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What is a person to do? “I don’t know anyone.  What do they expect of me? How am I supposed to behave?  What is a 4H Club?  How do you play kick ball? Why do they do math problems so strangely?  Is school really over at...

12 July, 2013 /

Maybe it was spring fever, but I don’t think so. I definitely felt what I can only describe as a breath of fresh air during the 34th NAJIT Annual Conference May 17-19, 2013,  in St. Louis, Missouri. So often nowadays I hear interpreters talk about the “graying”...

14 June, 2013 /

What do a Brazilian Butt-Lift and a Kindle book have in common? They are two examples of our society’s penchant for instant gratification. Language proficiency and by extension interpreting, nonetheless, are not abilities you acquire overnight. They improve exponentially as you practice, and reflect consciously or...

10 May, 2013 /

Sometimes my first answer is NO if I know I am not qualified to perform a task. However, if the authorities persist due to the nature of an incident, that incident is likely to be documented. It comes down to personal ethics; more precisely, it...

11 January, 2013 /

[caption id="attachment_839" align="alignleft" width="214" caption="Roseann Dueñas González"][/caption]   Dr. Roseann Dueñas Gonzalez is a 21st Century luminary in the field of language access in the U.S. She was the founder and  long-standing Director of the University of Arizona National Center for Interpretation, Testing, Research and Policy.  I...

28 December, 2012 /

This is a cautionary tale about what can happen when you don’t have two interpreters for a trial. It’s also rather amusing in a macabre way, and I enjoy telling the story to people who ask me about the most unusual case I have ever...

21 December, 2012 /

My mother died a few weeks before Thanksgiving. She was a remarkable woman who gave each of her children a great love of learning and an appreciation for art, music, language and books, books, books! There was so much I loved and admired about her,...

07 December, 2012 /

A few weeks back, I traveled to a distant town for a court interpreting assignment. It had been well worth the trip from a financial point of view, but I was really beat when I got home. As I was drifting off to sleep for...

14 September, 2012 /

I have been working as an interpreter and the owner of an LSP for over thirty years so one would imagine that I have been around the block and back in terms of working with a large number of interpreters, both in court interpreting and...

22 June, 2012 /
My apologies for the slightly off-topic salute to this year’s Academy Award-winning Best Song. The question I really want to ask is, of course, less silly and more important: is interpreting a technical profession or a practice profession? Think of each of the following groups of professions; then consider which group you would place interpreting in: 1. Astronomy, medical research, product safety inspection, archaeology. 2. Medicine, law, law enforcement, pedagogy, ministry. Can I get a show of hands?

So why the pop quiz?

I’m going to bet that most people would instinctively place interpreting into group #2, and therein lies the problem. It's not that #2 is the wrong answer (actually, I would argue that it’s more correct than we know!), but that we interpreters (of all stripes, but particularly court interpreters) relate to our profession as if it belongs in group #1 ... causing ourselves no end of headaches, backbends, self-justification, defensive posturing, and guilt. (Really!) Let’s explore what the professions in each group have in common.The professions in group #1 are all scientific and objective in their approach; they are called technical professions. A technical profession follows a specified process to reach an unspecified end result. (For example, the Scientific Method: “First, define the question. Second, gather information and resources. Then, formulate a hypothesis...”) If the process is not strictly adhered to, then the end result is invalid. The second group is a list of practice professions, which are extremely context-dependent and subjective in their approach, despite requiring technical skills. A practice profession employs various processes to reach a specified end result. (For example, the Hippocratic Oath: “...I will apply, for the benefit of the sick, all measures [that] are required, avoiding those twin traps of overtreatment and therapeutic nihilism...”) A physician may get from point A (sick patient) to point B (applying required measures while avoiding over- and undertreatment) through many different techniques, based on the circumstances, and the context in which he or she works; but the goal is always the same.

Why does this matter to me?

Why do I say we treat interpreting (especially court interpreting) as if it were a technical, rather than a practice, profession?
02 March, 2012 /
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