04 Dec Guest Post: Proteous Plug

Arianna M. Aguilar is a co-editor of the NAJIT publication Proteus. She has a degree in communications and has been interpreting and translating since 1999. She has been a certified court interpreter in North Carolina since 2005, and master certified Spanish-language court interpreter since 2013. She is president of Latino Outreach Consulting of NC, Inc., a translation and consulting agency, and is a published author.  She has given presentations on a range of topics at both NAJIT and American Translators Association (ATA) conferences.

It’s fall, and as an unknown author wrote, “autumn is the perfect time to take account of what we’ve done, what we didn’t do, and what we’d like to do next year.”

Please indulge us a plug for the latest issue of Proteus. The issue is free to all members of NAJIT (if you aren’t a NAJIT member yet, consider this the perfect time to start! After all the conference in San Antonio is right around the corner). Also, take note that the winter deadline is December 15^th. For submission guidelines and to send us your work, email proteus_editor@najit.org

Well then, what have we done here at Proteus for the fall issue?  We have assembled an impressive lineup of articles and information for our readers, both thought-provoking as well as humorous, for a well-rounded and educational read.

On the serious side, you will read “Electronic Surveillance and Systemic Deficiencies in Language Capability: Implications for the Courts and National Security of Australia,” by David W. Gilbert, which discusses how the language deficiencies affect the judicial process. Although it discusses matters in Australia, it is relevant to the US due to the use of translated transcripts to prosecute crimes such as terrorism.

Another article that you will read, penned by Chris Kunej, discusses how lack of uniformity of Council of Language Access Coordinators member state reciprocity requirements may affect the provision of language access to LEP individuals, especially those with languages of lesser diffusion.

A must-read is the letter from NAJIT chair Esther Navarro-Hall. It touches on some of the changes in NAJIT administration, the Board, SSTI and new ad hoc committees and volunteers.  It reminds us that there is a lot of work done in the background to make NAJIT what it is and even better.

This issue’s “How I Handled It,” by Ernest Niño-Murcia, discusses an ethical conundrum he encountered when he was asked to interpret privately for the prosecutor, without the LEP’s attorney present. What would you do? Read his article and decide how you would have approached the situation.

On the lighter side, we have articles such as “Ask an Interpreter,” and “For Better or Verse,” which offer a light-hearted look at the interpreting world.

And as the quote of the beginning of the article states, fall is a perfect time to look ahead and see what we can do differently. In the future, we are hoping to revamp the style of Proteus to make it more pleasing to the eye and useful for our readers. We also welcome submissions for our regular columns or items of interest. That way, we can benefit from the collective wisdom of all who read or participate in Proteus in some way.

We hope you enjoy this issue, and as always, we welcome your comments and suggestions!