Dear NAJIT Blog Readers, This week we'd like to share with you a special message from Mr. Freek Lankhof. Freek, thank you for all you've done throughout the years to strengthen our profession. - Kevin (You can read more about Freek in our June 6th, 2014...
These days, when people ask me what it takes to be an interpreter, I tell them one part language skills, one part interpreter technique, and one part people management. When we embark on our interpreting career, learning interpreting technique is a good beginning, but it is...
As I was putting on my make-up this morning getting ready for work, the thought crossed my mind in a flash: “I am putting on my war paint.” I realized it was a ritual, perhaps not too dissimilar from the rituals of our indigenous...
I was at a Holly Mikkelson training on August 3rd and afterward at lunch I asked her if I could blog about it. She said yes, but another NAJIT member, esteemed colleague, and past guest blogger beat me to the punch. I asked John P....
- by Gio Lester© I prefer depositions and arbitration to actual courtroom work. One of the first things I do is make sure the court reporters know I am on their team. This usually helps with the flow. From my personal point of view, ensuring that the...
On Saturday, July 12, 2014, the Franklin County Municipal Court auditorium played host to Operation Street Smart, presented by a couple of officers with the D.A.R.E Special Investigation Unit of the Franklin County Sheriff’s Office, and sponsored by the Community and Court Interpreters of Ohio...
- By Gio Lester Why would entrepreneurial individuals create a business to help others like them make money? That seems to go against the very core of Capitalism. But does it? And what are non-profits, actually? Well, the truth is that non-profit endeavors and money making are...
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.