-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...

At the memorial for deceased South African leader Nelson Mandela on December 10, 2013, the world-wide interpreting community was stunned and dismayed when a fake sign language interpreter was shown on television and the internet pretending to interpret the words of heads of state...

“I gots to talk.  I gotta tell what I feel. I gotta talk about my life as I see it.” (Sample of a Martin Lawrence stand-up comedy routine used in the Notorious BIG’s “Kick In The Door”.) I’ve been listening to and studying Rap music since the 80’s...

Continuing our retrospective, Jennifer De La Cruz answers our questions: NAJIT Blog- What did you learn from your participation in the blog?   Jennifer: Simply put, I have learned how much has to go into publishing your thoughts for your professional colleagues. We have to consider how relevant, impactful,...

As 2013 comes to a close, we all who have participated actively in keeping the blog current, appealing and meaningful are asked to share our feelings and lessons learned. We believe that sharing is closely related to learning and a very important part of the...

A couple of weeks ago someone sent me a link to a video from Spain of a talk show host conversing with a student who had called in to the program. The host asked the viewer what she was studying, and the young woman answered...

Giovanna Lester 2013 == Originally written for publication in the blog Adventures in Freelance Translation by Catherine Christaki and published on April 4, 2013. Communication takes place all the time, even when we are not aware of it. But there comes a time when we have something special to...

Experience alone cannot be the deciding factor when one weighs the decision of volunteering. I think it is important that we encourage everyone who is passionate about our professions and who wants to see them advance, to become more involved. It was one of the...