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Welcome to the NAJIT Observer

The NAJIT Observer (TNO) was created in 2011 in response to NAJIT’s members need for a tool

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16 Jun

Posted at 05:01h in Community Interpreting, Court Interpreting, Interpreting, Odds & Ends, Recent Posts, Translation by
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This article by Janis Palma was first published two years ago, almost to the date. It is a good reminder of the importance of proper terminology and the traps we face in our work - both translators and interpreters!
©Janis Palma- 2014
Beware of false friends! I don’t mean the people, I mean the words. 
One of the first impulses a young interpreter must overcome is the use of words that may, at first glance, seem to be equivalent terms and concepts in two languages... but are not. Taking that direct path from similarly-sounding words in our source and target languages is not always wrong, but part of being a good interpreter is knowing exactly when to take this path and when not to. In the rapid pace of judiciary interpreting, our brains may lean heavily towards cognates in source and target languages. Cognates are words with a common origin or etymology. True cognates, like “library” and “librería” in Spanish or “livraria” in Portuguese, with a common Latin root -- liber -- may come to have new and different meanings with usage and the passage of time. In this example “library” is a place where books are kept for people to read or borrow, whereas “librería” or “livraria” is a place where books are sold. So although they may be true cognates, these words have become false friends, or faux amis.

02 Jun

Posted at 00:01h in Ethics, Interpreting, Professional Practices, Recent Posts, Tools of the trade, TRAINING by
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This post was originally published on The Savvy Newcomer on August 2, 2016. Republished with permission from the author, Helen Eby, NAJIT Member and one of the leaders of our 2017 Advocacy Day efforts. By Helen Eby ©2016 One of my resources is The Routledge Handbook of Interpreting,...