The text below is aimed at individuals who have been trained but are stepping into a booth as professionals for the first time. These are my thoughts —nothing scientific about them, just good old experience, gut and gumption. So, the first thing you need to do is...
It’s one of those things that comes up all the time in social media discussions and listserves, even during courses and conferences. You have discussed it so much you know exactly how you are going to react, even if it has never happened to you....
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...
Team interpreting* is a process. There is no one single way to work as part of a team. There is no formula you can apply that will make it run on wheels every time. It is all going to depend on the chemistry between the...
Kathleen Shelly penned this for The NAJIT Observer in 2012. It remains just as relevant today. Please enjoy. - By Kathleen Shelly © 2012 A couple of weeks ago I was driving home from an interpreting assignment listening to NPR radio, as is my custom. The program...
Unavoidable Delays It’s a funny thing. From everything written and spoken about court interpretation, one would think that we are constantly working away—interpreting for trials, hearings, attorney/client interviews and the like, all day long, with a nice break for lunch. I think we all agree that...
Warning: trick question ahead! What is the best mode for interpreting witness testimony? If you said “Consecutive, of course,” then I disagree. And if you said “Um, simultaneous, maybe?” then I disagree even more strongly. (See, I told you it was a trick question.) What interpreters...
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...
A couple of weeks ago I was driving home from an interpreting assignment listening to NPR radio, as is my custom. The program was “Fresh Air,” and Terry Gross was interviewing an author named Michael Lewis on a piece of his in the magazine Vanity...