I generally start my day with a cup of coffee. By no means am I a morning person, and there is nothing like that freshly brewed first cup to get my day started. I wouldn’t consider myself a caffeine addict. I grew up drinking 2...
We hardly pay attention to the way in which we say things, but we certainly know intuitively that we should raise our volume when we want to emphasize something, or lower it when our intention is a bit more secretive or intimate. We know...
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 Portguese, 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. If you’ve never met Freek Lankhof, you're in for a real treat this week...
IN MEMORIAM María Cristina de la Vega Writer, Translator, Interpreter, Entrepreneur June 28, 1952 Havana, Cuba April 18, 2014 Miami, Florida Our beloved friend and colleague, María Cristina, left us on Good Friday, 2014. It was on June 13, 2013, that she revealed publicly in her blog, Musings that she had...
- by Gio Lester © 2014 Title VI was devised and implemented in the second third of the 20th century. Since then, our world has changed and so has our society. The demands and profiles of the services and tasks targeted by Title VI have also changed. We...
Whether you’re new to the field or simply haven’t used voice amplification equipment for simultaneous interpreting, it can be a bit intimidating to work with at first. Wireless equipment one of the most common technology solutions I’ve seen in court and it’s an excellent tool...
I used to be a grasshopper, you know, like the one in Aesop’s fable. It wasn’t that I didn’t work—I did. It’s just that after paying for rent, utilities and expenses, I considered that whatever was left over was mine to spend on whatever took...
-by Gio Lester, 2014 At the last arbitration for which I interpreted, the panel consisted of three judges: a monolingual American, a bilingual native Spanish speaker and a native Brazilian Portuguese speaker who also spoke Spanish and English. The lawyers for the parties were mostly bilingual,...
This week's post comes to us from our colleagues in Texas. Big thank you to Marco Hanson for sharing and making this post possible. Keep up the great work folks, and Happy Valentine's Day. - Kevin Office of Court Administration DAVID SLAYTON Administrative Director Free Spanish Court Interpretation...