The following article by Athena was published a while back. The NAJIT Observer team would like to offer it for your reading pleasure once more. Enjoy! Have you ever taken a dash of one language with a sprinkle of another, mixed them together and simmered to taste?...
Per diem court interpreters succeed in securing a pay adjustment after 17 years! The most recent pay rate for per diem court interpreters was set in 2006. Since then, requests for an increase by individuals and the Massachusetts Association of Court Interpreters (MACI – www.maci-inc.org) to...
Have you seen what’s going on in recent news? Freelance court interpreters in Massachusetts and Colorado are mobilized and are saying “no more” to stagnant remuneration and inert policies in their respective court systems. And their efforts are getting the following headlines: Boston Globe: With no pay raise in 17...
The act of interpreting has been taking place ever since two groups of people met but could not speak each other’s languages. A friend of mine, who is working on her doctoral dissertation, found this quote from the work of Marzena Chrobak[1]: “In the Near East,...
Per Diem vs. Per Assignment I have been a freelance interpreter since January 2007. For the first seven years of that period, I was hired exclusively to work per assignment by agencies. It wasn’t until 2014, when I first became certified, that I started working per...
On behalf of the Blog team and NAJIT as a whole, we hope you are having a very happy and restful holiday, wherever you may be and with whomever you may be spending it. Merry Christmas! Happy Hanukkah! ¡Feliz Navidad! Joyeux Noël! 新年快乐! Bom Natal! Giáng...
I know it may seem like a tired old cliché but, come on! You have to agree with me: it has been a great year! For me it was a year of enormous challenges chairing the NAJIT Board of Directors during the first half, and...
I first heard about the University of Arizona’s Court Interpreter Training Institute (CITI) program at NAJIT’s 35th Annual Conference in Las Vegas in 2012. Some colleagues were talking about it while we had lunch. They shared information and spoke highly of the program, so I...
Oh, no! It happened again. A client insulted you. They had a non-native, non-translator correct your work and asked for a refund. They asked you to volunteer to interpret out of the goodness of your heart. Maybe it wasn’t intentional, or maybe it was. Perhaps it...
During the first pandemic winter, I took on one of the hardest teaching assignments I’ve ever experienced: I tutored the son of a dear friend of mine with his fifth-grade homework. He was struggling a lot, and there were concerns that he might not be...