applying this method on an individual basis would see all their matters cancelled. This would merely be a very good way for a court interpreter to be a very hungry court interpreter. So, another option was proposed: the cancellation period for assignments at the time was forty-eight hours. We’d give courts as much respect as they were giving us, and so forty-nine hours before an assignment, we would tell them: I will be applying the PCIO rates that the Ministry has been informed of. Please confirm my rates and terms.

This tactic turned out to be hugely effective. Of course, forty-eight hours before a trial was not enough time to secure a new interpreter. The alternative would have been inordinately difficult for coordinators, and so one courthouse after another caved to the new fees. All this was in January of 2022.

Already by mid-year of 2022, there were 10-15 courts accepting the new fee schedule, no questions asked. Luckily for us, in Ontario there is a registry system available to interpreter coordinators throughout the province, and so the courts do not go through agencies. That meant one less middleman from the equation to facilitate negotiation. At the same time, we had to be cognizant of risks: if we pushed too hard, we might end up like public-service/court interpreters in the U.K.: there, the courts ended up saying, “Hey, know what? Let’s just punt this whole business over to agencies.” The result? Court-interpreter pay was cut by HALF rather than increased. So, we had to be diplomatic. Diplomatic and courteous, but intentional.

We came together as a group. Quite simply, PCIO said, “These are our rates in 2022 going forward,” and they let the cards play out.

Now for phase two: French court interpreters, seeing the success of all these measures, realized: “Hold on, the market rates in French are much higher.” We had gone from $180/day to $360/day. But market rates in Canada for a qualified French interpreter are in excess of $700/day. If we were working in parliament or at a conference, we’d be making more. So come November 2022, the PCIO-F division was founded, applying these rates and conditions, and banking on the heavy demand for French services and low supply of French interpreters.

Hourly amounts in French were upped successfully to $125/hour. But then, we decided to simplify things by charging half days and full days. If an interpretation goes past a half day, it’s a full day.

Come 2023, phase 3 went into gear: the PCIO non-French interpreters went from $60 to $70 per hour, and the PCIO French group went from $700 to $750/day.

Not only rates were changed but also terms and conditions. Previously, the cancellation period had been forty-eight hours, and this was increased to five days. Additionally, travel-time payments were updated. Before, it was much more advantageous to interpret out of town than to interpret locally. Now, changes have been made to make it worthwhile to work as interpreters and not just travel. Before, you had to travel at least 80 km one way to get paid for your travel time. But now travel time is charged from the moment you leave home to when you get to court, even if it’s very close by.

There is a cost to thinking that your interpreter is just a glorified bilingual. One could say: pay now, pay your interpreter something that reflects market realities… or pay later. The later payment will be much higher.

MAG has not yet given any official response. They have declined invitations to meetings. Essentially, they have pushed the decision down to individual courthouses; it’s up to the courthouse how much or how little they want to fight. But I would say that now it’s basically: “Tell us what your rate is, and we’ll have it approved.” It’s a case-by-case type of thing, but generally they approve.

If someone asks you, “Could you let us know what your rates are?”, that’s a carte blanche! Why not raise yourself up? The Ministry now knows what leg to stand on; they just haven’t made an official pronouncement yet.

Main photo taken from “ Le Groupe de travail sur les femmes et les DESC participe à la CSW59/Beijing+20 ” at Réseau-DESC , under the CC BY-NC 4.0 license. First body photo taken from “ Come telefonare con numero privato ” at Arrangiamoci , under the CC BY-NC 4.0 license. Second body photo taken from “ Singe hurleur ” at Wikimini , under the CC BY-SA 3.0 license.

The lowest pay in North America

Courtesy notice

Then some PCIO members asked: should we give advance notice to interpreter coordinators regarding our upcoming assignments, out of courtesy? The idea was to let the coordinators know about our new rates for all our confirmed assignments up until then.

French interpreters

There is a cost to underestimating the value of a service

MAG had viewed interpreters as highly trained bilingual monkeys. What do you give monkeys? Peanuts. But this attitude led to poor interpretation performance, mistrials, and miscarriage of justice. One needs only remember Regina vs. Singh, in which MAG was sued for $13M on account of bad interpreting.

Nicholas Ferreira , C.Crt.Int., MCI, originally from Toronto, joined the profession because he had heard about mistrials and incompetence leading to bad results. For the last fifteen years he has successfully navigated a variety of areas in the interpreting profession, including judiciary. When he’s not interpreting, you might find him on a road trip with his family or spending quality time with his friends. Contact: njfworld@yahoo.com

Double Down on Yourself. Know What You Are Worth!

Tue, 30 May 2023 19:18:00 GMT

When I started freelancing again after six years of work in a staff position, eighteen months ago I asked old and new colleague friends about their current fee ranges to adjust my expectations and be able to plan a budget for my new freelance contractor life. I was moving from the New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut Tri-State area to Illinois where I last freelanced in 2012.

I had a full-time job in New Jersey until November 2021, where the cost of living is higher than in the Chicagoland suburbs, so I expected the average hourly fee to be lower than in Jersey. I also knew that my fees were probably obsolete, in the sense that they were not that well informed because I only took freelance work sporadically.

I was quite shocked to hear that some of my colleagues were not only not charging more than when I left, but also that some were even billing less for the same work and for the same contracts (agency-governmental ones) we all worked on together in 2012. Their livelihood had decreased! How was that possible with inflation the way it stands and with the deteriorating global economy?

So, for my calculations accounting for a lower cost of living in Illinois (I used -35% to be conservative although my research showed -42.3%), I needed to earn enough to cover all my expenses, at the very least the basic ones if I wanted to survive for now and thrive hopefully in the near future. I determined that I needed to bill $3,000 per month to break even.

I have worked with a few Illinois agencies since I started interpreting in the mid-2000s and although not often, I continued to cover assignments for some, so naturally I turned to them for work. I accepted the slight increase I was offered to have a base, but after making my financial calculations, I increased my fee for all my clients to what I considered a pricing model and fee structure that resonated with my experience, my training, my credentials, the competitive landscape, the market’s demand, value, the level of difficulty, the cognitive skills needed, and the quality of my work.

The first couple of months, I considered lowering my fees to get more work because I was not booked solid, but I resisted. It has now been eighteen months, and after a few tries at something steady, whether contract work or full-time employment, I landed a four-day-per-week contract that is worth it. I am earning a little less than before, but more than my average counting my additional work on that extra day and the occasional weekend work. But I love the people I work with, and the commute is great: after driving all over Wisconsin and Illinois, sometimes with eight-hour round-trip commutes, I now drive forty-five minutes door to door with minimum traffic and great views along the way through farming country.

By the time I accepted this assignment, I was averaging $10,000 per month, and that is counting the nine weeks I took off during those eighteen months for a six-week class and a trip to Greece, hitting over fourteen thousand the last few months. I am about to increase my fees, by the way, since I have been charging the same amounts for a year and a half.

Being a business owner and independent contractor is not easy, as it does not offer the comfort of a steady paycheck and work security. You need to proactively search for assignments and strategize as you build your business, learn to live within your means, and make projections on future income and expenses. But given the few full-time opportunities and the pay offered in the area where I live, freelancing is for now the best option for me. I would jump at the opportunity of a full-time job if that job offered a good salary and benefits, but the ones I have been offered so far go from $19.13 to $27.40 per hour, not even half of my regular hourly rate, $19 being pretty close to the pay around the corner at a fast-food restaurant I frequent.

If you are on the brink of going solo, do not be afraid to freelance and set fees that are commensurate with your experience and skill. There is a market for everyone to succeed. Surround yourself with good friends that are willing to share their knowledge, join an association – NAJIT first and foremost if you are in the judiciary field – and any local translator/interpreter association. Better yet, volunteer with at least one of your associations and spread the word about the benefits of belonging to them. Being part of a larger group of professionals looks good on your resume and brings way more benefits than the ones printed in flyers. You can make out of these connections whatever you want them to be, great colleagues and lifelong friends; the choice is yours.

I must admit that I am always on the hunt for a full-time job opportunity, so if you happen to know of a well-remunerated one in my neck of the woods, please do not hesitate to call me! I prefer it that way, given my age and my future plans. But that’s just me.

The title of this blog post is borrowed from the NAJIT 44 ^th Annual Conference taking place June 2-4, in Las Vegas. If you join us, you will learn more about this important subject.

Main photo (cropped) “ Chicago sunrise 1 ” by author Daniel Schwen from Wikimedia Commons , under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license. First body photo “ argent gratuit ” by Pierre Lecourt at flickr , under the CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 license. Second body photo taken from “ Leverage your partnerships to increase your experience ” by Bertrand Duperrin at Bertrand Duperrin’s Notepad , under the CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 FR license.

Less money for the same work ten years later?

Share the love; there is plenty to go around!

At first, when I talked privately to colleagues about the range of my fees, some seemed incredulous. However, all it took was a few referrals their way for them to realize that the market can really pay a good price for professional work.

Employment or freelance: Do not settle for less than your worth

Succeeding in business in the translation and interpretation professions requires way more than excellent language and delivery skills. You need to have good business sense and the ability to manage several different clients’ expectations, billing systems, and work styles, and you need to keep your networking working for you and others. Recommending colleagues for assignments has great payback: not only do you do a generous deed, but it also creates a network of loyal colleagues and friends that are always willing to lend a hand recommending your work and sharing contacts and assignments. I have seldom met colleagues that do not reciprocate, so it is a win-win situation.

Interpreters Are Worthless

Wed, 24 May 2023 01:04:00 GMT

It was one of those weeks when everyone hates the interpreter. Weather is bad. Call quality is awful. And tempers are slightly more miserable than the shift.

Of course, everything the interpreter does makes things worse. When she asks clients to speak up over the static, clients comply, after pausing long and sighing longer, the way teenagers do when they roll their eyes. When she says “ say that again slowly ” to the LEP customer, who is speaking on the sort of single-bar cell-phone connection that transmits one out of three syllables, the LEP customer also complies, bellowing the repetition in the tone most people reserve for the truly stupid. When clients get the wrong answer, they accuse the interpreter of misdelivering the question, which she actually took great pains to translate with the same amount of ambiguity, and when the LEP customer gets an answer they don’t like, they accuse her of making up additional information that clouds the issue and confuses the situation, even though she’s only reading from her notes. Then every hour and a half or so, an LEP customer responds to her friendly greeting of “ Your Spanish interpreter is on the line to help with the call ” by saying, “ I asked for someone who speaks Spanish. I don’t want an interpreter. Interpreters are worthless. ” But that isn’t as bad as the LEP customer who agrees to work with the “ damn interpreter ” after all, only to grumble about her to whomever is in the car with him: “ They’ll let me know as soon as the damn interpreter finishes talking. ” “ They must be paying the damn interpreter by the minute. ” “ Oh, I think the damn interpreter is talking to me. What was that? ”

“ I selected the Spanish option because I wanted to speak to someone in Spanish. I have had negative experiences with interpreters and would rather not work with one. ”

“ That’s fine, sir, ” the client said pleasantly, “ I’d be happy to take your name and number for someone to call you back next week. We have a limited number of Spanish-speaking staff, and none are available this evening. I can have someone return your call in one to two business days, or I can try to help you now. ”

After a little more discussion and a few highly detailed reminiscences about incompetent interpreters, the caller went ahead with his question, a complicated matter involving medical insurance for his children.

Under the best of conditions, the call would have been hard work. It was very long, and it was full of service dates, claim numbers, diagnostic codes; proper nouns for providers, medical centers, streets, small towns whose pronunciations borrowed from both languages; and quasi-legal insurance terminology. But with a rough start, poor sound quality, and a week of stored-up interpreter bitterness, it was exhausting. What was especially hard to want to bother about were the little pleasantries that surround requests for repetition and the clever turns of phrase that suggest developing rapport between the caller and the insurance-company rep. The only thing that made it tolerable was knowing my shift would probably be over when the call ended.

After about forty-five minutes (way past the end of my shift), the insurance company representative said he would need to transfer us to another department, where the caller would be able to enroll in a different type of coverage, which would give his children the same level of protection they previously enjoyed.

“ If I can put you on a brief hold, I can get the two of you right over. ”

“ So you’ll be transferring the interpreter, too? ”

The question was sharp, and after I delivered it, the insurance-company representative hesitated, no doubt remembering the caller’s initial resistance.

“ Would you like to continue working with the same interpreter, ” he asked carefully, “ or would you like me to request a new one? ”

“ This one. ” The answer was equally sharp.

“ All right. ” The insurance company representative went through his closing script before ending with, “ I’ll transfer the two of you. Please hold. ”

The line clicked, and in the dead air between us, the caller mumbled, “ At least this one can speak Spanish. ”

It was one of the rudest, most grudging compliments I’ve ever gotten, but the week had been so long and so demoralizing that it felt like a pair of wings. Despite my lack of motivation and despite the caller’s unwillingness to work with me, we managed to get the job done. He was able to resolve his issue, relax enough to interact with the insurance-company representative in the comfortable way of two people acting without an intermediary, and even trust the interpreter enough to willingly conduct the second part of his encounter with her help, and I was certain that he’d stopped being fully aware of me for much of the call, which was the true compliment for me.

I keep this incident in mind when I’m in the middle of a difficult encounter, tempted to blow through a proceeding or behave unprofessionally for the best or worst reasons. It reminds me that non-English speakers almost always meet me when they’re in a vulnerable position and that to them, I represent a history of encounters I’m not aware of . For that reason, how I do my job—the parts that go beyond accurate rendition—matters. It can make an encounter easier or more difficult, whether the people involved (not just LEP customers) appreciate it or not. By focusing on the message and on my options as a language and cultural expert, I’m able to lose myself in the voices of the people I’m interpreting for, and they’re able to draw on whatever strength they need to get through their moment of crisis. Whether this is actually the case or not, I’ll never know—unless, of course, a mumbled compliment makes me feel I did something right.

Note: This post first appeared in July 2016 on The NAJIT Observer . Written by Ana Garza G’z.

Main photo taken from “ Italia podrá almacenar datos telefónicos y de internet durante 6 años ” by Antonella Napolitano at LIBERTIES , under the CC BY-NC 4.0 license. First body photo taken from “ CONSTRUYENDO UN SISTEMA FIREWALL/ANTISPAM TELEFÓNICO ” by Lorenzo Martínez at Securitybydefault.com , under the CC BY-NC 2.5 ES license. Second body photo “ Micrófono en la Radio Universidad Nacional de La Plata ” by LR11 Radio Universidad Nacional de La Plata at Wikimedia Commons , under the CC BY-SA 3.0 license.

The last call of the last shift of the week started in pretty much the same way:

“Your Spanish interpreter is on the line to help with the call. How may we help you?”

Ugh.

What is “privilege”?

Mon, 15 May 2023 19:04:00 GMT

No, I don’t mean the social “privilege” we all enjoy as interpreters or translators because of the education, general knowledge and specialized skills that give us a certain advantage over others a bit less fortunate. No, I mean the sort of privilege we are supposed to maintain and protect as part of our ethical duties.

Privileged and confidential information are not the same thing and cannot be treated the same way by interpreters and translators. Privileged information in the legal interpreting and translation world comes from the privileged communications that take place between an attorney and a client. There are other types of privileged communications, such as the ones between a married couple, but they all derive from the Fifth Amendment right against forced self-incrimination. [2] “In more technical terms, privilege is a legal doctrine under which certain communications, made within the context of certain relationships, will be sheltered from disclosure to any other persons.” [3]

As a Constitutional right, privilege is something that only the client, i.e., a criminal defendant, can waive. No court can force a defendant or his/her attorney to disclose information exchanged in the context of an attorney-client communication, with very few exceptions. One would be when the wellbeing of a child is in danger; another one would be when the client communicates to his or her attorney an imminent and credible plan or intention to commit a crime. [4]

Whereas the privilege is meant to allow a client to disclose all the information an attorney may need to prepare a defense in a criminal case, the information is protected from disclosure only when no third-party is present to hear it. The courts established very early on that the privilege attaches to the interpreter, as long as the interpreter is acting to facilitate communication within the confines of the attorney’s professional business. “The privilege of not disclosing a communication made by a client to counsel is confined to counsel and to an interpreter . . . .” Jackson ex dem. Haverly v. French , 1829 WL 2449 (N.Y. Sup. Ct. 1829). The privilege does not cover communications unrelated to the client’s case or attorney communications about the client’s case with anyone other than the client.

In a much more recent case, the defendant spoke in Spanish directly to the court-appointed interpreter, threatening to kill the prosecutor. After a jury trial in which he was found guilty, the court imposed sentence and the defendant appealed. The Texas Court of Appeals had to consider whether the threat communicated by the appellant directly to the court-appointed interpreter was confidential and protected by the attorney-client privilege. Aviles v. State , 165 S.W.3d 437 (Tex. App. 2005) . Appellant Aviles argued that the interpreter was acting as his agent or his attorney’s agent, so the attorney-client privilege prohibited the interpreter from disclosing the communication. But since the communication was not “in furtherance of the rendition of professional legal services to the client or those reasonably necessary for the transmission of the communication,” the court ruled that it was not protected by the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination. Id. at 439.

Confidential communications , on the other hand, are not a protected right under the Constitution and are subject to different rules. Confidential information is meant to be kept secret [5] and there is an implied promise by the interpreter or translator to keep and safeguard the client’s secrets or other private information learned during the course of our work. During an interpreted event or in the course of translating a legal document, we can become privy to facts or knowledge that are not in the public domain, and it is our ethical duty not to misuse the knowledge or facts for our own advantage or benefit. Disclosure of confidential information, however, can be compelled by a judge if it serves the interests of justice, which is a much lower threshold than the knowing and willful waiver of a constitutional right. As a matter of fact, it recently came to light that Space-X had signed Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs) with the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (UT-RGV), the Brownsville Public Utilities Board (BPUB), and Cameron County. The Texas Office of the Attorney General has ordered the release of the NDAs. [6]

To summarize: privileged communication emanates from the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination that protects criminal defendants, and by extension covers attorney-client exchanges of information. That privilege, in turn, attaches to the interpreter but only while facilitating communication between attorney and client as may be necessary for the attorney to counsel the client. [7] The privilege belongs to the defendant and only he or she can waive it. No one can compel the disclosure of privileged communications, with very few and rare exceptions.

Confidential communication arises when there are secrets that the interpreter or translator may learn during the course of their professional work, or information that is not available to the general public, which the interpreter or translator may neither disclose nor use to benefit from it in any way. However, that information may be subject to discovery in certain cases or may have to be disclosed upon an order from a judicial authority.

Both privileged and confidential communications are also to be differentiated from the secret nature of grand jury proceedings. Only witnesses may disclose their testimony before a grand jury. “The law provides that the proceedings before a Grand Jury be conducted in secret. The only individuals who may be present while testimony is being given are members of the Grand Jury, attorneys for the government, the testifying witness, an interpreter when needed, and a court reporter to record the testimony.” [8] Based on the same principle for privileged attorney-client communication, the grand jury’s secrecy rule “does not impose any obligation of secrecy on witnesses. The existing practice on this point varies among the districts. The seal of secrecy on witnesses seems an unnecessary hardship and may lead to injustice if a witness is not permitted to make a disclosure to counsel or to an associate.” [9]

I would like to see our Code of Ethics updated to include better definitions of these concepts. I believe many questions interpreters and translators have on just this one ethical principle could be easily clarified if we could “fine tune” the Code. What are your thoughts on this?

[1] NAJIT Code of Ethics and Professional Responsibilities. (Last visited on Apr. 25, 2023) https://najit.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/NAJITCodeofEthicsFINAL.pdf .

[2] “No person . . . shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself . . . .” Fifth Amendment , Overview. Legal Information Institute, Cornell University. (Last visited on April 26, 2023) https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/fifth_amendment#:~:text=A%20right%20against%20forced%20self,market%20value%20of%20the%20property .

[3] Libby, Michael. Privilege: when are communications confidential? (May 2014, Updated April 2018). https://dolden.com/privilege-when-are-communications-confidential .

[4] “[C]ommunications made to an attorney for the purposes of furthering a crime are not entitled to this privilege. Attorney-Client Privilege , Legal Information Institute, Cornell Law School. (Last visited on Apr. 27, 2023.) https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/attorney-client_privilege .

[5] Black’s Law Dictionary (11th ed. 2019).

[6] Sheridan, Erin. Rio Grande Valley groups fight to keep SpaceX non-disclosure agreements private. Texas Public Radio. April 24, 2023 at 2:21 PM. https://www.tpr.org/technology-entrepreneurship/2023-04-24/spacex-nda-foia-rgv-brownsville-cameron-county-bpub-utrgv .

[7] The privilege may not attach to the translator since the act of translating a document may not be a direct “facilitation of communication” between the attorney and the client.

[8] Grand Jury Witness Information. United States Attorney’s Office, Western District of Washington, U.S. Department of Justice. Last visited on Apr. 29, 2023. https://www.justice.gov/usao-wdwa/victim-witness/witness-info/grand-jury .

[9] Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure. Rule 6. The Grand Jury. Legal Information Institute. Cornell Law School. Last visited on Apr. 29, 2023. https://www.law.cornell.edu/rules/frcrmp/rule_6 .

Main photo (cropped) taken from Chapter 1.2 “ THE COMMUNICATION PROCESS ” from the e-book An Introduction to Speech Communication by Christopher Miller and Mia Poston (ed. College of DuPage Digital Press ), under the CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license. Body photo “ Secrecy. Le Secret. ” by Cesare Ripa (1560-1645) , originally published in 1608 in L’Iconologie ou la science des emblems devises, etc. enrichie & augmentée d’un grand nombre de digures avec des moralités, tirée la plupart de Cesar Ripa. Image downloaded from the New York Public Library Digital Collections . Believed by the NYPL to be in the public domain.

Canon 3. Confidentiality – Privileged or confidential information acquired in the course of interpreting or preparing a translation shall not be disclosed by the interpreter without authorization. [1]

In an 1859 case, “[a] communication was made by a client to an attorney, in the office of the latter, which was in his dwelling-house, and in the presence of a son of the attorney . . . who had no connection with the professional business of his father.” Goddard v. Gardner, 28 Conn. 172 (Conn. 1859). While the Supreme Court of Errors of Connecticut—as the court was called at that time—made it clear, on the one hand, that the son in that case was not covered by the privilege, it also made it clear, on the other hand, that: “The rule also, like the reason of it, extends to interpreters, and to clerks and agents employed by the attorney, &c. in the business committed to his charge, but extends no further.” Goddard, 28 Conn. at 175. That same year, the Supreme Court of Iowa also addressed the rule, and again mentioned interpreters: “the rule ‘is confined strictly to communications to members of the legal profession, as barristers, and counselors, attorneys and solicitors,’ [cite omitted] and those whose intervention is necessary to facilitate the communication between attorney and client, as interpreters. . .” Sample v. Frost, 10 Iowa 266 (1859).

The Couch: Forget Everything Else

Mon, 08 May 2023 14:28:00 GMT

The Couch is a place to exchange ideas and brainstorm, not only for its contributors but also for our readers who engage in the ensuing discussions. Today’s “Couch” article is a question about juggling that an interpreter would like help with. A thank you goes out to this contributor for bringing the issue to the fore.

Hi everyone. My question is, how do you set aside concerns while interpreting? Is there a technique anybody uses that you could recommend?

I know I am not the only one who is busy and who has a lot going on. But when we interpret, we have to put everything else aside and be entirely focused on our client’s needs. How do you do that? Not only during the job but also in preparing for it… are there any techniques you use to stay focused and set all your own cares and worries aside?

Thank you!

Body photo (cropped) taken from “ Desarrollan dispositivo láser con aplicaciones potenciales en salud ” by Armando Bonilla at cienciamx NOTICIAS , under the CC BY 4.0 license.

I am brought to interpret on all kinds of topics, from simple to very complex. I like to prepare as much as I can before the job. But there is so much going on in life right now outside of interpreting that it is difficult to focus, and many other things are making significant demands on my time. We have small children at home; we have to move and find ourselves a new place; there is so much paperwork to go through; and much more.

The Art of Being Good Enough

Tue, 02 May 2023 12:09:00 GMT

This past March, I had the privilege of hosting a community coffee hour for one of my biggest heroes. Our guest of honor was Holly Mikkelson, who, among other notable accomplishments, created the ACEBO self-study interpreting materials.

She never ceased to amaze me during our conversation, least of all with her humility. She spoke almost apologetically, as though the fact that she took an informal study resource and turned it into the first set of comprehensive audio court-interpreting practice materials in North America is made any less incredible by the fact that the whole project started around a kitchen table. Her work has elevated our profession and enabled so many of us to wrap our minds around the challenging techniques posed by interpreting.

“Did you know that your materials would be hard?” I asked her (if you’ve ever used Interpreter’s Edge , you know those practice exercises are no joke).

“I certainly did!” came her response.

“What would you recommend to people in the field, both newbies and veterans of the profession?” I asked.

“For people who are just starting out, I’d say keep plugging away,” she said. “And you’re never going to be perfect. Interpreting is the art of being good enough.”

That concept resonated with me, and it reminded me of something that our Glendon MCI (Master’s in Conference Interpreting) Director Andrew Clifford always told us, something that I now say to my students:

“Interpreters have good days, and they have bad days. When you go into the room on exam day, you will be nervous; you may not have slept great the night before; your brain might feel a bit fuzzy. In real life, that will happen, too. So, when you are tested, you are tested not to see you at your best, necessarily, but to potentially see you at your worst and to have your worst be good enough.”

What it comes down to is that interpreting is an art form. Our renditions are impacted by many factors, some personal, some external. Although we often try to treat it otherwise, interpreting is not an exact science.

To admit this fact is to acknowledge the tremendous risk taken on by our colleagues and ourselves.

That’s why part of being “good enough” means being honest with ourselves. We must know what we do well and capitalize upon it. We must learn to clear our minds of stress and panic to focus on the task at hand. Finally, we must notice our weaknesses and build awareness of our blind spots.

We must know when we’ve made mistakes and correct them.

To be an interpreter is to know that we are not perfect, but that if we work very hard, perhaps we can be good enough.

Main photo “ PERFECCIÓN DEL CÍRCULO ” (cropped) from ENFOQUE GEOMÉTRICO , under the CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 licence. First body photo taken from “ La perfección ” at Julen Iturbe-Ormaetxe, Consultoría artesana en red , under the CC BY-SA 3.0 ES licence. Second body photo (cropped) taken from “ Beca para Curso de Perfeccionamiento y Postgrado Musical ” from the Sistema de Información de las Industrias Culturales y Artes ( P eru Department of Culture ) , under the CC BY 4.0 licence.

“You should always try to come as close to being perfect as you can,” she continued. “Remember the people you interpret for, and interpret for them, for the people who don’t speak the language and really depend on you to know what’s being said. If you take that attitude into your exams, you’ll be a little more relaxed and confident and not worry so much about being perfect. Interpret for those people, not for this imaginary inquisition that is going to be examining you.”

To acknowledge that we are imperfect is to see what stands in the way of perfection and ensure that any personal weak spots do not negatively affect our clients.

20%-30% – Among other things

Tue, 25 Apr 2023 21:10:00 GMT

I happen to be a state certified interpreter. By no means does this indicate that I am a perfect interpreter; I am not. It does indicate that I passed a test on a given day, with at least the 70% needed in each section in order to be deemed certified. No one scores 100%. I don’t have stats, but I’m certain it is safe to say that the passing scores are probably grouped closer to 70% than to 100%. I’m sure at the federal level they are grouped closer to 80% than to 100%.

Obviously, when we get down to practicing our profession, accuracy is crucial. So how do you get from the 70-80% required to pass the exam to the 100% required in court proceedings? What makes up the 20-30%? Professionalism.

Are you dressed appropriately for the courtroom?

Do you have the tools of the trade: A pen and pad, a dictionary or dictionary app, colleague close by, or a phone-a-friend option? Are you actively taking notes, and using the notes to improve?

When things start getting out of hand, and they inevitably do, parties start speaking too fast, speaking over each other or using words you don’t understand, do you know how to take control of the situation? Do you maintain your composure, stay in third person and keep the record clean?

Feedback: How do you keep parties informed about the process and how do you make the process as seamless as possible? Are you open to criticism, and are you able to give constructive criticism without tearing a colleague or party down? Or do you avoid being critical of the process altogether, hoping it will magically improve?

These are just a few of the things I consider when I think about professionalism and the the profession.

Realistically, you can take certification out of the equation. Before obtaining certification, it can be easy to consider the oral exam and certification as the end rather than the beginning, but this is not the case. There are many professional interpreters who work in languages where certification is not available, and there are many professionals working toward certification.

There are countless ways to go about being professional. Do you care to share some?

And since I mentioned the exams: enough already about the certification exam being “ biased toward certain Spanish speakers” ! Enough about “ the test uses Spanish from a certain region, so it’s not fair to folks from other regions!” Malarkey! If you are a complainer: quit complaining. If you are an interpreter who needs to pass an exam, dedicate yourself to skills building.

NOTE: This piece was first published as a NAJIT blog in 2015 by author KMercado .

Main photo (cropped) taken from “ Tribunal de commerce de Paris, grande salle d’audience ” by author Tiraden at Wikimedia Commons , under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license . Body photo (cropped) “ Horloge de la gare SNCF rive droite ” by Frédéric BISSON at flickr , under the CC BY 2.0 license.

First impressions are important. Did you show up to the appointment on time? I’ve heard a few people use a quote over the past year which rings true. Roughly it goes: If you are early, you are on time. If you are on right on time, you are late. If you are late, you missed it. I think you get the point.

The Power of the Inflected Voice

Mon, 17 Apr 2023 17:43:00 GMT

We hardly pay attention to the way in which we say things, but we certainly know intuitively that we should raise our volume when we want to emphasize something, or lower it when our intention is a bit more secretive or intimate. We know to slow down when we think our listener is not understanding, or to rush when we think someone is trying to interrupt our train of thought. Seldom do we speak without some sort of inflection in our voice, be it to make a forceful statement, to ask a question, to show surprise or delight, or disgust. Yet, when we interpret, we sometimes forget to include those inflections in our voice as we render someone else’s words.

Modulating our voice not only makes it more pleasant for our listeners but also contributes to the accuracy of our renditions. For example, if a witness were to say “ I was not carrying that gun!” – stressing the “I” – everyone would understand that statement to mean “someone else was carrying it, not me .” On the other hand, if he were to say “I was not carrying that gun!” – stressing the word “that” – then the message would be quite different, more along the lines of “I may have been carrying something , but it was not that gun .” If the witnessed stressed the word “not,” instead, he could mean he had the gun in his pant pocket but was not actually carrying it in his hand. So you see, voice inflection can have a great impact on the message we convey and what the fact finders will weigh in order to assess credibility or arrive at a verdict.

Voice inflections can convey politeness, respect, boredom, sarcasm, disbelief, pity, gratitude, and just about any attitude humans can have when addressing each other. We as interpreters also have to be very careful not to insert our own attitudes towards a witness or a case in our voice inflections when we are interpreting, or to overdo what comes across so it sounds aberrant or artificial.

When we perform , in the broadest sense of the word, we actually have to be really good actors. Think soap opera, rather than newscast. I read an article in The New York Conservatory for Dramatic Arts’ webpage about nine years ago (no longer there, I’m sorry to report) that defined acting in a way that could very well be applied to interpreters—just trade “camera” for “courtroom”: “Actors are able to delve into the roles they play as though putting on the suit of another person’s body. When they appear in front of the camera, they are not acting the characteristics of that person, they are that person.”

When an interpreter “becomes” the person for whom he or she is interpreting, it is easier to place the right inflection in the voice during the target language delivery. It has been my experience that this, in turn, helps with the short-term memory retention in the consecutive mode, because we are not thinking of words in isolation; we are thinking of the message as a whole. In the simultaneous mode it helps us anticipate where the speaker is going with the overall discursive thread, and I have found that engaging in this holistic type of performance helps me stay focused much longer while maintaining a high degree of accuracy. Plus, it is a lot more fun to render target language equivalencies with the proper voice inflection than with a monotone delivery.

NOTE : This piece was first published as a NAJIT blog in 2014.

Main photo taken from “ Egennyttan och journalistiken ” by Joakim Jardenberg at jardenberg , under the CC BY 2.5 SE license. Body photo taken from “ Better Call Saul ‘Uno’ ” by Jose raul at NO ENTIENDO EL FINAL , under the CC BY 3.0 license.

The human voice can convey emotions without actual words, and as interpreters we cannot always reproduce those nonverbal elements, such as when someone sobs or laughs; but we can change the pitch of our voice so it is softer when someone cries while testifying, rather than using a shrill—and incongruent—pitch. The pitch of our voices is created through vibrations of the vocal folds. The rate at which these folds vibrate changes the way our voices sound, with faster rates equating higher pitches. Imagine a very angry female witness telling the opposing side’s attorney, “You are not understanding me!” in what will sound to you – the interpreter – like a desperate cry. Now think of yourself conveying those same words in a low husky voice. That simple change in the way we use our voice may have jurors perceiving a completely different message from a pleading or submissive witness as opposed to an irritated or overbearing one.

NAJIT 44th Annual Conference (2023)

Mon, 10 Apr 2023 20:47:00 GMT

This is one of the last blogs I will write while serving as NAJIT’s Vice-Chair, so I want to write about something that I am passionate about and that is extremely relevant at a time when we are working towards better compensation and work conditions: the NAJIT Annual Conference.

From my first NAJIT conference, the 35 ^th conference in Las Vegas in 2014 , to the 44 ^th Annual Conference , coming up in Las Vegas on June 2-4, 2023 , I have come full circle.

I enjoyed my first Las Vegas conference enormously. The hotel was beautiful, the weather was fantastic, and I went to the conference with a small group from New Jersey including Margarida Paz, Athena Matilsky and Gerda Pratto, so I felt at home from the minute I arrived. I was also fortunate in that I stayed at the hosting hotel, so that gave me the opportunity to experience the event more than colleagues who stayed off-site.

I was terribly excited about everything I learned. I attended presentations by Alfonso Villaseñor, Agustín de la Mora, Tony Rosado, Francesca Samuels, and Thelma Gomez-Ferry – all firsts of many I have enjoyed since. Those are the ones I remember most, but there were many others that I remember just by subject matter.

I enjoyed the opportunity to share experiences and compare notes with many colleagues with various areas of expertise, from different geographical areas in the United States and abroad. It was humbling to witness colleagues with a great deal of experience and outstanding credentials sit there with their notebooks listening in at workshops and presentations. Many were there to share their knowledge through presentations, panels, and sessions, but they were also attending to learn! That was an amazing thing and a lesson I will never forget. If these luminaries wanted to attend training programs, then so should we all. What a wonderful discovery. And presenters were open and generous with their time. They shared their contact information toward the end of each session, and all of them answered questions and helped with issues when I approached them after the conference.

During the conference, I got to crash the Board’s private party, where I met Rob Cruz for the first time. I never imagined that this really cool guy that was preparing drinks for guests was our distinguished outgoing chair! I was extremely happy to be in the company of “the cream of the crop” of interpretation and translation circles and see how friendly and welcoming everyone was.

The most powerful part was the networking that the conference provides. You get many opportunities to meet people and chat away, sometimes making fast friends. You have all the coffee breaks, when people gather around the snacks, cookies, muffins, granola bars, or donuts provided by one of our well-known sponsors, many times one of our own colleagues, as has been the case with Beatriz Craney from Craney Interpreting, or Agustín de la Mora, and other regular exhibitors. You meet at sessions, workshops, and panels (no talking during class, please!) and afterwards, within minutes, you are swept away into a cluster of longtime friends, often not your own but soon to be, on their way to lunch.

Some of these new friends I met at conferences also include Cristina Sánchez, Ernest Niño Murcia, Roxane King, Agustín de la Mora, Esther Hermida, Hebba Abulsaad, Judy Jenner, Sandro Tomasi, Gladys Matthews, Tony Rosado, María Ceballos, Alfonso Villaseñor, Francesca Samuels, Mylene Green, Helen Eby, Liz Essary, and many others that I have recruited over time to be members of the Conference Committee, co-chair, give a presentation, or chair the Advocacy Committee, run for the NAJIT Board, be mentors to the scholarship recipients, present a webinar, give a Zumba class, volunteer for the conference meet-and-greet, donate a book or a voucher for their training programs, lead the courthouse tour, be our keynote speaker, and more. And these are just a few of the people I have met at NAJIT conferences!

The theme of our event this year is “Double Down on Yourself. Get What You are Worth.” This concept has been in the news this whole last year and has been the subject of some of my and my colleagues’ blogs. We have heard of the efforts in many states such as California, Nebraska, Nevada, North Carolina, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and South Carolina, as well as from federal interpreters, to receive fair compensation and to demand conditions that are consistent with our code of professional practice and ethics. I do not think the individuals responsible for the purse strings in municipal, state, and federal courts realize the importance of the work we do and the disparity between the skills we bring to the table and the current remuneration in most U.S. courts.

Knowing what we are worth encompasses much more than just financial compensation; it is also a responsibility to hone our skills and dedicate the time to master terminology, techniques, invest in the best equipment, be insured, get incorporated if that is best for us, have a professional accountant, a banker, a retirement-plan specialist advising us about our future. This brings us back to the NAJIT Annual Conference, where you can get up-to-date information on all these topics, the current trends, the latest translation software, what the market’s supply and demand look like right now, how to run a successful business, ways to negotiate contracts, and follow-up concepts to improve your performance and sell your services.

So here I am, all these years later, a board member in my last and final term and as excited to attend an annual conference as I was that very first time in Vegas. At every one of them I make new and valuable friends, colleagues, and partners; I acquire knowledge and skills, learn tricks and techniques, and I get to spend quality time with my friends. There are people that I may only see once a year, so I treasure our time together.

Now that I am stepping down from the Board, attending the conference will be more important than ever because I will no longer be part of the Board’s video conferences, part of all those internal e-mail distribution lists (tons of them!), but I still want and need to keep nurturing all the friendships I have made at NAJIT over the years. I will miss all my current board colleagues as I miss former ones, but I will always have the annual conference to catch up with all my treasured friends. I will also get the chance to see someone who has become one of my closest friends: Susan Cruz, NAJIT Administrator and Friend Extraordinaire . That is priceless, and it is the most important thing NAJIT brought to my life during these nearly six years on the Board.

As you can see, the NAJIT Annual Conference has so much to offer that you just can’t afford to miss it!

Take advantage of the EARLY-BIRD special rates before the April 17, 2023, deadline.

Main photo (cropped) “ Las Vegas 89 ” by user Lasvegaslover from Wikimedia Commons , under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license. Body photo “ La Journée internationale de l’amitié célébrée le 30 juillet de chaque année, a été proclamée en 2011 par l’Assemblée générale de l’ONU avec l’idée que l’amitié entre les peuples, les pays, les cultures et les individus peut inspirer les efforts de paix ” by MONUSCO Photos at flickr , under the Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic license.

Coming Full Circle

My First NAJIT Conference

A Domino Effect

Attending that first conference changed my life. My networking circle grew exponentially. For every colleague I met, that person introduced me to someone else, so that new contact became two, two became four, and those four gave way to sixteen. By the time I left my third conference, the 37 ^th Annual Conference in San Antonio in 2016, I had met at least a third of the colleagues with whom I would work for the next seven years. Additionally, I got to see friends from my neck of the woods and strengthen relationships with people like Clariselle Ocasio, Geri Zorn, Liz Torres, Citlaly Alvarado, Karola Rangel, Andrea Lockman, Robert Joe Lee, Bethany Korp, Cosmelina Cammarata, Dahyana Grullon, Beatriz, Athena, Gerda, and too many others to provide a complete list.

NAJIT Collaborators

“Double Down on Yourself. Get What You are Worth”

The Couch: Behavior or Personality?

Thu, 06 Apr 2023 21:17:00 GMT

The Couch is a place to exchange ideas and brainstorm, not only for its contributors but also for our readers who engage in the ensuing discussions. Today’s scenario comes from a colleague with a question many of us have been faced with before: intervene or grin and bear it? Thank you to this week’s contributor for the Couch idea.

To his credit, he does not hold grudges and has an overall pleasant attitude. By that same token, it also just seems as though he wants to allow others to do the extra legwork in organizing and making decisions as to scheduling and all the rest. “I’m fine guys, you decide; just put me wherever you want,” which actually just creates more work for others since it is each team member’s job to pick one’s assignments.

While interpreting, he also falls into word-for-word mode all the time. He’s been stopped by the client more than once: “Wait, what on earth are you saying?”

Do I simply tolerate, grin and bear it? Do I try to bring it up with him? He’s not a bad person and has not done anything egregiously wrong. The situation described here is just a recurring thing. But I hesitate to bring it up with him, because it may just be personality related and nothing he or I can do much about, and all it would accomplish would be to offend him needlessly. “Choose your battles,” as they say. Have you been through a similar situation? What did you do?

Body photo “ Im Pfründnerhaus in Mainz ” (1880) by Heinz Heim (1859-1895), photo source flickr at Wikimedia Commons . Picture in the public domain.

What do you do about coworkers who just get under your skin in spite of your liking them? This might seem to be strange paradox, so allow me to explain. I have a coworker who seems like he’s just not trying. Either he’s overwhelmed, has too much on his mind and has stopped caring, or has some kind of disability that he is not sharing with other people. Each day, as a team, we have to select our daily interpreting assignments together and have to discuss extensively in our WhatsApp group for planning purposes. He often says things that show he clearly is not paying attention; didn’t read the discussion or just skimmed through it; or asking about things he could easily find out himself by looking at our shared calendar or reading the messages in the chat. His colleagues have expressed annoyance, but he takes it well.

Guilty or Not Guilty: In Our Role it’s Irrelevant

Mon, 27 Mar 2023 04:40:00 GMT

I was recently looking for something to watch on TV when I stumbled upon Amer Heard’s direct testimony during the Johnny Depp vs Amber Heard trial. I didn’t know anything about them as a couple at the time. I knew who Johnny Depp was. I had seen the movie Secret Window over 15 years ago when it came out. I didn’t know Amber Heard, had never watched her acting nor seen any of her pictures.

Because of my interest in legal matters and witness testimony, I kept watching for a while. When Amber was being cross-examined, her credibility was impeached over and over again. At that point, armed with the only information I had, in my mind she sounded like someone who was lying. Knowing perfectly well that the information I had was extremely one sided, I got curious and started to watch the trial from the beginning.

My main thought, as I continued to watch the Depp vs Heard trial, was that a good attorney can always make a good case. Plaintiff and defendant attorneys both made good points. Both parties were able to make most of the opposing witnesses sound as if they were lying, being dishonest, or at the very least, less than candid.

By the time I had finished watching the whole trial, I had unwittingly learned of its outcome already while searching for other information on the case. In my view, either side could have won had circumstances been different, as they were in the U.K. trial. If you did not watch either trial, suffice it to say that in the U.S. trial, Johnny Depp was awarded $10.3 million, and Amber Heard was awarded $2 million. Conversely, in the U.K. trial, Mr. Depp lost the case over similar issues surrounding his relationship with Ms. Heard.

I know that the verdict was controversial, so I will reserve my views on that. My objective was only to learn terminology, legal processes, and how objections are handled and why (I did tons of research afterwards), just out of pure curiosity. In the court cases I participate as an interpreter, my view is that the opposing parties are not necessarily lying. They just have very different perspectives.

The point of all of this was that I felt compassion for both sides because, whatever their faults or mistakes had been, their lives were being paraded in front of the world. We have all said and done things that, if exposed, would embarrass us. Who hasn’t raised their voice in anger or cursed or been less than kind to their loved ones? We are human, and as such we make mistakes. We are not perfect. I am not comparing everyone’s behavior to the extreme things I heard during the trial. All I am saying is that perfection does not belong to anyone. The people we encounter in court are as imperfect as we are, and for me the lesson was that all of them, despite what they may be accused of, are people, and regardless of what they have done, they deserve to be treated with respect.

We must be impartial at all times. Then, from my perspective as a Catholic and a Christian, I have to act with Christian charity. My obligation is to be, if not distinctly kind—since that falls outside of my role—at least impartial and treat people with the dignity they all deserve regardless of what they are alleged to have done. In the end, we are all fallible, all of us. Attorneys, judges, court personnel, interpreters, we are all share the same human nature and are entitled to be treated with the same level of dignity as anyone else, whether guilty or not.

Main photo (cropped) taken from “ Cine y Pediatría (397). El amor de Gilbert Grape transforma la discapacidad en capacidad ” by Javier González de Dios , from Pediatría Basada en Pruebas , under the CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 ES license. Body photos taken from “ VERGÜENZA Y POLÍTICA ” by Alberto , from Prototyping , under the CC BY 4.0 license.

In our ordinary role as judiciary interpreters, we see people who have been accused of heinous crimes sometimes, and a few of the things we hear in court can be difficult to process and be emotionally tolling, but we have to remain objective and give people the benefit of the doubt. We are not there to judge. We can’t go to a job with preconceived notions as to who is guilty or not. That is not our job.

Sometimes I feel like a nut…

Mon, 20 Mar 2023 13:21:00 GMT

There are also sensory associations between events and smells, for example, or places, or music. There may be events from your childhood you cannot quite recall, but if you visit a place you frequented back then the memories may come flooding back. Or maybe you had a very bad experience while some particular music was playing in the background, and now whenever you hear that particular music you get that disagreeable feeling because you can remember the whole unpleasant experience.

There are many techniques to improve long-term retention, but the ones that are truly helpful for us, as interpreters, are not the ones that create mnemonic acronyms. The University of Florida’s Student Academic Resources Center has a PDF with “9 Types of Mnemonics for Better Memory,” and at the very end, it lists the following strategies: Selectivity, Association, Visualization, Elaboration, Concentration, Recitation, Intention, Big & Little Pictures, Feedback, Organization, Time on Task, and Ongoing Review.

As interpreters, we have to know how to store information in long-term memory so we can retrieve it when needed. That includes terminology, vocabulary, syntax rules, semantic and pragmatic variables of language use, and general “universal knowledge” such as the names of currencies used in different countries, for example, or the different legal systems that may exist in the countries where the language(s) we interpret are spoken. For long-term storage of that information we can use strategies such as Elaboration (work with information and encode information in new ways), Recitation (repeat information verbally in your own words) and, of course, Concentration (stay focused and attend to specific stimuli.) But only Concentration is useful for short-term memory storage and retrieval, which is what we need in the consecutive and simultaneous modes. Additionally, we need Selectivity (what is important to learn—or in this case, retain), Association (associate or link together chunks of information—also known as “chunking” in interpreting theory), Visualization (picture in your mind the information you are learning—or hearing as you interpret), maybe even Big & Little Picture (recognize different levels of information—as with Selectivity, prioritize what are the most important parts of a message, second most important, etc.), and definitely Organization (reorganize information in meaningful, logical ways.)

I know, easier said than done, right? It actually takes a lot of intentional focus and a new way of assessing the source language message. It is also the surest path to accuracy and completeness in your consecutive and simultaneous renditions: visualize, identify the hierarchical importance of the information received (in terms of grammar as well as semantic and pragmatic content), associate or chunk the information (especially in the simultaneous mode), and organize your rendition so it always sounds as if that’s what the speaker would have said if he or she could speak in your target language.

More References :

Mohs, Richard C. “How Human Memory Works.” 8 May 2007. HowStuffWorks.com. Available at https://science.howstuffworks.com/life/inside-the-mind/human-brain/human-memory.htm .

“How Memory Works,” The Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning, Harvard University. Available at https://bokcenter.harvard.edu/how-memory-works .

“How to Improve Memory,” Psychology Today. Available at https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/memory/how-improve-memory .

Main photo (cropped) from “ Cats on film: Great Films featuring cats ” (The Matrix , “déjà-vu” scene) by El Acorazado Cinéfilo – Le Cuirassé Cinéphile from the blog EL ACORAZADO CINÉFILO – LE CUIRASSÉ CINÉPHILE , under the CC BY-NC 4.0 license. First body photo “ Almendras Chilenas ” by Jorge Sebastian Portillo at flickr , under the CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 license. Second body photo “ Souvenir shop ” by momentcaptured1 at flickr , under the CC BY 2.0 license.

Does anyone remember that commercial for a chocolate-covered coconut candy bar that could be bought with or without almonds? So, if you “felt like a nut” (if you felt like eating a nut, that is), you could buy the one with almonds, and if you didn’t, you could buy the one without almonds. I can still hear the song in my head. Why is it that some things just stick in your long-term memory while others don’t even come close to sticking? Memory theory suggests that when we link one concept to another related or familiar concept, it promotes long-term memory retention—like the songs we learned to memorize the alphabet, or the rhymes to remember which months have 30 days and which ones have 31. Of course, learning the songs and rhymes also involves repetition , which is a great way to move memories from short-term to long-term storage.

Sometimes interpreters just want to remember every single word they hear and translate them all, without stopping to think about the relative importance of those words, or the relative order in which they need to be conveyed in the target language so as to form an idiomatic, natural-sounding utterance. There may be times when the last thing said by a speaker needs to be the first thing conveyed in the translation. There may be times when key elements of a message are in the middle of an utterance, in between hedges and other sounds that carry no semantic content, so the interpreter must know how to prioritize what is going to take up more of the cognitive load in short-term memory. In other words, if you are going to overload your short-term memory retention capacity, make sure that the key information is not the one that gets lost if your cognitive processing capacity short-circuits.

The Real Story on Court Interpreter Pay

Tue, 14 Mar 2023 21:27:00 GMT

After 17 years without a raise, the per-diem court interpreters in Massachusetts got an inflation adjustment of 50% but not a raise. It sounds great, but it isn’t. In fact, the implementation of this long-delayed inflation adjustment has been accompanied by a significant change in staffing, reducing the role of per-diem interpreters in favor of a dramatic increase in the number of staff interpreters. With these fast-track policy changes, the courts appear to be pushing back against the current per-diem interpreters’ demanding a living wage.

The Massachusetts Association of Court Interpreters (MACI) tried everything short of a walkout, but it took a walkout to bring the Trial Court to the negotiating table with an offer that interpreters could accept. Nevertheless, it was a hollow victory.

In February, per-diem court interpreters staged a walkout for not having received an increase in pay for 17 years, while the value of the 2006 dollar declined to $0.50. The walkout was not cancelled after all, even though the Trial Court offered a cost-of-living adjustment, bringing the current pay to the same value as the 2006 dollar. But this was no actual increase. At the same time, the Trial Court began to reduce the number of days of work for certified and screened per diem court interpreters, particularly for Spanish and Portuguese, the two most frequently requested languages in the courts, while at the same time advertising openings for new per-diem Spanish and Portuguese court interpreters and having recourse to telephonic services.

The real victims of the most recent measures taken by the court administrators are not the professional interpreter s but the LEP individuals who come seeking justice from the court system. In 2022, there were 159,953 requests for interpreter services in the Commonwealth, 66% of which were for the Spanish language and 16% for Portuguese.

Per-diem interpreters used to work a full day for five days a week before the “negotiated” pay adjustment; now, some are contracted for half-days only two times a week, on average. Some of the best and most experienced certified interpreters are leaving the field because there is not enough work for them to make a decent living.

The vast majority of per diem interpreter s have been working for the Trial Court for well over 15 years. The approximately 120 Massachusetts per-diem court interpreters are vetted, highly skilled, experienced, and specialized. They work all over the Commonwealth in more than 100 languages. Quality language access for court users is necessary to ensure equal and meaningful access to justice. The work of per-diem interpreters extends beyond the walls of the courtroom, to public defenders’, court investigators’, court clinicians’, and district attorneys´ offices.

We would suggest that the Trial Court focus on improving the certification monitoring system, mentorships for new interpreters, and overall working conditions, particularly for remote interpretation.

From the vantage point of per-diem interpreters in Massachusetts, the Trial Court’s offer to adjust for inflation over the last 17 years falls short of the per-diem interpreters’ request to improve their take-home pay and working conditions. Per-diem interpreters deserve better.

Main photo taken from “ You Have Already Won! ” by Olivian Breda from Olivian.ro , under the CC BY 4.0 license. Body photo taken from “ Modern IT Management: How to negotiate better ” from Langerman Panta Rhei: All about modern IT Management for large enterprises , under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license.

The Trial Court’s Office of Language Access included a request for 50 additional full-time staff interpreters in its FY 2024 budget proposal. There are currently about 65 full-time staff court interpreters. Adding 50 more will increase the expenditure on benefits (medical/dental insurance, personal/medical leave, pension, disability, among others). Per diem interpreters render the same services to the courts without getting any of those benefits. Whether the Legislature and the Governor will approve this funding is not known at this time. In the meantime, experienced per-diem interpreters are working fewer hours while demand for their services keeps growing. To fill the gap, the Office of Language Access (OLA) at the Trial Court has started contracting agencies from other states and out-of-state interpreters to replace the per-diem court interpreters who reside and work in Massachusetts.

Anahit Flanagan has two native languages, Armenian and Russian. She is a Massachusetts Trial Court per-diem interpreter and a medical interpreter certified by the National Board (NBCMI) and the Commission (CCHI). She has 49 years of experience in teaching and has long been a language coach for medical and legal/immigration interpreting courses for students from the U.S. and other countries. She has developed the curriculum for language-learning programs for all levels of language proficiency and is a trained Oral Proficiency Interview (ACTFL OPI) tester. Volunteer work includes being a NAJIT Board Member (Director), an active member and contributor to the Massachusetts Association of Court interpreters (MACI), a member of the New England Translators Association (NETA), and a past member of the American Association of Teachers of Slavic and Eastern European Languages (AATSEEL). Contact: aflanagan@najit.org

The Lovely Land of Language Interference

Tue, 07 Mar 2023 15:44:00 GMT

The following article by Athena was published a while back. The NAJIT Observer team would like to offer it for your reading pleasure once more. Enjoy!

Have you ever taken a dash of one language with a sprinkle of another, mixed them together and simmered to taste? Of course you have! You’re bilingual. You’re bound to have stirred your languages together at one point or another.

There’s actually a fancy name for this: Language contact. Language contact is the secret demon that lies behind many of our language mistakes. I would venture to say that it is also the secret fairy godmother that gives rise to new usage and even new ways of thinking.

Sometimes I understand French grammar better when I hear the syntax of a French speaker in English. Take verb tense, for example. Both languages have past, present and future. So finding equivalents should be simple, right? Wrong. Of course that’s not right. If it were right, learning languages would be easy, instead of incredibly exasperating! It always makes me wonder, How did this become the idiomatic way to say things? Who decided it one day? This, to me, is why language is endlessly fascinating.

Let’s take a look at some examples, shall we?

- Present perfect: “Depuis.” Depuis is a magical French word that means “since.” In French, you literally say, “I live here since five years.” Note that with the magical word depuis, you don’t need the present perfect like in English: “I have lived here for five years.” It’s only when you see this that you realize how verb tense is so much more malleable than we would imagine.
- Future tense: “Quand je…” Do you need to tell someone that you’ll arrive at their house soon? In French, when you are discussing something that will happen in the future, you actually put it in the future. So you would literally say, “Tomorrow, I’ll see you when I will arrive to your house…” Note than in English, the “will” is unnecessary and sounds a bit odd, because we use present tense after the word “when.” However, it actually makes sense, logically, to conjugate this verb in the future.
- Addled adverbs: “Basically.” Oh, incorrigible cognates. In English, if you want to sum it all up, you can just use that lovely all-purpose word. So can I say basiquement in French, since basique is a word? No, even though I have tried. If you really want to sound natural, you can say en gros, which is kind like saying, “on the whole.”
- Syntax: “Also.” This time, the issue is word order. In English, you can say, “I would also like some cheese.” You can say, “I would like some cheese, also.” But you cannot say, “I would like also some cheese.” In French, you can. And why not? Who decided where we were allowed to put “also” in a sentence? Nobody and everybody, it would appear.

The crazy thing is how nuanced many of our examples of language contact are. Sometimes it’s hard to even pinpoint why certain phrasings sound a little off. Usually the only way to know is by hanging out with people who are as nerdy about language as you are (take a gander at How to Shamelessly Steal Language Skills from our Friends and Colleagues for more on that topic).

And sometimes, even though something sounds off, I’ll use it anyway. Take the verb “to live,” for example. In both French and Spanish, you can live a day. You can live a situation. You can live a feeling. In English, you can experience those things, not live them. But there is a different impact when you say “live.” It feels fuller, stronger, more real, perhaps.

What have you lived in the lovely land of language interference? I’m curious to know. Comment below!

Main photo by Enrique Hoyos from Pexels . Body photo by Benjamin Svobodny from Pexels .

Massachusetts Per Diem Court Interpreters Win Pay Increase… But Now Face A New Challenge - NAJIT

Mon, 27 Feb 2023 16:51:00 GMT

Per diem court interpreters succeed in securing a pay adjustment after 17 years!

The most recent pay rate for per diem court interpreters was set in 2006. Since then, requests for an increase by individuals and the Massachusetts Association of Court Interpreters (MACI – www.maci-inc.org ) to the Trial Court’s Office of Language Access (OLA) went unanswered or were outright rejected. On February 8 ^th , in addition to a guarantee of a yearly cost-of-living increase and a tiny raise in travel-time compensation, the Trial Court finally agreed to a 50% pay-rate increase retroactive to January 1, 2023, to correct for the changes in the cost of living as follows:

This did not happen in a vacuum nor out of the Trial Court’s generosity. One colleague, Genevieve Howe, started what turned out to involve a majority of per diem interpreters. She addressed OLA administrators as an individual who was unhappy with the situation in November 2022 by sending letters to OLA administrators outlining how long it had been since there had been any change in per diem compensation and providing data for her arguments from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Social Security Administration, and other sources. Genevieve also outlined concrete steps she would take individually if no changes were made to compensation and travel time while mentioning the possibility of a walkout, absent an adjustment by the New Year. Though OLA administrators had remote meetings with her, they took no action on Genevieve’s requests, nor on those from other colleagues who had also sent e-mails regarding these issues to the same OLA administrators.

Jumping forward to January, Genevieve let OLA know that their silence meant that other measures were going to be necessary. She communicated with a list of over 100 per diem court interpreters and asked them to consider a February walkout. The response was enthusiastic, and the week of February 6-10, 2023, was agreed upon. Quickly, a group of about nine per diems stepped forward to devise multiple ways to call attention to long-stagnant pay rates and other issues. In the meantime, per diem court interpreters had mobilized to contact local and statewide media outlets as well as their state representatives and senators. A petition to the Governor was started by per diem court interpreter Mercy Cevallos. Sandra Hall, a colleague who works in western Massachusetts, distributed yellow ribbons among supportive court personnel to use as a symbol of solidarity, and her idea spread to other parts of the state.

The Court rejected other changes requested by per diems in exchange for accepting the new pay rates. Key among these is travel-time pay, which is critical now that interpreters have the option to work from home or in person. The Trial Court administrator agreed to meet again in May 2023 for further discussions on travel-time compensation and other important issues highlighted by per diems in a poll.

In the process of fighting for better compensation, per diem court interpreters in Massachusetts found out that the state OLA has entered a request for the fiscal 2024 budget to hire 50 additional staff interpreters. Many court interpreters work on a per diem basis as they do not have the option to work full time, and approval of the request may mean the probable loss of their livelihoods. As a result, the issues of compensation and working conditions have now taken a backseat to the struggle for preventing the loss of employment for many of the over 100 per diem court interpreters trained and vetted by the Massachusetts OLA, a majority of whom are certified by the Commonwealth or the NCSC. The Commonwealth’s district attorney offices and attorneys who work with the Committee for Public Counsel Services and other organizations draw from this pool of per diem court interpreters in their search for skilled and certified interpreters. If the state OLA’s request goes through, these DA offices would likely be limited in their ability to work with LEP victims and defendants as required by state and federal laws. After a well-deserved win in their compensation, per diem court interpreters in Massachusetts now face a more daunting struggle than originally thought. Stay tuned!

Main photo take from “ Whether ‘rope pull’ is appropriate ” by user Levi Leon , at ENGLISH LANGUAGE & USAGE on StackExchange , under the CC BY-SA 3.0 license. Body image taken from “ How India Inc. is approaching salary increments in 2021 ” by Anushree Sharma at people matters , under the CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.

A new administrator for the Trial Court called for a meeting with this small group and with MACI members to take place on Wednesday, February 1, 2023, just prior to the week of the walkout. At the Wednesday meeting, he presented compensation changes that barely correct for inflation over the past 17 years and are far short of the new rates announced in January for federal court interpreters. The Court’s offer also did not match the rates that correspond to changes in the median income of workers with bachelor’s degrees, as per diems argued they should. But after an online poll, the Court’s offer was accepted by a majority.

Montserrat Zuckerman is an Indiana and Massachusetts Spanish certified court interpreter with over twenty years of experience as an interpreter and translator in the legal and medical fields. She lives in Massachusetts where she works as a freelance translator and legal interpreter and has served for eight years as per diem court interpreter for the Massachusetts Office of Language Access. She advocates for better working conditions for per diem court interpreters who serve the Massachusetts courts and the Commonwealth’s growing LEP communities. Contact Montserrat: mzuckerman51@gmail.com

Are You Reading the Headlines?

Tue, 21 Feb 2023 19:32:00 GMT

Have you seen what’s going on in recent news? Freelance court interpreters in Massachusetts and Colorado are mobilized and are saying “no more” to stagnant remuneration and inert policies in their respective court systems. And their efforts are getting the following headlines:

Boston Globe : With no pay raise in 17 years, state’s court interpreters threaten a walkout

Denver Post : Cohort of Colorado court interpreters walk out as pay dispute drags on

What an exciting time to see court interpreters taking action. There may very well be similar headlines on the horizon from these and other states. While it’s thrilling to see our profession brought to the forefront, it’s a shame that these matters can’t be “kept in the family” and dealt with through good-faith efforts. Too often, however, court systems expect freelance/contract/per diem interpreters not to rock the boat, accept the status quo, and do as they are told.

And you, dear colleague, you can act now. Support the colleagues in Massachusetts and Colorado. Read our Los Angeles colleagues’ open letter to Governor Newsom and sign the petition in a show of solidarity. Take a look at other states, like those that the NAJIT Board has supported through their advocacy-focused missives , and take a moment to write an e-mail. Consider the courts where you work and take your grievances to your courts’ administrative offices and policy-making bodies.

Here’s a template for a letter of support. Find the relevant parties and send them a note using the following or your own text.

If you have specific advocacy targets for a particular state or court system to whom such messages should be directed, share them in the comments. Also, share in the comments the local interpreter and translation associations’ contact e-mail addresses so they can be CC’d in those messages.

Change is coming. It’s time to act!

Main photo: Wake Up, America! poster, from the Library of Congress – no known restrictions on publication. Body image (petition letter) taken from “ Contestación del CES sobre Presuntas Funciones Inspectoras de la Futura Gerencia de Atención Primaria del Área Única ” by by José M.ª Morán Llanes at the AISSMa.org blog , under the CC BY-NC-SA 2.5 ES license.

Nope! Interpreters across this country are fed up. In many states, it’s been too long since remuneration, scheduling systems, and team-interpreting standards, to name a few, were updated. If state governments and court systems refuse to sit down at the table, interpreters are going to act.

Dear [STATE COURT ADMINISTRATOR] and [COURT INTERPRETER PROGRAM COORDINATOR],

I would like to express my solidarity with my fellow court interpreter colleagues taking a long-overdue stand for fair treatment by the [STATE] Court System.

Currently, [per diem/contract/registry] interpreters are underpaid and overlooked. Their good-faith efforts so far to engage directly with the [STATE COURT SYSTEM/AOC/LANGUAGE ACCESS PROGRAM] in a constructive, conciliatory, and professional dialogue to address the challenges faced by [STATE] court interpreters has yielded little response.

Both stagnant pay as well as unfair policies raise troubling questions of quality control and pose adverse impacts for the most vulnerable stakeholders in [STATE] courts . Any policy that degrades and devalues meaningful language access in the courts is a step backward; it harms all language professionals by degrading professional standards, undercuts access to justice, and threatens livelihoods.

[STATE] court interpreters have legitimate grievances. They should be heard and addressed urgently.

Sincerely,

[YOUR NAME]
[YOUR CREDENTIALS]

Garrett M. Bradford is a freelance conference and court interpreter based in Maryland. Alongside his excellent colleagues, he advocates for cost-of-living-adjusted compensation and practical policies that promote fair and professional working conditions for Maryland court interpreters.

Moving forward… but where do we go from here?

Mon, 13 Feb 2023 19:57:00 GMT

The act of interpreting has been taking place ever since two groups of people met but could not speak each other’s languages. A friend of mine, who is working on her doctoral dissertation, found this quote from the work of Marzena Chrobak [1] :

Maybe it was a spillover effect from the role interpreters played during the Spanish invasion of the “New World.” Maybe the decline in prestige has been caused by an unconscious association between the interpreters and those for whom we interpret, such as war criminals or enemy combatants. Whatever the reason, as of the 1900s—maybe as early as the 1800s—interpreters lost much of that privileged status we can see in the hieroglyphs of the Pharaohs’ tombs of Ancient Egypt.

In public service—the legal, education, and healthcare sectors, for instance—not only have interpreters lost the prestige we once had, but more often than not we have been relegated to the role of “outsiders.” Rather than acknowledge the essential role interpreters play in furthering the democratic ideals of social equity, particularly in the United States, we are stigmatized as “intruders” in what I suppose would otherwise be a perfect monolingual, monocultural world.

Ah, but there is pushback! There is, among us, a warrior consciousness that refuses to bow down to the forces that attempt to keep us ostracized. There is, among us, a fighting spirit that refuses to remain on the fringes, where we are never fully accepted as equals, never fully recognized as professionals in our own right.

And yet… we are not quite there. We still have to clamor for proper conditions when we provide our services—like team interpreting or proper equipment. We still have to hue and cry when public-sector clients turn a deaf ear and a blind eye to the value of our services. At some point we have to overcome, we have to reach the point where we no longer have to tolerate disparaging attitudes and demeaning treatment. But how do we get there?

I honestly believe that we can do that only by joining forces and agreeing to move in the same direction. And I honestly believe that direction has to lead to the sort of internal and external controls that allow us to regulate who can “become an interpreter,” how interpreters are trained and educated, and who will ultimately be able to practice this profession in such critical areas as law, healthcare, and education. I see healthcare interpreters already there, having set up their own credentialing systems and educational requirements for those who want to practice in the public health field. I see interpreters in education starting to take the reins of their own destiny, working on the design of their own credentialing through an autonomous professional association. What I don’t see is interpreters in the legal field doing anything to free themselves from external controls, such as those of court administrators or judicial councils at state and federal levels. It sort of reminds me of my own island nation, colonized during the Spanish incursion into the “New World,” then colonized again, so a lot of people don’t know any other way of being… But I digress.

Judiciary interpreters were created by law, in a way. The profession was “formally recognized” upon the enactment of the Court Interpreters Act (28 USC §1827 et seq .), so the federal judiciary “occupied the field” by establishing a certification exam and setting the rules for the practice of spoken and sign language interpreting in legal settings. Everyone seems to be perfectly comfortable with those external impositions on the profession, and at one point some interpreters even shut down an excellent certification exam NAJIT had developed at great expense and through countless volunteer hours from many colleagues who helped with the development and validation of the test. We, as a profession, were on the right track, but then it seems as though everyone fell back into that initial complacency. I should clarify that sign language interpreters are also ahead of the curve here, having established long ago their own credentialing standards. Spoken language interpreters, however, remain far behind in the legal field.

Is it because we are afraid to rock the boat? Or are we intimidated by the lawyers and judges who essentially control our profession right now? Why are we stuck in this loop, continuously complaining about not being paid enough, or not having the right working conditions, of being undercut by non-professionals who claim to be interpreters, yet always one step shy of actually taking control of our profession? I don’t mean taking control of your own business practices (which you should, by the way). That is a horse of a different color. I mean taking control of credentialing at the national level, control of our performance standards (which are terribly obsolete), control of the training and education future members of this profession are offered or required to take.

Judiciary interpreting as a profession needs to shake off this decades-long lethargy, this “let someone else do it” attitude. I’m keeping an eye on one organization that seems to be doing just that: AAPTI . If they succeed, we may finally get to be the ones who control this profession. I am cheering them on and rooting for them.

[1] Chrobak, Marzena. “For a tin ingot: The archeology of oral interpretation.” Przekładaniec. A Journal of Literary Translation, Special Issue (2013): 87–101. doi:10.4467/16891864ePC.13.039.1456

Main photo from “ Le droit, enfant abandonné de l’épistémologie ? ” by Richard Monvoisin at CORTECS , under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license. First body photo (cropped) taken from “ The interpreting profession in Ancient Egypt ” by Ingrid Piller at Language on the Move , under the CC BY 4.0 license. Second body photo (cropped) taken from “ Unesco, solo mayúscula inicial ” at fundéu RAE , under the CC BY-SA 3.0 license.

“In the Near East, the first mention of this profession comes from Ancient Sumer. One of the typical artefacts of this region – a clay tablet with a list of words in cuneiform (…) – probably dating back to the protodynastic period IIIa, i.e., 2600-2450 BCE – first contains the expression eme-bal, “to interpret,” literally, “to turn (bal) language (eme).” (p. 88)

The importance of the interpreter’s role remained high throughout history: Ancient Egypt, Ancient Greece, the Roman Empire, China… Every chronicle of encounters or clashes between different civilizations includes accounts of the interpreters who made communication possible. In fact, without interpreters, many historical conquests and defeats would never have taken place. Yet, at some point, we lost that status; we lost the respect bestowed on interpreters and their role in society. (Was it because of the defeats?)

Only those who took on the role of conference interpreters, working for large international organizations like the UN, OAS, NATO, IMF, and others like them, have retained a respectable level of recognition as to the important—make that crucial—role interpreters play in a nation’s ability to communicate with others.

Is it Better to be Hired by Assignment or by the Day?

Mon, 06 Feb 2023 19:06:00 GMT

Per Diem vs. Per Assignment

I have been a freelance interpreter since January 2007. For the first seven years of that period, I was hired exclusively to work per assignment by agencies. It wasn’t until 2014, when I first became certified, that I started working per diem for New York and New Jersey courts. Illinois and Wisconsin courts hire per diem and per assignment as well.

I like working per assignment because after the assignment, I get to go home and work on marketing and growing my business, do all my NAJIT volunteer work, write blogs, or simply show up at my sister’s home or my son’s to see the grandchildren. It gives a lot of flexibility to my days, and I enjoy that freedom.

I have never worked per diem for an agency, and I doubt I ever will

To be honest, I did not know that agencies hired per diem since I had never been offered such an assignment in my sixteen years in the profession. Then, a few months ago, I received a text request for a first assignment with a reputable agency.

The official offer came via e-mail offering me to work a specific one-day trial in a state court. So, I agreed and arrived early, as is customary for me, only to find out that it would be a very short assignment. The agency seemed to think – and I do not know why – that after the cancellation, they could use my services for any other case they chose to assign to me, just as you would an employee, or someone that you hire per diem, despite the fact that the contractual e-mail specifically stated that I was hired for a particular assignment.

I have clarified with the agency’s owner and their personnel that if I am hired for a trial, that is the trial that I am to provide services for. If I am offered to be hired for the day and take such an assignment, then I am to provide services for that day. I have never worked per diem for an agency, and I doubt I ever will, now that I know about the practice. I do not like to work in that manner, and since it is up to me, that is what I have decided to do at this stage in my career.

Standard practice

I have consulted with many colleagues, and they all agree that the contractual e-mail is the ruling document for these interactions. That is how everyone I consulted works.

Now, in my experience, working with courts can include per-diem and per-case assignments, and I like working with courts in either type of arrangement. Having full days, provided I work as part of a team, if working long assignments, is a great experience: the fee is fair, the terms are great, the day is full, I get to work different types of cases, and I get to see and interact and network with colleagues and coordinators in person (something that rarely happens if I come in for one case only). Plus, courts give me work volume.

I hone my skills, so I get to choose

I am sure that the agency I mentioned will probably never hire me again, and that is regrettable, but I have my standards. I am certified in four states, three of which via direct testing. I continue to test at every opportunity – I just tested in New York, although I am not required to recertify – to make sure my skills are current. I completed about 135 instructional hours with 40 CEUs last year alone, though I am required only 12 CEUs every two years. I also continually study with different groups and consult colleagues with more experience than I have on different terms, strategies, and best practices. And that, in my view, has earned me the right to choose the kind of work I do.

Does anyone feel differently? I would love to know your point of view.

Main photo (cropped) “ Sky Daytime ” by Conquestus , from NEWGROUNDS , under the CC BY 3.0 license. Body photos: “ Carrying Lumber up to Taktsang, Bhutan, 2002 ” by Terry Feuerborn , from flickr , under the CC BY-NC 2.0 license; “ Alarm clock PNG ,” from pngimg.com , under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International Public License .

The first agency I worked for, and for which I continue to work occasionally, is Interprenet, co-owned by David Medrano and Carlos Cantu. In the years that I have worked as a freelance interpreter for them, they have grown exponentially and have become a prestigious global agency. I have provided services for them from 2007 to date. For the period 2007 to 2012, although I did not have an exclusive contract and worked occasionally with other agencies, I worked mostly for this one agency because they kept me busy, they paid me well, the check was never late, and I did not need to invoice them. I still love working for them! I believe they also like working with me because they know I am reliable, I will never be late, and I will never cancel, except under extenuating circumstances, or try to pass on the assignment to a colleague. One reason I do not work more for the agency than I do is that now that I am certified, I can work directly with the courts, and I truly enjoy working in court – mostly trials, but also all kinds of criminal, civil, and family cases.

My experience with large and reputable agencies like Interprenet, such as Kevin McGuire’s Atlas Language Services, is that the agency hires me on a per-assignment basis, and if that assignment gets cancelled or is shorter than the number of hours anticipated, I am nonetheless released from that given assignment and am paid the full amount stipulated in the contract.

Language and Technology Evolve Only as Fast as the Humans who Speak it and Make It - NAJIT

Mon, 30 Jan 2023 20:01:00 GMT

Two questions: 1) Is technology going to replace us? (Ironically, the “age-old” one.) 2) Does language really evolve so fast? I want to bring perhaps a different perspective, which others may have evoked in other places.

As to technology, it is possible that AI becomes powerful enough to reproduce, with significant accuracy and using idiomatic constructions, what’s said in repetitive settings, e.g., a courtroom, or even many conferences. I don’t see that as an impossibility. But even if or when that happens, will robots entirely replace human beings?

The example I always bring back in conversation is that of airline pilots. The autopilot has existed since the early twentieth century in primitive form, and these professionals have often expressed worries that the human element would become obsolete. I don’t, on the other hand, see dozens, let alone hundreds, of passengers entrust their lives entirely to a computer without any kind of human agent. And if we think a conference or a court proceeding has repetitive elements, think of how repetitive and predictable a commercial flight is (takeoff, climb, cruise, descent, landing, all on carefully predetermined flight paths – this is a good thing, by the way). The third role in the cockpit, that of the flight engineer, may have disappeared due to technological advances, but that of the first officer is there to stay: one, because many flights are a long affair, and to entrust the entire duration of the flight to a single human being acting as a “check pilot” for the computer is extremely risky, and two, because even on short flights, two pairs of eyes and ears are always better than one.

You might say, “Alright, but an unchecked error by an automatic pilot can lead to death,” and that is true, but as we all know, something getting “lost in translation” can have serious implications in a person’s or in many people’s lives! Court or medical-consultation room aside, think of how serious the global situation could get with world leaders entrusting their communication to machines alone. Suffice it to say that something worse than a plane crash could result.

As disruptive as technological developments can be, translation and interpretation are as old as language itself, so as long as there are humans, the language profession will be here to stay. Today it enjoys more status and prestige than it ever has, and it should remain a well-respected profession provided that we can continue making a case for its usefulness – rather, necessity – better still, its simply being a permanent part of the human ecosystem, like agriculture, war, craftsmanship, homemaking, and everything else.

The other sell will be to convince the population that speaking and writing well is better than speaking and writing poorly. (Just think: if people are not convinced of this, then any “bilingual” with a really good “translation app” will steal our jobs in a few years.) But the population is already convinced of this truth. Observe the humility of those who know they have trouble expressing themselves properly. Those who use lower registers instantly recognize a higher one when they hear it, and regardless of people’s attitude about the proper use of language, it is universally agreed that speaking and writing well takes more effort and skill than doing so badly. So here, too, if translators and interpreters take their language skills seriously, it need not be difficult for the profession to maintain and even improve its ranking.

Which leads to the second question: does language really evolve so fast? I was privileged to study under world-renowned conference interpreters who – and they would readily admit this – were themselves privileged enough to enter the market at a very favorable time in history (the latter half of the 20 ^th century). What’s more, they got to travel constantly, live in different places where their languages were spoken, heck, even grew up doing this, since they were the sons and daughters of diplomats and dignitaries. A lot of the literature written in the field puts forward this admittedly elitist ideal, namely that one ought to travel a great deal and spend significant amounts of time in the countries in which their languages are spoken.

To do this, we are told incessantly that this includes “keeping abreast of language developments.” For beginners, this is often daunting – especially if they have more than two working languages. Not only do they not have the time or money to travel, they are also told that to be good, they must know everything! Now, things do end up working out for people, and beginner’s trepidation is normal. I would like, nonetheless, to revisit this idea of the “speed at which language evolves.”

Well, it’s not the same across the board. If you mean information technology in English, then yes, language does evolve extremely fast, with neologisms coming out all the time, so much that other major languages that regularly interact with English often just calque or even borrow the word. But this is not the same by any means in other fields or in other languages. Is it really necessary to be anxious about this? By all means, work very hard, maximize your language exposure, and practice a lot. But does that mean you need to read all the cutting-edge literature in all your languages and spend three weeks per year in those countries where they are spoken? Does it mean you must try to make friends with fifteen-year-olds and learn their slang to stay “relevant” or “in”?

The truth is that we are human beings, and so are the people for whom and whom we interpret. Changes in our own lives, most of the time, come about very slowly and gradually; it is no different for the eight billion other people on this planet. If you listen to a recording from a hundred years ago, provided the audio quality is adequate, you will have no difficulty understanding the speaker. And a hundred years is longer than most people get to live. So again, here, just as with technology, I would say, “Don’t worry about it too much.” Chris Durban said that the best do keep their language skills very high anyway, regardless of where they live. Do everything you have to do, and do it well, but don’t panic about suddenly not understanding your language tomorrow because you weren’t up at two a.m. to catch some hot publication you should have read. Don’t be thinking that all your clients will simultaneously come to you and say, “We don’t need you; this software does it just fine.” The likelihood of either of those things happening is not worth losing sleep over.

Main photo taken from Ética para robots by Antonio Orbe, at Sinapsis , under the CC BY 3.0 ES license. Body photo taken from QUÉ VER EN BUCAREST: EXPLORA LA CAPITAL DE RUMANÍA EN UNO O DOS DÍAS by Vero Boned at Sinmapa web de viajes , under the CC BY-NC 4.0 license.

While I will be the first to encourage this sort of thing and will even concede that those who do so have a better chance at being the best – nothing replaces living in your language of choice 24/7 – this also overlooks the very great number of language professionals whose parents were not diplomats and who do not have thousands of extra dollars or five weeks of free time per year to go live in an Airbnb in Guangzhou, Amman, Bucharest, or Rio de Janeiro. And yet those for whom finances or circumstances are an impediment to travelling far or for very long are still held to the same professional standards and must keep their language skills top notch.

Jules Lapprand grew up in Victoria, British Columbia, and spent a significant part of his adult life in Montreal, Quebec. He completed a translation certificate from Spanish into English at McGill University (Montreal) in 2016 and a Master’s in Conference Interpreting at York University (Toronto) in 2019. He has worked as a freelance translator and interpreter since 2018. Outside of work, he enjoys literature and music, martial arts, and road trips. He lives in central Michigan with his family. E-mail Jules at TNO_editor@najit.org .

You can’t have your cake and eat it, too

Mon, 16 Jan 2023 15:42:00 GMT

It’s a lot of fun when you work in a venue where you can get together with colleagues to share anecdotes, ask questions, and learn new things to help you be a better interpreter. I was with some fellow interpreters recently talking about sayings in English and how best to translate them. The one about having a cake and eating it came up. As native Spanish speakers, we could not figure out why you could not have a cake and eat it too. Why would taking a bite out of your cake prevent you from having a cake? Then, of course, we looked up the meaning of that saying, and it turned out that the “eating” did not refer to a single bite but to eating the entire cake; hence, were you to eat the cake, it would be gone, and you would no longer have a cake. As we pondered on possible Spanish-language equivalents, it became clear that what the saying meant was that you could not engage in two incompatible activities, such as “dar Misa y repicar campanas” [be in the chapel and the bell tower at the same time.] It was also about not being able to engage in things that were mutually exclusive.

That got me thinking about interpreters who are independent contractors and yet want to form unions. It stands to reason that those would be incompatible activities. Independent contractors, by definition, are their own bosses. They own their own businesses, pay their own taxes, make their own decisions about whom to work for, whom not to work for, when to work and when not to work. They keep their own financial records as business owners and can even subcontract other interpreters as needed. Independent contractors decide how much to charge for their services and under which conditions to provide those services.

I fail to grasp the compatibility of being an independent professional and joining a union. If you become part of a bargaining labor unit that has the courts as your “management” unit, doesn’t that automatically—or at least implicitly—mean that you are no longer your own boss? Doesn’t that mean you are no longer “independent”?

Now here’s the other thing that is different about the courts. Contracting with the courts—which are part of the public sector—is not the same as contracting with the private sector. In the latter, you set your own contractual terms and the client can take them or leave them. If they accept your terms, you provide your services. If they don’t, you don’t either. Simple. With a government entity, they are the ones who set the contractual terms and you can either take them or leave them. Why? Basically because they are managing public funds and have both lawmakers and taxpayers to answer to. Government contracts are strictly regulated, and public spending is closely monitored. Interpreting services for the judiciary fall under the “public spending” category. That does not mean we have to agree to work for peanuts. What it does mean is that we have to know how to navigate the system and go to the source of the budgeting problem: the lawmakers.

The authority to provide proper compensation and other operational conditions for expert service providers like interpreters comes from the top, not from local courts. The power rests with the high-ranking judicial officers who set policy and the lawmakers who control the purse strings. Forming unions is not going to move the needle at that level. If anything, it would reinforce the image of interpreters as low-in-the-totem-pole workers. So perhaps forming unions is just barking up the wrong tree. Perhaps independent contractors should be organizing in a different way that can get the eyes and ears of the real decision-makers.

In any event, I just don’t think you can be your own boss as an independent contractor and also have someone else be your boss if you are part of a union’s bargaining unit. You just can’t have your cake and eat it too.

Main photo (cropped) from “ A abrir camino me llamas ” at pastoralsj , under the CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license. First body photo taken from the page “ RELACIONES LABORALES ” at MR CONSULTING , under the CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 CA license. Second body photo taken from “ Caminar como técnica para pensar, 3 ” by Carlos Osorio at Caminando por Madrid , under the CC BY-NC 3.0 ES license.

Unions are usually defined as bargaining units of employees who have a common employer with whom they can engage in negotiations for certain working conditions and employment benefits. The concept of labor unions dates back to the Industrial Revolution and the need to protect workers from abuses by industrialist capitalists. Unions were an avenue to rebalance the power disparity between labor and management and to this date continue to play that role. However, independent contract interpreters are not someone else’s employees. As business owners, everyone who receives the services of an independent contract interpreter is a client, not an employer. You negotiate your contract for services directly with your client: how much you want to charge, your minimum fee, your cancellation policy, and so forth. That is a one-to-one business relationship. I can’t imagine interpreters joining a union to negotiate working conditions with a law firm wanting to hire their services, so why the courts?

What make the courts different from other clients? Many independent contractors happen to work almost exclusively for a single court unit. Going to the same place to provide professional services day in and day out may feel like a regular job… but it is not! You can say “no” at any time and never go back, or you can take a few days to cover an assignment elsewhere, or you can just go on vacation. What about benefits? Well, that’s included in the whole concept of “having your own business”: you have to budget for things like health insurance, emergency savings, retirement and, yes, vacations. While it is true that there are fewer full-time positions for interpreters than there are “employable” interpreters, by choosing this profession you must have factored in the very high probability that you will have to work as an independent contractor. On the other hand, many independent contractors relish their freedom and would never dream of being tied down to a job in which they need to ask permission if they want to do something other than go to work on any given day.

Professional Standards: It’s Up to Us

Mon, 09 Jan 2023 20:26:00 GMT

During the first NAJIT event I ever attended, the 35 ^th Annual Conference in Las Vegas in the spring of 2014, my friend Gerda Prato introduced me to Tony Rosado. I was so excited that I still have the picture.

I already knew who Tony was from reading his blog. Although I admired him a great deal and liked all he had to say, I wasn’t sure I could deal with my clients in the way he encouraged us to. I struggled for clients to send materials, to be willing to pay for preparation and travel time, etc. How was I going to make them comply with the other terms in my contract if I could not persuade them in the simplest of requests?

I guess it all takes time. You need to build a client portfolio and trust and rapport with them. It took me a while to feel like I could demand terms and expect to be treated with the respect I’ve now earned. I wish I had taken Tony’s words to heart way before, but we all have our own pace.

So, incidentally, a few months ago I was contracted to cover an event with two colleagues. The agreement was that we would be working the plenary sessions and all the events in the main ballroom, and we would be given equipment for the whole event.

We were alternating days, but as I was the lead interpreter for this particular event, I visited the conference site during our first day. I could not have been more surprised to find my colleagues working under completely different conditions than those agreed upon.

The equipment wasn’t there. One of my colleagues was standing up at the front of the room to the right. Our contact person was standing close to her listening intently and correcting my colleague’s perfectly accurate rendition! She did this several times.

I must say here that we do accommodate special terminology for clients that send us documents ahead of time, but not all clients send documents in advance. They know that if they send materials ahead of time, they must pay for preparation time, and they don’t want to. This client sent all the prep material the night before the event, way after all interpreters were asleep – literally, in the wee hours of the morning. I assume their rationale behind this was that we use their desired terminology, without their having to pay for our preparation time.

What the client should understand, although some pretend not to, is that interpreters cannot memorize terminology in their sleep or get up at dawn to prepare with materials sent at the last minute. We, as normal people do, must have a good night’s sleep in order to be fully alert and prepared for the hard cognitive burden of a full day of conference interpretation.

If we are talking about just a handful of words, then it’s not a problem. You have them handy, and you use them. But if you didn’t take the time to send special glossaries and materials ahead of time, you can’t expect the interpreter to use your choice of equivalent terms. So, as you might imagine, I was dismayed to find my colleagues treated in this way with no place to sit, no booth, no transmitters or receivers, no headphones; just standing there and straining their voices and getting shut down at every opportunity in front of all attendees for terminological choices not provided in advance. Not only did this affect their performance, it undermined them as professionals.

I wasn’t about to interrupt, but as soon as the session was over, I approached our contact and gave her my business card and told her I was managing this project; then I gathered my colleagues, and we made a plan of action.

I reached out to the agency and informed them of the issue. They immediately reached out to the client, and we ended up working a fraction of the time we were hired for because they had not ordered the equipment we were promised. As expected, the agency stood with us.

During the event, the client can’t separate the interpreters to cover separate sessions. If they need to cover more than one room, they need teams of two interpreters per room. As much as we want to be flexible, stretching ourselves too thin only leads to impossible and unreasonable expectations.

The positive side of this story is that, as concerned as my colleagues were about the expenses they incurred for contracted time not worked – given the lack of equipment, booths, and separating the interpreters as they wished (having one interpreter stand at the front of the plenary session while another interpreted alone for ninety minutes!) – in the end, the client was happy with our services, and we have worked for them several times since. In fact, I was booked months ago for an event in May 2023!

The lesson here for me is to continue working with informed agencies that know what it takes to do the job properly and that uphold contracts and contract interpreters. Definitely drop those agencies that would bend over backwards to keep a client happy at your expense, to the point of wanting you to do other tasks unrelated to interpretation just to get “their money’s worth.” I don’t work that way. Nor will I ever again.

Be assertive and make sure you are treated as a professional. We lead the way. The client gets or loses a good professional. It’s not up to them, it’s up to us.

Main photo (cropped) taken from “ Organizador Profesional de Congresos (OPC). Profesional. Experto ” at protocolo.org , under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license. Body photo (cropped) taken from “ Le big data au service du client ” by Sylvie Corlay at PressMyWeb.com , under the CC BY 4.0 license.

To provide quality work, we must have good working conditions. A well-located booth with a table and outlets, a good sound feed, headphones, transmitters, receivers, etc.

New Year’s Resolutions: The Why, the Way and the Joy

Tue, 03 Jan 2023 13:10:00 GMT

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

By the time you read these words, it’ll be January. It’s actually still December for me while I write this, but not for much longer. There is less than a week to go, in fact. So, adios, 2022! Hello, 2023! Happy New Year! What’s your new year’s resolution?

I’m a tiny bit of a nerd when it comes to new year’s resolutions. I’ve been making them for a very long time. I recently stumbled upon fifteen-year-old Athena’s resolutions for the new year. Teenage Me was kind of cute. I vowed to wear glasses more instead of contact lenses (I suppose to look out for my eye health?) and also to be more helpful around the house for my mom.

I can’t tell you if I made my resolutions come true that year (my mother might argue that they did not), but of course I like to think that I did.

My goal-setting has evolved a lot over the years, but new year still means taking a moment to look ahead. So given the timing of this post, I thought I could share some thoughts I’ve had on the topic.

Maybe you have a professional interpreting objective to accomplish, or a personal life goal you’d like to make into reality. Whatever your resolution may be, if you actually want it to stick past January, you’ll have to do something more than proclaim it loudly on New Year’s Day.

You’ll have to make room for your resolution.

You’ll also have to make sure your resolution is realistic for the amount of room already available in your life.

I often have students ask me some variation of, “Is three (or two, or four) months of studying reasonable for me to pass X/Y/Z interpreting exam”? My answer is: It depends what you DO with those four months, and on how long it takes your habits to form. The first habit you’ll have to implement is sitting down to do the work!

Sometimes, that will mean waking up earlier in the day. That’s good, but what we often forget is that by saying “yes” to waking up early, we are saying “no” to going to sleep late. Otherwise, it won’t be sustainable; three days will go by, you’ll be completely exhausted, and without even thinking about it, you’ll fall asleep on the couch in the middle of the day. Once that happens, you’ll go back to whatever your old schedule used to be, and the studying will slip quietly out the door.

The thing about resolutions is that they have to go from being a thing you want to being an actual habit. And sometimes, as with the sleep example, by creating one habit, you are necessarily getting rid of another.

Habits are hard to make and hard to break.

What I’m describing is actually hard to do, though, so whatever it is we’re working toward, we’ve got to really want it. Motivation is what fuels our drive, so the motivation has got to be there. We’ve got to be so devoted to our goal that by July, when school vacation is on and snow is just a far, distant memory, our goal is still with us. That motivation is our Why .

Next, we find our Way . Our way is our plan. We need a plan because, a goal without a plan is just a dream. (Social media quote, author unknown.) Our plan will involve our calendar, into which we carve out reasonable chunks of time to devote to our goal.

This will mean saying “no” to other things. That will be hard. If it’s impossible, then we’ll have to re-think our goal.

Once we have the inspiration, we find Joy in the journey; ways to make the process fun and the work worth it.

One of my more general but important goals for the new year is to cultivate my language proficiencies. I don’t live with anyone who speaks my non-native languages, and sometimes I find that when I open my mouth to express myself, I don’t know what to say. For an interpreter and language nerd like me, that is rather alarming. So, I’ve decided to do something about it, cultivating language exposure into my life in a habit-forming sort of a way. While having fun.

I have conceived of an array of little ways to add more language exposure to my life; by listening to Quebec radio while I wash the dishes, for example. By making time for a group lunch that will involve speaking Spanish, for another. By researching and buying novels in those languages that are fun to read ; by listening to podcasts I find interesting; and – this is big – by giving myself permission to use the subtitles when I watch TV and movies. Now that I’ve finally given myself this permission, watching the shows is way more fun, and as a result, I watch more of them, hence drastically increasing my language exposure.

Sometimes, depending on what your goal may be, there won’t be as many creative solutions. Sometimes, meeting your goal will involve less fun, more work, more stress, and more scary, life-changing events riding on your energy investments. Well then, you’ll have to want it even harder, and schedule ways to hold yourself accountable and find people to help you on your journey. If it’s the right goal, the journey will be worth it.

Let’s not turn new year’s resolutions into one more item on our to-do list, one more task to cause guilt when left unmet. Let’s set reasonable, fun objectives for ourselves. If we do resolve to accomplish something monumental this year, let’s keep our motivation near and prepare to do a lot of work. Anyway, who said 2023 had to be drastically life-changing? Maybe our goal will be “Sleep in fifteen minutes later every Saturday.” That’s a perfectly reasonable new year’s resolution!

Main photo “ Target Practice ” (cropped) by Mobilus in Mobili at flickr , under the CC BY-SA 2.0 license. Body photo “ Seven Effective Habits ” taken from a post of the same name at Vanessa’s , under the CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 license.

The thing is, we can’t drastically alter everything we do, all at once. But we can pick one thing we really care about, one thing at a time, and implement practical, repetitive, scheduled strategies to cultivate it past the first two weeks of 2023.

Happy Holidays! - NAJIT

Wed, 28 Dec 2022 16:20:00 GMT

On behalf of the Blog team and NAJIT as a whole, we hope you are having a very happy and restful holiday, wherever you may be and with whomever you may be spending it.

Merry Christmas! Happy Hanukkah! ¡Feliz Navidad! Joyeux Noël! 新年快乐! Bom Natal! Giáng sinh vui vẻ! Maligayang Pasko! !عِيد مِيلَاد مَجِيد

Warmly,

The NAJIT Observer

Featured image (cropped) taken from “ Yosemite National Park on a Wintry, Snowy Day in December ” by Beedie Savage at Peace of Mind Through Photography , under the CC BY 3.0 license. Body image “ Christmas Happy Holidays ” from PNG ALL , under the CC BY-NC 4.0 license.

It’s been that kind of a year!

Mon, 19 Dec 2022 17:20:00 GMT

I know it may seem like a tired old cliché but, come on! You have to agree with me: it has been a great year! For me it was a year of enormous challenges chairing the NAJIT Board of Directors during the first half, and then equally enormous relief for the second half of the year once I stepped down. Yes, folks, serving on the NAJIT Board of Directors is a very demanding volunteer “job”! But I stepped down only to start other projects near and dear to my heart, like setting up my own nonprofit, an idea born out of conversations with interpreter/agency owners concerned about highly skilled interpreters not getting certified because they could not afford the cost of their state’s certification exam. I am slowly but surely building up a fund to help those interpreters by subsidizing at least part of those costs. That’s a long-term goal.

This year, many of us completed a unique “experiment” spearheaded by the SSTI Board of Directors: the SSTI Research Collaborative. Practitioners and academics were matched up to conduct unique research projects in translation and interpreting, including ASL. I was thrilled to complete my year-long project under the mentorship of the amazing Aneta Pavlenko, and guess what? That experience made me decide to go back to school and get something else crossed off my bucket list: a Ph.D.! Another long-term goal.

There are many of you out there also crossing things off from your bucket lists—like getting federally certified. Congratulations to all of you who passed the test in the fall of 2022! And then there are those who got together as a united front to demand better working conditions or pay. Congratulations to all those state and federal court interpreters who have achieved so many momentous victories this year! Let’s not forget how far we can go when we work together for a common good, rather than against each other for selfish reasons. (Yes, I said it!)

Building continues…

I’m sure there are also many among you who started new projects, new jobs, moved to new places—could you be watching the Mauna Loa’s eruption a hop, skip, and a jump away right now? Or are you one of those who got a new business off the ground training highly successful “future fedes”? Did you get to attend a conference you had never been to before? Or visit a new country? Or both—perhaps the FIT conference in Varadero this year? In my case, it was the First International Conference on the Right to Languages sponsored by the Universitat de València, Facultat de Dret. I got to put faces to names of scholars I had read and whose work I admired tremendously—plus, I got to meet new ones whose friendship I will forever cherish.

I realize there are always misadventures, like a COVID super spreader event that shall remain nameless (even though it was so much fun!). And, of course, there have been deeply heartbreaking events, and I stand in solidarity with all of you who suffered the loss of a loved one this past year. We do need to make room in our lives to grieve for as long as the heart needs to and mourn the passing of a parent, a sibling, a child. Take my word for it: grief does not have a statute of limitation. It never goes away; you just learn to live with it. But learn and live you do. And let’s not forget the atrocities taking place in Ukraine. People very dear to me still have family there, and it somehow feels like it’s my family, too.

All right, so it has not been a perfect year. But I am trying to look on the bright side and make this my year-in-review blog piece, mostly because I feel very fortunate to have been able to engage with all who read The NAJIT Observer and share my ups and downs, rants and raves, over the course of these past twelve months. This sort of dialogue keeps me motivated and engaged. What would things be like otherwise, if I lived inside a bubble shared only by my own thoughts! What kind of a year would that have been? No, I definitely like this one better and, yes, taking stock of the good and bad, I still believe it was a great year. I hope that when each of you look back on your year, you will come to the same conclusion.

Here’s to wishing you a Merry Christmas! ¡Feliz Navidad! Happy Hanukkah! Happy Kwanzaa! And a very Happy New Year to all!

Main photo (cropped) “ Look Back and Forget the Year ” by Peter Thoeny at flickr , under the CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 license. Body photo taken from “ Vancouver Photos of the Year: A Look Back at 2014 ” by Rebecca Bollwitt at Miss604 , under the CC BY-NC-SA 2.5 CA license.

CITI: A New Convert

Mon, 12 Dec 2022 23:12:00 GMT

I first heard about the University of Arizona’s Court Interpreter Training Institute (CITI) program at NAJIT’s 35 ^th Annual Conference in Las Vegas in 2012. Some colleagues were talking about it while we had lunch. They shared information and spoke highly of the program, so I was intrigued and asked many questions and took copious notes to follow up.

One of the comments really caught my attention. Most people who had taken it had eventually passed the Federal exam. As I went over all the names shared, I confirmed they were all indeed federally certified.

Ever since then, I had every intention of registering for the program. I had great experiences taking other one- and two-day workshops, such as the FCICE Oral Exam Prep with Joshua Elliot and a five-day workshop with Yvette Citizen and Joshua titled “The Institutito” in Frankfort, Kentucky.

I found the five-day program very helpful, if not quite challenging for my skill level at the time. It proved useful not only because it improved my skills, but also because it showed me that I was not yet ready for certain types of cases and certifications. Professionally, I made great networking connections that have helped me to this day. At a personal level, I gained long-lasting friendships.

For years, I told myself that I would try the six-week program, but I just kept pushing it back because of the cost and amount of time required. Then, this , I finally decided to apply, but I almost backed out at the last minute. I felt it was big time commitment. On top of that, I would have to miss at least two weeks of work if I wanted to fully apply myself and get the best possible benefit and results.

The program started at the same time as NAJIT’s 43 ^rd Annual Conference in Fort Lauderdale this past June, so I started a bit late. Then, after the conference, I was diagnosed with COVID, and I had more severe symptoms than the first time around. Yet as I struggled to get caught up, I was hooked. From day one!

I sometimes mistakenly assume that I have been in the profession long enough that I will most likely know all the content in every program offered. This time, I was in for a big surprise.

In my view, one of the best presentations was given by Dr. Gloria Rivera. If you are not well versed with medical terminology, she is great for beginners too as she teaches in a way that engages newbies and experienced medical interpreters alike. The two-hour lecture was incredibly easy to follow and went well beyond the basics in content and complexity; it was both complex and accessible to all.

The main program instructors were Carlos Radillo, Kelly Varguez, and Tamber Hilton. I had never met Carlos before, but I immediately identified with him and was mesmerized by his level of bilingualism. I heard him speak Spanish, and that alone transported me to Mexico City and my time there, his skill with the Spanish language as perfect as I am sure it was when he left our common native country.

I had attended some in-person and virtual programs led by Kelly and Tamber before, and I liked them both, but I was further impressed with their complementary teaching styles and personalities. There is nothing more humbling than having open-minded instructors that showcase their superior knowledge with firmness but also simplicity, showing respect for everyone’s talents, knowledge, and skills.

All three instructors managed the flow of participation very well, too. That can be a big factor because depending on your level of self-confidence and experience, attendees tend to participate too much or too little, so it comes down to the instructors to level things out. Our instructors could not have done this better.

The assignments and the way students interact with each other is another feather in CITI’s cap. There were opportunities to learn from each other as we were grouped according to levels. This was very helpful and encouraged us to consult each other and really push for “common” engagement.

CITI has lectures for interpreters of all types as the skills are used by all language interpreters in the same manner, regardless of the setting. A great number of CEUs are accepted for medical interpreters as well by states that require them for certification compliance.

I could say a great deal more about this program. As I shared with Paul Gatto, the program’s Assistant Director, I would attend this program every year if I could. I will certainly try. I have tried for years to practice every day, to be more cognizant of my learning shortcomings and my lack of discipline. I know it is not easy to dedicate the time; I know that the expense is considerable; I also suspect that a very self-disciplined person can probably do at least some of the work on their own. But for someone who has attained a level of financial stability and is looking to further develop his or her skills, I would invite you to take it for the first time or again if you have had the privilege of joining this program. Regardless of your current skill level, you will definitely see improvement. I dare anyone in this field to attend the program and not become a better interpreter.

Main photo (cropped) taken from “ Flying High ” by Jennifer Ferreira, at the blog OBLIQUE EXPOSURE , under the CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 license. Body photo “ Communication Skills ” at OER Commons , under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license.

We had guest speakers for some of the lectures: Ernest Niño on notetaking, Joshua Elliot on firearms and weaponry, and Carmen Patel on legal procedure. Each of these subjects was fascinating and provided great insight into their various subject matters: different interpreting methods and skills, firearms and weaponry functions, with a great deal of passion and enthusiasm for the law.

Let’s Get Loud: Taking Off the Cloak of Invisibility

Thu, 08 Dec 2022 17:02:00 GMT

Oh, no! It happened again.

A client insulted you. They had a non-native, non-translator correct your work and asked for a refund. They asked you to volunteer to interpret out of the goodness of your heart. Maybe it wasn’t intentional, or maybe it was. Perhaps it was out of sheer ignorance of all that goes into your craft. Whatever the case may be, you’re furious. So, there you are, frustrated and fuming mad. You’re enraged, and you must get it off your chest. That’s when you log onto Facebook and search for your favorite translator/interpreter group, which is filled with colleagues who will understand every ounce of your frustration. You post a rant, get your therapy, and move on to the next adventure.

Think about how many times you have taken to social media to vent about the general lack of understanding about our profession. Have you ever written a post to share your frustration? Do you find yourself agreeing with these types of posts? I know that I have. I have seen countless posts from language professionals sharing their awful experiences and complaining about the rampant ignorance surrounding language professionals’ work.

Is there something else we can do besides cathartic venting to our colleagues in person and on social media?

My answer is a resounding yes. Yes, there is. In the words of J.Lo, “Let’s get loud!”

Oh, sure, we’ve all heard it before: one of the hallmark traits of a good translator/interpreter is the element of invisibility. And it seems that we’ve really taken that to heart and applied it to all parts of our professional life. Yet we can no longer afford – in all senses of the word – to be invisible. This cloak of invisibility we wear as a badge of honor may very well be costing us.

I have seen a myriad of announcements for workshops and training by language professionals for language professionals. While continuing education is crucial to stay up to date in our practices and a requirement to hold some professional certifications, we can target new audiences. I have rarely seen an announcement for training aimed at other professionals who work with translators and interpreters, such as lawyers and law-enforcement officers. NAJIT has some excellent position papers, and there are a few articles on the internet, but besides that, there is not much out there.

If we want people to know something, we can make sure they do by teaching them. How about adding our clients (or potential clients) to our educational efforts? We can begin by reaching out to local courts, bar associations, law schools, professional associations, etc. We can work with them to develop and offer training on how to work with us, teach them that our profession has specific standards, and why our work matters. The more people know and understand our work, the better our working conditions will get.

In my experience, clients are more open to listening and taking your suggestions if they understand the reason behind them. Legal professionals almost always need a why for everything. I have been testing this for a few years now. I have noticed that if I request that attorneys share case details, documents, and information, my requests often go ignored unless I explain how sharing this information will benefit everyone. I have frequently found that I need only explain this once. After this, those same attorneys will come to me and share the information without me having to ask. Together, we can work to make this the rule and not the exception. Together, we can get loud. Together, we can finally make ourselves visible.

Main photo (cropped) taken from “ Aprende cómo vender más venciendo la timidez ” by Mariano Cabrera L. at MARIANOCABRERA.com , under the CC BY-NC 4.0 license. Body photo “ Make some noise # streetart in Bristol wheatpaste ” by Earthlad at moblog , under the CC BY-SA 2.0 license.

Although I understand that the primary purpose of our work is to be invisible, that only applies to the act of interpreting and translating itself. As professionals, we cannot be invisible. We must be loud and vocal and be noticed because we are present. We are working, and our job is vital. Without us, there is no global communication. Without us, there is no justice for the non-English speakers.

Dennise A. Serrano was born and raised in a Spanish-speaking household in Puerto Rico. She was the only English-speaking member of her family, and the struggles her family members faced because of the language motivated her to become a professional translator and interpreter. She obtained a Bachelor’s Degree in Pre-Translation and a Master’s in Translation from the University of Puerto Rico. She currently works as a Language Specialist for the U.S. Attorney’s Office. She recently passed the oral portion of the Federal Court Interpreter Certification Examination. Contact her at dennise.serrano@gmail.com .

The Couch: A Moment of Weakness

Tue, 29 Nov 2022 17:53:00 GMT

The Couch is a place to exchange ideas and brainstorm, not only for its contributors but also for our readers who engage in the ensuing discussions. Sometimes, it feels like your code of ethics and your concern for a person’s well-being can conflict – but is there a conflict? A thank-you goes out to this week’s contributor for the Couch idea.

You are on a two-person interpreting team, and you have a good working relationship with your colleague. She happens to be the one interpreting while an emotionally charged testimony is being given, and you notice, only for a brief moment, a scowl, a wry look, come across her face. Unfortunately for her, it so happens that the defense attorney was looking at her at that very moment. He jumps on it and raises doubt with the Court as to the interpreter’s impartiality. Amazingly, the Court sides with the defense attorney, and your colleague is dismissed.

What should you have done? Would a sympathetic glance have sufficed? A few words, e.g., “I’ll call you after”? How much encouragement or camaraderie would have been “going too far”? You know that the attorney didn’t get your colleague excused from the case out of meanness or spite; he is only trying to win his case. For that very reason, he may use anything in his arsenal that may serve his interests. But your diffident response to your colleague at the time of the incident leaves a pit in your stomach later that evening. What should you have done differently, if anything?

Body photo “ Sympathy ” by John George Brown (1831-1913), photo source Christie’s at Wikimedia Commons . Picture in the public domain.

Celebrating Gratitude

Mon, 21 Nov 2022 20:51:00 GMT

This week, the Blog team felt it pertinent to re-publish a short post from 2019, in the spirit of Thanksgiving .

This is a time to celebrate gratitude; a time to recognize, acknowledge and be thankful for our experiences.

A good life is not one free of hardships; it is one in which there is a balance between good and bad times. We can’t all achieve a perfect balance, but we can all focus on the positive experiences we have had in our lives and strive to learn from the not-so-positive ones. That is how we grow.

In the meantime, we at NAJIT want to show our gratitude to all of our members for their support, especially our Board members, committee members, course instructors, conference speakers – in short, all of our many volunteers who help NAJIT grow and remain relevant.

And to all our members and to interpreters everywhere, thanks to each and every one of you , for all that you do in service of the profession and to ensure smooth and accurate communication in courts and elsewhere!

Warmly,

The NAJIT Observer

Featured image “ God blessing ” (cropped) by Xtream_i at flickr , under the CC BY-NC 2.0 license.

Big Brain Club

Tue, 15 Nov 2022 16:34:00 GMT

During the first pandemic winter, I took on one of the hardest teaching assignments I’ve ever experienced: I tutored the son of a dear friend of mine with his fifth-grade homework. He was struggling a lot, and there were concerns that he might not be able to handle the workload. We called our little homework sessions the Big Brain Club.

I can’t even begin to describe the advanced evasion tactics this ten-year-old deployed. You wouldn’t believe the number of excuses he made to leave the room to get a snack/go to the bathroom/fetch a pen… the shenanigans, the bed jumping! I became the strict tutor I’ve never been, kindly but firmly getting him to focus him on the task at hand and limiting his escape expeditions. It took a lot of energy, leaving only some left to determine what he actually understood, what real problems he was having, and how he could do better. It was made worse by the maddening lack of pedagogy contained in his prescribed textbooks (that’s fodder for a whole different blog). It was no wonder he was struggling in geography; it was drier and less interesting than a law-school textbook.

It was one of the hardest teaching assignments I’ve ever had, and it was also the most rewarding. By the time we were through, he understood that he was intelligent; he just needed to do the work. He learned that just because he doesn’t understand something the first time he hears it doesn’t mean that he’s dumb; that if he asks questions, he will get better instead of worse. He understood what doing the work felt like, and he knew the feeling of success that came from getting 100% on his multiplication exam. Oh, we were both proud of that one.

It took me a month or so to convince him he could tell me when he didn’t know something instead of pretending he did know it, or guessing randomly, or making jokes to distract me. We had to gently pry down his wall, the thick barrier he had erected to protect himself from fear of judgment or scorn. We all have that wall, and it gets worse the older we get. But if we stop asking questions and pretend we know everything, learning stops dead in its tracks.

You see, there is an art to learning, and to absorbing new information. There is an art to acquiring your skills, and an art to refining them. The thoughtful student tries to paint a picture with his mind. As he listens, he fills in the picture. Sometimes, a wise person might give the student enough knowledge to fill up an ocean. Sometimes, some yammering idiot can just say nothing at all for hours on end. Then, the student’s metaphorical paintbrush dries up and shrivels while she waits. But the good student knows how to look outside the box, because sometimes wisdom and knowledge come from unexpected places, at unexpected times. Sometimes there are no textbooks, and the good student has to make their own.

Given that our job requires life-long learning, it is startling to me how some people don’t actually seem to understand what learning is. There appears to be an expectation that by buying a class or a book, you are buying knowledge. It’s as though understanding has been purchased through the initial transaction, and just because you spend the class driving down the highway, cleaning your house with the webcam off, or ignoring all the in-class activities, you have somehow nevertheless injected that knowledge into your brain.

Unfortunately, we cannot learn without engaging, and if we don’t have the right conditions for learning (i.e., a quiet space to work and the correct materials), not much will happen.

I often tell my students, “I’d love to sell you the pill, but I can’t. So, I’ll have to teach you, and you’ll have to learn.” More explicitly, I’ll give them tools, and they’ll have to use them over and over, in different ways and with careful curiosity, until they get the results they want.

Learning is hard, and it is sometimes humiliating. It was hard for my fifth-grader, and it’s hard for all of us. But learning is also crucial to our survival. So, I thought I’d share some guidelines on how to be a Big Brain, because it’s just as relevant to us interpreters as it was to my student and me in the winter of 2020.

HOW TO BE A BIG BRAIN:

1. 1. 1. Big Brains are curious. We always ask questions!
    2. Big Brains are humble. We admit when we don’t know things!
    3. Big Brains are creative. We make boring things fun!
    4. Big Brains pay attention. We listen, and we always, always, always read the instructions!
      (5. No unauthorized shenanigans!)

Good luck with your learning, everyone, and never, ever stop.

Main photo “ ATC Students in the Computer Lab ” (cropped) by Narek75 at Wikimedia Commons , under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license. Body photo “ Musk Ox (Ovibos moschatus) Bulls Head Butting ” by Gregory “Slobirdr” Smith at Wikimedia Commons , under the CC BY-SA 2.0 license.

As interpreters, we cannot ever afford ourselves the luxury to stop learning. Beginners must acquire technique, communication skills, and confidence. Practicing interpreters must learn to correct bad habits and fine-tune their abilities, monitoring their output but not constantly second-guessing themselves. Advanced interpreters must evolve with the requirements of the profession and keep their minds fresh and ready, internalizing new concepts on a daily basis. Interpreters of all stripes have to absorb entire glossaries of words and learn completely new ideas just moments before the trials, conferences, medical appointments and more that they face on a daily basis.

Building the New

Mon, 07 Nov 2022 20:07:00 GMT

—Socrates

Jon Leeth was the Special Assistant to the Assistant Director in Charge of Court Reporting and Interpreting Services, also referred to as Chief of the Court Interpreters Unit, at the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts. I don’t have the exact dates of his tenure, but I remember Mr. Leeth from my early days as a federal staff interpreter and later as a freelance contractor interpreter. No doubt he was a very smart man. He figured out what needed to be done to implement the mandate of the Court Interpreters Act and followed through. But the knowledge about interpreting in United States courts at the time was sketchy, at best, with a study by Dr. Carlos Astiz [ Interpreting Services in American Criminal Courts: A Violation of the Due Process Clause? ] essentially being the only one that provided any insight into the workings of the courts when non-English speakers – that’s what we called them then – were parties or witnesses.

Astiz’s study portrayed interpreters in a very negative light, and, I must admit, with good reason. There was no training, guidance, credentialing, or oversight of the people engaged as interpreters before the Court Interpreters Act came into being in 1978. Astiz hypothesized in his report about what the interpreters’ job should be. Jon Leeth followed suit. So alarmed was everyone by the outrageous behavior of some of those engaged as interpreters in state and federal courts back then that they could think only of one way to prevent this in the future: create robots to interpret in court. I don’t mean AI-type robots. No, quite the opposite. This new invention was meant not to think and to be trained only to perform in the specified modes—consecutive, simultaneous and sight—using some specific terminology as determined by someone of presumed expertise in the subject matter.

There was a great concern about the interpreters’ ability to “handle” language registers that ranged from very formal legal and experts’ technical language to street slang and regional colloquialisms. Training and testing, therefore, revolved around the individual’s ability to memorize what words or phrases could be considered equivalent in English and the foreign language, and the capacity to learn short consecutive, simultaneous and sight translation techniques. While the federal certification exam continues to be “the only test in the federal government that has absolutely no prerequisite for taking it” (Leeth, The Court Interpreter Examination , n/d), interpreters trained in the United States continue to lack the proper educational background that would enable them to engage in independent critical thinking as part of their professional performance.

The original questions raised by a need to test and certify interpreters in the federal courts system—“conserve the level of the language used in the court, the style of the language, the tone of the language” (Leeth)—were not addressed by implementing educational programs that empowered interpreters to make the right “language level, style and tone” choices. They were addressed, instead, by ambiguous language in a Code of Professional Responsibility for federal court interpreters—“Official court interpreters shall perform to the best of their ability to assist the court in providing due process for the parties” ( Federal Court Interpreter Policies and Procedures , draft 1991 manuscript)—and by an equally imprecise Model Code of Professional Responsibility for state court interpreters—“Interpreters shall render a complete and accurate interpretation or sight translation, without altering, omitting, or adding anything to what is stated or written, and without explanation.”

There was a prevalent idea, albeit misinformed, that a non-English speaker could be placed “on an equal footing with those who understand English” merely by “[conserving] every element of information contained in a source language communication when it is rendered in the target language” ( Model Code ). Non-English speakers were assumed to be just as capable as an English speaker of saying “I don’t know what you are talking about. Could you make that clearer?” (Leeth), fully disregarding the profound cultural differences that actually prevent a non-English speaker from expressing any such assertion. “Our clients, for example, generally aren’t in a place where they feel like they can demand anything from the court. They’re poor and don’t speak English and it’s all really overwhelming. They don’t feel entitled to a smooth court process to begin with, and they don’t necessarily feel entitled to even be able to understand what’s going on.” (Sofia Khan, Attorney, Interpreting Justice: Issues Affecting LEP Litigants .)

If the Court Interpreters Act was intended to prevent miscarriages of justice, it may have failed. There is hope, however, as a significant number of experienced interpreters have come to realize the “equal footing” paradigm is impracticable, particularly during out-of-court and off-the-record interpreting, but more so—in my opinion—during simultaneous interpreting provided to non-English speakers. The mere fact that someone born and raised in the U.S. has achieved a third-grade education and lives in some remote rural area does not make that person equal to a foreign-born and raised individual who has also achieved a third-grade education and comes from some remote rural area by the mere fact that the latter has been provided with an interpreter. A “speaker’s intention and the listener’s comprehension are both circumscribed by the subjective experience of each individual.” (Muneer Ahmad, Interpreting Communities , 2007.) The differences between English-speaking and non-English-speaking defendants in a courtroom cannot be overcome unless the interpreter knows how to harmonize performance principles—to render a complete and accurate interpretation—with effective communication that takes into account “a shared cultural context between speaker and listener.” (Ahmad.)

Client education comes by trickles and can feel, at times, to be impossibly slow. But our profession is gaining momentum and recognition. More and more stakeholders are realizing that our job cannot be performed by merely switching one word for another, as though languages were template copies of one another where the only difference is how phonemes are arranged. That kind of “provincialism” (thinking that the whole world is confined to what’s inside one’s own national borders ) seems to be dying out. But old habits die hard. It’s time for us all to start “building the new.”

Main photo (cropped) “ Access to Justice ” (artist: John Atkin) by Jennifer Aitkens , from flickr , under CC BY 2.0 . Body photo“ Robot Rocket Version – Red with one eye ” by Kurtkaiser at Wikimedia Commons , under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication.

“The secret of change is to focus all of your energy not on fighting the old, but on building the new”

This “robot interpreter” archetype is a big part of the reason judiciary interpreters are still not recognized as a bona fide profession by many members of the legal profession. Most of the training and credentialing is based on skills and terminological proficiency, not on actual expert knowledge about language and related fields like linguistics and communication. The real-life effects of the wording on many codes of professional practice, to interpret “without altering, omitting, or adding anything”—absent any further contextualization—is quite the opposite of “[bringing] justice to those [non-English speaking] individuals as if they were English speaking” (Leeth) because we all know by now that “language and communication are contextual . . . not susceptible of mathematical solution” (Ahmad).

Transcription In The Interpreting Profession: An Exciting Time To Be An Interpreter

Mon, 31 Oct 2022 15:01:00 GMT

We have all been there: tired and in need of a partner. Could there exist a machine that does the notetaking for me? I started to ponder about speech recognition many years ago when ASR (automatic speech recognition) was accessible via software (think Siri). I wondered at that time if one could use speech-recognition software to take down everything that is said during the course of one’s work as an interpreter. Even if this was possible, I also wondered how an interpreter would be able to use transcription, either in tandem with or independently from their notetaking. I knew that the technology wasn’t there yet. I scrapped the idea and continued taking notes the conventional way, with a pen and notepad. But what is speech recognition and what does it entail?

Speech recognition is the ability to detect and interpret spoken input ^[1] . Speech is often converted to text ^[2] , and the ability to generate this text is promulgated by the use of AI. The text generated is commonly used for captioning or automated voice dictation ^[3] . Software engineers and scientists create models for the software to convert voice into a final product. As to AI and Natural Language Processing (NLP), I won’t bore you with terms such as machine learning, machine training, phonemes, or n-grams, but just know that this is a very complex process of taking a human’s voice (with its message) and transferring it to written text (preserving the message). As you would imagine, there are different challenges to arrive at a perfect and accurate text conversion from voice, but the technology has come a long way from making wild, and oftentimes funny, mistakes.

After the pandemic, I had some time to test what was possible with transcription. Some colleagues were rightfully incredulous about the idea that a machine could replace such an essential aspect of our work as interpreters. After all, machines are limited and still make mistakes. Still, I toiled and looked further into the matter. During my graduate studies at NYU, I noticed that Machine Translation, or MT, has come a long way in helping a translator with the use of CAT tools for their daily translation work. Through research into machine learning and machine training in my graduate program, I made an educated guess as to how far along speech-to-text software has come, both having similar applications with AI. I decided to test transcription and see if transcription could serve as a note-taking aid or even substitute notetaking.

The next step for me was to imagine how an interpreter could use the MS Word Dictate in various interpreting settings. I had the idea of connecting a microphone (lapel or table boom mic) to capture the audio from the LEP individual to send to the computer (or mobile device) in tandem with the use of conventional notetaking tools as a transcription aid, in case the software should “fail” due to poor audio quality or other complications in transferring voice to text. But how about remote interpreting? Initially, I thought of connecting a computer and a mobile device via an audio TRRS cable, but that entailed using two devices. Having sought solutions for remote simultaneous interpretation in my role as a staff interpreter for the State of New Jersey, I learned of a virtual-cable software to transfer sound between apps, just like a real audio cable. This solution, I thought, would work perfectly for video-remote interpreting. You can watch a video ^[4] I made on this topic on how to set it up on Mac computers.

Putting aside reservations about slang, regionalisms, and so forth, I went ahead and tested. Maybe I was overly optimistic, but my expectations were low. Would the machine be able to interpret different accents? I tested with diplomatic speeches in Spanish, and then I tested with real colleagues using a script. I was impressed; the results were better than expected. As I kept testing, I started to “learn” how to work with transcription, which some interpreters have coined as the “sight-consec” mode. It was a learning curve as expected but I kept practicing and testing. I didn’t want to overly rely on the technology, but I learned through this process that I needed some level of trust in the software. Over time, I started noticing that my consecutive interpretations got better with transcription; they were more fluent and natural. But I had to test this against conventional notetaking. I decided to test accuracy; hence I used The Interpreter ’ s Edge – Turbo by Holly Mikkelson with a consecutive exercise I hadn’t done. I tried taking notes with and without transcription. Once more, the results were impressive. Transcription was notably more accurate. Of course, future tests will need to check not only accuracy (including different languages, dialects, and environments) but also for didactical purposes, to build a new skill allowing people to work with transcription while being aware of the various pitfalls.

All in all, it is interesting to see how technology (with the use of AI) keeps evolving and gets better every day. Today, AI is being used in different applications, from creating works of art ^[5] to using applications in various forms of transportation. The European Parliament has taken a step further and introduced machine translation for parliamentary speeches ^[6] , which makes me wonder what the future will look like for interpreters and our profession. I believe that we are stepping into a new frontier, and it is an exciting time to be an interpreter and translator. Will the interpreting profession be able to evolve with the changing technology landscape? If so, how? How will the legal interpreting profession be affected? All interesting questions.

^[1] “Introduction – Training.” Training | Microsoft Learn , 2022, https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/training/modules/recognize-synthesize-speech/1-introduction. © Microsoft 2022, Accessed 10/17/2022

^[2] “Introduction – Training.” Training | Microsoft Learn , 2022, https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/training/modules/recognize-synthesize-speech/1-introduction. © Microsoft 2022, Accessed 10/17/2022

^[3] “Introduction – Training.” Training | Microsoft Learn , 2022, https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/training/modules/recognize-synthesize-speech/1-introduction. © Microsoft 2022, Accessed 10/17/2022

^[4] Transcription for Consecutive Interpretation in Zoom Using Microsoft Word and Virtual Audio Cable, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2DfGrXKz_0, accessed on 10/18/2022

^[5] 6 Ways AI-Generated Art Is Changing the Future of Art, SIMONA TOLCHEVA, https://www.makeuseof.com/ways-ai-generated-art-changing-future-of-art/, accessed on 10/18/2022

^[6] https://twitter.com/translation_eu/status/1549326940909309953, Europe In Your Language @translation_eu, 7/19/2022, accessed on 10/18/2022

David Proano Celi is a staff Spanish interpreter for the State of New Jersey. He has an undergraduate certificate in interpretation and translation from Hunter College and a Master of Science in Translation & Interpreting from New York University. He is also an amateur python coder. In his spare time, he enjoys playing various musical instruments and spending quality time with his wife and three cats. His website is interpretforme.com .

Main photo “ Diagrama3 subunidades castellano ” by Jordi R., from Wikimedia Commons , under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license. Body photo “ Draagbaar dicteerapparaat ‘Rols 3’ met losse microfoon in zwarte koffer, objectnr 75310-A-D ” from Apparatebau Stellingen GmbH, from Wikimedia Commons , under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

The process of how to apply this idea pragmatically took various steps. First, I pictured in my mind how an interpreter could use speech-to-text technologies; this would require a computer or mobile device and a mic. Then I had to choose a speech-to-text software. There are many speech-to-text programs, but I settled on using the MS Word Dictate feature simply because it was already familiar to me. I spoke into MS Word Dictate, first in English and then in Spanish, and I obtained positive results. As I was speaking, I saw words appearing on the screen, in grey at first and then in black. Sometimes the word in grey was completely different from what I had said, and then a different word would appear in black. Sometimes an entire group of words would be different from the utterance, but by the time they were solid black, the machine had transferred what was said into text. This, I thought, was the machine learning and doing its algorithmic work into deciphering what was said.

The Couch: Witness Protection

Mon, 24 Oct 2022 13:51:00 GMT

The Couch is a place to exchange ideas and brainstorm, not only for its contributors but also for our readers who engage in the ensuing discussions. Sometimes, it feels like your code of ethics and your concern for a person’s well-being can conflict. Thank you to this week’s contributor for the Couch idea.

A serious crime has been committed in a small town, and there was one witness. Because it is a small community, the witness is afraid for his or her life if he or she comes forward and prefers to remain anonymous. Precedent allows for witness anonymity in cases such as this one. This witness requires the services of an interpreter.

Late in the afternoon that same day, you get a call from a person speaking your non-English language. You quickly realize it was today’s witness (of course, without the voice modulator). The two of you know each other. The witness asks you what kind of influence you have on the attorneys; he/she would like to see the defendant locked up but is afraid to come to anyone but you.

You know that there is a good chance you will be called upon to interpret for the same anonymous witness the very next day, whose identity is no longer a secret for you and who is actually familiar to you. What should you do? Tell the court staff and the attorneys? Tell the witness that given your acquaintance with them and your knowledge of their identity, you can no longer interpret impartially? Will your disclosure compromise the witness’s safety in any way? How should you go about this?

Body picture “ Zeugenschutz bei Verhandlung ” by United States Marshals Service at Wikimedia Commons , in the public domain.

The time has come for this witness to be examined. The alleged perpetrator is in the courtroom. You interpret for this witness who is testifying remotely; the witness is connecting via audio call only and is using a live voice changer. Other than interpreting an artificially distorted voice from someone connecting remotely to the proceedings, nothing is out of the ordinary for you.

From the Classroom to the Courtroom: A Unique Transition from Teaching to Interpreting - NAJIT

Mon, 17 Oct 2022 18:16:00 GMT

I was so comfortable, but man was I bored. I had the privilege of being a Spanish teacher for two and a half decades, which brought with it tremendous success, along with some cool perks. I had taught in the International Baccalaureate program for twenty years, and every single one of my students without exception during that time passed the standardized exam at the end of the year. I was department head for eight years, getting to hire and inspire my colleagues. I got to travel in the name of professional development. I loved my students, with all their highs and lows, as they navigated teenage life. For many years, teaching was absolutely my calling. So why was I so restless? Well, all of you who changed careers in middle age, I ask, why did YOU do it?

With a lack of flexibility, and with boredom, complacency, and dealing with an increasingly hostile (and now, in many states, political) school administration, I needed a big change. It took me a couple of years to figure out what my next move was, and I finally landed on Spanish interpreting. To be honest, up until then, I hadn’t felt I had the skill set to do it professionally. It seemed out of reach for a number of reasons: I’m not a native speaker of Spanish, and I knew nothing about the legal field or daily goings-on in the courtroom (other than how to fight a traffic ticket!). Did I even have the mental capacity to be any good at it? But there was an undergraduate certificate program in interpreting right in my city that I could schedule around my teaching job. I had to at least give it a shot. The alternative meant I would continue to languish in my comfy position and just fade into mediocrity. I couldn’t live with that.

Going from teaching Spanish to interpreting in a courtroom or other legal settings really is a 180-degree turn. The two jobs have little in common other than the working language. As a teacher, I had to coordinate a lot of moving parts – students, parents, administrators – as well as adapt to the changing goals and demands that happen on a regular basis at any school. You have to be so flexible in nearly every situation while at school, yet you live and die by the bells and school holidays. With freelance interpreting, I set my own schedule, which, to me, is one of the top three reasons I love this new endeavor. I am responsible only for myself, and this is so liberating.

A teacher is accountable to a lot of different groups. If your students aren’t successful, oftentimes it is a reflection on you. Parents understandably have a big stake in their child’s education, and often it’s a partnership between all three parties – student, parent, teacher – to ensure success. As an interpreter, every success (and failure) is my own. What a nice change of pace.

All that being said, teaching was a wonderful training ground for interpreting. I DO have a thick skin, can think on the fly, and can advocate for myself effectively – all skills a teacher AND interpreter need. Teachers are trained to have cool heads in tense situations (if the active shooter drills don’t sober you, you have stronger nerves than I do), and most interpreting encounters carry with them at least some level of stress. I am grateful for the unexpected crossover skills I possess.

And best of all, I don’t have to grade any more papers!

Julie Davi is a qualified freelance legal interpreter in Richmond, Virginia. She has traveled throughout the Spanish-speaking world, most notably Spain, where she spent a year for college. She received a Bachelor’s in Spanish from Dickinson College (PA) and a Master’s in Spanish Literature from the University of Virginia. Recently, Julie completed an undergraduate certificate program in Spanish translation and interpretation from Virginia Commonwealth University. In her free time, Julie is an avid figure skater and figure-skating judge, as well as a yoga practitioner. She is so appreciative that she gets to spend more time with her husband and young adult daughters these days. She recently started a TikTok account to create a community of interpreters to share ideas and feedback for both “my triumphs and gaffes.” You can follow her there: @adventuresininterpreting , or e-mail her at juliedavi127@gmail.com .

Main photo (cropped) “ Elementary School in Boquete Panama ” by FranHogan , at Wikimedia Commons , under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license. Body photo“ The Whisper of the Muse ” by Julia Margaret Cameron (1815-1879). Photo in the public domain {{PD-US}}. Taken from Wikimedia Commons .

But with this autonomy comes a unique kind of adjustment. After many years of being the star of my own show in the classroom, suddenly I find myself in a career with a very different kind of spotlight. Some argue that our job is to be invisible, completely avoiding any kind of individual attention. I was a teacher who loved making her students laugh, getting them excited about the Spanish-speaking world, and helping them learn grammar tricks I had cultivated over twenty-five years. I was their fearless captain, and all eyes were on me most of the time, creating a flow of energy I was very comfortable with. As an interpreter, I have to find other ways to get my energy, as it’s much more internal now. We are isolated from our colleagues and often wonder if we were successful on any given day (I actually regularly invite other interpreters who have a break to come observe me, because I miss being able to do that in my former career. Feedback from other professionals is something I’ll always value, as it’s ingrained in me). There’s no one in the courtroom that quite knows what it’s like to be in our shoes, and sometimes other legal professionals can be critical of our jobs without realizing the training, mental fortitude, and thick skin it takes. The “audience” is much more critical, and the stakes are much higher. I am still searching for a good balance.

Interpreting Is Not Always Improv

Mon, 10 Oct 2022 06:00:00 GMT

There is one aspect of all judiciary interpreters’ certification exams that I find somewhat inconsistent with real-life practice. In real life, being able to anticipate and appropriately reformulate what judges and attorneys say is very closely linked to the repetitious nature of legal language. There is, in fact, something known as “boilerplate language” because it’s a speech formula used by judges from which they rarely depart. The more we hear and become familiar with what English speakers say in court and how they say it, the better we can render it in the foreign language. As we repeat, we refine, we polish, and we come up with better and better solutions.

This may seem like a basic principle of our professional practice to everyone reading this, but to be honest, I was not fully conscious of the link between repetitive speech patterns and ease of delivery until I ended up interpreting in a completely unfamiliar court. The script changed, the way the judges and attorneys used legal language changed, and it was so difficult to anticipate where they were going as I tried to follow their trains of thought and speech patterns that I felt like a rookie all over again. Then, as I kept thinking about it—because that’s how I learn to do better next time—I came to realize how interpreting students must feel as they are learning to master the simultaneous technique for court while also learning to navigate the particular traits of legal language.

Testing an interpreter’s simultaneous skills having had no prior exposure to the particular discourse does not seem to me to be the best approach for a credentialing exam. But for the sake of full disclosure, I admit I am not a psychometrician or test designer or anything of the sort. I am an interpreter who is always trying to do better, even after forty-some years in this field. I do know that a lot of the work we do in the simultaneous mode is scripted, in a sense. There are bench books that provide judges with outlines for the various hearings they preside. There are textbooks that provide attorneys with guidance on the best way to argue a motion or to conduct a direct or cross-examination. It is certainly not all spontaneous discourse, and testing an interpreter’s ability to improvise seems a bit out of step with real-life interpreting scenarios.

Now, this is just me thinking about all the different threads woven into the fabric of our very complex profession. I am not a test designer, but I know a good interpreter when I hear one. So, speaking of test design, why is no one paying attention to the pragmatics of discourse in the consecutive mode? Why do we still have interpreters on the witness stand that sound like robots? A criterion-referenced test is all about the scoring units , but scoring units in and of themselves do not tell the whole story. We need intonation, we need the proper tone—sarcasm, disbelief, hostility, etc.—we need pacing, which a timed test does not allow for because the candidate is worried about running out of time. These are all elements of discourse that have an impact on meaning and accuracy. Sometimes we may even have implicit information that needs to be made explicit or explicit information that may be conveyed implicitly. In other words, are scoring units allowing candidates to present a complete picture of their skills and knowledge? Has there not been any research on testing interpreters after 1978 that can give us a better instrument? (Rhetorical question. Of course there has been!)

And one last word about the certification exam. Potential examiners get together and decide what will and will not be acceptable. Most of, if not all, those examiners are seasoned interpreters. When deciding what to accept and what not to accept, they would do well to remember what it was like when they were taking their first steps in this profession. To the test examiners: please don’t expect testing candidates to perform at the same level you perform today, after years and years of experience. Remember that practice is going to polish those candidates’ skills and expand their knowledge. Someday, they will be you.

Main photo (cropped) “ Hôtel judiciaire (Neuchâtel) ” by Yannick Bammert, from Wikimedia Commons , under CC BY 2.0 . Body photo“ Ki mit tud? 1972 Zsűri színes 1 ” from Szalay Zoltán, in the Wikimedia Commons , under CC BY-SA 3.0 .

Of course, professionals should know how to do both, follow the script or improvise as needed. It’s like playing a musical instrument: you need to know the scales and read sheet music, but you also need to know how to follow or lead improvisational harmonies. Now, even if you were able to do both, I wonder if, when testing a certification candidate, requiring an improvised simultaneous rendition is the best way to measure a candidate’s performance level. After all, a certification exam is an instrument designed to evaluate the minimum knowledge and skills an interpreter should have in order to perform competently in a courtroom. And that performance is certainly going to improve with exposure to more and more proceedings, more and more boilerplate language. Yes, improv will always be a necessary skill for the consecutive mode, when you never know for sure what someone’s answer will be to an open question. But if it is good practice to memorize repetitive courtroom discourse, is it so far fetched to consider a simultaneous portion of a certification exam that is already familiar to the candidate?

Not All Language Communities Are Served Equally

Mon, 03 Oct 2022 06:00:00 GMT

Interpreters are proving to be an indispensable resource to indigenous communities as the demand for their services increases. While a handful of language-service agencies claim to offer some of these languages, they cannot guarantee the interpretation provided is true or accurate. This is why, to highlight the crucial need to protect indigenous languages and preserve their history, the UN officially declared 2022 the beginning of The International Decade of Indigenous Languages.

Executive Order 13166, signed in August of 2000, states that federal agencies are to “ensure that the programs and activities that they normally provide in English are accessible to LEP person(s).” According to the Court Interpreters Act of 1978, these same individuals have the right to language services in federal courts. This should mean that every individual has equal access to the justice system, right? In theory, yes. However, a vast majority of cases involving LEP person(s) surround indigenous individuals and/or families seeking asylum in the U.S., and immigration court is not required to provide legal representation. This, coupled with the dearth of indigenous-language court interpreters, greatly affects the outcome of their quest to seek refuge.

The duty of an interpreter is to remove the language barrier between the court and the person(s) of a culturally and linguistically diverse background. The interpreter allows the involved parties to be on the same page. Interpreters need to be equipped with the skills needed to guarantee that all person(s) are equally heard. In immigration cases, interpreters can make or break the defendant’s case for asylum. This is why the topic of preserving indigenous languages is so important. To put it into perspective: California, one of the leading states in indigenous populations, has fewer than five indigenous-language interpreters. While we are proud to have a small handful of indigenous languages represented on our roster here in Kansas City, we know more needs to be done. Interpretation agencies have the grave responsibility to continue searching for highly skilled indigenous-language translators and interpreters to assist those seeking the same American Dream we all are.

Main photo “ Cartel Arroyo Garupá (Provincia de Misiones, Argentina) Ruta Nacional 12 ” (cropped) by Horacio Cambeiro , Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license. Body photo “ Aimaras Pozo Almonte ” by Michelle Bachelet from flickr , under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.

In recent years, courts in larger cities have become inundated with immigration cases for indigenous individuals, and due to the scarcity of interpreters, cases continue to be delayed or people are forced to accept unsuitable linguistic aid. In fact, many migrants compromise by using an interpreter or translator for a language that may slightly resemble theirs because that is all that is offered. As of 2019, the U.S. immigration system had an accumulation of over 800,000 open cases for individuals seeking asylum from smaller cities in Central America because, so far, they are able to provide appropriate interpretation only for a select few of their languages. This unmet need has proven to have detrimental consequences as many of these individuals are seeking safety from persecution in their home countries and cannot proficiently make their case. More often than not, mistranslation in the immigration system has resulted in prolonged detention or, in worse cases, deportation. With the large disparity in availability of indigenous-language court interpreters, it is nearly impossible to guarantee equal footing in court.

Kristen Altoro-Nevins was born in the Bronx, New York, and lived there until 1999 when her family moved to Kansas City. She’s currently pursuing a degree in criminal justice with a focus in forensic psychology through Purdue University while working as the Client Relations Specialist for Bridging the Gap Interpreting, a language-service company serving the greater Kansas City and surrounding areas since 2007. Contact: office@kansascityinterpreting.com

The Couch: Can’t quite put my finger on it…

Mon, 26 Sep 2022 17:23:00 GMT

The Couch is a place to exchange ideas and brainstorm, not only for its contributors but also for our readers who engage in the ensuing discussions. A common fallacy in our time is to say that nothing is real unless you’re able to explain it. But sometimes, even though you can’t quite put your finger on it, you know there’s a problem. Thank you to this week’s contributor for the Couch idea.

You have just been hired as a full-time permanent staff interpreter in a large courthouse. The pay, the benefits, the 401 (k), your colleagues, and your working conditions are excellent; you feel challenged enough to find your job continually stimulating, and you have been told that with immigration influx, the demand for interpreting is very likely not to drop anytime soon. The interpreter coordinator gives the team a great deal of leeway as to which assignments they take each day in the courthouse, provided everyone does their fair share; no one is breathing down anyone else’s neck, and everyone wants to keep it that way. In other words, it’s your dream job; “I intend to keep this until I retire,” you tell yourself. Things couldn’t be better.

The colleague who recommended you for the position also works with you daily. You and he were acquaintances before this. He’s a stand-up guy, neat to talk with, and generous with his time, and you and he get along. But after a few months, you notice something. Sometimes he just disappears (he’s neither in a courtroom nor in the interpreter lounge); he’s often late for hearings, but just by a minute or two – such that the most irritated parties are the interpreter colleagues, much more than courtroom staff. No client (i.e., judge, lawyer, LEP, etc.) has complained about him so far because he has such an affable character – his social skills are top notch. And yet something is wrong. The rest of the interpreting team is annoyed with his behavior. He always appears to be busy with something other than work when he’s not interpreting. He sometimes takes more than an hour to answer text messages on his phone – and you all need to be promptly reachable during the day because the team needs to be in many different hearings at once.

Is it just that the rest of the interpreting team has a chip on its shoulder against this colleague? It doesn’t appear to be so. You are all reasonable people. The problem remains, and whenever asked by colleagues to justify his fault, he (after the fact) alleges obligations related to family or other areas of life, rather than sending a quick word to a colleague in advance (“Hey, I’m going to be five minutes late; can you cover for me?”). It’s starting to weigh down on the team’s morale.

What do you do now?

Body picture “That’s marvellous” from “ The Big Lebowski ” at Radiator Heaven , under CC BY-NC 3.0 .

Almost a year has gone by at your dream job. Your colleague has been confronted by his, shall we say, lack of transparency, punctuality, and communicativeness a few times, but his response is systematically defensive: I take my commitments very seriously; I’m insulted that you should imply I’m doing a subpar job; you should lighten up and not take things so seriously; etc. The problem is very difficult to discern, again, because of his overall positive demeanor and disposition. He is cheeky and knows how to talk himself out of sticky situations, including with management who has also approached him about the issue. The mere attempt to define the problem is beginning to be exhausting. You are tired. But the problem is not going away.

A Spanish interpreter communicating in Polish? Not quite!

Mon, 19 Sep 2022 06:00:00 GMT

I have been familiar with nonverbal language my whole life. As a child, I used to sign with my sisters and friends. We were just doing it the other day in court actually, my sister Marisa and me. But the first time I attended a more in-depth, formal presentation about unspoken language was several years ago. I forget the name of the presentation, but it was given at the NJ annual training program, and the instructor was Janis Palma.

But I could say with a reasonable degree of confidence that my most acute and representative experience of nonverbal language was last Monday. That day, as I got on a bus to make my way back to the place I’m staying in New Jersey from a Staten Island court, I met an elderly Polish woman. She was this sweet little grumbling lady. You have seen her around (her kind type), I’m sure.

When I hopped on the bus, it had a “not in service” sign, so the bus driver warned me where his last stop would be and did not charge me the fare. As soon as she saw me, my new instant friend moved her bags to offer me a seat next to her, even though the bus was nearly empty. Next, she grabbed my wet umbrella and deposited it in a small niche created by a surface covering a wheel. Then she asked about the weather. After a little while, we were informed the last stop was coming up, and we got off together. She asked if I was getting a transfer from the driver to board the next bus, and I told her that I had not paid for the ride.

And on we went in our little companionable adventure. We parted ways when I realized I was going in the opposite direction, so taken was I with our little exchange.

You must be wondering what it is that this story has to do with T&I.

I am by no means suggesting one ought to interpret in a language one is not fluent in. The experience just brought home the importance of body language and unspoken communication. Although my new Polish acquaintance continuously grumbled, she showed great kindness toward me and other passengers. Those are the non-language components, cues, and nuances that we must communicate in some way to make our message complete.

Had I been interpreting for her, would I be portraying a grumpy old lady as she appeared to me at first sight? Or would I have used the context and body language to portray her accurately, like the kind soul that she actually is? It is a thin line, but I think after all these years of training and experience, I can find the perfect balance.

The whole episode reminded me of the first time I went to observe a colleague at work. I was doing an internship for my first Certificate in Court Interpreting, as the program was called, and I observed the witness constantly smiling pleasantly and calmly. The interpreter, however, was glowering at the attorney (who was asking the most convoluted questions) while she interpreted, and given that she was blocking the jurors’ view, all they had to go on was the only speaker they could see. In other words, the interpreter’s nasty looks. Now I wonder the impression the witness had on those jurors, seen from the distorted message conveyed by the interpreter. I never found out the outcome of the trial because I was there for a limited time.

From now on, more than ever, I will be more cognizant of my non-verbal messages while interpreting. It’s in the Code of Ethics, canon 1 (bolded text mine).

Canon 1. Accuracy

Source-language speech should be faithfully rendered into the target language by conserving all the elements of the original message while accommodating the syntactic and semantic patterns of the target language. The rendition should sound natural in the target language, and there should be no distortion of the original message through addition or omission , explanation, or paraphrasing. All hedges, false starts, and repetitions should be conveyed; also, English words mixed into the other language should be retained, as should culturally bound terms which have no direct equivalent in English, or which may have more than one meaning. The register, style, and tone of the source language should be conserved.

Main photo from “ Staten Island Ferry – St. George Terminal, Staten Island, New York, NY, USA – August 19, 2015 ” by Giorgio Galeotti , Wikimedia Commons, under CC BY 4.0 . Body photo “ La conversation ” (cropped) by Guillaume Andreux from flickr , under CC BY-SA 2.0 .

Well, to me, a lot. I communicated for the first time in my life for some length, about one hour, with a person with whom I do not share a language, and it was fun. It was so soothing. And not only did we sign, but we also spoke. In our own language. And surprisingly, we understood each other! It was a great experience.

Dear Fellow NAJIT-ers

Mon, 12 Sep 2022 16:19:00 GMT

Dear Fellow NAJIT-ers,

Happy September!

How the heck is it September again?!

Time. It never stops.

Jules, our fearless Editor-in-Chief, just sent me the nicest e-mail telling me he’d like to hear from me again. Eeek. I have been hiding all summer, you see. Thank you so much to my fellow NAJIT bloggers who took my absence in stride!

Now that hiding-time is over, I’m supposed to write again, but I am struggling back here in the land of Doing and Thinking.

Luckily, Janis spontaneously submitted a gem of a post just in time to save me from my writer’s block and that week’s deadline.

But here we are a week later, and I’m due a post.

So, I’ve been thinking about what to write. Something motivating, I thought. Something energetic to inspire us to enter the fall filled with vim and vigor, ready to increase speed and take on the intense challenges that our field has to offer us!

But there comes a time when one simply doesn’t have the energy for intense challenges full of vim and vigor.

So instead, I will write of the Pause.

I’m an advocate of the Pause. You see, sometimes velocity needs to be reduced, not increased. If the highway of life gets too curvy, we’ve got to slow down. To do otherwise would inevitably send us perilously off the cliff of whatever highway we are driving on, and we can’t have that.

I paused this summer. I was kind of due a Pause. First, I had a topsy-turvy tumultuous spring. Then, I flew to Fort Lauderdale to attend our annual NAJIT conference (which was wonderful, by the way! Kudos to the board and our management team!). On my way home, I came down with Covid.

If that weren’t enough, three weeks later I got slammed in the chest by the door of a car while bicycling in downtown Montreal at a speed of about 20 mph.

That was kind of the final straw. So I decided to hit the pause button. First, of course, I had to finish some work commitments that I already had. But after that, I cleared my calendar, put up an away message on my e-mail account, and actually hit the off button on my cell phone.

Of course, me being me, I don’t really stop when I stop. But I did slow down. I felt the wounds of my physical injuries. I listened to my body and worked on healing. I also felt the places in my heart where I don’t always go.

I thought a lot about my Hopes and Dreams. I’ve spent fifteen years being career-driven to the max, and there are other flowers waiting to bloom. I started planting those seeds this summer.

I meditated a lot. I cooked good meals. I spent a lot of time by myself, but I also reconnected with people who had slipped by the wayside.

In this life, we’re taught to go-go-go. We’re taught to pedal-to-the-metal and never-ever-stop.

But we can’t go full speed ahead every single day. We need pauses.

What we usually get instead are distractions. Popcorn for our brain; junk food for the mind. There is a careful, happy medium between live-in-the-woods-without-electricity and drown-your-brain-in-social-media-and-entertainment.

What we may find inside could be a lot of discontentment. A ton of anxiety. Fear, sometimes, and hidden anger.

And that’s where the gold is. Because inside yourself, you’ll discover your Necessary Goals. You’ll discover your Reasons Why. You’ll figure out what things are your dreams, and what things aren’t worth struggling for.

I know I’m not the only person who gets overwhelmed with work or who is anxious about proving myself professionally. Sometimes, we all need to hit the pause button and remember what we’re doing, and why.

I’m back now, in better health and moving slowly. I’m also trying to appreciate every Now that comes my way, because it won’t be here again.

Have a happy fall. Follow your dreams and be kind to yourselves!

Love,

Athena

Main photo from “ ¿Sabes respirar? ” (cropped) by Cristina Torres from at CENTROmujer , under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 . Body photo “ LA FAMILIA: DERECHOS Y DEBERES ” by Jorge A. Subero Isa on his blog , under CC BY-SA 3.0 .

That happy medium can be found only when we pause. When we take the moment to actually notice our surroundings; to check in with our bodies; to turn off the distractions and listen to ourselves and what is around us. I know I paused for a whole summer (and was blessed to be able to do so) but it doesn’t always have to be so drastic. You can just pause for a day, for an hour, or even for a moment. Just stop what you are doing and listen to yourself.

A Courtroom’s Ecosystem

Tue, 06 Sep 2022 15:52:00 GMT

There are big fish and little fish in a courtroom’s ecosystem. Judges are definitely the biggest fish of all. Interpreters? Well, that’s what I have been thinking about: where do we fit in the courtroom’s ecosystem? Throughout my years in this profession, I have encountered all sorts of misconceptions about our place in the courtroom’s hierarchy—are we the smaller fish of all? More specifically, there are a lot of misguided ideas about our role as integral components of that ecosystem otherwise known as the administration of justice. Misconceptions can be harbored by non-interpreters who believe, for example, that anyone who can speak two languages can be an interpreter. But they can also come from members of the profession.

When you are unsure about what it is, exactly, that you contribute to the sustainability of your environment—the courtroom environment, for example—you risk getting shoved to the bottom of the feeding chain by the bigger and smarter fish (stay with me on this extended metaphor!). Judiciary interpreters as a “species” among the legal and non-legal species that swim around us in courtroom environments don’t seem to share a clear, uniform, and standard concept of what we contribute to the administration of justice’s processes. While some believe we are there to provide meaningful language access for LEP defendants, others believe we are there to provide judges with the ability to communicate with LEP defendants. In between those two extremes runs a wide gamut of possibilities that end up sending mixed messages up and down the food chain. The end result? Some of us get swallowed whole, some of us get chewed up and spit out. Chances are, those who learn to navigate these treacherous waters by being well-informed and assertive are the only ones who get to survive and thrive.

Those who project self-confidence and are assertive about their rightful place as indispensable components of the justice system will enjoy higher prestige and respect than those who project insecurity. Most academic and independent training programs don’t teach judiciary interpreters to be assertive. Quite the opposite, we are taught mostly to be passive, invisible , and rather subservient to the other actors sharing our workspace. Even the non-professionals in the courtroom may behave as though the interpreter’s place is lower than theirs and should, therefore, yield to their authority.

To answer this question, we can get some help from some post-Court Interpreters Act judicial decisions regarding the right to an interpreter: “The interpreter is necessary to implement fundamental notions of due process such as the right to be present at trial, the right to confront one’s accusers, and the right to counsel.” ( Martinez-Chavez v. State , 1989; also Chacon v. Wood , 1994; U.S. v. Mejia-Perez , 2018.) In fact, soon after 28 U.S.C. §1827 was approved, the right to an interpreter was elevated by the courts to a constitutional right, which is not something we interpreters often think about. In United States v. Lim (1986) the court held that “a defendant whose fluency in English is so impaired that it interferes with his right to confrontation or his capacity, as a witness, to understand or respond to questions has a constitutional right to an interpreter.”

Or we could go the academic route and seek more theoretical frames of reference to answer the question, like those offered by Mikkelson —“scholarly research on the role of the interpreter has revealed the shortcomings of the argument that interpreters are mere conduits transferring verbal messages from one language to another”; or Jacobsen —studies show “how some interpreters are prepared to exercise latitude and modify originals to convey their perception of speaker meaning.” These and many other scholarly papers address the question of the court interpreter’s allegedly passive role and counterargue that interpreters play a much more active—and critical—role in the transfer of meaning between languages. Still, the question of the interpreter’s role is not one we can say has been definitively answered.

The fact remains, nevertheless, that in the ecosystem of a courtroom, we are each individually and collectively responsible for being expertly knowledgeable about the historical, legal, and social reasons that have put us there. We need to be very clear about what it is exactly that we contribute to the overall balance of everyone else’s role in the administration of justice. And, finally, we have to be very clear about what we bring to the table for the effective sustainability of equal access under the law whenever LEP defendants or litigants are involved in a process. If you are encountering attitudes, behaviors, or treatment as though you were the smallest fish in that pond we call a courtroom, then ask yourself: how am I establishing my rightful place in this work environment? Do I actively work on enhancing my interpreting skills so I always project that I am a top-tier interpreter? Am I up to date on—or mostly well-versed in—the sources of knowledge that nurture my profession? Do I belong to the associations that represent my professional interests? If I were to testify as an expert, would I meet all the education and experience criteria expected by a legal scholar (i.e., a judge)?

I know we don’t have a clear answer yet, but I hope to have at least set out a roadmap to figure out “what is our place in the courtroom’s ecosystem?”

Main photo (cropped) from Measuring ecosystem services, managing progress at the WLE Thrive blog , under CC BY 4.0 . Body photo“ Laurentian Maple Forest Ecosystem ” by Guilhem Vellut at flickr , under CC BY 2.0 .

So, what is our place in the courtroom ecosystem?

Freelance or Staff Interpreter?

Mon, 29 Aug 2022 15:40:00 GMT

I know that many interpreters prefer the freelance world, and there are many successful freelancers working here in Arizona. This is my story and why I now have the second longest tenure as a staff court interpreter here in the state court in Phoenix.

I didn’t know that I wanted to be an interpreter or translator when I started my master’s degree in Spanish way back in 1985. My undergraduate liberal-arts degree was in anthropology, language and culture. I spent six months on foreign study, living in Madrid and Nerja, Spain. It was the best experience of my life, and I’m sure it’s what set me down my life’s path.

I wanted to improve my Spanish after graduation in the U.S., so I began my master’s degree. I didn’t have a firm career plan; my idea was to just keep going to school, maybe teach Spanish someday. It was a coincidence that I took a translation course in the Translation Certificate program at Arizona State University and really liked it. To complete the certificate course, I had to do an internship. My thesis advisor suggested I apply at the Superior Court of Arizona interpreter’s office in Maricopa County. This is how I learned about the career of court interpreting. I had no idea it existed. Another coincidence (or maybe not) is that at the same time, I was completing my master’s thesis: a translation of several short stories by Mexican author Amparo Davila and the theoretical discussion of the process and challenges and difficulties of translating fiction.

Once I graduated and had worked as a freelance contractor for eighteen months to get the required experience for the office to hire me full time, I started my job as a Spanish Court Interpreter in the same office where I did my internship. And here I am, more than thirty-two years later, still a staff court interpreter and still happy, satisfied, and fulfilled by my job. Incidentally, I did teach Spanish part time as a second gig at the community-college level for about six years. This made me all the more certain that I was in the right profession, interpreting.

I’ve seen lots of changes over the decades, here at the court as well as in the profession. There have been many changes in terminology (never stop researching and learning new terms or new ways to say them) and especially in technology (all for the better!). But the work itself is mostly the same. Interpreting in multiple settings: in criminal trial court for defendants, victims, witnesses, and next of kin; in juvenile delinquency and dependency matters for juveniles and their parents, caretakers, and guardians; probate court; family court; and civil court. For many years I also transcribed and translated forensic transcripts of police interviews of defendants and witnesses. Working in a variety of different court settings and proceedings and now having the chance to work at home part of the time doing virtual hearings means that the job is never boring. I have never felt burned out, although the job can be challenging and exhausting at times. Good sleep and exercise help a lot!

Jennifer Hammond grew up in Michigan and went to Kalamazoo College where she did her junior-year foreign study in Spain. She moved to Arizona and received the Master of Arts in Spanish and the translation certificate from ASU. She has been accredited/certified in translation from Spanish to English by the ATA since 1993 and received the Arizona Supreme Court Interpreter credential in 2018. In addition to spending time with family and granddaughters, she enjoys cooking, reading, travel, and being a group fitness instructor for fitness classes at the YMCA. She lives in Glendale, Arizona, with her dogs. E-mail Jennifer at interprejen16@gmail.com .

Main photo (cropped) by Wasif Malik at flickr , under CC BY 2.0 . Body photo from Wikimedia Commons , “ Flying High ” (cropped), by Craig Sunter , under CC BY 2.0 .

I’ve seen tons of people come and go after working here in this office while gaining the valuable training and job experience. Some have gotten coveted federal court-interpreter positions, but many now work as freelancers. I qualified to retire from my job years ago and could have become a freelancer, too. But I like the stability of a full-time job and a great pension and benefits. I’ve never been tempted by the life of a freelancer and the ability to make your own schedule and earn what seems like a lot more money. I consider the paid health benefits, paid leave and vacation time, and the matching pension contributions to be worth way more. I’m looking toward retirement soon and collecting that great pension. Like anyplace else, we’ve had some ups and downs over the years. But I have to say that this is a very good place to work. Interpreters are mostly appreciated and valued by everyone from the public to attorneys, court staff, judges, and administration. There’s a lot to be said for public service in a government job that never closes or shuts down and almost never lays anyone off. After more than thirty-four years working as a court interpreter, I still enjoy getting up every day and coming to work, and I still enjoy the work and the challenge.

Calling All Potential Blog Authors

Wed, 24 Aug 2022 04:06:00 GMT

Interested in contributing to our blog? The NAJIT Observer needs you!

The shared experiences of other members of our profession can lift us up. A lot of what we do is done alone – a translator plugging away at a lengthy document or an interpreter preparing for an assignment, for example. Often, in order for the work of translators and interpreters to meet expectations, it is necessary for them to spend long hours studying, memorizing, reading, and writing.

One of the great strengths of a professional association is reminding members that they are not alone. Although “we’re in this together” has grown to become somewhat trite in recent years, associations do help translators and interpreters see themselves as part of a much bigger picture – a group of professionals at the service of two or more interlocutors who don’t speak the same language. This blog, along with hundreds or even thousands of other blogs dedicated to our profession, is a corollary of that. Many of our articles encourage our readers or are filled with useful tips and insights.

As you may have seen, over the last few months, an increasing number of guests have volunteered to offer their writing talent to The NAJIT Observer – and the Blog team would like to express its gratitude to all contributors so far. Why write a guest piece for The NAJIT Observer ? This writer wishes to go over a few reasons and perhaps motivate you to come forward if you have not done so yet.

NAJIT has a wide following. Perhaps you’d rather remain incognito? I can’t fault you for that. But to those of our readers who love their profession, who love what we do, and who feel enthusiastic about it, your contributions are welcome. When you speak joyfully about what you love, far from being “self-centered” or “self-referential,” your enthusiasm can truly edify others.

Furthermore, since language is our specialty, writing for an audience can have indirect benefits on our everyday rendition if we are interpreters, and even direct benefits on our work if we are translators.

Perhaps you would like to contribute an article but feel daunted by the task. Some guest contributors have confessed that their article-writing took them a whole day of work, and the task should not take you this long! So, if you need some helpful writing tips, please read on. Those of you who are already great writers, feel free to stop reading here (and please, consider this call for articles). But perhaps you are like me and find yourself endlessly editing your first sentence, then getting discouraged upon realizing that you’ve just spent way too much time with little to show for it. If that’s the case for you, read on.

This exercise is for those who have impetus but no idea of where to begin. It is also useful when you have several ideas and wish to organize them. I personally recommend doing it with a physical piece of paper and a pen, and not with mind-mapping software (paper and pen/pencil are more conducive to creativity).

Take a blank piece of paper and write the first word that comes to mind about a topic. Another will immediately come to mind as you write the first one; branch that new idea out from your central node. Perhaps from that word another will branch out; very well, let a few ideas come from that node. Or perhaps you’ll have another idea originating from the central node. And so on; you can see where I’m going with this. Once you’re done – this will take less than five minutes – you’ll have a neat web of ideas and of the links between them.

Here’s where that traditional “essay structure” we all learned about in high school comes in. On your mind map, what stands out as the central theme? Make your first paragraph about that. Forget about “finding a topic sentence”; that will only slow you down. Then use a word or two for each of the next few paragraphs, each expressing a different idea from your mind map. Of course, your last paragraph will tie it all together. This is just a basic skeleton; the next step will give it flesh and blood. Realize also that for now, your article is an invertebrate animal, and its skeleton can go all over the place; your structure is not set in stone, and you may reorder your ideas entirely. You merely want something to start with.

Now comes your first shot at putting a bit of order into this “glorious mess” you have created. This is the first or major run of editing your draft. Move entire paragraphs from the beginning to the end of the article if you have to, and vice versa. Delete entire paragraphs. No one has to know they even existed. This is your space!

You could compare this process to the work of a sculptor, putting together a lump of clay, followed by macro-adjustments and gradually proceeding to smaller and smaller details.

This is where you correct for spelling mistakes, misplaced punctuation, and so on. On that note, I’ve seen recommendations to turn off your software’s internal spell-checker until you get to this stage. For example, it’s hard to free-write – that’s the process of writing as much as you can, as fast as you can – if you have a computer constantly telling you with red underlining, “You made a mistake here, and here, and here.” You can turn on the spellchecker at this step.

Once you are done, you will see that writing a six- to eight-hundred-word article – including review by the Blog team and your approving or rejecting changes – takes less than two or three hours, if that.

Content is one thing, but the vehicle, or form, of an article matters too. I hope these tips are helpful to you in writing an article for The NAJIT Observer or anywhere your writing talent will be a force for good. Thank you all again for your attention and contribution!

Main photo Crowd PNG taken from pngimg.com under CC BY-NC 4.0 . Body photo by Monfocus at Pixabay .

Now just write. Write as fast as you can without being incoherent; get everything down, no matter how many mistakes, redundancies, repetitions, and nonsensical sentences you put together. Write this way until your article is full. Quash out the inner critic in you. Its time will come.

Reasons to contribute a post to TNO

Mind mapping

Prioritize your ideas

Write. Just write.

Rearrange, toss, slash, and burn.

Edit again, this time at the sentence level.

And finally, proofread.

Ideas to explain our profession to others

Wed, 17 Aug 2022 18:59:00 GMT

As judiciary interpreters, we often run into misunderstandings about our profession as a specialized skill. Unfortunately, in many arenas, the interpreting profession is an obscure concept. It’s surrounded by a halo of “anyone can do it.” You’ll also often hear the words “translator” and “interpreter” used interchangeably – my personal pet peeve when it comes to referring to language access. In my mind, understanding our profession is how you begin to respect it.

I have found over the years that it is useful, when you want to educate the public about our profession, to come up with easy-to-understand analogies. I know these may seem simplistic to the interpreters reading them here, but you may find them useful when helping others outside of our profession understand what we do.

I hope you find this style of explaining our work inspiring to continue to tell the world who we are and what we do.

Now, back to interpreting and translation: Transferring ideas from one language to another is the common ground. But just like singing and dancing, they require a different set of abilities. Not everyone who is a good translator is a good interpreter, although some individuals will master both. In case you’re wondering, translation is written, and interpretation is spoken.

Here comes the million-dollar question: Who can interpret? Well, anyone can. Any person, regardless of speaking two languages, can interpret. You can figure out a lot from context and pick up a word here and there, and then spout out your “rendition.” When Nelson Mandela, one of the world’s most respected leaders, died, there was a sign-language interpreter at his funeral. The “interpreter” did not know sign language, but somehow, he was able to fool someone into giving him the job. There you are – anyone can interpret.

The better question is: Who can interpret accurately? In general, professional language interpreters have a combination of the following: equal command of two languages (being bilingual), experience communicating with people in different settings and language registers, higher education in areas related or unrelated to languages, and training in the field of interpreting.

Going back to our singing-and-dancing analogies, we can all dance at a party or sing in the shower. That does not make us singers and dancers. An interpreter is someone who possesses the training and skill to interpret accurately in different modes. Anyone else is a person trying to interpret.

Main photo by cottonbro at Pexels . Text body images ( 1 , 2 ) from Papa Yaw and Pixabay at Pexels .

What do singing and dancing have in common? Music or rhythm, you might say. Does this mean anyone who is a good dancer is also a good singer? Sometimes. Do you need different abilities and training for these activities? Absolutely.

We all believe in the power of education and training. Of course, if you train and study in a certain field, you are bound to get better at it. Yet there is another component when it comes to interpreting. As with singing or dancing, some people have an innate talent to interpret, and others do not. In my view, a good interpreter must have both training and a natural talent for language access.

Interpreting vs. Translation

Who is an interpreter?

Learning where this all started

Mon, 08 Aug 2022 06:00:00 GMT

I was the little girl who loved going to school and begged her parents to put her in first grade when she was barely old enough to be in kindergarten. I was the little girl who had a lot more fun playing “office” than playing “house.” Come to think of it, I still do. And as far as school goes, well, I embrace every chance I get to learn things, whether in a structured environment, like school, or unstructured, like reading on my own. I recently thought, “I want to learn more about the law,” not because I want to be a lawyer but because I have some questions about what we do as interpreters in court, and where we stand in the big picture. I think I can find the answers only if I go back, way back, into the history of interpreters in our U.S. court system so as to understand how we ended up here. When I look around, to be honest, it seems like we’re moving backward rather than forward.

So, thanks to some very supportive friends and family, I am not only enrolled in a legal studies program (all online), but I also just discovered that as a student I have access to LexisNexis and Westlaw! (Cue happy music.) Of course, I immediately started to look up all the cases that have anything to do with court interpreters or interpreting in court, and since I’m still getting the hang of this, the oldest case I could find at first was a failure to appoint an interpreter from 1907. Then, as I got a little better at this searching thing, I started to find cases dating back to the 1800s. And as I kept on figuring out this LexisNexis legal search engine, I found a 1795 case that mentions a statute in Virginia providing “that interpreters may be sworn truly to interpret, when necessary.” ( Claiborne v. Parrish , 2 Va. 146.)

There is a case from 1879 in Colorado which, “[o]n appeal, the court ruled that under §§161, 162, the inability on the part of persons called as jurors, to speak the English language, and to understand it when spoken, was not necessarily a disqualifying fact.” ( Trinidad v. Simpson , 5 Colo. 65.) This was about three decades after the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, and there were cities along the Southern territories in which the majority of residents were former Mexican citizens whose first language was Spanish. They served as jurors because there were very few residents in those communities who could speak and understand English. It appears, from the language in the Trinidad v. Simpson opinion, that they could be provided with interpreters or perhaps the proceedings in court were conducted in Spanish.

I found a few other interesting court opinions. The privileged communication between attorneys and their clients extends to the interpreter since at least 1859. ( Goddard v. Gardner , 28 Conn. 172; Sample v. Frost , 10 Iowa 266.) Then, in an 1877 case, the court held that an expert could not be compelled to testify without compensation. ( Buchman v. State , 59 Ind. 1.) Although that case was about an expert medical witness who refused to testify without compensation, it could very well apply to interpreters if compelled to testify. Of course, that requires a bit more research to see how that holding by the court may have changed over the course of the last century.

My favorite so far is a quote from Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, in Towne v. Eisner (1918) as quoted in the 1942 case of State v. Vasquez (101 Utah 444): “A word is not a crystal, transparent and unchanged; it is the skin of a living thought and may vary greatly in color and content according to the circumstances and the time in which it is used.”

The Vazquez court added: “Degrees of understanding may present themselves between that of complete comprehension of the language to that of minor matters. The question, not properly heard or understood, may bring forth an answer that might turn the scales from innocence to guilt or from guilt to innocence. Then, too, the answer given might be made in words not entirely familiar or understood by the defendant. (….) While English has comparatively few inflections, either a prefix or a suffix mistakenly applied or interpreted may change the meaning of a whole sentence.”

I have to wonder, why is it that something so clear to these judges in the early part of the last century does not seem to be so clear anymore to the bar and bench in this century?

Main photo (cropped) by Shahnawaz Sid at flickr , under CC BY 2.0 . Body photo from “ La Argumentación Oral ” by Fernando Boj Corral at Complemento agente , under CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 .

Notice that even when the country was still very young (barely nineteen years old), there was already a law in the books in Virginia, and apparently in West Virginia too, addressing interpreters in court. I have yet to find those statutes (Va. Code 1887, ch. 164, § 3357; W. Va. Code, ch. 130, § 30,) but I will keep looking—and I will share when I do find them, if you are as curious as I am. What really strikes me is the awareness—and highly non-judgmental attitudes, based on the texts I have found so far in these court opinions—of a need for interpreters because of the many different languages spoken by litigants, witnesses, and defendants. There’s German, Portuguese, Italian, English, and let’s not forget the languages of all the Nations already here.

The ATA Certification Exam

Mon, 01 Aug 2022 02:14:00 GMT

You may have heard of the ATA (American Translators Association) Certification Exam. It has been around for a long time, and it is recognized as a legitimate credential; passing it demonstrates that one is a competent translator in that pair of languages. In fact, for those who lack official certification for court interpreting, in many cases courts and other agencies recognize the ATA certification as qualifying an interpreter for court interpreting.

You can choose from thirty-two language combinations in which to be certified; Korean to English and English to Korean were just added this year. (Please visit www.atanet.org/certification/guide-to-ata-certification to check if your language pair has an exam.) For a long time, those seeking certification had to go to an examination site on a specific day to take the exam, but this year, finally, an on-demand exam now is available, which you can complete at home using your computer at a time that is convenient for you. You must take the exam within a month after you register for it. (On-site exams are still offered, and you can do a handwritten exam on site if you prefer.)

Currently, the exam is offered only to ATA members, so taking it can be rather costly (membership fee: $205/year + $525 for taking the exam). But the benefits are great once you get certified, and you can certainly expect a very good return on your investment. But don’t give up the idea of taking the test yet, just because you’re not ready to commit this amount of money. You can take a practice test whether you are a member or not and see how you might perform on the actual exam. I recommend taking a practice test first and going over the results, and if you feel you have a good chance at passing the real exam, you can then become an ATA member and take it.

This translation exam evaluates whether your translation is at a professional level, and it is not easy. The current average pass rate across all language pairs offered is less than 20%. This is another reason for taking a practice test first. A practice test will have you translate a passage that was used on a real exam in the past, to give you an exact idea of what the exam requires. And the practice test is graded by a grader and returned to you, unlike the actual exam. This will tell you what kind of errors are marked and how many points are deducted for each error.

You can obtain a practice test by visiting ATA’s website and filling out a Practice Test Request Form to be submitted online ( www.atanet.org/certification/practice-test ). Each language pair has up to three practice tests, and you can order multiple tests. It costs $80/passage for ATA members and $120 for non-members. Try to take the practice test in an environment that resembles as closely as possible that of the actual exam, and allow about one hour per passage.

No smartphones or tablets are allowed at on-site exams, and a smartphone is used as a back-view camera for the online exam. Unlike practice tests, the exam you have taken will not be returned to you, and you will receive only the final result (Pass or Fail). It is a point-deduction system, and a passage with a final score of 18 or higher is marked as failed. Exams are graded by two graders, and those that receive a passing grade on both passages from both graders pass the exam. If one grader gives a pass but the other does not, the exam is evaluated by a third grader.

Each passage comes with “Translation Instructions” at the top. This provides the context of the translation assignment and indicates the source, purpose, audience, and medium of the translation, and sometimes includes ‘giveaways’ (for example, telling the candidate to translate a specific term in a specific way), so be sure to read the instructions carefully.

The skills tested in the exam are: 1) source-language comprehension; 2) target-language proficiency; 3) transfer skills; and 4) adherence to Translation Instructions. Errors are assessed on scales of 1, 2, 4, 8, or 16 points, depending on the severity of the error in the given context. Errors are all defined, and graders have standardized tools to mark errors and assess particular aspects of the translation.

If you are interested in learning more about the ATA Certification Exam, please visit www.atanet.org/certification for all the information you’ll need. If you still have questions, you can contact me at izumi.suzuki@suzukimyers.com .

Main photo from the website of John Holland Translations , under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 . Body photo from Fin del examen by profesorluisduran at Geografía e Historia en la educación permanente , under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 . Photo of author taken from Linguist in the Spotlight: An Interview with Izumi Suzuki at The Savvy Newcomer .

The exam is a three-hour, open-book, proctored exam in a specific language pair. All printed resources are permitted. Internet is available, but no forums, machine-translation sites, or e-mail are allowed. Candidates select two 225-275-word passages out of three; the passages are on general topics. On-site exams have one proctor for every five candidates. You will use WordPad on PC or TextEdit on Mac (spell/grammar check functions disabled) to complete the translations, and you will save your work on the USB drive that you are provided with at the exam. For the online exam, you will receive directions on how to access it.

Izumi Suzuki is a certified court interpreter in Japanese and a certified translator from English to Japanese and from Japanese to English. She has also been a grader for the English to Japanese translation exam for over thirty years. Izumi is a member of the ATA Certification Committee.

The Couch: We know better because…

Mon, 25 Jul 2022 21:05:00 GMT

The Couch is a place to exchange ideas and brainstorm, not only for its contributors but also for our readers who engage in the ensuing discussions. Sometimes, you may not agree with what an interpreting department in another state says is the right way. Thank you to this week’s contributor for the Couch idea.

You are working remotely for a state other than your own for a dependency and neglect hearing. That state’s office prescribes you a deemed proper equivalent for dependency and neglect in your working language, whose broad and literal English translation could be: “Treating a person or an animal with cruelty, harshness, or thoughtlessness, or failing to provide needed care [ maltrato ], and omission, negligence, and lack of care [ descuido ].” But in your own state, the English name for the hearing is different: DNA cases , or dependency, neglect, and abuse cases . You are accustomed to using your own equivalent for this term in your home state, and so in the state for which you are working remotely, you are inclined to use a term whose rough definition in English could be: “Situation in which a person is unable to care for him/herself [ dependencia ] and omission, negligence, and lack of care [ descuido ].” But you are told by the supervising interpreter from outside your home state that they selected the word maltrato , “Treating a person or an animal with cruelty, harshness, or thoughtlessness, or failing to provide needed care” rather than abuso , “To deal improperly with a person of lesser experience, strength, or authority” because, says the head interpreter, maltrato is a broader term than abuso . In any case, neither maltrato nor abuso properly convey the idea of dependency and neglect .

Body picture It’s My Way… Or the Highway! by Ishan Manjrekar at flickr , under CC BY 2.0 .

How many things are wrong with this scenario (terminologically not procedurally) if any? And what would you do about it if anything?

Are your rates for remote interpreting the same as in person?

Tue, 19 Jul 2022 10:10:00 GMT

An agency that I have not worked with before recently got in touch, and we had the typical e-mail back and forth regarding compensation, cancellations, travel, etc. Here is that e-mail exchange.

To: Garrett
From: LSP rep
Subject: In-Person Spanish Interpreter on Upcoming Date

Hello, Garrett.

I’ve been given your contact information by your colleague, Pía Fantástica de las Maravillas.* I wanted to ask if you have availability for a Spanish legal interpreting assignment on such-and-such date and time…

If you are available, please confirm your rates including any travel charges and your cancellation policy.

Best,

LSP rep*

______________________________________

*Names have been changed or omitted.

______________________________________

To: LSP rep
From: Garrett
Subject: Re: In-Person Spanish Interpreter on Upcoming Date

Dear LSP rep,

Thank you for getting in touch. Pía Fantástica de las Maravillas is an excellent colleague, and I appreciate her passing along my information.

My standard on-site legal interpreting fees are as follows:

$xxx**/hour (four-hour minimum)

Car travel (if applicable):
–Current IRS mileage rate for round-trip travel from my office.
–Any parking, toll, or related travel expenses to be invoiced to the client.

–Travel time exceeding 30 minutes from my office charged at $xx**/hour for round-trip travel.

Note: Hours are charged at a whole hour, not fractions of an hour.

If an assignment is cancelled with less than 48 hours’ notice (not including weekends), the interpreter will be compensated for that assignment’s scheduled hours (or minimum hours as stipulated above).

Assignments may be quite taxing given the number of hours and complexity of the matter; the interpreter will take appropriate breaks if working alone to ensure that the interpreter remains faithful to the professional code of ethics and avoids errors that ultimately would endanger the record.

If the client desires to complete the interpreted session with minimum breaks, a partner interpreter should be contracted.

Let me know if this is confirmed and of any questions you may have.

Thank you,

Garrett

______________________________________

To: Garrett
From: LSP rep
Subject: Re: In-Person Spanish Interpreter on Upcoming Date

Hello, Garrett. Are your rates for remote interpreting the same as in person? If they are different, let me know.

Best,

LSP rep

______________________________________

Let me say here that I love referrals. Some of the most interesting and well-remunerated assignments have come my way through colleagues sharing my information with others. Referrals are great!

So, this question, “do you charge the same fee for remote interpreting and on-site interpreting” comes up rather often. I make all efforts to charge a higher fee. And I believe you, my fellow interpreter, should too. In fact, you ought to consider charging more given that… well, read on to see my typical response to this inquiry, which borrows heavily and directly from our colleague Maha El-Metwally’s Remote Interpreting: Considerations for Interpreters LinkedIn post.

To: LSP rep
From: Garrett
Subject: Re: In-Person Spanish Interpreter on Upcoming Date

Dear LSP rep,

TL;DR: Yes, a different fee applies to remote assignments.

My remote, legal interpreting fees are: $xxx**/hour (four-hour minimum)

Note: The interpreter will let parties know if any issues with sound, video, or individual speakers arise. Be prepared for the interpreter to stop interpreting if he is unable to see or hear properly.

Remote assignments tend to have more technical issues come up and increased cognitive load resulting in interpreter fatigue setting in more quickly than in-person assignments. If you’re interested in reading a bit more about these issues, read on.

Research shows that interpreting remotely causes more fatigue than in-person interpreting . In a remote setting, in addition to the cognitive load of interpreting, interpreters also have to deal with real-time user communication via chat/text message/e-mail, have multiple screens with documents and the meeting platform open, and are exposed to long hours staring at those computer screens. Also, the interpreter must have the appropriate equipment (fast computer, stable internet connection, proper microphone, extra power supply, etc.). Furthermore, interpreters often encounter meeting participants who log into the meeting on their mobile phones, while driving, and others not using proper microphones resulting in deficient audio quality. Interpreters can’t interpret what they cannot hear (or cannot hear well).

It is true that, in a remote setting, the client does not have to bear any of the in-person interpreting service costs: travel, parking, mileage, potential accommodation if significantly distant, and per diem. That said, with all these cost savings, should the client save on the interpreter’s fees as well? Given what is described above, it is only reasonable that interpreters working remotely should charge more for their services as they have to perform more tasks, deal with higher stress and resulting fatigue, and invest more in their remote setup.

I appreciate you asking and your consideration.

Thank you,

Garrett

______________________________________

What about you? Are you successfully charging more for remote interpreting services? Has your state judiciary changed interpreter compensation policies for remote proceedings?

**Federal law and requirements prevent professional associations from discussing actual rates on any public forum.

Reference:

El-Metwally, Maha. “Remote Interpreting: Considerations for Interpreters.” LinkedIn, 8, February 2021, https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/remote-interpreting-considerations-interpreters-maha-el-metwally .

Main photo Cell phone era? by pluzz at flickr , under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 .

Depositions, client/attorney meetings, hearings, interviews, and other legal matters:

Cancellations

Fatigue and Potential Partner

Interpreters Are Not Tools

Mon, 11 Jul 2022 06:00:00 GMT

There is a rather distorted perception held by some legal professionals about the role of interpreters in courtroom proceedings or even outside of court. They believe interpreters are tools, like a microphone or a laptop computer, things they can use for whatever purpose they have in mind at the moment. They do not understand the complexities of the interpreting process, they do not realize the enormous cognitive load imposed on the human brain by language transference processes and, consequently, they have no appreciation for the work interpreters do.

I do not mean this to be a blanket description of all legal professionals, because there are some who do understand, do realize, and do appreciate. What’s more, it would be wrong to assume those attitudes and behaviors we perceive to be dismissive as either willful or malicious. Far from it. I am pointing out what could be mostly natural response to how language professionals work – our clients see only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to all the work we do while standing in that courtroom and interpreting all proceedings.

It is incumbent upon us to educate our clients in whatever creative ways our different situations allow us to because too often the conduct and attitudes of legal professionals suggests a misperception of interpreting as merely hearing one word in one language and finding that word’s equivalent in a second language. Law, as a discipline, is essentially language based, unlike other disciplines like archeology or civil engineering. Laws exist because they are written and codified by lawmakers, and legal precedents are set by judges and justices who write extensive opinions on some legitimate controversy. Words in law become actions, like sending someone to jail or releasing them from custody. Law is all about language. And yet, there seems to be very little awareness among legal professionals about the extent to which “precise concepts that underlie a particular word or phrase as used in one society are therefore almost bound to differ from their counterparts in a second language.” (Morris 1999, 7)

Laws in one country are not going to be like the laws in a different country, because they reflect a particular society’s way of self-organizing and self-governing. Consequently, legal concepts are going to be dissimilar, even when they belong to a similar tradition, like common law or civil law—now referred to as Continental Law in Europe. Nevertheless, judges expect interpreters to transmit legal concepts, such as a departure from the sentencing guidelines or a voluntary departure for an undocumented immigrant, as if everyone outside their own limited speech community of law professionals could understand the subtleties in meaning that differentiate those concepts.

Not only do they seem to be oblivious at times to a much wider segment of society that is not familiar with legal concepts, they also seem to be equally unaware of the extensive populations of Limited English Speakers who may lack any such legal concepts in their own languages. Interpreters are caught between the proverbial rock and hard place because they have been trained and told time and time again that they cannot be concerned about such conundrums. They are tools to be used by the courts and, therefore, interpreters are barred from analyzing and arriving at language-based solutions grounded on their own expertise when there are evidently no open-and-shut solutions for a legal concept they must convey in a foreign language. They seem to be barred, as well, from considerations of legal style that make courtroom discourse that much more challenging, such as long, complex, and redundant sentences, conjoined phrases, and other “conventions that differ from ordinary [language], such as the one-meaning-one-form principle (. . .) and the repetition of nouns where in ordinary [language] the second and later occurrences of the noun would be replaced by a pronoun.” (Azuelos-Atias 2011, 42.) All they can do is repeat, repeat, repeat.

One prominent researcher has found, for example, that “[s]imultaneous interpreters are vulnerable to conditions where total processing capacity requirements are high, be it for a whole speech or for a given speech segment. Such conditions may occur when speeches are dense, fast, spoken with an accent or a type of logic with which the interpreter is not familiar, when they contain multi-word names or unfamiliar names, numbers, enumerations, etc.” (Gile 2008, 60.) Courtroom discourse is certainly one that requires a high processing capacity with its dense contents and often fast rate of speech among court participants. Finding the science that supports our contentions is not difficult, but it does require a willingness to seek the sources and learn on our own.

As opportunities arise, legal professionals can be enlightened about the different grammatical structures between languages, particularly those that do not belong to the same linguistic family. They should be at least minimally conscious of the different social architectures in other countries that produce highly divergent legal concepts. Interpreters must be allowed to use their own judgment, based on their extensive knowledge and expertise, to find the best way to express a thought in a target language so it makes sense to the listener.

Interpreters are not inanimate tools for judges and lawyers to manipulate as they see fit. Interpreters are language experts, and it is incumbent upon each one of us to convey that message through our own professional development as well as our demeanor and performance in every courtroom and beyond.

References:

Azuelos-Atias, Sol, 2011. “On the incoherence of legal language to the general public.” International Journal for the Semiotics of Law, 24:41-59.

Gile, Daniel. 2008. “Local cognitive load in simultaneous interpreting and its implications for empirical research.” Forum 6(2): 59-77.

Morris, Ruth. 1999. “The gum syndrome: predicaments in court interpreting,” Forensic Linguistics 6(1): 1350-1771.

Main photo from “ Typewriter ” (cropped) by Konrad Gutkowski and Katharina Hoffmann at Sounds of Changes , under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Body photo “ Samuel Johnson ” by rocor at f lickr , under CC BY-NC 2.0 .

If interpreters are to gain any respect as professionals in legal settings, the most fundamental step is to further their own knowledge of the highly specialized nature of the work they perform, and then educate everyone else about the true nature of interpreting in legal contexts. All judges and lawyers should know that interpreting is not a flash card you flip to find the word in the other language that means the same thing, but it is essential that when educating legal professionals, interpreters demonstrate what sets a professional apart from a bilingual speaker. What are those complex cognitive processes? What are the challenges interpreters overcome every single day?

The Couch: A Disagreement on Terms of Payment

Mon, 27 Jun 2022 06:30:00 GMT

The Couch is a place to exchange ideas and brainstorm, not only for its contributors but also for our readers who engage in the ensuing discussions. Sometimes, if not everything is clearly laid out from the beginning, embarrassing and undesirable situations can follow. Thank you to this week’s contributor for the Couch idea.

You have been called to travel for a trial in a region where interpreters are rarely needed. Apparently the case will be complex. You have to set aside three days to get there (the night before, the hotel, studying and familiarizing yourself with the case; the hearing itself the day the trial begins; your return home the next day).

To your surprise, when the hearing begins, everyone was expecting it to be rather long, but in fact, right off the bat, the defendant and his lawyer state that the defense intends to immediately enter a guilty plea. Okay, says the Court, and fifteen minutes later it’s over.

Body picture from “ Pay me now, or pay me later… ” by lakewentworth at flickr , under CC BY-NC 2.0 .

Who’s your client?

Mon, 20 Jun 2022 06:00:00 GMT

Interpreters have many clients. I don’t mean who pays. I mean who is the beneficiary of your interpreting services. Yes, we do see whoever hires us as the “client,” but as a professional service, that is not the most precise way of defining a “client.” Nevertheless, we can use that as a starting point to figure out who is our client, and then explore how that relationship has a bearing on the actual interpreting performance we provide.

Generally, those who contract interpreting services are either agencies or institutions, rarely an individual. Agencies are intermediaries between the interpreter and some other end user of the interpreter’s services, so their role is limited as is the interpreter’s responsibility to them. The agency tells the interpreter where to go, when, and for what sort of event, and the interpreter agrees to provide a service in exchange for a given fee. Ideally, the interpreter and the agency will have negotiated all these conditions and put them in writing as a binding contract for professional services. Whether you provide services for the same agency on a regular basis, or only one time, your conditions—such as honorarium, cancellation policy, and so forth—should be in some sort of written form that not only protects you but is also a reflection of your professionalism.

Institutions can be a hospital for a healthcare interpreter, some court or administrative office for judiciary interpreters, and so forth. It is more difficult to set your own rates and other conditions when contracting with institutions, but it is not impossible. Whether the institution is publicly funded and therefore working with a limited funding allocation of taxpayers’ money, or is privately owned and answerable to a board of directors or CFO, as an independent contractor you are still in charge of your own business and can decide whether or not to accept conditions preset by an institution. Remember that you can always say, “thanks, but no thanks.”

Of course, if you are an employee, you have no option but to abide by your employer’s policies and job conditions, but you knew that and agreed to such boundaries when you accepted a job with that entity. If you disagree with your employment conditions, you should probably revisit your decision to take that job, because changing corporate culture—and by “corporate” I really mean anyone who hires interpreters on a full-time basis, whether public or private—is always an uphill battle and is not always successful.

None of these, however, are your intended listeners when you are interpreting, and that is the client I want to explore with you. We often think of the non-English speaker (NES) or Limited English Proficient (LEP) individual as our clients. The fact is that, unless we are at a conference where the English speaker is the presenter and our only listeners are specific members of the audience, our intended listeners will be both English and non-English speakers. In medical settings, those can be the healthcare provider and the patient or a patient’s parent if we are talking about a minor, or maybe the spouse. In educational settings, those can be the school administrators or the teachers and the students or the parents of those students. In legal settings, it gets complicated.

There are other instances in which only the LEP individual will be listening to your interpretation of the proceedings taking place. Whether you use equipment or whisper to provide simultaneous interpreting for an LEP defendant—or plaintiff, as the case may be—that one person is your sole client and the only one relying on your performance in order to be an informed participant in the proceedings. If it’s a criminal matter, then you are the only access that individual has to any due-process right to be informed, to be present, to assist in his or her own defense.

When people who do not speak the same language need you so they can communicate with each other, they are both equally dependent on you, they are both your clients, and you have a professional responsibility to provide your best services to both, regardless of who pays. The bottom line is that in any scenario in which someone needs an interpreter, that means someone needs more than just language access; they need access to health, to education, to information, and to justice.

Main photo from “ How to become a better listener ” by Phil LaViolette at resourcily , under CC BY-SA 4.0 . Body photo from “ Audience ” by Susan Oaks at lumen Communication for Professionals , under CC BY-NC 4.0 .

Inside a courtroom, you can have clients you never even thought about, like the jurors who are listening to your rendition of testimony from the witness stand. We tend to think of the court—meaning the judge—as our “client.” However, the service we are providing is not only for the court’s benefit. When we are interpreting the testimony of an LEP witness, for example, the concept of client is extremely fluid. When we are interpreting into the foreign language, our client is the LEP individual, but when we are interpreting the foreign language into English, our client, meaning our intended listener, is first and foremost the attorney asking the questions. But there are peripheral clients as well. One is the judge, who must make certain rulings and findings based on your renditions, particularly when there are objections from the opposing side. That opposing side’s attorney is also a peripheral client who is relying on your performance to devise a cross-examination strategy. There may even be a defendant, or plaintiff if it’s a civil case, who is listening to your renditions and would be a collateral client as well. Then there’s the court reporter, a very important client because that is the person creating the official record of the proceedings. Finally, you have the rest of the court personnel and anyone in the audience, all of whom will also be paying attention to your renditions. These are all your clients to one degree or another because they are relying on your interpreting services to be able to understand the testimony of an LEP witness.

The Subjects Matter

Tue, 07 Jun 2022 15:31:00 GMT

The practice of interpretation allows interpreters to take a break from themselves and from their own lives. I was smitten by this profession since the day I got to interpret for stars at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF). A combination of circumstances led me to quickly realize that I could use this same skill in a different venue, to help women attempting to flee from domestic violence. Often, I found these women were used as doe-eyed tools in the litigation system. After working for shelters, hospitals, and charitable organizations, I was thrilled to receive full judiciary interpreter certification in 2014. It was my opportunity to address these cracks and flaws within my sphere of influence.

My first big criminal trial led to my first hard wake-up call: millionaires benefited from legal aid while domestic violence (DV) victims were eligible for assistance only by the time they and their children were homeless. In my experience, a system that is supposed to help and protect and that does not mete out fair, equitable justice, but rather allows the few to profit from the tribulations of the many, is no justice system at all.

The shelters I worked with had similarly unjust rules: most women had to return to their abusers after being allowed to lay low there for three months, after which they were forced out: essentially, back to the abuser, or back to the streets.

I was selected for the 2017 trial of a major executive who had committed fraud and perjury. Here, I realized that someone had to shoulder the blade so that other famous names could remain untainted. For that trial and the subsequent burn-out, I earned a respiratory infection.

We all get compassion fatigue, and that wasn’t my first time experiencing it, but if we all suffer from it in some way, it also shows that interpreters are human and that most of them have big hearts! We are bound to strict confidentiality, and yet nothing is put into place for us at an organizational level to debrief and unpack emotionally from interpreting traumatizing situations. This of course comes with deleterious effects on our mental health and on our loved ones.

I have seen the dark underbellies of the professions we are called to interact with. Most women fleeing from domestic violence are in distress; a distressed woman is a sure prey for a greedy lawyer seizing an opportunity to pad up his/her pockets, cut deals, and use a client to his/her own benefit without regard for her needs or concerns. These women end up being pushed further into a tunnel and then cornered like game. They end up stripped of everything, in addition to the trauma they’ve already experienced through violence.

After an attorney half-jokingly responded to a question of mine regarding the whereabouts of his client: “It always ends up in the same way for them – dead, on the street, or drugged up to numb the pain,” my decision was sealed. No more would I take any family-court assignments. I had had enough of the threats uttered in court, the stories I had heard, the faces I had seen…

The reality is that many women are driven to suicide after being chewed up, spit back out, and steamrolled by the legal system, only to be separated from their children.

I no longer wish to stand by and fail to be a voice for the generations to come who have a right to life and not to be destroyed by an abusive power structure that stifles their voices. Children are fully legal persons de jure but are often overlooked and ignored de facto . Often those who come from abusive households end up becoming abusers themselves. This allows transgenerational violence to continue.

Silence enables the harm to continue – tyrants have always known this – whereas the power of speech can topple tyrannies. We must aim for a more inclusive system that will put an end to the cycle of silence.

I know of a DV victim who nearly died; the psychiatrist at the rehab center under whose care she was said it was a miracle that she should still be alive. Her daughter has lost her youth because of this, unable to see her father nor her mother. No expression of sympathy was given from any lawyer, doctor, or official involved. The judge handling the case did apologize, but her hands were tied. If justice for all were truly a standard by which we all live, the system would be transparent and accessible to all.

Worse still for this woman, she ended up with a lawyer whose license was later subject to disciplinary removal. Her local bar association said she may get the $5,000 retainer back somehow. This was the type of predatory lawyer whose incompetence may even be called criminal – and his bar association said, in response, that he must subsequently (under pain of license suspension) warn his clients about himself. That’s like asking a recently accused thief to go and deposit $1,000 in a company bank account, or a hungry child not to dip into the jar while waiting for the adults. But this lawyer is not the only one. There genuinely are abusers who profit from the cracks and flaws in the system they work with. Some are very well versed in family law and know how to spot their prey… if the hapless victim should sense danger and begin to want to escape, they pounce.

I will spare you the rest, but most dreadfully for this woman and her child, child protective services have been of little assistance either.

Interpretation remains my beloved profession, but I have chosen no longer to work in the family courts, rather I seek other ways to help those who have been short-changed by the system. When asked to speak on my profession as an interpreter, I can’t help but tell of these things, because knowledge is power, and I want to share, outside the booth, the knowledge and experience I have received.

Violaine Tourny almost unwittingly became an interpreter from the earliest age, drawn to nature’s sights and sounds and then to languages. Growing up, she was nicknamed “the language sponge.” She studied Latin, German, Spanish, and Italian, though she has not used these languages in the booth for years. Without knowing such a career even existed, she did act as interpreter in her previous trade – sportswear technical design and manufacturing. In this capacity, she helped to bridge communications between Asian suppliers and French clients. When asked if she was an interpreter, she would answer, “No, I simply repeat what someone says in one language in another language such that that other person can understand.” She interpreted thus on an ad-hoc basis until working for the Toronto International Film Festival as well as hospitals, shelters, and refugee centers. She became fully accredited by the Ontario Ministry of the Attorney General (MAG) and certified to work in hospitals and clinics in 2014. She has been a conference interpreter since 2015, and in early 2022, she was added to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario’s list of freelancers. She strives to be fully present for her clients and puts her whole self into everything she does. Check Violaine out at linkedin.com/in/violaine-tourny

Main photo from “ Appel à candidatures: Ateliers régionaux sur les droits numériques ” by Emmanuel Bama at eBamaBlog , under CC BY-SA 4.0 . Body “ Une mendiante ” by Hugues Merle (1823-1881), from jean louis mazieres at flickr under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 .

There may well be a structure in place to help DV victims, the textbook example being the medical provider flagging an issue, after which other doctors, lawyers, judges, schoolteachers, and the police all become involved. But mental health is part of overall health, and children’s mental health cannot wait. Why is there, and why has there always been, such a gap between what could be done and what is actually being done?

The Couch: A Partner Whisked Out of Sight

Tue, 31 May 2022 18:20:00 GMT

The Couch is a place to exchange ideas and brainstorm, not only for its contributors but also for our readers who engage in the ensuing discussions. Sometimes, the sudden loss of a partner can be challenging, and even though the solution may be clear from an ethical perspective, it remains a difficult avenue to follow. Thanks go out to this week’s contributor for the Couch idea.

You have been interpreting on a two-person team at a rather long trial. You are an American citizen, while your partner was born outside the United States. The second day into the proceedings, your partner receives a phone call that leaves him rather distraught. His performance is visibly, but not seriously, affected, and you and he are able to handle the proceedings at an acceptable level. You’ve worked with him before, and you know him to be an upstanding individual, both on the professional and on the personal level, and a devoted family man to boot.

No one in the courtroom yet realizes what has happened. You are now without a partner, but the trial must go on, and it won’t be over anytime soon. What do you do? How do you see the scene play itself out after this?

Body picture from “ Religion in the Immigration Debate ” by Gregory Noble at The Family Redoubt , under CC BY 4.0 .

On the third day, immediately when the session is adjourned and you and your colleague head out to get refreshments, a group officers accosts your colleague just outside the courtroom. Their uniforms bear the markings “ICE.” The ICE officers take your colleague away. But just before they hurry him definitively out of earshot, your partner looks at you and quickly asks that you not tell the hiring agency what happened, rather that you make up a more “respectable” excuse for him.

It’s Not a Matter of Trust and Credibility

Mon, 23 May 2022 06:00:00 GMT

I have been an interpretation and translation practitioner for fifteen years, and during this time I have wondered why judiciary interpreters must be sworn in before every assignment, sometimes even before the same judge, more than once a day.

Most states that grant language-interpreter certification require an oath of office before certifying an approved candidate. Some states assign a certification number and issue an official ID with photograph that allows interpreters access through the personnel door to bypass the security check.

Practices and protocols vary widely, however. There are certain counties in California and in the administrative courts, such as the Executive Office of Immigration Review or the Social Security Administration, that keep an oath on file that does not expire. In some jurisdictions, once you are sworn in before a judge, you no longer need to be sworn in for each individual assignment. In other courts, the written form signed before obtaining the certification has permanent validity. In all states where I work (New York, New Jersey, Illinois, and Wisconsin), however, you are sworn in for every hearing, although a few judges ask if you have been sworn in that day and take that prior oath as valid. My question here is: why can’t certified judiciary interpreters just put their appearance on the record like attorneys do?

I have consulted with colleagues, court administrators, offices of the clerk and of the sheriff, judges, and attorneys. Although I have received many answers that are logical, none so far have fully demonstrated, in my layman’s view, the need for repeated oaths.

One of the most common reasons I have heard is that not all languages have a certification program and not every interpreter is certified in the languages for which certification exists. Another is that the oath binds the interpreter to the code of ethics. I understand that not all interpreters are certified, but many of us are, and the oath of office on file already binds us to our code of ethics.

I have to admit that it all boils down to this. Interpretation as a nascent profession does not have a standardized process for certification. All attorneys, except in President Lincoln’s time, have had to go to law school and/or pass a bar exam. Every one of them. Not all interpreters are certified, and our academic education differs from one interpreter to the next. There are all levels and types of interpreting programs. Even the exams are not all the same. There isn’t a national standardized test that all states use. Though most are similar in that they use the National Center for State Courts exam, not states all do. Some of the state credentials are called certification and approval. Some have two levels, journeyman and master, while others also include a “conditionally approved” category. Some have as a minimum passing grade of 70%, while for others it is 80%. There are some states where 60% qualifies you to work as a conditionally approved interpreter.

Fundamentals of Court Interpretation , chapter 18, page 415, tells us the following:

“The legal status of court interpreters is still a gray area, because interpreters are undoubtedly officers of the court yet, under Rules 604 and 702 of the Federal Rules of Evidence and other similar state court provisions, interpreters are subject to expert witness challenges.”

These are the rules I am referring to:

Rule 604. Interpreter; An interpreter must be qualified and must give an oath or affirmation to make a true translation.

As I see it, Rule 604 compliance is already covered by the oath of office each certified court interpreter swears to. Here is a sample of one I signed before I was granted certification:

“I solemnly swear or affirm that in all proceedings in the courts (of the state) to which I am appointed as an interpreter, I will interpret truly, accurately, completely and impartially in accordance with the standards prescribed by law, the code of ethics for court interpreters and (the state) guidelines for court interpreting.”

As I understand it, Rule 702 applies only to interpreters while testifying, so this has no bearing on the subject at hand.

I am a law-abiding citizen and like to follow rules, and so as long as it is a requirement, I will comply. That’s the way it must be. But once in a while, I want to understand the protocols and rules.

What’s your take on the issue?

Main photo from “ The Significance of Trust ” by Eric Sheninger from A Principal’s Reflections , under CC BY 3.0 . Body photo from “ Chris Zimmerman’s Swearing-in Ceremony ” (cropped) by Cliff from flickr , under CC BY 2.0 .

Taking an oath to uphold our code of ethics is a great responsibility, one that is so important to our profession that it remains with us at all times. It comes to mind if we can’t hear a speaker, if someone is speaking too fast, if a statement is convoluted, if someone mumbles, if there is background noise during a virtual hearing, or if you lack a partner during a long hearing. We think of our oath constantly when these issues disrupt our rendition because we have sworn to uphold this code of ethics including interpreting fully and completely, without adding and omitting anything, etc. Occasionally to fulfil that oath, we intervene on the record to address an issue. To uphold a code of ethics, a daily, let alone hourly, reminder is not needed. A professional, sworn-in, certified interpreter does not need this.

Differing Perspectives

Playing Devil’s Advocate

Oath of Office for Court Interpreters

A Threat to Our Profession - NAJIT

Mon, 16 May 2022 16:21:00 GMT

A few decades ago, “language access” was not really a phrase. Litigants who did not speak English were frequently left in the dark as to their own judicial proceedings, and this carried severe consequences.

The evolution of court interpreting as a profession has relied on the dedication and persistence of various movers and shakers. Our profession is still young, and it is still far from perfect. However, thankfully in most places it is no longer common practice to simply drag a bilingual person off the street for the day and ask them to tell the hapless defendant what is happening in a broken version of whatever their language may be.

A defining characteristic of a profession is its code of ethics. Across the nation, we now have interpreting standards that bind us together in the work that we do. We have fought hard, first to have certification exams at all, and then to have those exams recognized. This has translated to a fairer judicial process for people who are Limited English Proficient (LEP) and an incentive and compensation for those of us who embark on this harrowing career in the first place.

In California, these standards are now under threat. The Judicial Council is moving to broadly permit judiciaries to outsource interpreters’ work to out-of-state/country providers who are not vetted by a state body. This hurts everyone: the interpreters in California, LEPs, and everybody who works with them. It even hurts the people who are uncertified and may accept assignments beyond their skill level, exposing them to risky liability and ultimately lowering the possibility for everybody to earn a wage that incentivizes the broadening of a career to include certifications that take time and discipline to achieve.

Why is it that our field routinely faces this kind of quandary? Doctors and lawyers, whose professions are well-regulated and sealed tight from interference by unskilled, unverified providers, are never the target of such sweeping legislation. Is it that the work of us language professionals is considered to be easy? After all, everyone uses the spoken word without even thinking about it, and most people with a college education can write decently well; translators and interpreters just happen to be able to do both of these things in two or more languages. Nothing special, right?

Whatever the origin of such misconceptions may be, the Judicial Council’s proposal is the perfect recipe for undercutting the profession and, by extension, everyone who works with it – doctors, lawyers, judges, and defendants alike.

Cost is regularly cited as an excuse. But if the costs of using a certified professional are deemed too high, a simple argument ought to calm such fears. In the aviation world, the saying goes, “If you think hiring a good aircraft mechanic is expensive, try hiring a bad one.” Hiring a competent professional, whose skill level has been officially confirmed through rigorous testing, is a form of insurance. You could very well hire an unverified professional, and the outcome may be very good. But it may also be bad – very bad. And in a judicial setting, with so much at stake – a person’s personal freedom in a criminal case, or millions of dollars in a major lawsuit – it’s not enough to say: “Well, if the interpreter is no good, we’ll just hire another one.” The mistakes leading to such a decision may cause incalculable damage in the interim.

Earlier, I mentioned the importance of an ethical code in defining a profession. One more critical defining characteristic is education. Very few higher-education opportunities exist for judiciary interpreting, and none at all past the Bachelor level. We have more options now than we did a few decades ago, but the pickings are still slim. The fact that we don’t have advanced degree programs in judiciary interpreting makes our profession extremely vulnerable to these types of affronts.

We need to advocate for better educated interpreters (i.e., advanced degree holders) and laws that prohibit unlicensed individuals from practicing judiciary interpreting. Yes, this is a major undertaking and a long-term goal, but we must understand the big picture of the profession that we are painting as we speak. Certification is not enough, especially without a legislative framework to close loopholes that allow non-certified interpreters to be contracted.

This threat is real. The time to act is now. Some of our colleagues have already formed an organization to fight against this and other issues. The American Alliance of Professional Translators and Interpreters, AAPTI, is bringing together people from our own NAJIT, of course, as well as the ATA, CCHI, NBCMI, and regional organizations and unions. They hope to bring these problems to the public eye and help enforce the standards and corresponding compensation that some of us have come to take for granted.

But AAPTI needs your help. There is strength in numbers, and every voice counts. To find out more and get involved, email info@aapticonnect.org . And keep participating in NAJIT as well, making it your responsibility to embody the standards, ethics, and level of training required by such a rigorous line of work. Your profession thanks you.

Main photo from “ Bolivia’s Death Road: The Most Dangerous Road in the World ,” under CC BY-SA 3.0 , at CAPTAIN TAREK DREAM . Body photo from “ Spain Taxi Drivers end Uber Strike after License Limits Agreed ,” under CC BY-NC 4.0 , at OMG! news .

Moreover, this present concern is very much unlike when we all saw taxi drivers protesting in droves, faced with the onslaught of Uber (remember?). On the one hand, the taxi drivers had every right to be indignant: they had to pay sky-high fees and work around a bunch of red tape to be able to drive their cabs. Then, here came private individuals with a smartphone and a car, stealing all their customers. Their frustration was entirely justified. But at the same time, it was difficult to make a compelling case in the taxi drivers’ favor: the customer went with what was less expensive (the Uber driver), with very few consequences to his or her personal safety or ability to get from point A to point B. A taxi driver may need to pay hefty licensing fees and have to get through much red tape, but the end result for his customer is very little different from what the customer would get by going with an Uber instead. Not so for the certified or uncertified, unverified language professional. In this case, it’s more like the new cab drivers don’t have a driver’s license at all. Now, that’s a scary thought.

Best Practices for Witness Preparation

Mon, 09 May 2022 06:00:00 GMT

I was talking to a friend and colleague recently about all the in-person work we’re starting to get in court, both civil and criminal. She mentioned, in passing, that she had received a call to prepare a witness for trial. The conversation turned to the issue of having separate interpreters for witness preparation and then testimony at trial. I brought it up with another friend and colleague afterwards, which made me realize this is something that warrants a carefully thought-out best practices guideline for interpreters in legal settings.

Who calls a witness?

In criminal matters, both the prosecution and the defense will take the testimony on direct examination only of their own witnesses. Cross-examination is conducted by the opposing party. When either side prepares a witness for trial, they go over their own questions and try to anticipate what opposing counsel will ask, which will be mostly yes-or-no questions. Attorneys will advise their witnesses to listen carefully to each question and answer only what they are asked.

In civil matters, each side gets a chance to depose—that is, take the testimony under oath—of the other side’s witnesses before a trial takes place. They get to hear what the other side’s testimonial evidence will be if the case ever goes before a judge and a jury. Preparing a witness for a deposition is very different from the preparation of a witness for a criminal trial. Since the attorney doing the preparation is not the one who will be asking the questions, it all boils down to anticipating the adversary’s questions on direct.

Who hires the interpreter?

In criminal matters, each side will hire their own interpreter for the preparation of their witnesses. During trial, however, witnesses for the defense will have an interpreter appointed by the court, which will most likely will be the same interpreter—or team of interpreters—appointed for the defendant. The prosecution, however, should bring their own interpreters for their witnesses, and not use the court-appointed interpreters. In the federal jurisdiction, this is a fiscal matter: the Department of Justice’s budget is separate from the Executive Branch’s budget from which interpreters get paid when appointed by the courts. In state courts, it’s a matter of caselaw: the defense interpreters should not be “borrowed” to interpret for the prosecution witnesses. [1]

In civil matters, each party is responsible for hiring their own interpreters for litigants and witnesses at trial. For depositions, however, the party hiring the interpreter is the one conducting the direct examination, so it will be the opposing party for that particular witness.

Is there a conflict?

Sign-language interpreters have a standing rule not to interpret for the same witness during preparation and subsequent testimony at trial. There are scientific and empirical grounds for this separation of interpreter engagements, based on the way in which the brain processes visual versus auditory information and how it is stored in short- and long-term memory. [2] That same evidence would support the opposite rule for spoken-language interpreters.

Our professional community has not taken an official position on the question of an inherent conflict when interpreting for the same witness during preparation and testimony. Given the fact that attorneys and judges are not always aware of our ethical duties to safeguard attorney-client confidentiality and to remain impartial at all times, we find ourselves too often in the crosshairs of unfounded objections. Having the same interpreter for witness preparation and testimony on the record should seem like an ideal arrangement. All terminological questions would be resolved during preparation, and in the end, the actual testimony on the record should be flawlessly rendered. Clearly, there should be no conflict whatsoever when the same party hires the interpreter for preparation and testimony.

What happens when it is one party who hires the interpreter for witness preparation and a different party who hires the interpreter for trial or deposition testimony? Can it be the same interpreter? Should it be different interpreters?

Perception versus reality

Do interpreters become part of the “plaintiff’s team” or the “defendant’s team” by virtue of their having been engaged in the witness-preparation phase of a case?

If a freelance interpreter is hired by the court to interpret for a defendant during any stage of a criminal matter, does that disqualify the interpreter from being hired by the prosecution to interpret in any out-of-court or in-court proceeding in the same case? Or, conversely, does having been hired by the prosecution at any stage of a case disqualify an interpreter from being hired by the court to interpret for the defendant in that same case?

Of course, we can always recuse ourselves if we feel we cannot remain impartial. That is also part of our ethical alignment, and doing so is a reflection of our professionalism. But it is quite detrimental to our profession when we allow misinformed attorneys and judges to impose limitations and restrictions on our professional practice and standards.

Conclusions

If we take for granted that interpreters are abiding by their ethical duties to remain impartial and protect confidential communications, there is no reason to acquiesce to a compartmentalized practice that limits when and where an interpreter can be professionally engaged. It is up to each one of us, of course, to enlighten our clients and stakeholders. Each one of us has a duty to educate stakeholders about the ethical scaffolding upon which we build our practice every single day, so the reality of the judiciary interpreting profession prevails over any misinformed perceptions.

[1] U.S. v. Mayans , 17 F.3d 1174 (9th Cir. 1994.).

[2] Cohen, Michael A., et al. “Auditory recognition memory is inferior to visual recognition memory.” PNAS , Vol. 106, No. 14 (2009). https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.0811884106; “What do we remember better–What we see or what we hear?” Science ABC , updated 16 Jan 2022. https://www.scienceabc.com/humans/what-do-we-remember-better-what-we-see-or-what-we-hear.html.

Janis Palma has been a federally certified English<>Spanish judiciary interpreter since 1981. Her experience includes conference work in the private sector and seminar interpreting for the U.S. State Department. She has been a consultant for various higher education institutions, professional associations, and government agencies on judiciary interpreting and translating issues. She worked as an independent contractor for over twenty years in federal, state, and immigration courts around the U.S. before taking a full-time job. Janis joined the U.S. District Courts in Puerto Rico as a staff interpreter in April 2002 and retired in 2017. She now lives in San Antonio, Texas, embracing the joys of being a grandmother. She also enjoys volunteering for her professional associations, has been on the SSTI and TAJIT Boards, and is currently on the NAJIT Board of Directors. Contact: jpalma@najit.org

Main photo from “ Falsas memorias en juicios orales ” by Janeth Aldecoa at cienciamx Noticias , under Creative Commons license version 4.0. Body photo from “ Neutralidad en la red o Internet abierto ” by Dareus at En Clave de Derecho , under Creative Commons license version 4.0.

Answering these questions in the affirmative necessarily assumes that the interpreter cannot remain impartial regardless of who does the hiring. It also assumes the interpreter will not safeguard the confidentiality of anything interpreted previously. Limiting an interpreter’s ability to be engaged with any of the parties in the same case at any stage of the proceedings calls into question the very moral fiber of that interpreter and, by extension, all interpreters.

Interpreting Into the Future: How Technology Shaped the Interpreting Industry

Mon, 02 May 2022 06:00:00 GMT

How could modern translations function without technology? There’s no denying the important role technology plays in our modern life. But it’s a double-edged sword since each new technological advancement poses a new risk to translators and interpreters: the possibility of one day being replaced by a computer. Imagine being tasked with overcoming language barriers two or three centuries ago! Back then, there was no Google Translate, and if you mentioned electronic data collection to your community, they would probably set something on fire. An app that could connect you to a real-time, professional interpreter when you needed it most wasn’t even something people dreamed about. Thankfully, technological progress has made it much faster and more efficient to transfer words from one country to another. The shift into the digital era was drastically accelerated by the global pandemic, and although it had serious consequences on many aspects of business across the world, some advances helped us become even more connected than before. Technological advancements upended entire industrial sectors, and one of the most notable areas of change can be observed in the interpretation industry. But what do these changes look like, and more importantly, where is the future of human interpreting headed with technology as a driver of continual change?

The tools that are currently in use within the interpreting and translation industry assist linguists in their professional roles. The technological advancements we’re referring to include:

Computer-generated translations have the capacity to translate large chunks of texts without human involvement. But the downfall to MT and machine learning is these technological developments do not consider cultural sensitivities, and this disqualifies these new technologies as standalone tools.

Translation memory (TM) systems are computer-based features that save words and segments that have been translated into the target language by a human translator for future translation projects. This helps improve the accuracy and efficiency levels of professional translation projects.

Armed with smartphones and popular web-conferencing systems for virtual meetings, interpreters have so much more opportunities to work with global clients than they did in the past. With remote-interpreting solutions, geographical location is no longer a hurdle that linguists need to overcome to help break the language barrier. The technology that supports remote interpreting has also made great strides over the last few years. The Day Interpreting App, for example, connects qualified, experienced interpreters with customers in real-time.

Language access services like remote interpreting showcase how drastically interpreting services have changed over the last few years, and it’s all part of a wave of tech developments that work together to improve the way we do things in society. The demand for language-industry professionals like translators and interpreters is always growing, and video technologies provide the ideal way to meet that growing demand. Thanks to the evolution of technology, interpretation is accessible in areas where it might never have seemed possible in the past. However, the rise of AI being used in applications like Zoom to facilitate real-time interpreting in multilingual meetings poses a growing risk to human interpreters.

Armed with the technology that facilitates video remote interpretation services through popular web-conferencing systems, we are opportunistic about what the future might hold for interpreters. The devices interpreters now use to interpret audio and video content have come a long way since the day of booths and headsets. However, the transformation goes deeper than the surface level of hardware. The way in which interpreters work to overcome language barriers has also undergone a metamorphosis of sorts. More and more interpreters offer remote simultaneous-interpreting services these days, and a decade ago, this was a farfetched idea. The technology in the industry has also made the lives of professional interpreters easier, allowing them to work from the comfort of their own homes when in-person interpreting is not an option. This benefit is double-sided, though, as it is also an advantage to clients, who can gain access to more efficient video remote-interpreting services without factoring in travel and lodging costs for interpreters.

Tools like Google Translate seem like solutions to help break the language barrier. After all, they’re much cheaper than professional interpreting services. However, the tools can’t ever be as efficient as human interpreters. Nor can they consistently and accurately translate human communication. These tech tools aren’t advanced or reliable enough to provide accurate translations, and confidentiality will probably always be an issue when it comes to a cloud-based tool. Then there’s the case of no ‘coverage’ for words that do not have a direct translation in the target language. The other thing that needs to be considered is that AI cannot understand emotions within conversations, nor does it include cultural awareness when performing translations. Interpretation tools might be handy for short sentences, but it only understands basic grammar and vocabulary and cannot translate the theme of a message. All this serves as empirical evidence that technological advancements might be driving change in the interpretation industry, but they will not be replacing human translation and interpretation services in the near future.

Thanks to technological advances, interpreters and their clients are closer, and language barriers are being broken down more effectively and efficiently. The interpreting process has undergone a radical change, turning into something that’s easily accessible and more personal for everyone involved. And as technology keeps evolving, the interpreting sector will follow suit, resulting in even more consistent and accurate translation and interpretation. The role technology plays has made access to remote-interpreting services easier, improving accessibility to interpreters that speak rare languages. While it is true that the fear of being replaced by an automated tool is a growing concern among translators and interpreters, technology is nowhere near advanced enough to replace a human professional. The future of translation is human-and-AI powered, both forces working together in Post Edit Machine Translation (PEMT). The human element simply isn’t replaceable, in spite of the changes. With the ‘human in the loop’ approach, it’s a best-of-both-worlds scenario, and it’s a scenario that translators and interpreters seem to be willing to work with.

Sean Patrick Hopwood has had a long love affair with languages, and is a polyglot with different levels of command of at least seven languages: “I find the power and versatility of words both exciting and intriguing. Like people, it’s the little details and idiosyncrasies, along with their cultural influences and beliefs that make them who they are; unique.”

Click here to learn more about Sean Patrick Hopwood and Day Translations .

Current Technologies Used in the Interpreting and Translation Industry

Machine Translation (MT)

Translation Memory (TM) Systems

Smart Tools for Audio and Video Content

Video Remote Interpretation – the Perfect Example of Technology-Driven Language Access Services

How Technology Will Keep Driving Change for Interpreting Services

Why Technology Needs Human Expertise for Consistent and Accurate Translation

Wrapping Up

The Couch: We don’t have all day…

Mon, 25 Apr 2022 16:32:00 GMT

The Couch is a place to exchange ideas and brainstorm, not only for its contributors but also for our readers who engage in the ensuing discussions. Sometimes, the saying “Don’t shoot the messenger” has, even today, failed to catch on for some individuals. A special thank you to this week’s contributor for the Couch idea.

You are interpreting for a particularly acrimonious case. Each side is pressuring the other – discovery on both sides was insufficient, the parties are late for the day’s proceedings, preparation was poorly done, lawyers are passing the blame onto their subordinates; no one is taking responsibility. Parties are poorly prepared, and as a result, everyone is suffering because the case is stalling.

The judge is flustered. You, meanwhile, an experienced interpreter, have worked in all kinds of difficult situations, many worse than this one, and you are not fazed. You remain professional and are doing everything you are supposed to be doing.

Yet though you may be the best interpreter on earth, your performance doesn’t depend entirely on you. If people talk over each other, you still have only one voice; if an utterance is unclear, your interpretation will be, too, and you are not to blame.

And in the courtroom, as with anywhere else, there is always at least one person who does not understand the complexity of the task you are faced with. This time, that person is the judge.

Around the third time you ask for a repetition, the judge looks at you as though you don’t know what you’re doing. At the fourth request for a repetition, the judge calls you out: “Interpreter, need we ask for someone else? We don’t have all day.”

You keep interpreting. But the parties’ demeanor and communication are not improving. You get the feeling you will need to ask for several more repetitions before the session adjourns. But the judge, a very influential one in the local community, thinks you, and not the parties, are to blame. No one in the courtroom right now appears they would be receptive to explanations regarding the interpreter’s role.

What do you do?

Body picture by Stephen Mackenzie from flickr .

Through no fault of your own, you need to request several repetitions and clarifications from both parties. The parties are exasperated, and the exchanges are emotionally charged and often illogical. You can’t bring clarity to what is already unclear.

NAJIT 43rd Annual Conference: Is it worth it?

Mon, 18 Apr 2022 06:00:00 GMT

A few days ago, I was preparing the paperwork for the Wisconsin CEU (Continuing Education Units) Compliance form, and I realized that I do attend tons of workshops, in-person presentations, and virtual webinars. I have the privilege of being a NAJIT member, and as such, over the years I have taken advantage of many skills and knowledge-building training program opportunities, some of them offered free to members, others at very reasonable costs.

Switching back to freelancing recently to move closer to family was the best decision I have made since moving to the United States in 1994; however, my new life has come with its challenges, some of them in the form of financial limitations.

Not knowing exactly how much money I can count on every month makes budgeting and saving a difficult task. Another temporary disadvantage is that I have not been freelancing even a full year to learn the current cycles of activity and idleness, and the lulls between engagements, so I need to tread carefully.

Non-negotiable

There are specific items that are musts. They are non-negotiable. Association memberships are in this category. A budget needs to keep a sense of priorities, and associations are my professional lifelines. Although something’s got to give, it can’t be my professional development either, particularly in order to meet my certification CEU requirements.

That brings us to my favorite and most lucrative annual conference. Yes, I said lucrative . When I come back from NAJIT’s annual conference, I feel like NAJIT has been robbed. As if I come back home with so much more than what the event cost me to attend.

1) Knowledge. Improving your skills could be the one and only reason to attend the conference. That alone justifies investing in yourself and your professional development. But some other pluses include:

Learning during the Friday workshops, not only new skills (SIGHT FOR SIMUL) and improving old ones (ADVANCED CONSECUTIVE SKILLS-BUILDING), but also getting the opportunity to find ways to include new services (IMMIGRATION LAW AND TERMINOLOGY FOR INTERPRETERS) and inject your professional practice with new technology that you can use for work (PRE-CONFERENCE WORKSHOP – WEBEX SIMULTANEOUS INTERPRETATION), plus so much more.

Keep in mind that there is an Early Bird special rate that will close on April 22, so take advantage of the additional savings and register today. Don’t put it off!!

2) Stay current in all your CEU requirements

This could be your first consideration when budgeting your annual professional activities. I personally only need to attend a single conference every two years to meet the minimum certification CEU requirements. This alone is a no-brainer as I get to cross out an important must in my professional to-do list.

- - The colleague I will recommend to my local AOC for our annual training program
  - The friend I will organize a study group with
  - The new agency I will approach for assignments (it would only take a couple of these to cover the cost of the event)
  - The colleague I will engage to edit my translations
  - The friend with whom I will trade assignment recommendations (another item that would alone justify the whole event)
  - The colleague I will call on to be my boothmate at a conference
  - The person with whom I will practice for a job interview when that ideal opportunity shows up

4) Meals. The most expensive part of traveling to me is the meals. I can find an app for flight and hotel deals, but what about food? If you are far away from restaurants and bars, and your only option is the hotel (not this year by the way!), meals can really add up. With NAJIT’s conference program planned for this year, you have only to worry about a couple of meals, if that. As a conference attendee you will get:

- - Breakfast on Saturday and Sunday
  - Two coffee breaks with snacks, morning and afternoon, on Friday, Saturday, and on Sunday morning. Either of these snacks can take the form of a lunch for those of us who do break their fast with a light snack mid-morning.
  - Appetizers during the Friday welcome event and the Saturday Evening Reception (plenty to substitute a dinner for me!)
  - A formal three-course luncheon on Saturday!

5) Entertainment. I am big on parties (when in Rome…), and this will be at the beach! In 2019, we began what I hope will become a tradition of having a Saturday event with music and dancing. It was a blast! For as long as I have attended the conference, I have gone dancing either Friday or Saturday night, an activity that needs to be budgeted as well. Now I get to dance, socialize, and eat during this event… and it’s free!!

So, in closing, I ask you: is the NAJIT Annual Conference worth it?

YOU BETCHA!!!

Main and body photos courtesy of NAJIT.

I base my calculations on the following tangible and intangible benefits of the conference:

3) Contacts. You can’t put a price on these. Either in the form of business cards, names, or new Facebook or LinkedIn friends (and I am not even big on social media!). These contacts can signify:

I can find more and more reasons to attend the conference, but fortunately for me, I do not need them. To me, friends are the most important people in life after family, and I get to see my closest friends throughout this event. Who needs another reason to attend? Not I.

Federalism as Played Out in the Court System

Mon, 11 Apr 2022 14:57:00 GMT

A friend of mine is certified as an interpreter in the courts of a dozen or so states. I was asking myself the other day, “Why not simply have a centralized system, in which your certification is valid in any one of the fifty states?” Of course, there is the NCSC and the possibility to obtain reciprocity in other states if you are certified in just one. But it’s not so simple. To obtain reciprocity in many states, interpreters must attend orientation sessions, each several hours long, to help them learn the ropes of the court system in that specific state. Different states each have their own distinct legal system.

This opens up the larger question of federalism as played out in the court system itself. The United States has a long history of federalism. But is federalism the better way, when compared to centralism? Which is the most natural way to organize large societies?

You might say to yourself: “I don’t care; I’m just here to interpret and to get paid,” and to be honest with you, that is a valid position to have. I tend to think one ought to “love the process,” as they say, and not just the goal; as you climb up the mountain to be able to enjoy the vista, it’s nice to stop often along the way, take in the fresh smells of the forest, the sound of a gentle brook or the chirping of birds; if you’re daring, perhaps even ask yourself how the forest got to be there to begin with.

Anyone wishing to work in some capacity with the U.S. court system may at first balk at its complexity. [i] And yet it is possible to thrive within such a complex system, as evidenced by the fact that a good number of people do. The human mind thrives on complexity, not on complicatedness. [ii] What is federalism? The Oxford Dictionary defines “federalism” as “A political system in which power is vested in an association of constituents, rather than in a central government set over and above them.”

Different countries have adopted different modes of government. The French have a very centralized form of government – France spending only twenty percent of public funds on local government, the lowest proportion out of all the major EU countries. [iii] The Swiss Confederation, meanwhile, is very decentralized. With its absolutely massive population, India has a decentralized form of government, [iv] but a rather centralized judicial system. [v] Calls have been made to grant more authority to local bodies. [vi]

So, which is better? Federalism or centralism? It would seem that federalism most resembles other parallel societal realities. Consider language, for instance: the most natural thing throughout most of human history has been for language and culture to be very localized, with many different tribes, cultures, and spoken languages occupying a relatively small area. Languages and cultures develop in their own localized context, generally without asking neighboring cultures for permission. This is still the case in much of Europe (even more, of course, before the modern nation-state was born), as well as in Asia and Africa. It was the case of the Americas before colonization, through which a small handful of European countries were able to gain control over incalculably large swaths of land and the populations that lived on them.

Federalism could loosely be considered a synonym of subsidiarity, or the ability to aptly delegate. The more tasks are delegated to local powers, the better higher authorities may manage the tasks incumbent upon them, since no one human being can manage responsibilities that are way too big for them. Colonization and technology may have us believe that human nature has changed, but proper delegation is the only thing that makes management possible. The societies that enjoy the most relative peace are those whose leaders know how to delegate and whose political and legal systems provide for such delegation of powers.

Therefore, there is a reason the different court systems are not simply localized versions of the federal supreme court. Imagine if the courts of Kentucky, California, Wyoming, or New York were governed by a representative from Washington. Something about that just feels un-American. [vii]

But regardless of what your or my opinion might be about the nature of the present justice system, you have to recognize that it works – if you didn’t think so, you wouldn’t be working in it. Do you think the courts could afford to be more centralized? Can you point out other virtues of the present system or of a more unitary approach?

[i] https://www.usa.gov/state-courts

[ii] Credit goes to Emmanuel Manolakakis for this idea.

[iii] https://www.bruegel.org/2019/02/frances-institutional-system-favours-rebellion-against-its-leader/

[iv] https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/C6DBC0C1267746CAACF37CCB290C1084/9781316258071c3_p24-44_CBO.pdf/decentralization_in_india_history_laws_and_politics.pdf

[v] https://www.mapsofindia.com/government-of-india/judiciary/

[vi] https://www.barandbench.com/columns/divide-and-unite-decentralizing-the-judiciary

[vii] https://officialalamo.medium.com/federalism-vs-centralism-why-it-matters-to-the-texas-revolution-190af0b89881

Main photo taken from “ The Relationship between State and Federal Court Systems in the United States ” at LibreTexts .

The Couch: Can You Do This One Thing For Me Real Quick?

Mon, 04 Apr 2022 13:30:00 GMT

The Couch is a place to exchange ideas and brainstorm, not only for its contributors but also for our readers who engage in the ensuing discussions. Sometimes, even when everyone in the room has the best of intentions, role boundaries can get muddied, and then everyone suffers. A special thank you to this week’s contributor for the Couch idea.

In the state where I work, all court-interpreting assignments are issued and managed by the state’s Administrative Office of the Courts (AOC). That means that they issue administrative procedures and other guidelines that govern the conduct and practice of court interpreting throughout the state in courts of all levels.

One common problem is that after an interpreter has been contracted to provide services and is there in the courthouse waiting, she may often be approached by a public defender or other private attorney and asked to help “real quick” with the attorney’s client. The AOC recently issued a policy reminder that this is forbidden under most circumstances. The rationale is that if an interpreter is contracted by the AOC for the courts’ business, a private or defense attorney needs to hire their own interpreter to assist with any case preparation or other attorney-client interactions. The exception to this would be administrative tasks: for example, reading plea agreements or DUI forms, or other things of that nature that don’t involve communicating or discussing in-depth details of the case or the attorney’s legal strategy for handling the case.

With that background, I was once asked by a public defender and authorized by the judge to accompany her to a holding area to sight translate a plea agreement for a defendant in custody. So far so good.

For the next hour, I was trapped in a holdover with the attorney going over all of this new information with her client in an effort to prepare a defense or renegotiate the plea agreement.

Understanding what the policy is regarding the use of AOC-contracted interpreters by PDs in case preparation and having in mind the circumstances in which I suddenly found myself, if it had been you in my place, what would you have done?

Body picture by Marcie Casas from flickr .

Once we were in the holdover area and the attorney had reviewed the details of the plea agreement, the defendant vehemently refused to accept the terms. He went on to vociferously complain about the ineffectiveness of his legal counsel, the unjust nature of the U.S. legal system, and how his prior and heretofore undisclosed history of mental illness should be a mitigating factor in his case.

One profession, one name

Tue, 29 Mar 2022 15:34:00 GMT

Can we please standardize the name we use to refer to our profession and those who practice it? There are so many variations on a theme: legal interpreting, community interpreting, court interpreting, public-service interpreting, judicial interpreting, and of course, the one name adopted by our national association: judiciary interpreting . The thing to keep in mind is that interpreters who work in legal settings do not always work in courthouses or courtrooms. Sometimes the work takes place in small jailhouse rooms where attorneys get to meet with their clients. Sometimes it happens in elegant high-rise offices with a stunning view of the ocean. Legal settings can range from conference rooms to living rooms, with all sorts of courtrooms in between: municipal, federal, small claims, family, drug courts, juvenile.

Interpreters who are qualified to work in legal matters can be called upon for polygraph exams, medical exams, psychological evaluations, post-arrest bookings, pretrial services interviews, none of which happen inside a courtroom necessarily. Calling us “court interpreters” or what we do “court interpreting” is not just limiting but is also misleading. Interpreters who work in legal settings perform under wildly unrelated sets of circumstances – even depositions in the middle of an oil field or on a dairy farm, on board a shrimp boat or a luxury cruise liner.

Furthermore, our work is not limited to legal terminology, as the designation “legal interpreter” or the label “legal interpreting” might suggest. Criminal matters, for example, can involve forensic sciences like fingerprint analysis, DNA testing, ballistics, and things as dissimilar as the parts of an automobile or the parts of a body. State and federal laws can include the protection of marine biology or prosecuting wildlife smugglers. Civil matters, on the other hand, can involve insurance claims arising from natural disasters or medical malpractice; they can come about from a hydraulic-engineering failure that caused a bridge to collapse or from the damages to a family resulting from a defective product. The level of language proficiency and subject-matter expertise required in this professional specialty goes far beyond the realm of what the term “legal” by itself could encompass.

What we do is a necessary public service, but we are more than public servants. Our work benefits different linguistic communities, but we are not interpreters for a specific community. Nor are we “judicial interpreters,” as some have also termed our profession, because judicial refers to the function of judging or the administration of justice, which is not what we do. Our function is not judicial . Neither are we “linguists.” We are interpreters . Yes, we need a good foundational knowledge about linguistics, but our role is far more complex. We are not just “one who speaks several languages” or “a person who specializes in linguistics.”

The work we do can best be described as “judiciary interpreting” because the term judiciary encompasses everything that happens within “a system of courts of law.” That is the overarching context in which we perform our work. Decades ago, the NAJIT membership pondered this question and decided to adopt a name that truly described the nature of our work, a name that is neither limiting nor misleading. Now, if we were able to find consensus to call our professional organization the National Association of Judiciary Interpreters and Translators , can we not find a way to standardize the names of all those educational programs around the country, all the academic research papers and all the references to our profession in every government agency? Can we please call interpreters in legal settings judiciary interpreters ? It would be one step, maybe small but also significant, towards getting practitioners and stakeholders on the same page, sharing an understanding of what this critically important function for our country’s system of justice is all about: judiciary interpreting .

Janis Palma has been a federally certified English<>Spanish judiciary interpreter since 1981. Her experience includes conference work in the private sector and seminar interpreting for the U.S. State Department. She has been a consultant for various higher education institutions, professional associations, and government agencies on judiciary interpreting and translating issues. She worked as an independent contractor for over twenty years in federal, state, and immigration courts around the U.S. before taking a full-time job. Janis joined the U.S. District Courts in Puerto Rico as a staff interpreter in April 2002 and retired in 2017. She now lives in San Antonio, Texas, embracing the joys of being a grandmother. She also enjoys volunteering for her professional associations, has been on the SSTI and TAJIT Boards, and is currently on the NAJIT Board of Directors. Contact: jpalma@najit.org

On the Topic of Monotasking

Mon, 21 Mar 2022 06:00:00 GMT

This post is on the topic of monotasking. That’s right, you read it correctly. Monotasking. What’s that, you ask? Well, it’s the opposite of multitasking. In other words, instead of doing a ton of things at once, you do one. Thing. At. A. Time.

I first learned about this concept in graduate school. You’d think that I would have run into it sooner, but my entire life all I’d heard of was multitasking: the more you can do at the same time, the better. Once I learned about monotasking, though, I was hooked.

People take pride in their ability to multitask. Well, I challenge you to take pride in the opposite. Take pride in doing one thing at a time, really, really well.

This topic came up a bit in my last blog, When Your Brain Splits in Two . There I discussed how, in the most practical sense, you can’t actually do multiple things at the same time. You can merely do one thing after another, very, very quickly. Now, this is vital if we are to succeed in the act of interpreting. On the job, we have to be able to multitask in the back-and-forth-from-one-task-to-another nature of the word.

But what about in our day-to-day lives? What about when we are setting about trying to accomplish something? Does it really make sense for us to have twenty different projects we are trying to get done at the same time?

No. That’s the quick answer. If you have a goal, such as trying to improve your interpreting technique, it makes sense for you to focus on that one goal. Likewise, if you’re using practice materials, it makes infinitely more sense to focus on one exercise until you have mastered it, instead of spreading yourself thin by performing every single lab you can get your hands on.

I’ve seen what happens when people bite off more than they can chew. Heck, I’ve experienced it personally. Many of us spread ourselves far too thin, and then we cave to frustration and disappointment when we’re simply not able to do what is needed in order to improve. I’ve felt this disappointment myself. It’s why the whole concept of monotasking resonated with me.

The hard truth is that monotasking is actually way more difficult than it sounds. We are not used to doing one thing at a time. We drive while texting, despite the deadly warnings flung our way by highway-patrol signs. We walk with headphones on, we are distracted ten times during the course of one conversation, and God forbid the moment arrive when we are stuck out in public and can’t reach for our cell phone to distract us.

The thing is, we are bombarded by activity and by other peoples’ priorities 24-7. So, in order to reach the obsession level we need to make our goals a reality, we have to take control over what influences us on a daily basis.

WE control our notifications. Viber, Messenger, WhatsApp, e-mail, Skype, Zoom, Amazon… You get to decide who notifies you and when. Personally, I check my e-mail on my own terms, when I have the headspace to do so. I’m not an ER physician, and I don’t need to find out about a work emergency at 11 p.m. before I go to sleep.
JUST SAY “NO.” This world will fill us with projects up to our eyeballs and leave us with a constant feeling of never enough-ness. We will feel guilty for what we can’t do when we spread ourselves too thin. We will feel disappointed when we can’t achieve our goals because we have five hundred of them. Prioritizing and being able to say “no” is an art form. Start practicing.
FIND OUR OWN RHYTHMS: Once we’ve been able to whittle down our thousands of commitments, we can check in with body and mind to create the headspace necessary to accomplish the things that are priorities. Maybe that means working transition time into the day, so we aren’t frantically running from one thing to another. Or maybe it means scheduling some calm-down time before studying, so that we don’t succumb to anxiety. In other words, let’s create an environment conducive to success in body, mind, and spirit.

Monotasking is about prioritizing. It’s about making room for our dreams and allowing ourselves the space and the energy to make them come true. It is harder than it seems, but we can all benefit from trying. Good luck!

Main photo “ Stay on Target ” by Stuart Herbert from flickr. Body photo “ How Blessed are the Pure of Heart ” by Clive Varley from flickr.

Here are some tips I’ve learned along the way:

Athena Matilsky fell in love with languages the year she turned sixteen. She majored in Spanish interpreting/translation at Rutgers University and also studied French. After graduation, she taught elementary school in Honduras and then returned home to begin freelancing as a medical and court interpreter. She later became a staff interpreter for the NJ judiciary. She has gone on to earn certifications as a healthcare interpreter and a federal court interpreter for Spanish and as a court interpreter for French. Most recently, she received her Master’s Degree in Conference Interpreting from Glendon at York University. She currently works as an interpreter and teacher, training students to acquire the skills necessary to pass state and federal interpreting exams. When she is not writing or interpreting, you may find her practicing acroyoga or studying French. Website: www.athenaskyinterpreting.com

Things We’re Not Talking About

Mon, 14 Mar 2022 21:36:00 GMT

This is the war everyone hoped would never happen. And yet it has happened. Most of us had never paid attention to Ukraine, except perhaps when it came up during the testimony before Congress in 2019 regarding Marie Yovanovitch, a former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine. U.S. news are seldom about any other country, especially one so far away. This war, however, is now in the news every day. If you have not heard about Ukraine by now, you must be living off the grid.

Some interpreter and translator groups, organizations, and associations, have published messages of solidarity, which is nice. But—truth be told—messages of solidarity with the people of Ukraine are just words. Then there are those who have stood silent: no words, no actions, as if whatever is happening on that side of the world has nothing to do with their day-to-day reality. Oh, yes, gas prices have gone up. Now there’s an inconvenient reminder that there is a war going on somewhere in the world.

I see the feeds on social media from our colleagues in other parts of the world and feel a mixture of pride for what they are doing and shame for what we are not. The Institute of Translation and Interpreting (ITI) in the U.K. posted in its Twitter feed on March 11 that a language-support task force has been created to help Ukrainians seeking refuge in countries in which they may not speak or understand the language. Members of this task force include AIIC (UK & Ireland), the National Register for Public Services Interpreters (NRPSI), Charity Translators, the Chartered Institute of Linguists (CIOL), ITI, and the Association of Translation Companies (ATC). [ https://www.iti.org.uk/resource/the-uk-s-ukraine-language-support-task-force.html#.YisTg3zWQig.twitter ] Notice how professional translators, interpreters, linguists, and language-service companies are all joining together in this effort.

On March 8, in another Twitter post, AIIC asked interpreters and translators to join a roster of professionals to be shared with every city welcoming refugees from Ukraine. As of that date there were 723 interpreters and translators volunteering in 64 countries. [ aiic.org/site/probono ] That same day, Ewandro Magalhaes, Chief Language Officer at KUDO, shared a message on LinkedIn and Twitter from the Polish government asking for monetary rather than in-kind donations for Ukrainian refugees. [ https://www.gov.pl/web/unitedkingdom/humanitarian-aid-to-ukraine ]

If you have been thinking about ways to help but didn’t know how, here’s an official web page with information coming directly from the country that is bearing the brunt of refugee influx, Poland: https://www.pomagamukrainie.gov.pl .

Please, help Ukraine in these difficult times while the attack lasts, the Ukrainians will continue to spend their money, energy, blood, nerves, and tears, and hope that the world is not only concerned but also ready to act NOW.”

After you read this, my hope is that you will not stay silent or be content with a statement of solidarity. My hope is that you will do a lot more than that. And I thank you, because this blog today is not about our profession, but it is about our humanity.

#StandWithUkraine

Janis Palma has been a federally certified English<>Spanish judiciary interpreter since 1981. Her experience includes conference work in the private sector and seminar interpreting for the U.S. State Department. She has been a consultant for various higher education institutions, professional associations, and government agencies on judiciary interpreting and translating issues. She worked as an independent contractor for over twenty years in federal, state, and immigration courts around the U.S. before taking a full-time job. Janis joined the U.S. District Courts in Puerto Rico as a staff interpreter in April 2002 and retired in 2017. She now lives in San Antonio, Texas, embracing the joys of being a grandmother. She also enjoys volunteering for her professional associations, has been on the SSTI and TAJIT Boards, and is currently on the NAJIT Board of Directors. Contact: jpalma@najit.org

Body photo by Rgm38 , taken from Wikimedia Commons .

And last, but not least, I would like to share some words written and posted on social media three days after the Russian invasion, by Ukrainian-born Lidiia Yershykhina, Legal and International Affairs Officer at the National Institute of Industrial Property in France. “We appreciate your thoughts and prayers when hearing sirens and blasts on the street. We value bold statements in the press that help to put things straight. We love to scroll through beautiful pictures and see the blue and yellow lights on famous buildings while sheltering in basements and metro stations. We are thankful for the recently introduced sanctions against the aggressor. Please DO NOT STOP there!

Business As Usual

Tue, 08 Mar 2022 23:06:00 GMT

I had my first business at the age of twenty. It was a furniture store a block away from the main plaza in downtown Celaya, Mexico. Business has been in my blood since I was born. My father was an entrepreneur and we, the sisters, “worked” for him from the moment we could hold a hammer. Since he wanted us to learn the whole manufacturing process, we went to work with him on weekends and hammered nails into long rectangular sticks that would be used to hold a mirror to the armoire door. As such, we learned important lessons that resonate to this day. Here are some of them.

Dress for success: To begin, if you want to be treated as a professional, you need to act like one. You need to put away your sleeve-end frayed blazer, even it is still your favorite. Pair it with jeans and a casual blouse for after-work drinks, but for work, dress in the best suit you have. My childhood is full of memories of travel with my family, and I remember my parents always insisting on our dressing as we wanted to be treated. Everyone we knew and traveled with wore comfortable clothes for travel, especially on flights. We did not. We were always dressed to the nines. Although at first it did not make sense to travel so formally dressed, I did observe how we were treated differently. The lesson here is clear. During assignments, sometimes people ask if I am an attorney. I have also seen other colleagues, and sometimes even attorneys, be asked if they are the patient or the defendant; in other words, the LEP. It’s not a criticism of LEPs because they are not there to work and usually dress more casually.

Act the part: “Be diplomatic and act as a professional… People will treat you how you act…not subjugating ourselves but acting as the… offshoot of the court that we are” (Javier Castillo). We are in the courtroom as an equal to all the participants there. We are officers of the court, and we deserve to be treated as such. We must not behave as though we had an inferiority complex. I have seen some colleagues behave almost sycophantically, as if they were there being granted an honor or a favor. As if they were not there because of a special skill they have, which they really do!

Have it in writing: We must have a contract to work with that at least includes a minimum number of hours contracted, a cancelation policy, and an expense-reimbursement policy. This provides protection and consistency. It is also easier to manage billing if we have identified a fee that is consistent for the same service. For example, I have a fee that I bill for any legal or medical assignment. I am moving more towards half-day and full-day fees, but I still have an hourly fee. Typically the client provides the contract, but sometimes I create one myself using a basic template. Simple but necessary.

I clicked on the LinkedIn member’s posting and I found that he is a life coach. Next thing I knew, we had an appointment set up. I am not sure where this connection will go, but at the very least, I have learned that my hard work is not producing the results I desire; some action needs to be taken.

More importantly, for my career, registration for NAJIT’s 43 ^rd Annual Conference just opened, and I need to work on being fully available to work on myself. To work on my skills. I have been spread out so thin in all my activities over the last few years that I have not dedicated enough time to work on my skills, and so I am aiming at giving the workshops my best.

https://najit.org/najit2022/

A couple of weeks ago, I was sharing an idea I had on my wish list for a long time with Janis Palma, my NAJIT Board colleague and friend. Of course, the reason I have not turned my idea into execution is that I do not have time. In typical fashion, Janis stated the truth. You do have the time, Hilda! That snapped me to reality, and I have since started a practice schedule with my sister Paula. As “busy” as we both are, we have managed to schedule a few sessions. Bottom line, we need to invest the time, money, and resources in improving ourselves because we have an important job that requires accuracy. We must be the best we can be.

Stay the course: Set fair fees and stick to them. If a client gives me bulk work, I don’t mind working with a slightly lower fee. But only slightly. And do not be intimidated by the fear of not being hired. You will. If you have language and business skills, and if you observe the basics – be on time, dress professionally, be pleasant and formal – you will be called. But stand up for yourself. Be kind even when turning work down. Professionals appreciate that. Use your interpersonal skills. Show empathy. But stay firm.

To set your fees, you do not need to reinvent the wheel. Network and ask colleagues. You can get answers to your questions privately. If you don’t have close colleagues, find them. You can accomplish several goals with one action. When I moved to New York in 2012, the first thing I did was to take an interpreting class at NYU and join the NYCT (New York Circle of Translators). The move improved my skills and provided me with much-needed contacts, plus a big bonus: I made some friends!

Refer also to the available data. Provided below are links that offer useful information regarding rates for interpreters.

Court Interpreting Research: https://courtinterpretingresearch.com/compensation-database

Interpreter Compensation in the Courts: A Descriptive Study: https://img1.wsimg.com/blobby/go/01969d7d-a7b1-4052-8dd6-f0638cf6050a/downloads/Interpreter%20Compensation%20Article%2C%20RJL_s%20Scan.pdf?ver=1609813152487

LISTINGS AND STATISTICS RE: INTERPRETER COMPENSATION IN THE COURTS OF THE USA: https://jimdo-storage.global.ssl.fastly.net/file/f511d43a-200a-470b-8664-9c7359d10ca9/%23%208%20Listings%20and%20Statistics%20Compensation.pdf

The Evolution of a Profession: https://najit.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Reclassification-report-final-June-2019.pdf

In 1999, my father received the Success Story Award: A Tribute to the Entrepreneurial Spirit of Outstanding Individuals in our State. That is among many other recognitions and tributes he received during his lifetime. What distinguished him as a businessman was that he never gave up. He always had a solution for every problem. And he suffered from chronic “optimism.” I hope these few suggestions help you make decisions that will cause you to stand out in a crowd and encourage you to share whatever expertise or advice you have that can contribute to the professionalization of translation and interpretation.

Main photo taken from The U.S. Army on Flickr. Body photo taken from Pixabay by Daniel Reche .

Hilda Zavala is a state certified/approved Spanish court interpreter and translator with more than thirteen years of experience in legal, medical, corporate, and non-profit settings in New York, New Jersey, Illinois, and Wisconsin. She is a board member, treasurer, and Conference Committee chair of the National Association of Judiciary Interpreters and Translators as well as former president of the New York Circle of Translators. She is an active and voting member of NAJIT, ATA, the NYCT and other professional groups. Hilda has two certificates of Legal Interpreting: Spanish/English, the latest one from NYU. Hilda has been a Staff Interpreter at Essex County Superior Court in New Jersey for over five years. Born in Chicago, Hilda lived for twenty years in Mexico and loves traveling. She continuously looks for opportunities to promote and advance the interpreting profession. Contact: hzavala@najit.org

Invest in yourself : Thursday morning, I found a phrase that a high-school friend tagged to his LinkedIn page: “Speed or strength don’t matter if you’re not going in the right direction.” It made me pause. I went back and re-read it and realized why it caught my attention. The rat race came to mind. I frequently feel like I’m in one, as though in spite of all my pedaling, I do not advance. Sometimes I am harsh and demanding on myself, and looking back on my daily activities, it turns out I did accomplish many crucial things on my to-do list. Then why does it feel like I am not getting anywhere?

The Couch: A Straw to Break the Camel’s Back

Mon, 28 Feb 2022 06:00:00 GMT

The Couch is a place to exchange ideas and brainstorm, not only for its contributors but also for our readers who engage in the ensuing discussions. Sometimes, a day’s proceedings in the courtroom can seem more like an episode of Jerry Springer than they do a trial. A special thank you to this week’s contributor for the Couch idea.

You are interpreting at a civil proceeding. An American woman is suing her ex-husband for his having stopped paying her alimony four months ago. You have been hired by the attorney for the defendant, whose English is very broken.

The judge asks the woman what she does for a living. She says, “Currently unemployed.” The judge then asks the man who has accompanied the plaintiff to court, a well-built man in his late twenties, in what line of work he is. The man and the woman act in such a way that it is clear they are a couple. The brawny man answers: “Well, I don’t work either.”

“And how long have you been without a job, sir?”

“Three years.”

“Do you have any children?”

“No.”

“Then,” asks the judge, “may I ask what day-to-day life looks like for the two of you?”

“Well,” the man starts, “I get out of bed around noon. Both of us then go the gym to work out, you know, to keep our bodies really fit for each other…”

At this the defendant, for whom you have been interpreting and whose blood appears to be boiling, turns to you and says: “¡Y son esos ******** que tengo que mantener con mi labor!” (“And it’s with my hard-earned money that I am supporting these ******!”) You have, of course, interpreted the defendant’s words for the court.

Tension rises in the courtroom. At your last utterance for the defendant, the plaintiff’s boyfriend jumps to his feet, looking menacingly both at the defendant and at you, his messenger. “Take that back or else!” It becomes quickly impossible to interpret anything since now at least five people are talking at once (including the judge and both attorneys).

The judge calls to order. The plaintiff’s lawyer takes the floor: “This man [the defendant] must support his ex-wife, as agreed upon and recorded in the divorce papers.”

You are not to judge based on appearances and must remain neutral. But as things go on, it really looks like the plaintiff may win the case. The defendant, whose demeanor portrays a hard-working, lower-middle-class member of society, may well be forced by law to continue to pay for what appears to be an… unproductive lifestyle.

Body picture by lassaffa from Pixabay .

Eventually the defendant’s character witness gets out of hand as well (the brawny boyfriend seems to have a very short fuse and is good at pushing others’ buttons), and to continue trying to interpret appears to be utterly futile. The temptation to simply walk out is growing within you. But the defendant needs you. What do you do?

Team Interpreting is a Matter of Due Process

Mon, 21 Feb 2022 08:00:00 GMT

“Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits recipients of federal financial assistance from discriminating based on national origin by, among other things, failing to provide meaningful access to individuals who are limited English proficient (LEP)” ( lep.gov ). In state courts, where Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and Executive Order 13166 are applicable—including all the Department of Justice (DOJ) guidance on the applicability and enforcement of the law—Limited English Proficient (LEP) individuals have a right to quality language services by competent interpreters. Only by providing such services can the right to due process of LEP defendants in criminal matters be duly safeguarded. Due process means being informed of all charges against you in a language you can understand, being able to communicate with your legal counsel and assist in your own defense, and understanding everything that takes place during any court proceeding against you—not just testimony. In federal court, this mandate emanates from the Court Interpreters Act ( 28 U.S.C. 1827 ), which created a certification process for interpreters so defendants could understand all proceedings against them.

These legislative initiatives did not happen in a vacuum. The federal law that mandated the certification of interpreters back in 1978 came about as an indirect result of the case of U.S. Ex Rel Negron v. State of N.Y. [ 434 F.2d at 389 ] in which the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York ruled that a “defendant who spoke no English, and [sat] in total incomprehension as the trial proceeded, was not sufficiently ‘present’ to satisfy the dictates of the Sixth Amendment.” Furthermore, the Negrón court noted that the confrontation clause of the Sixth Amendment was made applicable to the states, via the Fourteenth Amendment.

Before the Negrón case, in 1973 the First Circuit in the case of U.S. v. Carrion [ 488 F.2d 12 (1st Cir. 1973) ] had also ruled that “ whenever put on notice that there may be some significant language difficulty, the court should make such a determination of need [for an interpreter].” In a 1974 case, State v. Natividad [ 111 Ariz. 191, 194, 526 P.2d 730, 733 (1974) ] the Arizona Supreme Court ruled that “A defendant’s inability to spontaneously understand testimony being given would undoubtedly limit his attorney’s effectiveness, especially on cross-examination. It would be as though a defendant were forced to observe the proceedings from a soundproof booth or seated out of hearing at the rear of the courtroom, being able to observe but not comprehend the criminal processes whereby the state had put his freedom in jeopardy. Such a trial comes close to being an invective against an insensible object, possibly infringing upon the accused’s basic ‘right to be present in the courtroom at every stage of his trial’.” [Cites omitted. Emphasis added.]

Subsequent to the Court Interpreters Act, we have two other interesting cases that have a direct bearing on the LEP defendant’s right to an interpreter in order to protect due-process rights. In the 1993 case of U.S. v. Mosquera [ 816 F. Supp. at 174-76 ], a “district court ordered the government to turn over a copy of the indictment translated into Spanish and additionally ordered that ‘[a]ll documents, except motion papers and original evidence’ be translated.” A very enlightened judge in that case further quoted the defense attorney concerning the “difficulties encountered by non-English speaking defendants facing our judicial system” who addressed how “[t]he cultural differences are . . . dramatic between what we monolithically construe as our Anglo-Saxon or Judeo-Christian or American system, [and foreign cultures]…”

Then, in 2000, the Court ruled in United States v. Febus , 218 F.3d 784, 791 (7 Cir. 2000) , that “[o]ne of the purposes of the [Court Interpreters Act] is ‘to ensure that the defendant can comprehend the proceedings and communicate effectively with counsel’ through the appointment of an interpreter’.”

The right to an interpreter is not just an empty mandate to assign some warm body who may or may not be able to provide accurate and complete interpretations of everything an LEP defendant is entitled to understand. The right to an interpreter is a fundamental constitutional right emanating from the Fifth, Fourteenth, and Sixteenth Amendments of the U.S. and state constitutions with similar provisions. If the interpreter is not competent, an LEP’s rights are not protected. If the interpreter starts to make mistakes because of mental fatigue, the defendant’s right to due process are no longer protected. We know from the academic research and literature in the field that mental fatigue for interpreters starts to set in somewhere between forty-five minutes and two hours of simultaneous interpreting, depending on the difficulty posed by the source-language speakers, their speed, volume, the technical versus non-technical contents of their discourse, and the acoustic conditions in the courtroom or availability of equipment so the interpreter can hear all speakers. The pilot study by Barbara Moser-Mercer et al in 1998 “include[s] a recommendation that simultaneous interpreters not work alone for longer than approximately 40 minutes for a single speech or short meeting and that they take turns roughly every 30 minutes when working all day meetings.”

Janis Palma has been a federally certified English<>Spanish judiciary interpreter since 1981. Her experience includes conference work in the private sector and seminar interpreting for the U.S. State Department. She has been a consultant for various higher education institutions, professional associations, and government agencies on judiciary interpreting and translating issues. She worked as an independent contractor for over twenty years in federal, state, and immigration courts around the U.S. before taking a full-time job. Janis joined the U.S. District Courts in Puerto Rico as a staff interpreter in April 2002 and retired in 2017. She now lives in San Antonio, Texas, embracing the joys of being a grandmother. She also enjoys volunteering for her professional associations, has been on the SSTI and TAJIT Boards, and is currently on the NAJIT Board of Directors. Contact: jpalma@najit.org

Main photo by CALI from flickr . Body photo by Phillip Capper from flickr .

A team of interpreters is therefore intended to protect the target-language listener from the human failure that will inevitably set in after an interpreter has been working non-stop for an extended period of time. Once mental fatigue sets in, interpreters lose the capacity to self-monitor and, therefore, to know whether or not they are being accurate. (See Winter 1997 Proteus .) This jeopardizes the LEP defendant’s due-process rights. Just like the appointment of a competent interpreter for an LEP defendant is a matter of due process, so is having a team of interpreters during prolonged proceedings to prevent interpreting error due to mental fatigue. Meaningful access is not a matter of appointing a single interpreter who will not be able to fulfil the task of full and accurate renditions for the LEP defendant after a certain period of time working alone. Working in teams for prolonged proceedings is the only way an LEP defendant can have meaningful access as required by law and the protection of his or her Constitutional due-process rights.

A Dilemma in the Courtroom

Mon, 14 Feb 2022 14:21:00 GMT

THE FOLLOWING IS NOT YOUR TYPICAL DAY IN COURT.

What do you do when you are challenged?

Is it professional of an interpreter to request a break?

Dilemma in the courtroom! What would you have done?

The following is an experience I had in a Superior Court in Georgia over the course of a proceeding a few years ago. I reported to my assignment as usual and went through the customary procedures: check in, sign the interpreter log, ask for the defendant, go through introductions with the attorney. But things didn’t go as they usually did for me that day. I had to interpret for a man in dire straits.

Court in session: as the judge called the calendar, I, the interpreter, answered for the defendant.

“How do you plead?” the judge asked.

“Guilty,” said the defendant.

“Your attorney, through the interpreter, will explain to you how the process works.”

During the pre-trial, the attorney told the defendant: “If you’re not a U.S. citizen, pleading guilty can aﬀect your immigration status.” So, I interpreted that. Suddenly the defendant, a native of a country not far from my own, addressed me directly: “Are you trying to get me deported, sister?” At this, the lawyer (having assessed the defendant’s frantic demeanor and having more or less understood what he had asked) intervened and said: “The interpreter merely interpreted what I just said. Do you want us to continue?”

“Yes,” replied the defendant.

So, we went back before the judge, who asked: “Did you understand everything? Did the interpreter interpret everything for you?”

“ NO, ” replied the defendant; “ the interpreter went to the bathroom!”

The courtroom burst into laughter. I kept my calm. The judge looked the defendant in the face and said to him: “Are you serious? The interpreter took a break because we all took a break. I called recess. If that is what you are referring to… do you still want to continue with the plea deal?”

“No,” answered the defendant, “I want a trial now!”

“Okay then,” replied the judge. “We’ll have your trial this afternoon after lunch break.”

I went to have my lunch on another floor, to avoid any further contact with the defendant!

Before the afternoon session began, the attorney was looking for me, and when I came down, he said to the defendant: “I don’t know if the interpreter still wants to work for you. If she says ‘no,’ I don’t blame her.” He then asked me, “Do you want to continue interpreting for him?”

“Yes,” I replied.

To our great surprise, suddenly the defendant started weeping and confessed that he was overwhelmed. He said that he had worked third shift and had subsequently come straight to court without having slept a wink or eaten anything.

“I’m hungry and I’m overwhelmed,” he sobbed. “I’m so sorry. Please forgive me.”

Stricken with compassion, I gave him some snacks before we went back for his hearing to give him a bit of strength and lift his spirits.

Turns out the story had a happy ending: the charges against him were dropped, and he could go home to his family.

My question, then, is for the reader: is it wrong, in this case, for the interpreter to give food to the defendant? What would you have done in this scenario?

Adjo likes singing, dancing, and cooking for her family and friends (now, for friends affected by COVID-19) when she is not translating, interpreting, or running her company, Le Pont Translations LLC, of which she is the founder and CEO. The company is based in Atlanta, Georgia, where she resides. Contact: mireille@leponttranslations.net

Images (main and body) provided courtesy of the author.

If you are a court or legal interpreter, I’m sure you have interpreted plea agreements before. This was a domestic-violence case, and when I met with the attorney for the pre-session, he mentioned that the defendant spoke some English. But since this was a serious case, the judge wanted to make sure the defendant understood everything in order to make an informed decision. That’s why a French interpreter was requested. It was explained to the defendant that he would receive assistance in sorting out his plea deal and the best possible options for him. He took the offer that was made him. Thus far, the pre-session.

Adjo (a.k.a. Mireille) Agbossoumonde dreamed of becoming a journalist thanks to her admiration of an Ewe journalist growing up in her native Togo. Because of her love of languages, she went on to study at the Université de Lomé, Togo, graduating with a bachelor’s degree in English and Linguistics and a master’s degree in English-French Translation. She became a sworn (certified) translator and interpreter in 2000. She also obtained a Certificate in Pedagogy from the National Institute of Education Sciences (INSE) and a Professional Development Certificate/Badge for Simultaneous Interpreting from New York University in 2016. Before moving to the U.S., she was a high-school teacher and taught English as a second language for six years. Here in the U.S., she taught French as a second language in the Atlanta Public School system for four years. She is an experienced French conference/RSI interpreter (French, Ewe, and Mina) and has been a full-time interpreter since 2009, specializing in medical, legal, and immigration court interpreting (EOIR). She is also a federal language consultant as a member of the NLSC (National Language Service Corps). She served as Contract Interpreter Monitor for USCIS (2010-2017).

A System of Checks and Balances

Mon, 07 Feb 2022 15:16:00 GMT

During my years of interpreting in many different areas, mostly in court and other legal settings, I have observed situations that seem, at the very least, inappropriate, unfair, and perhaps even illegal.

One of the first and simplest examples I can give is an assignment I just had a couple of days ago. I was sent to a company’s human-resources presentation introducing a new benefits management company. After the presentation, they began helping employees to register for benefits. I was assisting a person using a tablet to register when a woman approached me asking if her marital status was married or single. She told me she was not married but had filed “married filing jointly.” I referred her to the human-resources representative who, after asking the obvious question (are you married?) and hearing the answer (no), told her to write “married.” I have worked many years in accounting and bookkeeping and know how strict the IRS can be, so I was mortified. My job, however, is not to look after the LEP individual’s tax compliance, but to interpret and translate forms for them, so I kept my thoughts to myself.

All the same, having worked in accounting for more than fifteen years, I was appalled, and when I arrived home, I did a bit of searching and found the following:

“Under Section 1001 of title 18 of the United States Code, it is a federal crime to knowingly and willfully make a materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement in any matter within the jurisdiction of the executive, legislative, or judicial branch of the United States.”

I know the chances are small of someone being caught for misleading statements such as these, but I felt anguish nonetheless. I know that if I had been there as one of the new management-company representatives, the bookkeeper, the secretary, or the accountant, I could easily have been helpful and given a proper answer. But as an interpreter, I couldn’t. These are moral issues that I assume many of our colleagues deal with. This woman’s situation may have been considered a civil union, but in Illinois (where this assignment was taking place) the process for a civil union is as official as a marriage, yet the status is not recognized as such by federal law. Additionally, domestic partnerships are no longer a legal option for residents of Illinois.

A human-resources manager knows very well that the answer to the question of whether an employee should select “married” or “single” on a form is a very simple one. If the employee is married, choose “married” and if single, then choose “single.” This manager did not seem to have any qualms with her reply to the employee who came to her looking for advice. So why do I have a problem with it? I was just the interpreter, right?

This next example may illustrate my dilemma a little better.

I was asked to interpret for a lawyer who was explaining a plea agreement to his client in criminal court. Once the forms were filled out, we were to go before the judge. The LEP defendant was very confused and did not answer the questions during the preparation the way the attorney needed them answered in order to enter the plea, so before the hearing started, the attorney told his client that when the answer needed to be “yes” he would tap the table with one finger, and when a “no” was required, he would tap the table with two fingers. They did just that before the judge. I kept looking at everyone: the prosecutor, the judge, the clerk, the sheriffs, and they all saw what I saw. Not one person there had a problem with what transpired. So again, you would ask that if the individuals who have the power to put a stop to this process and give back to the LEP the right to be fully present in his or her own defense and afford him or her what the law provides through jurisprudence did not intervene, who am I to protest? While in the courtroom, I am an officer of the court, and it would be within my purview (see below) to report the issues that impede language access. However, to whom is the interpreter to report this? The court, the clerk’s office, the sheriff’s office? All those offices were physically represented and were witnessing what was occurring.

CODE OF PROFESSIONAL CONDUCT FOR INTERPRETERS, TRANSLITERATORS, AND TRANSLATORS

“Many persons who come before the courts are partially or completely excluded from full participation in the proceedings either because English is not their native language or because they have a speech or hearing impairment. The resulting communication barrier must be removed , as far as is possible, so that those persons are placed in the same position as similarly situated persons for whom there is no such barrier. As officers of the court, interpreters, transliterators, and translators help ensure that such persons enjoy equal access to justice and that court proceedings and court support services function efficiently and effectively. Interpreters, transliterators, and translators are highly skilled professionals who fulfill an essential role in the administration of justice.”

I learned about the system of checks and balances while working in accounting. Although the system is mainly used in government contexts, it can be applied in many others within the public and private sectors. In practical terms, the authority to take a given action rests with one department, while the responsibility to verify the appropriateness and legality of that action rests with another. So, I keep asking myself: why is this system failing? Who is responsible? But more importantly, are there solutions?

I know what my role is as an interpreter, and I am subject to my own code of ethics and conduct, but that does not mean that I do not struggle with these limitations and moral dilemmas.

Is that your experience? If so, how do you deal with these issues?

Your input can help us all in the profession, so please share how you handle not only the issues but the moral dilemmas as well. Thank you for reading TNO and for following this journey!

When Your Brain Splits in Two

Mon, 31 Jan 2022 06:00:00 GMT

Did you know humans can’t actually multi-task? We are capable of lightning concentration if we try, and we can quickly shift focus if we practice. But we can’t actually do two things at once. When we interpret simultaneously, for example, we listen. Then we process. Then we speak. Then we listen. Then we process. Then we speak. Then we… etc.

Like a juggler who starts with one ball then adds a second and a third, we can direct our attention to precise elements and then switch, very quickly. Until we miss something, of course, and the balls start falling to the floor.

I’m not here to reinvent scientific explanations, and papers have already been written on the topic. However, a little bit of practical understanding of the magic of our brains can help us to maximize our interpreting abilities.

I have a trick to demonstrate this. Try interpreting something. You can perform the exercise in any mode: consecutive, simultaneous, or sight translation. If you’re performing consecutive, you should listen and take notes. If you’ve picked sight translation or simultaneous, just dive in. Interpret. Do the best you can.

Done? Good. Now, I want you to do something else. This time, cut out the interpreting. If you had audio input, just listen. If you were sight translating a document, just read.

Okay. You did it. What happened?

The trick never fails. The second time through, when you listen just for listening’s sake, or you read simply to understand… the content makes more sense. We capture more nuance. Our comprehension goes up.

It has to, of course. Before, your energy was split. Your brain has a finite amount of energy and attention, and when you are interpreting, it is split. This is important because it means that when we are interpreting, we cannot listen at 100%. A portion of our brain has to process and speak, too. So maybe we can devote only 60% to listening. That means 20% is processing and 20% is speaking, so no wonder we say ridiculous things when we are interpreting. (The fancy name to explain that phenomenon is booth brain. )

The point is, interpreting is like running with weights on your ankles. It’s harder, and your legs won’t work as well until you build the muscle.

The conclusion? Well, if we are aware of our split attention, we can control it. When I interpret from Spanish to my native language of English, I purposely put more energy into comprehension because that will be more challenging. Alternatively, when I interpret into Spanish, I focus more energy on my output because speaking in Spanish is harder for me than listening in English.

Then, don’t forget output! You have to also spend time learning to speak clearly and confidently.

The important thing here is that we separate the elements. Get used to one ball. Then you can start juggling with more.

I encounter a lot of resistance when I ask my students to perform shadowing, paraphrasing, and dual-task exercises. I encounter even more resistance when I tell them to practice reading aloud, to work on reading and listening comprehension, or to create their own speeches. People tend to think that that’s not helpful. So instead, they repeat the same mistakes, with different materials, over and over again. Then they get mad when their interpreting skills don’t improve.

The moral of the story? Our brain splits in two when we interpret. Sometimes into three or four. So we have to maximize each piece of our brain as best we can and create the ideal circumstances for success. We must isolate the different elements of interpreting and practice accordingly.

But don’t take my word for it. Try it, and see what you think!

Main photo by geralt from Pixabay . Body photo also by geralt from Pixabay .

The other thing is that since we cannot listen at 100% while we are interpreting, we have to make sure that our diminished capacity is still darn good. That means practicing listening. I’m serious. We take listening for granted, as though all listeners were made equal, but let me tell you: We were not made equal. And your 60% has to look like someone else’s 100%. That means devoting time just to listening comprehension. You want to level up your listening skills so that when you interpret, you keep that listening-for-listening’s-sake ability to capture nuance.

Athena Matilsky fell in love with Spanish the year she turned 16. She chose it as her major at Rutgers University and selected a focus in translation and interpreting. After graduation, she taught elementary school in Honduras and then returned home to begin freelancing as a medical and court interpreter. She has since achieved certifications as a Healthcare Interpreter and a Federal Court Interpreter. She was the recent editor-in-chief of Proteus. Currently, she works as a freelance interpreter/translator and trains candidates privately for the state and federal interpreting exams. When she is not writing or interpreting, you may find her practicing acroyoga or studying French. Website: https://athenaskyinterpreting.wordpress.com/

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