NAJIT and SSTI continue to be committed to our work illuminating and emphasizing the intersection of research and practice in the interpreting and translation fields. The SSTI Collaborative Project is our latest illustration of that commitment.
The SSTI Research Collaborative is a hands-on research initiative that gathers together researchers and interpreters/translators for a year of learning, collaboration, and discovery. Working in small teams with the guidance of a senior researcher, practicing interpreters/translators and early career researchers (MA or PhD students or recent graduates) identify pressing questions in our field and launch their own research projects to seek answers.
The first iteration of this program (2021-22) brought together five wonderful teams that worked on topics such as language access for Deaf attorneys in the courtroom, gender bias in interruptions in court interpreting, the impact of legal differences on the accuracy of target language terminology, translation policy by California government agencies, and qualifications for court and police interpreters in the United States. During the year-long program, teams participated in a research bootcamp, quarterly meetings, and regular team check-ins. As a culminating experience, the teams presented their projects at the 2022 NAJIT Conference.
The teams will continue to share the knowledge they’ve created with the NAJIT membership through articles in Proteus and NAJIT Academy webinars. They are eager to give back to the NAJIT community, who supports this program with their generous donations.
The SSTI board is grateful to the teams and to all our donors for making this program possible. We strongly believe that collaborative research has the potential to produce work that is relevant to the field and to actual practice, and we want to build relationships that optimize the types of research that practitioners are doing and / or want to do. Stay tuned for our second cohort!