Meet the team

President

Aída Martínez-Gómez, PhD
New York, New York
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Term: May 2015 – 

Aída Martínez-Gómez, Associate Professor of Legal Translation and Interpreting, holds a PhD in Translation and Interpreting Studies from the University of Alicante (Spain). Her main research interests focus on interpreting in prison settings, including both access to justice and treatment for foreign incarcerated offenders, and the particularities of bilingual prisoners acting as interpreters. In a similar light, she has also explored broader issues pertaining to non-professional interpreting and interpreting quality assessment. Her works have been published in international journals such as Interpreting and JosTrans, and in volumes edited by renowned scholars in the field.

Prof. Martínez-Gómez’s areas of teaching expertise are legal translation and court interpretation. She has taught at the University of Alicante and the Monterey Institute of International Studies. She is the Coordinator for the Certificate Programs in Legal Translation and Interpretation at John Jay College, and teaches introductory to advanced courses within these programs.

She is also a court-certified translator and interpreter accredited by the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and has worked in this capacity for the Spanish Secretary General for Correctional Institutions, the British Ministry of Justice and several international law firms such as Ollé & Sesé (Madrid), Loeb & Loeb (Chicago), and Peters & Peters (London), among others.

Vice President

Christopher Mellinger, PhD
Charlotte, NC
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Term: September 2019 – 

Christopher D. Mellinger is Associate Professor in the Department of Languages and Culture Studies and is affiliate faculty for the Latin American Studies program at The University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Dr. Mellinger holds a Ph.D. in Translation Studies from Kent State University. He also holds certificates in Spanish-English interpreting and Spanish Translation/Localization Management from Wake Forest University. He is the managing editor of the journal Translation and Interpreting Studies. He is the co-author with Thomas A. Hanson of Quantitative Research Methods in Translation and Interpreting Studies (Routledge), co-editor with Brian Baer of Translating Texts: An Introductory Coursebook on Translation and Text Formation (Routledge), and is currently editing The Routledge Handbook of Interpreting and Cognition. He has co-edited special issues on community interpreting, translation, and technology (Translation and Interpreting Studies) and on translation process research (Translation & Interpreting, 2015).

At UNCC, Dr. Mellinger teaches translation and interpreting at the graduate and undergraduate levels, and has developed courses in medical, legal, community, and educational interpreting. In addition to his teaching at UNCC, Dr. Mellinger has experience teaching translation, interpreting, computer-assisted translation, and localization at the graduate and undergraduate levels at Kent State University, Wake Forest University, and Walsh University.

His main research interests are translation and interpreting process research, corpus linguistics and text-based linguistics, translation and interpreting pedagogy, and research methods (empirical research, quantitative methods, data modeling). He is a state-certified court interpreter (English-Spanish) and has been a freelance translator and interpreter for over ten years.

Treasurer

Melissa Wallace, PhD
San Antonio, Texas
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Term: May 2015 – 

Melissa Wallace received her Ph.D. in translation and interpreting studies from the Universidad de Alicante, Spain. A certified court interpreter and certified healthcare interpreter, Wallace served two terms as an appointed member of the state Supreme Court Committee to Improve Translation and Interpreting in Wisconsin Courts and is completing her second term on the Licensed Court Interpreter Advisory Board of the Judicial Branch Certification Commission for the Supreme Court of Texas. Her past professional service includes serving on the Executive Board of the American Translation and Interpreting Studies Association (ATISA), chairing the Advisory Council of Voice of Love, and serving on the Standards and Training Committee of the National Council on Interpreting in Health Care (NCIHC) and the Webinars Work Group of the NCIHC’s Home for Trainers initiative.

Her research focuses on indicators of aptitude on court interpreter certification exams, non-professional interpreting in public service settings, language justice, and language access for forced migrants in US detention centers. She has presented her research in the United States and abroad, has published in international journals, and has co-edited, with Dr. Esther Monzó Nebot, special issues on the ethics of non-professional translation and interpreting in public services and legal settings, research methods in public service interpreting and translation, and legal translation and interpreting in public services.

Currently she is an Associate Professor of Translation and Interpreting Studies at the University of Texas at San Antonio where she directs the graduate certificate program in translation studies. Wallace taught and conducted research in court interpreting as the Fulbright – University of Tampere Scholar in Tampere, Finland, in 2016.

Secretary

Marianne Mason, PhD
Harrisonburg, Virginia
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Term: June 2018 – 

Marianne Mason holds a PhD in linguistics from the University of Georgia. She is an Associate Professor of Translation and Interpreting Studies and Linguistics in the Foreign Languages, Literatures, and Cultures Department at James Madison University. She is also the coordinator of the Translation and Interpretation Minor at JMU and teaches interpreting and internship courses in the minor. Prior to joining JMU, Mason taught linguistics, translation, and languages at Georgia State University and Georgia Institute of Technology.

Her main areas of research include language and the law/forensic linguistics, discourse analysis/pragmatics, game theoretic pragmatics, and translation/interpreting studies. In these areas, Mason has published a book, Courtroom Interpreting (2008), a co-edited volume, The Discourse of Police Interviews (2020) and has a forthcoming/under contract book, Police Interrogation, Language, and the Law, with Cambridge University Press. She has also published on police-lay person exchanges, covertly-taped conversations/the discourse of wiretaps, and bilingual courtroom proceedings in journals such as the International Journal of Speech, Language, and the Law, Translation and Interpreting Studies, Perspectives, Police Quarterly, Language and Communication, Journal of Pragmatics, Pragmatics, among others. In the spring of 2018, she was awarded a fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies/ACLS to complete her research titled: Language at the Center of the American Justice System. The project examines legal institutions’ historical interpretation and enforcement of linguistic actions invoking constitutional rights; lay persons’ knowledge of how discourse is used to achieve linguistic goals in custodial settings; and the effect of law enforcement’s treatment of invocations for counsel on police interviews.

In addition to her teaching and research, Mason has provided expert witness testimony and reports in criminal cases in the state of Georgia that involve interpreter-induced errors and police-lay person exchanges, such as the invocation of Miranda warnings and police interviews/confessions.

Member at Large

Christina Guerrero Harmon
Santa rosa, California
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Term: November 2022 – 

Christina is an ATA-certified English>Spanish translator and California certified court interpreter working full-time for Sonoma County Court. She earned her BA in Studio Art from Pomona College (2001), her MA in Environmental Art from Aalto University (2008), and her Legal Translation and Interpretation certificate from UCLA (2005). Born into a bicultural family, she grew up toggling back and forth between central Mexico and northern California. Her multidisciplinary career includes non-profit arts marketing in LA, management for higher education institutions through international cooperation and outreach in Mexico City, as well as an active solo and group arts practice in the US, Mexico, Finland, Lithuania and the UK. Passionate about equity in language access, she is currently participating in a translation policy research project initiated by SSTI’s Research Collaborative program. Christina is a Warré beekeeper and gardening enthusiast who loves to knit and dance sevillanas with her husband and daughter.

Past Board Members

Member at Large

Marco Hanson
Austin, TX

Term: May 2019 – May 2021

Secretary

Susan Berk-Seligson, PhD
Nashville, Tennessee

Term: May 2015 – May 2019

President

Janis Palma
San Antonio, Texas

Term: May 2015 – May 2019

Treasurer

Holly Mikkelson, PhD
Monterey, California

Term: May 2015 – January 2017