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This article by Jennifer de la Cruz was first published on December 5, 2014. It started off like any other day. I had been working in court for just enough time to have experienced most types of hearings and a trial or two. I had just...

Dear Readers, we are in the process of changing our platform and that has had an unexpected impact on our comments feature. We love to hear from you, therefore you are invited to make yourself heard via email to tno_editor@najit.org or NAJIT's Facebook group.
After I wrote that, I realized that “how not to ask for repetitions” could be taken two ways, so I’d like to address both of them.

Part I: How Not to Need Repetitions.

1. Practice your active listening skills. 2. Train yourself to understand different accents (in both your working languages). 3. Buy sound-enhancing equipment for yourself, so you can hear better. 4. Understand the law, case law, and court processes so you can make a good educated guess at something you aren’t sure if you heard or not. (For example, memorizing possible sentences associated with certain crimes.) 5. Learn to talk faster. I suggest tongue twisters and shadowing the news. 6. Work on the Stare of Death you can give the chatterbox who’s standing behind you (not a party to the case). 7. Practice gestures and body language that will help you control the flow of witness testimony so you don’t forget long segments … 8. … but also strengthen your short-term memory and note-taking skills so you can remember longer segments.

It’s the last week of April and NAJIT’s Annual Conference is just around the corner. Before we know it, we will be in San Antonio, polishing skills, learning what’s new in the field, catching up with old friends and making new ones. And although I...

OSMOSIS – an ability to learn and understand things gradually without much effort. (Merriam-Webster) I was joking with some colleagues about having parents who were physicians and, therefore, how these friends had learned medicine by osmosis. We have all had that experience: learning about a particular...

The phrase itself should set off an alarm. Or perhaps “militant” is too strong a word. How about “the advocate interpreter”? Merriam-Webster defines militant as "having or showing a desire or willingness to use strong, extreme, and sometimes forceful methods to achieve something,” or, in...

“Respect yourself and others will respect you.” ― Confucius The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines protocol as “a system of rules that explain the correct conduct and procedures to be followed in formal situations.” There were no such rules, standard procedures, or protocols for interpreters in courts of law within the...

The NAJIT conference in Atlanta was intellectually stimulating and for some of us—or maybe all—it was also very good for the soul. We laughed, we sang, we danced, we ran into old friends and made new ones. In short, a lot of those present thought...

            We hardly pay attention to the way in which we say things, but we certainly know intuitively that we should raise our volume when we want to emphasize something, or lower it when our intention is a bit more secretive or intimate. We know...

  María Cristina de la Vega is sponsoring this article by Veronica Perez Guarnieri, an AIIC colleague, because of its relevance to the legal interpreting profession. VERÓNICA PÉREZ GUARNIERI was born in Argentina. She graduated with a Master of Arts in Translation and Interpretation from Universidad del...