06 Jul Team Interpreting Standards – Are we ready?
I remember it well. I had just begun my interpreting career, and I was placed with a more experienced interpreter to provide services for a competency hearing. I had been interpreting simultaneously for a while, and now it was my partner’s turn. She switched to...
01 Jun The Real Life of Interpreters
Posted at 04:01h
in Athena Matilsky, Interpreting, Professional Development, Professional Practices, Recent Posts
9 Comments
So, what’s all this got to do with interpreters in real life? Well, it’s not easy to rebuild a life from scratch. While I help my students to improve, my own interpreting skills and immediate vocabulary recall are beginning to grow a bit rusty from...
04 May Georgia Peaches & Interpreting Conferences
Last week found me in Atlanta, Georgia for a whirlwind weekend with the Atlanta Association of Interpreters and Translators (AAIT). Local organizations are vital to keeping our profession alive, and it was an honor to be able to attend and present at this one. I...
06 Apr Hard Doesn’t Mean Impossible!
This week it was my turn to post on the NAJIT blog, and I asked some of my colleagues what I should write about. I was told, “Don’t teach. Tell your story.” So here it is. U.N., here I come. I graduated Rutgers in the...
02 Mar One Word Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words
Posted at 04:01h
in Athena Matilsky, Interpreting, Recent Posts, Tools of the trade, TRAINING
4 Comments
Have you ever heard the term, word picture? If you are a trained interpreter, chances are you have. Often, it is explained as a remedy; a way to describe a term that has no equivalent in the target language. However, word pictures are much more...
16 Feb Maybe It’s Time to Make Friends With Spanglish
Posted at 04:01h
in Athena Matilsky, Court Interpreting, Interpreting, Past Posts, Recent Posts, Terminology
19 Comments
Maybe it is time to make friends with Spanglish. …And Italish, Portinglish, Haitian Creolish and any other language +English! It happened this way: Judge (English): “…mortgage…” Me (Spanish): “…hipoteca…” Litigant (No language): [Blank stare; look of incomprehension and confusion.] The question was repeated. All at...
05 Jan United We Stand, Divided We Risk it All
Posted at 04:02h
in Athena Matilsky, NAJIT Affairs, Professional Development, Recent Posts
3 Comments
Happy New Year everybody! For the first post of this year, I’d like to propose a new year’s resolution that doesn’t involve us joining a gym. Not that the gym is so terrible, but with all these cold fronts right now I personally would like...
