The Couch is a place to exchange ideas and brainstorm, not only for its contributors but also for our readers who engage in the ensuing discussions. Sometimes, without the remotest fault on interpreters’ part, a crowd can have its suspicions aroused against them...
The Couch is a place to exchange ideas and brainstorm, not only for its contributors but also for our readers who engage in the ensuing discussions. Although interpreter ethics exist in part to prevent interpreters from getting into sensitive situations as much as possible, sometimes...
The Couch is a place for readers to engage in stimulating discussion. The subject of this month’s Couch is...
An open or shut case? A couple of weeks ago, a woman I was interpreting for started chatting with me before an interview, and she asked me if I had heard about upcoming plans to reopen the courthouse. During this conversation, she shared her view that...
“The terror of performing never goes away. Instead, you get very, very comfortable being terrified.” ~Eric Whitacre I like that quote. It speaks to me. I think you could replace the word “performing” with “interpreting” and paste it on the walls of all our offices. Interpreting...
I like being tucked away in some nondescript area of a courtroom, where I can see and hear everyone but no one is paying attention to me, where I can have complete anonymity as my voice flows from a wireless microphone to a receiver in...
Even in the middle of a pandemic quarantine, none of us were spared. We all got hit right between the eyes. The racial prejudice. The senseless death. The social bias. The raw fear. The failure of the very foundations of our criminal justice system. A...
This cat got out of the bag in June 2018. We want to take a trip down memory lane, to when we used to go out...
The Couch is a learning place, not only for its contributors but also for our readers who engage in the ensuing discussions. How well can you command your mother tongue? Would you feel comfortable reading a modern novel written in it? Well, our colleague needs...
I will start by saying that interpreters are awesome people who have the ability to perform mental feats very few people can. For one thing, we can listen and speak at the same time in two different languages! That in and of itself is amazing,...