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Warning: trick question ahead! What is the best mode for interpreting witness testimony? If you said “Consecutive, of course,” then I disagree. And if you said “Um, simultaneous, maybe?” then I disagree even more strongly. (See, I told you it was a trick question.) What interpreters...

15 February, 2013 /

I am interpreting consecutively. I am well-rested, fully focused, alert and engaged. Almost effortlessly, I allow the equivalent words,phrases and structures to flow through my brain and out my mouth. An interpreting instructor of mine once called this being “in the groove.” It doesn’t happen every...

25 January, 2013 /

I’ve only been active on Facebook for a couple of years, if you could call having a few family members as friends “active”. In a sense, I’d been wading gradually into the social networking scene up until fairly recently. I’d always signed up for listservs and yahoo groups...

09 November, 2012 /

A couple of weeks ago I was driving home from an interpreting assignment listening to NPR radio, as is my custom. The program was “Fresh Air,” and Terry Gross was interviewing an author named Michael Lewis on a piece of his in the magazine Vanity...

28 September, 2012 /

A few weeks back, I traveled to a distant town for a court interpreting assignment. It had been well worth the trip from a financial point of view, but I was really beat when I got home. As I was drifting off to sleep for...

14 September, 2012 /
First off, I apologize to Robert Pollard for getting his name wrong last time! In any case, this will be the last entry in my “Time for a Paradigm Shift” series. But in the immortal words of Winston Churchill, “this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.” I’ve spent the last six months laying out a framework for a new perspective on our field (and by “our field,” I mean interpreting as a whole and unique field); but unless we implement that perspective, it’s nothing more than a thought exercise. (And I, for one, would be disappointed if there weren’t practical implications as well, after all that.)

A quick review of teleological decision-making

In this series, I’ve introduced the concept of teleological [outcome-oriented] decision-making and the Demand-Control Schema. To review, this process requires that we:
  1. Be aware of our values as interpreters: accuracy, completeness, neutrality, professionalism, and so on.
  2. Recognize the demands being placed upon us in any given situation. What environmental, interpersonal, paralinguistic, intrapersonal, linguistic, and divergent factors are influencing the way in which we do our work?
  3. Identify the controls at our disposal. What are all of the things that we could do, regardless of whether or not we should do them?
  4. Be aware of the values of the context in which we are working. What is valued in a legal setting? A medical setting? A religious setting? A conference setting?
  5. Handle the demand(s) by applying the control(s) that best fits with our values as interpreters and those of the context in which we are working.

31 August, 2012 /

I’d like to share with you an ethical dilemma that has been an ongoing subject of debate among interpreters I know for the last several years. First I’ll set up the situation for you; then I’ll offer you the two extreme opposing points of view....

27 July, 2012 /
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