As Mother’s Day approaches, I find myself remembering my last day of training before I became a professional court interpreter. Part of my training (and the part I enjoyed the most) was sitting in courtrooms observing court procedures. “I am starving,” I thought, ready to...
I pulled up to the National Guard’s State Emergency Operations Center on Monday April 20th, 2020 unsure of what to expect on my first day interpreting a COVID-19 press briefing by Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds. I passed through a sign-in desk and had my temperature scanned...
If I had been told a year ago that NAJIT’s Conference Committee would be organizing a remote event, I would not have believed it. The virtualization of “virtually” everything around us caught us all by surprise. It is a well-known fact that humans by our very...
I was born Puerto Rican. I was actually born in New York, but that doesn’t make me a New Yorker any more than being born in Hawaii or Japan makes my cousins Hawaiian or Japanese just because their military parents happened to be stationed there...
Happy April, everyone! Wow. We are one quarter of the way through 2021. It always amazes me how time just keeps on dashing by. I do love this time of year. Even Montreal is starting to wake up from its winter slumber (though I’m sure there...
It's been one year since the WHO declared Covid-19 a pandemic. Vaccinations bring hope that the virus can become less of a threat and we can get back to what we consider "normal." However, we, the world, and our profession have changed. We need to...
Last year, I had the honor of participating in the Multilingual Magazine 2020 Summer Series with Jost Zetzsche (author of Translators' Tool Box), Karen Tkaczyk, and Mila Golovine. We were discussing diversification, with the goal to explore what we had already done and what else...
I have recently become particularly interested in exploring what sign language and spoken language interpreters have in common and what we do not. One thing that seems crystal clear, especially now that so much public health information is conveyed through televised press conferences, is how...
“Excuse me, speaking as the interpreter, could you please move the phone closer to the patient? The interpreter is struggling to hear everybody.” That was me, a week ago, attempting to provide telephonic medical interpreting services. The nurse complied, and the quality of the call improved…a...
It is hard to believe that it has been a year since I started working from home due to the pandemic. It feels so long ago, but I remember the uncertainty vividly. Something ominous hung heavily in the air, blinking question marks hovered in everyone’s...