Pardon the interruption to your regularly-scheduled programming, but it’s spring! And I must have spring fever, because all I want to do is go around singing.

In all seriousness, I wanted to share with you my absolute best getting-the-interpreting-juices going trick, something that I’ve never heard anyone else recommend. Something you probably do all the time, but never thought to use as a warm-up. Allow me to, as usual, introduce my friends the Muppets (or, in this case, some human residents of Sesame Street).

Sing! – Sesame Street 1971

Now that we’re back in 2012 (that episode dates from 1971; I believe it may be the first time the song was ever performed on Sesame Street, and how nice that it’s in a bilingual version!), I am actually being 100% serious when I tell you that you should sing along with the radio or a CD to warm up for interpreting.

Specifically, find an artist whose songs tell clear, coherent stories without a lot of repetitions, using a lot of high-falutin’ language and word play. Folk, country, and soft rock are good for this (sorry, reggaeton fans). In Spanish, I like Ricardo Arjona, José Luis Perales, and Silvio Rodríguez. In English, Billy Joel, Elton John, Joni Mitchell, and the Barenaked Ladies (if you haven’t heard of them, they’re an all-male Canadian pop group known for fast, clever lyrics). Obviously my Spanish repertoire could stand to improve!

In any case, if your voice is like mine, I recommend singing in the car on your way to an assignment … with the windows closed. (If you can actually carry a tune, feel free to open them.) Really belt it out (not enough to damage your throat, of course!). My totally unscientific, anecdotal evidence suggests that singing along with such music (especially in your B language) offers many advantages:

• It gets you thinking in the language you’re singing in.
• It brings complex language and grammatical structures to the tip of your brain, to be pulled out when you need them under pressure.
• It physically warms up your mouth and vocal apparatus.
• Following along with a pleasing rhythm will make the pacing of your speech more pleasant for your listener.
• And most important, especially if you’re an introvert, singing along enthusiastically will get you over your stage fright.

So, try it out next time you need to get in the right frame of mind for a complex assignment. It’s more fun than shadowing or going back over the same interpreting exercises you’ve memorized by now. (Neither of which you should ever, ever, ever do in the car.)

What artists do you think would be good to sing along with in your working languages? Who should I add to my warm-up lists?

Posted in Odds & Ends| 2 Comments »

The best compliment I ever received on my interpreting wasn’t exactly about the quality of my work or even how well I spoke both languages. The words that made me glow with satisfaction? “I almost forgot you were there.” To any interpreter, this should be one of our most important goals—to let the witness be the center of attention, to let him tell the story with as little interference as possible.

On this particular occasion, conditions were absolutely ideal. It was a trial for the murder of a police officer. Both the defense attorney and the prosecutor’s questions were concise and to the point. There was none of that fumbling or backtracking that is the interpreter’s nightmare during direct and cross-examination. The dreaded “strike that” did not once put in an appearance. The witness for the prosecution, who had been expertly prepared, listened carefully to the questions and answered without hesitations, babbling or non sequiturs, even though his testimony was very emotional (the officer had died in his arms.) Good preparation and smart attorneys enabled me to fulfill my role with no cumbersome requests for repetition or clarification. Smooth as silk.

But it doesn’t always happen that way, does it? We’ve all interpreted in disastrous situations in which we are forced to bring attention to ourselves in order to protect the record. At the same time, we are expected to make everything work smoothly in spite of too-lengthy or wordy questions and answers, and poorly prepared lawyers and witnesses.

The best thing we interpreters can do is prepare as much as possible. This not only means preparing ourselves by seeking out and examining all information on the case, but also (in the nicest way possible) educating the attorney or attorneys on how to question their LEP witnesses on the stand. A few instructions made to the witness beforehand are, of course, absolutely essential.

So you’re all ready. You understand the case and you have researched all of the terminology you believe you will need. You have spoken briefly with the witness to become acquainted with speech patterns and accent, and perhaps even been so lucky as to have interpreted for the witness preparation. What else can you do to ensure a smooth-running consecutive interpretation?

Make yourself invisible. No, really. Being as unobtrusive as possible will help the triers of fact to concentrate on what the witness is saying, and not on you. There are various steps you can take to achieve this near-invisibility. The first, of course has to do with how you look. Dress conservatively but neatly. You’re not there to impress anybody with your fashion sense, but rather to focus attention away from yourself and toward the witness.

Positioning helps too. When I interpret consecutively, whether for attorney/client consultations, depositions or courtroom witness testimony, I place myself if at all possible to the side and somewhat back from the witness. Unlike simultaneous interpreting without equipment, there is no need to stay close or to whisper into the witness’ ear on the stand, since whatever the interpreter says, whether into or from the witness’ language, should be spoken aloud—indeed, loud and clear. The reason for this is two-fold: I don’t want to draw attention to myself and away from the witness, and I don’t want the witness to be looking at me, but rather at the person asking the questions. In addition, when a proceeding is being recorded, it is essential that every word be clear because of the possibility of later challenges to the interpretation.

As for myself, I don’t need to look at the witness at all during consecutive interpreting, since I am either taking notes or reading them, although I can see the witness out of the corner of my eye. As I am reading and interpreting my notes, I do glance up as frequently as possible at the attorney or judge who has asked the question to maintain the illusion that the witness is speaking through me.

At about this point, you are probably saying to yourself: “I know all that. Why is she going on about it?” Well, I guess my point is that it’s important to review your courtroom demeanor objectively or, better yet, have a colleague observe you and give some constructive criticism. All good interpreters love feedback.

The following is a true story.

A few months ago, I was fortunate enough to be able to observe two of my colleagues, both certified interpreters, in a situation that was far from ideal. The witness was an elderly lady who spoke very slowly and ponderously. She was not at all hard-of-hearing, but she seemed to have her own agenda, something she wanted to communicate that sometimes had nothing to do with the questions being asked. Some of her answers took the form of non-sequiturs, and her slow, hesitant delivery was difficult to interpret accurately. The prosecuting attorney became more and more frustrated, and his questions began to take on an accusatory tone. The strategy of the first interpreter was to look directly at the witness, and get as close as possible in an attempt to somehow make her listen to the questions. The only result was that the witness looked at the interpreter when answering, but little else was achieved. The interpreter, intent on trying to make sense of the old lady’s ramblings, did not take any notes. As if relieved to have understood what she was saying, and afraid of forgetting it, the interpreter would summarize as quickly as possible in a rather perky tone far removed from the lady’s own manner of speaking. These attempts to make the old lady listen, and then to clarify what she said became extraordinarily distracting.

When it came time for the other interpreter to take over, she simply sat back, took notes, and tried to convey exactly what the lady was saying with no attempt to have it “make sense.” Her words were delivered slowly; they seemed ever so subtly to reflect the weight of years expressed in the voice of the old lady. Every pause and “uh” was there. The atmosphere became less charged and things seemed to fall into a natural rhythm. The interpreter was doing her job. I almost forgot she was there.

Online resources

National Center for State Courts
Court Interpreting: View from the Bench
http://www.ncsconline.org/wc/publications/Res_CtInte_StateCrtJV20N1ViewFromTheBenchPub.pdf

New England Law Review
Protecting the Rights of Linguistic Minorities: Challenges to Court Interpretation
Charles M. Grabau and Llewellyn Joseph Gibbons
http://www.nesl.edu/userfiles/file/lawreview/vol30-2-GRABAU.HTM

National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey: Interpretation Guidelines, p. 4
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhanes/nhanes_07_08/Interpretation_Guidelines.pdf

Tags: consecutive, notes, position, unobrusive, witness, witness testimony
Court Interpreting, Odds & Ends| 4 Comments »

By Katharine Allen, InterpretAmerica  © 2012

“Rejected Afghan Interpreters Get Second Chance to Come to Canada”[1]

“US Contract Interpreter Missing and Believed Kidnapped in Iraq”[2]

“Families of Dead US Soldiers Sue Over Afghan Interpreter’s Armed Rampage”[3]

“Iranian Refugee Nearly Latest Victim of Poor Translation”[4]

 “Japanese Earthquake Highlights the Need for Multilingual Communications”[5]

These are just a smattering of headlines that have become increasingly common in recent years. While international exchange and economic globalization generally represent the 2-stroke engine that has driven positive growth in the interpreting profession for decades, it is all too easy to overlook that conflict and war are often pulled into this engine’s wake.

And just as international business requires multilingual communication, so too does war.

Yet how often do we, as language professionals, pause to consider who is actually providing interpreting services in conflict zones? Who gets sent to Iraq with the troops, or accompanies the Red Cross on missions to Sudan, or works on the ground during interdiction efforts in Colombia or Mexico for the war on drugs? Interpreters who facilitate communication in conflict zones put themselves at great physical and psychological risk, and yet are mostly unknown to other interpreters, because they work in isolation from the rest of the profession. The service they provide is vital, and it is time our profession widens its reach to officially bring them into the fold.

This blog post will consider three groups of conflict zone interpreters: military linguists, contract interpreters, and humanitarian interpreters.

The effort to recruit and train military linguists is where most of the money in interpreting is actually spent. Over the past decade, in an effort to fill the huge communication needs for our troops on the ground, literally billions of dollars have been thrown at training up Pashto, Dari, Urdu, Farsi and Arabic speakers for the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Others receive training in the less noticed but no less critical languages such as Spanish, Portuguese and French, to provide linguistic resources for the war on drugs in Latin America and the many areas of engagement in French and Portuguese-speaking parts of the world.

Members of the Army’s O9 Lima Linguist program, which has trained many linguists to provide “translation in theater,” provide a good example of whom the military is tapping to provide interpreting services. According to goarmy.com, O9 Linguists “use [their] language to assist officers at military traffic control points, combat troops in the field, and the public affairs office.” It goes on to say that “as a linguist in the U.S. Army, you’ll help shape the course of history by supporting U.S. soldiers overseas with your words and promoting peace and understanding through communication.”  This short video provides a glimpse into the kind of training and work conditions military linguists experience.

Yet despite the many billions of dollars spent on building up language resources, little work has been done to analyze the activities of interpreters in conflict zones, and few troops receive actual training in translation and interpreting. (A notable exception is the development of a few innovative training courses created in the past 5 years, such as the Military Translation and Interpretation Pilot Program designed by the Monterey Institute of International Studies, the Translation and Interpretation Training Capabilities Project, a 3-week curriculum created by Cyracom International for the Defense Language Institute, and the US Army’s 09L linguist training program).

A second critical group that more typically appears in the news cycle is comprised of contract or civilian interpreters. Headlines about this group can be either negative, reporting on interpreters having facilitated attacks on American forces, or tragic, covering their death while on duty or their precarious local situation as “collaborators with the enemy” once the troops pull out.

Contract interpreters provide the majority of interpretation services in conflict zones, from accompanying on patrol to interpreting during key leader engagements.  They are typically either foreign nationals hired locally, or native speakers of the target language who have recently moved to the United States.  In both cases, they are recruited and managed by private companies under contract to the U.S. government and may or may not have formal training. Currently, the starting salary for a contract Pashto or Dari interpreter recruited in the U.S. is well over $100,000. Interpreters with high-level security clearances earn even more.  These high salaries reflect not just the scarcity of qualified linguists, but the extreme danger into which they are sent. In fact, language service providers who bid on these government contracts are sometimes required to supply not just the interpreter, but to also provide for their funeral arrangements ahead of deployment.

If the first two groups are at least occasionally brought to our consciousness, a third group, interpreters working on the ground with international aid and news organizations, flies almost completely under our radar. Yet their expertise is just as critical and sought after. When the Red Cross moves into Somalia or the Sudan, they need interpreters. When journalists flock to Egypt and northern Africa to cover the Arab Spring, they need competent, reliable linguists in any number of obscure languages. And though not strictly related to conflict, when relief agencies converge on a devastated Haiti, flooded Pakistan or earthquake and nuclear disaster shaken Japan, qualified interpreters have to be on the ground to facilitate the massively complex logistics such aid efforts require.

One organization, in particular, has dedicated itself to training interpreters who work for humanitarian efforts. In 2011, the University of Geneva’s Interpreter Department formally created The Center for Interpreting in Conflict Zones: InZone. The Center’s website lays out the mission for this new initiative: “Whether they work in Gaza, Kabul or Nairobi, humanitarian field interpreters work in isolation and are often ill prepared for their job. Improving communication in conflict zones has become the key objective of the Interpreting Department’s latest initiative, InZone, which delivers virtual skill training to interpreters in the field.”[6]

InZone’s groundbreaking work is seeking to establish for conflict zone interpreters what other sectors in Interpreting have already accomplished: to define the most basic elements required for any profession – ethics and standards of conduct, basic education and training requirements, and minimum standards for workplace requirements.

Another agency worth noting is the National Language Service Corps, which was established in 2006 through a congressional mandate “to test the idea of a national corps of individuals who spoke languages other than English to offer their support to Federal agencies during times of crisis, such as relief efforts after hurricanes.”[7] Since then, NLSC has continued to provide training and placement for linguists during natural disasters and the US military and government agencies. While very different in scope and mission from InZone, it represents one of the only organizations in the US that targets humanitarian interpreting.

Despite playing catch-up inside our profession, military and conflict zone interpreters have a lot to teach the rest of us. How to stay safe when interpreting in unsure settings, how to handle vicarious trauma, and how to stay focused and effective under extreme circumstances are just a few of the challenges they face and overcome on a daily basis. These examples represent the tip of the iceberg of a rich and highly relevant dialog that our own profession has yet to engage in with interpreters, agencies, and other stakeholders who have worked to provide language services in conflict zones.

To jumpstart that conversation, InterpretAmerica is holding a first-of-its-kind panel on Interpreting in Conflict Zones at the upcoming 3^rd North American Summit on Interpreting, June 15-16 in Monterey, California. Panel members represent individuals who have been immersed in many aspects of interpreting in conflict zones, including one of the principal authors of Cyracom’s TITC curriculum, an O9L combat linguist from the 51 Translation and Interpretation Company at Fort Irwin, California, a military officer who has served multiple missions working with interpreters, a contract interpreter with vast experience working in conflict zones and subsequently training military linguists, and Dr. Barbara Moser-Mercer, who spearheaded the creation of InZone for the University of Geneva.

For complete details, visit www.interpretamerica.net or email info@interpretamerica.net.

Tags: 3rd North American Summit on Interpreting, Conflict Zones, Cyracom, Humanitarian, InterpretAmerica, interpreting, Inzone, Linguists, MIIS, Military, Monterey Institute, NLSC, O9 LIma, University of Geneva
ASL, Community Interpreting, Conference Interpreting, Court Interpreting, Medical Interpreting, New Ideas| 5 Comments »

-by Giovanna Lester © 2012

Remote Interpreting (RI) is defined as any form of simultaneous interpreting in which the interpreter works away from the meeting room either by telephone or by utilizing video-conferencing tools such as cable arrangements, closed-circuit TV and other similar technologies.

Despite what many believe, RI is not new. Agencies and organizations that are part of RI’s history include:

• ♦ UNESCO “Symphonie Satellite” – 1976
• ♦ NYC-Buenos Aires United Nations experiment – 1978
• ♦ European Telecommunications Standards Institute study on ISDN video telephony for conference interpreters – 1993
• ♦ Various tests by the European Commission – 1995, 1997, 2000
• ♦ United Nations tests – 1999, 2001
• ♦ European Parliament – 2001

However, two important factors have contributed to RI’s increasing prevalence in recent years. The first and probably most important factor, from the point of view of language service providers and conference organizers, has been the advances in technological developments. These advances allow for the delivery of better sound and image quality for conference attendees and interpreters. The second factor is the development of technology industry standards that have made using these technologies easier and more affordable.

Some noted improvements relate to design elements such as improved ergonomics, less complex set-ups and a reduced number of input sources. The above developments, however, have had no direct impact on the professional interpreter, and the human element has become the most important variable in the process.

The human body has its own limitations and these have been noted in studies as recently as 2006 and as far back as 1998. For example, the lack of visual input results in greater stress, and affects the interpreter’s ability to commit information to memory. Improper set-up can result in physical tiredness (eye fatigue, fatigue related to mental multi-tasking, etc.). Other complaints noted were related to the social isolation and the technical aspects of controlling multiple input devices.

A controlled study (Moser-Mercer, 2002) has shown that working live in a conference setting is less stressful and less tiring than working in RI environments. Another study, by Erickson and Kintsch (1995), shows that the RI-created environment affects interpreters’ efficiency, comprehension and production processes in their short- and long-term working memory, which is reflected in the quality of their performance.

My personal experience in the area of RI is not extensive, but it is varied in regard to both set-up and pay. It seems that the market has not found its point of equilibrium yet.

One of my first experiences was with the more complex set-up. It involved (1) using a landline and (2) a cell phone while (3) negotiating Yahoo instant communication service in order to (4) coordinate the hand-off to my colleague, while at the same time (5) following the PowerPoint slides on my computer, (6) using a headphone for the audio line and (7) holding the landline phone upside down so its microphone was closer to my mouth and the rest of the phone did not bump into my headset! Fortunately, the client had provided the PowerPoint slides ahead of time, which assisted my colleague and me in becoming familiar with the terminology and determining the rhythm and delivery needed to fit text and sound together.

In another instance, the client had me listen to the live presentation once, then listen to the recording of that live presentation, then interpret while listening again—all with no visual clues, no handouts, and no PowerPoint slides. I still needed two separate lines: one for hearing and one for speaking.

At my most recent endeavor in the RI field, the client got it almost completely right. I was invited into a studio and provided with the material ahead of time so we could agree on the rendition of certain terms and coordinate the speaking/slide synchronization. And there was a rehearsal the day before the event. On the day of the event, we had people joining us from eight different countries. Since we had been given their presentations ahead of time, there were very few surprises and all of them were negotiable. My colleague and I were given professional respect (they took our input into consideration and made changes to set-up and script), and were respected as human beings as well: we were given comfortable chairs, snacks, lunch, and technical support. Another indication of professional respect was the level of pay. The only reason it was almost perfect is because the monitor was below eye level and the microphone was not at the right height, which caused me to hunch forward, and resulted in upper back discomfort. The assignment was only one hour long and I could not have endured it for much longer. Again, ergonomics is very important.

What I learned from the above experiences: Remote Interpreting is the new darling in the field because companies are faced with new financial demands, and they are considering a wide variety of technologies that can potentially assist them in navigating those demands. However, they still need to learn what can and what cannot be expected in terms of interpreter performance. This is actually a great opportunity for professional interpreters—the human element—to have a stronger say in the development of this segment and to set limits.

Scientific studies show that the stress on interpreters during RI goes beyond the psychological. It is physical and has been recorded: eye strain, muscle fatigue, confusion and headaches, among others. Citing the Moser-Mercer study of 2002: “The remote interpreting situation appears to represent not only a novel environment for interpreters in which they need to invoke more effortful problem-solving strategies, but seems to cause more than the usual physiological and psychological strain in that the coordination of image and sound, the piecing together of a reality far away and the concomitant feeling of lack of control all draw on mental resources already over-committed in this highly complex skill.” Erickson and Kintsch (1995) suggest that shorter on-task times may improve interpreter performance.

During my experience as Moderator of the Technology Panel at InterpretAmerica’s Second North American Summit on Interpreting, I had the opportunity to discuss technology, training, expectations, design, and other related topics with several of the manufacturers present. It was surprising to learn that they do, in fact, want our input — that of the actual end-user, the Interpreter, and not just that of the buyer — with regard to their equipment design. They were surprised as well to learn that not much training was provided to either the interpreters or the technicians setting up our booths, and that the buyers of their equipment expected the technicians to read the manuals and convey that information to the interpreters. Some of these findings are recorded in the report by Marjory Bancroft, aptly titled, “Interpreting: Full Speed Ahead, Blazing a Trail toward National Unity,” available for download at http://www.interpretamerica.net/publications (starting on page 36).

Bancroft’s report, in addition to being more recent, took into account the recommendations of panels composed of stakeholders with different backgrounds and roles in the interpreting field. Hence, it may be the most relevant with regard to interpreter input on technology development.

Technology and the human element have to come together. And since technology is manipulated by and created to serve the human element, it is us interpreters who have to determine how to apply the technology, how to accommodate our physical and psychological needs, and how to educate our clients as to our own, human limitations in order to curb their expectations. We also need to work with technology providers to assist in the task oriented and ergonomic aspects of the devices we use. Until interpreters take these responsibilities to heart and start educating our clients and advocating for improvements in working conditions, we can’t expect change.

====================

References:
AIIC: http://www.aiic.net/ViewPage.cfm/article879.htm#job – Remote interpreting: Assessment of human factors and performance parameters
AIIC: http://aiic.net/ViewTheme.cfm?Theme_ID=353 – Collection of articles and white papers on remote interpreting

AIIC: http://aiic.net/ViewPage.cfm/article85.htm – Guidelines for Remote Interpreting

Cadernos CML: http://multimedialinguas.wordpress.com/edicoes/ano-i-2010/0001-janeiro/panayotis-mouzourakis-%C2%ABremote-interpreter-training-training-for-remote-interpreting%C2%BB/

Posted in Conference Interpreting, New Ideas| 10 Comments »

No matter how high-minded we are, or pretend to be, I think all of us have a guilty secret when it comes to popular TV shows. For some it might be the latest crazy reality show or the hottest telenovela. For me it’s a show called “What Not to Wear.” I get a real kick out of the way the gorgeous experts take some cluelessly frumpy or flashy female and turn her into a confident, professional-looking woman. Love it.                                                           

So how does this relate to you? You probably dress just fine for the courtroom. But why is it so important? You might say “I want to look professional” or “I want to be taken seriously.” Yes, there is that, but there are some other important reasons as well.  

When the subject of dressing for court comes up, the advice I often hear is “dress like an attorney.” Well, yes and no. I know a number of attorneys whose style of dress I wouldn’t want to emulate in a thousand years. There’s the sloppy old public defender who’s been around for as long as anyone can remember with the frayed corduroy jacket, the wrinkled khakis and the stained tie. Then there’s the Allie McBeal lookalike with the tight suit complete with mini-skirt and stiletto heels. One thing the interpreter has to remember is that the attorney has no reason to be unobtrusive; on the contrary, many high-profile attorneys make it part of their business to be as noticeable as possible. The interpreter? Not so much. 

Part of our job is to be unobtrusive, and that includes our attire. Does that mean we must wear the same old black jacket and pants or skirt every day? Well, not that either. During the course of my 14-odd years (sometimes very odd indeed) as a court interpreter, I have seen almost every possible version of interpreter attire in the courts, from blue jeans and flannel shirt at traffic arraignments to chiffon ruffles and oodles of jewelry at child custody hearings. These interpreters will say that they need to be comfortable, or that that’s their “look.” They have their own way of dressing and want to be seen as individuals. Unfortunately, the courtroom interpreter simply cannot afford the luxury of being seen as different or special in this particular way. Strangely enough, I have observed that the more noticeable the clothes are, the less competent the interpreter seems to be. Interpreters who insist on their own particular way of dressing just don’t seem to hang around very long.  

As with anything that contributes to your success as a self-employed free-lancer, clothes are an investment, albeit not one you can deduct from your taxes. They must fit well and look good. They must be clean and neat. When you’re just starting out you may not have a decent professional wardrobe; it’s not something you acquire overnight. Watch for sales. Save up your money for that special confidence-boosting jacket. Find a really good tailor who understands your body type. 

Now, I’m not a person who is very good at matching up tops and pants and skirts and jackets. Having grown up wearing school uniforms, I just never got the hang of it. So what I have done over the years is to look out for sales and buy very good quality women’s suits at half the original price or even less. I have over 20 pant and skirt suits which I rotate and match up with different tops. I feel confident in what I wear. I have put a good deal of time and effort into looking just right, and I find it empowering. I wear low heels, because the profession often calls for a lot of standing or walking quickly from place to place.  Heck, sometimes we even have to run! 

Guys, of course, have it a lot easier. The suit and tie are, of course, de rigueur. But the suit must fit, the tie must be tasteful, the pants must break just right above the dress shoe. No Hush Puppies or Doc Martens, please. 

And speaking of shoes, make sure yours are in good repair. I’ll never forget the time the heel fell off one of the well-worn (alright, decrepit) dress sandals I had worn that day; a resourceful bailiff glued it back on seconds before the judge got on the bench. I won’t make that mistake again. 

So, this is what it boils down to. It doesn’t matter if you’re interpreting in a tiny podunk court in the boonies for a case involving a farm truck and a bicycle or a federal case involving international drug trafficking. You’ve got to dress the part. As always, you are our representative, you are the face of the interpreter community. Here’s looking at you, kid.

More about courtroom attire:

http://www.law.ua.edu/pubs/jlp/files/issues_files/vol12/vol12art13.pdf

http://old.post-gazette.com/pg/09151/973982-455.stm

http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2010/04/12/so-what-exactly-should-female-attorneys-wear/

Tags: court interpreting, courtroom attire, dress for success, interpreting, professionalism, tasteful, unobtrusive
Odds & Ends| 3 Comments »

Now that we’ve established in Part I that we’re going to think about interpreting in a teleological (outcome-based) way, the obvious next question is: What outcome are we talking about?

In this entry, I will use the term “goal” rather than “outcome.”

outcome Pronunciation: /ˈaʊtkʌm/• noun • the way a thing turns out; a consequence: it is the outcome of the vote that counts

goal Pronunciation: /gəʊl/• noun • 1(in football, rugby, hockey, and some other games) …2 the object of a person’s ambition or effort; an aim or desired result: he achieved his goal of becoming King of England

That is, an “outcome” is what eventually happens in a given situation. A “goal” is a desired result (outcome) that you put an effort into reaching. (Thanks to The Oxford Dictionaries Online.) Because, as a practice profession, we make decisions in such a way as to bring about the outcome we want (teleologically), we will refer to the desired outcome we are working towards as the “goal.”

Any situation in which we find ourselves has an ultimate goal, a desired end outcome. When we go to the grocery store, our ultimate goal is to acquire the things we need. We probably also have other, intermediate goals, such as not taking all day to get them all, not spending more than our budget permits, and so forth.  The same can be said for any situation in which we find ourselves interpreting. Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: challenges, ethics, professionalism
New Ideas| No Comments »

A good, healthy session of constructive criticism by a senior colleague about our performance or skills as interpreters is something I venture to say we would all embrace at some level, right? Whether meant as gentle guidance or a harsh reality check, at the end of the day we’ve grown just a little if we heed these words of advice. But what if we’re being challenged by someone who hasn’t been where we’ve been? How do we position ourselves to best respond?

What is it that places interpreters in a position where outsiders would think to challenge us? Well, I know a lot about my car, and when I take it to a mechanic for something I have an inkling about, I’d probably speak up if I had an idea. Same thing goes when I take my child to the doctor because, after all, I usually have information to complement his medical opinion.

How we handle ourselves in any given interpreting situation happens in the open, and seemingly, a lot of the people around us have some level of understanding about what we do. So, yes, there is often a critical eye observing us, and feeling empowered to give opinions. The courts in California have attempted to address part of the issue of challenges by bilingual jurors who believe they hear an interpreter error on the witness stand. To a certain degree, the jury instruction[1] typically given does acknowledge the interpreter’s skills and abilities by saying that the jury must rely on the interpreter’s version. Although it goes on to allow for the challenge, the deference to the professional is understood.

We know that we are subject to both challenges and criticism, but so are other professions. A couple of factors that make it more difficult for us when we are targeted may be how our training is perceived, in general, and specifically, how we present ourselves.

We’ve heard that outside the US, linguist careers are already requiring university degrees, whereas so many training programs here are more similar to trade school certificates. Although I think there are valid arguments on both sides of the issue of “to be or not to be” university trained in the profession (often, great linguists come from other industries before joining our ranks), we have to acknowledge that kids here aren’t born into a culture that holds interpreting among the most highly regarded professions. I hope this will someday change, but in the meantime, although the knowledge we can gain over the span of a career can rival that of doctors and lawyers and scientists (we speak their words— so much of it sticks!!), when we do our jobs correctly, we simply work in their shadows.

How much of this perception can we personally chip away at in our daily dealings? If it’s all about perception, then it’s no longer a matter of only great performances and consistently upholding ethics; what we have to do is “represent” our profession in all we do. A courteous reaction to somebody who has no business challenging how I do things would be to educate, to calmly explain myself—even when my blood is boiling. But even before we are in a position to explain ourselves, if we are perceived by others as someone who has their act together, rather than some “second-class professional,” our reaction is better supported and more credible. This is probably quite individual, but we can all agree that the more we take our responsibility to the profession to heart, the fewer words we’ll need for explaining ourselves, and the more likely we’ll see those around us defer to our expertise.

On a side note, challenges from clients can be handled in a variety of ways, up to and including our decision to terminate the business relationship. When the challenge comes from an employer, however, this can be a stickier situation. Hopefully, we’ll have the backing of national organizations such as NAJIT and ATA (American Translators Association), state organizations and professional unions if, for example, an employer considers that professional ethics and the mechanics of how we complete our task must take a backseat to internal policy. In any case, holding steadfast to what we know is correct is sometimes easier said than done.

So, is the challenge from outside the profession friend or foe? Likely, it is all in how we react. A calm, reasoned answer will hopefully turn even an outrageous perception on how we do things into mutual understanding. At the end of the day, the challenges that we are facing should definitely not go on in silence. Personally, I find it very valuable when colleagues from afar share what they are going through, because all of us become more aware and prepared if similar things happen to us. Unless and until the interpretation and translation hold a place in the hierarchy that is widely recognized and understood as the highly specialized professions they are, we should embrace all challenges as “friend”, and know we will only become stronger as a result.

Tags: challenges, codes, conduct, duty, ethics, perception, professionalism
ASL, Community Interpreting, Conference Interpreting, Court Interpreting, Medical Interpreting, Odds & Ends| 1 comment »

In 2009, the DEA spearheaded a sting operation in Africa whereby informants posed as FARC members and sought local Africans’ assistance in transporting drugs across the Sahara to be sold in Spain in order to finance FARC operations. By early 2010 three men were arrested in Ghana and in short order put on a plane to New York, where they were arraigned on charges of narco-terrorism: conspiracy to provide material support to a terrorist organization. These cases have become more frequent in the Southern District of New York, long considered the “premiere district” for prosecutions of this kind.  Since the defendants hailed from Mali, whose official language is French, the interpreters’ office provided a French interpreter for their initial court appearance. A short time later, one of the defense attorneys called the interpreters’   office to say that communication with his client could not be effective in French; what he needed was a Songhay interpreter. And that’s where our adventurous tale begins.

It’s not unusual for metropolitan court interpreter offices to get requests for uncommon languages. Sometimes those languages are ones we have never even heard of.  Latin American Indian dialects and African dialects can be great challenges. It is one thing to find a speaker of these languages and English, but an interpreter? Why would there be an experienced interpreter of a language combination with no market? In the end, these are language requests that prove our mettle: all our knowledge, experience, contacts and common sense have to come into play to help us identify appropriate candidates to act as interpreters in a court setting.

Songhay sent us directly to and Ethnologue and Wikipedia. As the latter explains, “The Songhay, Songhai, or Songai languages (pronounced [soŋaj], or [soŋoj] in the dialects of the cities of Timbuktu and Gao; the spellings Sonrai and Sonxay are sometimes seen) are a group of closely related languages/dialects centered on the middle stretches of the Niger River in the west African states of Mali, Niger, Benin, Burkina Faso, and Nigeria. They have been widely used as a lingua franca in that region ever since the era of the Songhay Empire. In Mali, the government has officially adopted the dialect of Gao (east of Timbuktu) as the dialect to be used as a medium of primary education.”

In this case, my office was told that the defendants needed someone who spoke the Gao regional variant. Further searches revealed that the Malian émigré community in the U.S. was very small, numbering only in the hundreds in most cities.

Sometimes a court interpreters’ office has to act like a detective. Especially since we can’t very well tell a federal judge in a high-profile case that interpreters in this language are impossible. to locate. So our hunt began: we contacted other state and federal courts, and interpreter listservs, of course; but then we spread a wide net, contacting: the Malian embassy, Mali Mission to the United Nations; U.S. State Dept. language section; Center for Applied Linguistics; PEN African Languages; Peace Corps; cross-cultural organizations; African Studies programs at many universities; African Literature Association; National African Language Resource Center; Friends of Mali; Friends of Niger; African Academy of Languages; African Language Services; Northeast Regional Consortium of Programs in African Languages; African Services Committee, World Network for Linguistic Diversity. We Googled all kinds of combinations using the word “Songhay,” and even contacted various entities in Europe and Africa.

After all this, the leads were few. We ended up with the names and phone numbers of two candidates, one in NY and one in Maryland, who spoke good Songhay and English (according to others), both of whom worked full time, having no experience in interpreting or translating. There has been no market in the U.S. in this language combination, so it was not surprising that we could not find anyone who met the court’s requirements in simultaneous interpreting ability.  As chief interpreter, I was ultimately responsible for the interpreters we sent to court. I realized that we would probably have to train these folks ourselves.  We would orient them, lecture, demonstrate, motivate them to learn, and show them how to practice. I had plenty of material already prepared, having offered training in the past for interpreters of other languages.

But I needed to chase them down. One candidate traveled to NY on several occasions to test the waters by attending brief court conferences or attorney-client consultations. In these, it was determined that he spoke the right dialect but that he was way over his head when it came to interpreting courtroom speech. Yet he was responsible and serious, and the best we could do at the time.  I spent several months leaving messages for the second candidate, who was local. Then I set up a meeting with her and told her I planned to hold some future training sessions. She was game.

It turned out my two candidates knew one another through mutual friends. I planned a training session over a holiday weekend so they wouldn’t lose work days. For 21 hours over three days, we worked hard on shadowing, paraphrasing, lag exercises, vocabulary, and early simultaneous exercises. With coaching, the two candidates showed aptitude.  Graduated practice sessions resulted in their ability to simultaneously interpret simplified legal material for short periods (5-10 minutes) at slow speeds, though their knowledge of English was not sophisticated, and they were unfamiliar with high-register terms. Quite a bit of additional training would be needed before they could undertake any long proceeding such as a suppression hearing or trial. Given our need for their services and lack of other alternatives, I was willing to provide additional training, but couldn’t convince my court administration to pay the candidates for time devoted to training. (The promise of future work was not compensation enough for their efforts, since they would be investing a lot of time to training.) Despite my pleas, the candidates became embittered at what they saw as the court’s disrespect. I begged, pleaded and wrote memos hoping my administration would find a way to provide them incentives for learning—a study stipend, whatever— to no avail. It was frustrating that court administrators were blind to the realities. Their position was that if the candidates could not fulfill the contract conditions to provide simultaneous interpreting, under no circumstances could the court consider paying them to learn. (Circular reasoning, it seemed to me, since the court needed these services that otherwise these candidates would have no need to learn.) To make matters worse, there were considerable delays paying the transportation expenses for the candidate who had traveled from Maryland; the local candidate received exactly nothing for her troubles, not even subway fare.

More months went by. The suppression hearing and trial kept getting adjourned, for one reason or another. The defense attorneys were communicating with their clients as best they could, using French interpreters and one local Songhay speaker who they hoped to use as a defense witness.

We went back to the drawing board.  One day a language agency responded to an email by saying they could provide high-caliber Songhay candidates.  I spoke with the agency owner several times to explain the complexity of the assignment and the need for training, which the court could provide but not pay for.  A month later I was provided with 4 or 5 candidates who lived in different parts of the U.S., all of whom spoke the right dialect, held higher education degrees and were willing to make themselves available for this assignment. (The agency had interviewed thirty potential candidates before choosing this handful.) I decided to conduct Skype interviews and chose the three most promising candidates.

Then it was back to my administration, this time requesting a meeting with the district executive, who works directly for the chief judge. (This move annoyed my boss, but as I saw it, the situation forced me to knock on all possible doors.) I had also informed the trial judge of our efforts. Now I became a supplicant: I need help; here’s what I know we need to do— otherwise, we will have to tell the judge we have no interpreters for trial; we have to provide training no matter what; now tell me how you want to proceed: returning to our original two candidates, if we can pay them for training; or trying again with three new ones through an agency that will assume costs for the learning curve.

A decision was quickly reached. Contract negotiations were held with the agency, and an agreement reached with the AO to pay trial costs designed to include travel and per diem for any required “interpreter orientation.” It was left to me to proceed with the educational effort.  (Translation: the court did not have to pay anything out of its own funds—the original resistance, I now realized, was to local outlays— all monies would come out of the central account. Training became “orientation”: yes, Virginia, semantics is a wonderful thing.)

The training, in which a total of four staff interpreters and a student intern participated, was carried out in the midst of scheduling headaches and last-minute changes in hearing dates. We managed lengthy daily sessions over a total of 10 days, at two separate periods within the same month, using an actual courtroom as our classroom. Once we had a day’s notice of the suppression hearing being adjourned and reworked everything to extend the practice period by several days instead.

Our new candidates were indeed of professional quality: they had excellent knowledge of both English and Songhay, were highly motivated and quick learners. (They all also spoke French, which helped when we were searching for equivalent legal terms.) Each candidate was provided with a thick notebook of material, organized by topic, including exercises, vocabulary lists, court transcripts and actual case documents.  Above all I aimed to create a comfortable learning environment (with communal breakfasts, tea and chocolate breaks). We staff Spanish interpreters became like personal coaches, working with them one-on-one and in groups. We encouraged and prodded, gave our inside perspective on court proceedings, had them role play being witnesses and defendants, moved them from interpreting out loud to the microphone, listened to their delivery, timed the practice sessions to gradually increase speed, and so on. It was fun and also exhausting. When we were done, we were thrilled to see that all three could act as interpreters in a courtroom within a reasonable degree of accuracy. (They learned to check one another, agree on terms, prepare glossaries, etc.) All we needed now was for the case to go forward so they could get some real-time practice.

I had planned the whole schedule to dovetail with the expected date of the oft-adjourned suppression hearing, but—guess what?— the hearing date was changed once more, at the last minute.  So “our pilots” were sent home with the mission aborted, to return to their regular jobs.  We stayed in touch by email and phone as I encouraged them to practice regularly and keep consulting one another.

The suppression hearing took place a month later. All three performed brilliantly, taking turns every 15 minutes on the microphone. Everyone was happy, including the defendants.

Over another six months, the trial was repeatedly postponed, all for very good reasons. Of the three defendants, one pled guilty and has already been sentenced. Defense counsel was substituted several times, there were hospitalizations and deaths in the families of the attorneys, the assigned prosecutors changed, even the judge left the bench and the case was recently reassigned. But the case is going to trial in April, and come hell or high water, the interpreters are ready for trial!

I have gone into this much detail to convey how complex and fluid these situations are, and how much flexibility they demand of interpreter offices as well as of the contract interpreters themselves. There was always the chance we were preparing interpreters for a trial that would never happen if all defendants decided to plead guilty. There was also the chance that our training would not be effective or the candidates would prove insufficiently talented. Or the candidates might have moved on and lost availability for the case. I can’t tell you how many times their travel and vacation arrangements had to be modified. But we all persevered, for one reason: we were all committed to providing the required service to the court and the defendants. Justice demands nothing less.

The moral of this story is that court administrations need to recognize the key role their staff interpreters play with contract interpreters in languages of lesser diffusion. Until there are outside academies to fulfill the training function on an as-needed basis (with diverse languages that may be needed for one case and then never again), the resourcefulness and teaching ability of  the staff interpreters is the only bulwark protecting the judicial system’s ability to guarantee due process by providing reliable interpreting.

Ultimately, the more experienced staff interpreters are in interpreter training and education, the more valuable they are to their court. So, you may think, courts should encourage staff interpreters to attend educational conferences by paying the registration fee. Yet most don’t. Isn’t it time for them to wake up?

Posted in Odds & Ends| 2 Comments »

After 32 years in the same field, I also have my share of war stories. I’ve decided to tell a few.

How do you say that, really?

One time it was the word “balloons” that gave me trouble. I researched it with my friends in the Brazilian Portuguese Literary Translators Group and all my dictionaries. I knew how I would say it, but the material was to circulate throughout the country for educational purposes and needed to be divested of any regionalisms. To my surprise I found out there were many ways to express the concept of balloons (as in inflatable balloons) in Brazilian Portuguese. Here are a few:

1. Papo-de-anjo  - Central Brazil
2. Bola-de-soprar  - Northeast
3. Globo – Northern SE region
4. Bexiga – City of São Paulo
5. Balão – Northern SE region
6. Bola-de-encher  - Houaiss dictionary

Despite my research and explanation, the client insisted on using the term familiar to her brother’s Brazilian girlfriend, who was not a translator, but whom she had known longer.

Who are you gonna trust?

The latest one involves a made up word that is used all the time – menas (like irregardless in English). I really feel badly for agencies and their clients who do not understand the foreign language they are working with and have to trust total strangers (the translators) with their valuable projects. They were all suffering on many different fronts: the agency was working with a new client and a new translator, neither the Project Manager (PM) nor the client spoke the language, the client’s point person was not a translator, nor was he an authority on the subject (but they had an established relationship).

How do you deal with a situation like that? After the second round of questions from the agency, I reminded them that they had my résumé, provided the names of some of my clients for them to contact, some URLs to websites with similar content, as well as my telephone, and invited them to set up a conference call among the three of us – agency, client and translator – free of charge. Then, as an example, I explained that I would not ask my brain-surgeon neighbor to fix my computer just because both of them were Japanese. After all, as intelligent as my neighbor was, his knowledge of computers could  be as bad as mine.

Apparently that did the trick because two days later  the PM asked for my invoice.

…Or the never-ending review

This one happened many, many years ago, but it is unforgettable. The Vendor had ingratiated himself with the new Project Manager after having been dumped by the company’s previous PM. And the new PM delivered the material to the client without having it reviewed and revised. 

The material was to be used for dubbing, but the “translator” did not take time constraints into consideration, nor register. He apparently used three or four different people to translate the material, and did not check it for consistency before delivery. The voice-over talents refused to use the material. The client was pulling his hair out.

The agency wanted a revision of 5 videos on financial compliance, for a total of 5 hours of recorded material, over the weekend. There were gems such as “blue-ribbon panel findings indicate that” rendered as “the discovery of a panel in the form of a blue ribbon indicated that,” and “quarters” (referring to first quarter, second quarter, etc.) were rendered as “facilities” and “installations,” – at least they did not call it the “25-cent coin.”

But, correcting the issues did not solve the whole problem. The voice-over talents also wanted their say on the translation and they balked at “companhia de capital aberto” for “public company.” It so happens that in Brazil a “companhia pública” is one under government control. But it is such a perfect false cognate that it is hard to convince anyone in the tight spot the client was in to trust a total stranger over the voice talents he had been working with for sometime.

I finally got a chance to speak with the client. I introduced myself and asked my questions: how many of the voice talents were actually financial translators, how many were translators, did he receive the vocabulary sheet I sent to the agency with the explanations and links to Brazilian financial and government sites justifying the corrections and terminology choices? You guessed the answers: “None.”, “No.” and “No.” Followed by a “Thank you for taking the time to explain everything to me, and I will look for the sheet you mentioned.”

Again, reaching out to the client and the agency can do much to allay doubts and insecurities.

How much did you say?

And there are those clients completely out of touch with reality where it relates to cost and time. Instead of getting upset, I take the opportunity to educate them.

A client approached me asking for an estimate of price and delivery time. His response to my estimate was “Whoa, I was expecting half of that. What can you do for me?” Many possible answers crossed my mind, but I chose the less aggressive and more educational “The rate you are proposing was practiced in the 80s and if you think in terms of how long it took for the original material to be created, you will understand the time requirement. You want quality. Quality has a price. If you choose to go with a pool of translators, the time variable may actually increase due to terminology reviews. As for the price, that is the value of my time, knowledge and the quality control I am providing you with.” I got the job at my desired rate.

Whose language is it anyway?

Recently I was proofing some conference marketing material to be used in Brazil. The agency’s client was based in the US and provided us with their Quality Control list. That is usually a very useful tool, but not this time. Not having any knowledge of the language, its style, grammar requirements, etc., the client made decisions that would render a good job impossible. They wanted the names of all presenters, institutions and businesses to appear in the target text as many times as they appeared in the source text; same capitalization, same number of paragraphs.

I was able to explain to the PM that those rules were a hindrance and prevented the translator from delivering good quality work. In my understanding, since the client made an effort to have all the material translated by professional translators who were also native speakers, they were basically negating their investment with those rules.  I further asked him if the client would have interfered so much if the job had been in a language that used a different alphabet or graphic representation, such as Mandarin or Arabic.

The result was a PM who could go back to his client and tell him to trust the translator and enjoy the Return On Investment secured by a job well done, even if it did not look exactly like the original.

These stories illustrate why Customer Service is essential to the success of a business – that truism applies to freelancers also. Keep that in mind.

Posted in Odds & Ends| 2 Comments »

After a career as a systems analyst in the petroleum industry, John Estill found himself working as a translator and interpreter while enjoying retirement in rural Ohio. I’ve had the pleasure of working with John on the Ohio Supreme Court Advisory Committee on Interpreter Services. John chairs the NAJIT Advocacy Committee, whose function is to advocate for NAJIT and for our profession in response to events reported in the press. Today’s  post features the committee’s work product.  - Kevin

Interpreter Error? Not This Time

A recent posting at Legal Language Services, “Arkansas Court Interpreter Error Leads to New Trial”, called attention to the need for excellence in translation and interpretation. Unfortunately, it also managed to obscure several important aspects of the case in point while misconstruing the measures for excellence.

The posting was based on a story in the Fort Smith, Arkansas Times Record, “Sketchy Translation In Court Enough to Get Man New Trial.” The story, in turn, was based on a decision of the Arkansas Supreme Court in MENDEZ v. STATE, 2011 Ark. 536, Dec. 15, 2011.

The Case

The defendant and appellant, Jose Luis Mendez, was accused of several crimes based on the allegation that he had raped and attempted to murder one Irma Guervara. He was interviewed in Spanish by a police detective. The interview was recorded, and was later transcribed and translated by an employee of the prosecutor’s office and, separately, by a translator engaged by the defense.

The defense’s translator was, in fact, an interpreter certified under Arkansas law. The prosecution’s translator was not a certified interpreter; he had attempted the certification test, and had failed it.

At one point during the police interview, the police detective asked, “Did you try and kill her?”. Mendez asked why he would do that. The detective responded, “Grabbing her by the neck?”. According to the prosecution transcription & translation, Mr. Mendez replied, “Yo lo hice”  – “I did that”. According to the defense transcription & translation, Mr. Mendez replied, “No lo hice” – “I didn’t do that”.

The trial court admitted both statements, leaving the jury to determine which version to believe. The jury convicted, and Mr. Mendez was sentenced to a total of sixty years imprisonment. Mr. Mendez appealed, and the Supreme Court reversed and remanded, on the grounds that the trial court should only have admitted the transcription & translation prepared by the defense, as only the defense translator was qualified under Arkansas rules of evidence governing translations.

Quality of Interpretation Not At Issue

The Legal Language posting draws this conclusion from the story:

This real story illustrates the importance of obtaining qualified court interpreters and the very serious consequences that may result in using an unqualified court interpreter. Courtroom interpreting can be crucial to the outcome of a court case depending on the experience of the interpreter. Poor interpreting can cause prejudice in the courtroom.

While this is an unexceptionable conclusion – all of us interpreters would no doubt agree that our profession is important to the pursuit of justice – it does not follow from the case presented. Interpretation per se was not at issue in this case; rather, two competing transcriptions & translations were presented to the jury. The Supreme Court found that only one of these had been prepared by a “qualified translator”, and that only that one should have been presented to the jury.

(Arkansas Rule of Evidence 1009 provides that a translation may be presented in evidence on the affidavit of a “qualified translator”, who is later defined to be a person satisfying the requirements of the state’s interpreter certification program.)

Conflicting Translations, Not Error

While the translations in this case were in conflict, neither was held to be in error. The translators were not acting as interpreters. The only error was on the part of the trial court, which erred in admitting a translation performed by a non-qualified translator.

Legal Language later says,

The case in Arkansas turned on a crucial difference in interpretation, and led to a big misunderstanding, and a big loss of time and money.

The difference was indeed crucial, leading to the consequences shown, but it was not a difference in interpretation.

We do not know the source of the discrepancy, as we do not have the recording of the interview available to us. Those of us who prepare transcriptions & translations understand the difficulty there can be in hearing the original utterance, and the difference between a particular word and and its negation may be difficult to hear. The two translators came to opposite conclusions based on their respective perceptions of the utterance.

Is Certification Necessary?

Legal Language goes on to opine:

Is a Certified Interpreter Necessary?

Although there is no nationwide standard for interpreter certification some states require that interpreters be certified in order to perform in court. For example, Arkansas has one level of certificationfor legal interpreters.

There is, of course, a nationwide standard for interpreting in the Federal courts. In addition, the Consortium for Language Access in the Courts provides language certification services for 43 states, including Arkansas. While state court certification is by no means uniform, the trend is toward standardization nationwide.

In the Arkansas case, it was deemed that the uncertified interpreter’s work should have been thrown out and that the only interpretation that was admissible was that of the defense since the interpreter was certified through the state certification program.

However, not all excellent interpreters are certified. Sometimes an interpreter’s experience and familiarity with legal terminology is more important than certification. There are specialized terms, roles and ethics unique to the legal setting that make it vastly different from the community setting.  Furthermore, the stakes are very high when statements are not accurately interpreted in the courtroom setting. (Emphasis added)

Not all excellent interpreters are certified? One might as well say that not all excellent attorneys are licensed. Just as licensure is the community’s assurance of excellence in the practice of law, certification is our assurance of excellence in the practice of interpreting in the courts. To be sure, there are still uncertified interpreters practicing, but those who aspire to excellence also aspire to certification. Certified interpreters have passed both written and oral tests to assure their language skills as well as their knowledge of courtroom procedures and language. They are bound to a code of ethics that requires them to honestly evaluate their skills and strive to improve them.

Either way, it is in your best interest to hire a professional interpretersince successful interpreting for court proceedings requires very specific skills and expertise.

With that, we are entirely in agreement.

John M Estill

Chair, NAJIT Advocacy Committee

Posted in Odds & Ends| 7 Comments »