Sometimes, words just don’t cut it. As interpreters, we often have to rely on facial expressions, body language, voice tones, quality of speech… aspects of communication that we can easily take for granted. Of course, life usually gives us the experience we need to understand the unspoken, and we...
We grew up hearing that first impressions are lasting. The internet has redefined the meaning of “lasting” in that sentence, and social media added one more characteristic to it, “pervasive.” In the 21 st Century most of the people you will ever deal with will...
On Thursday, November 1, I received this email from a fellow interpreter: Dear friends and colleagues, I deeply regret to inform everyone that our dear, beloved friend, mentor, and colleague, Nancy Festinger has just passed away. There is no doubt that her loss will be felt by...
The Love of Language A number of thoughts and events came together recently to start me thinking about how we acquire language and how the ability to speak more than one language and interpret from one to the other is seen by those outside of the...
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...
I didn’t exactly grow up on a farm, but my small town was indeed surrounded by fields of corn and soybeans. When I was in my teens I started out on what turned out to be years of travel, living in enormous cities both in...
At home, we’ve really gotten into the games this year. It’s amazing to see these young Olympic athletes put forth their very best, and then rejoice with them in victory, or weep with them in their defeat. I’ve learned a lot from these games, and...
The following is the first of a two-part series on the importance of certification standards with a view toward achieving recognition of the interpreting field as a profession on a par with those already regulated and standardized in the United States. Part 1: Why Certification Matters Early...
This week, physicists revealed to the world that they’ve all but confirmed the existence of the Higgs boson, called the “God Particle” in layman’s terms. The discovery is said to answer the riddle of how subatomic particles were formed, and what gives them their mass....
By Barry Slaugther Olsen, Co-President, InterpretAmerica The word “technology” means different things to different people. But when it comes to interpreters, the “T” word tends to conjure up all sorts of largely unfounded fear and denial. “Will I be replaced by a computer?” or “Oh, a computer...
