This past March, I had the privilege of hosting a community coffee hour for one of my biggest heroes. Our guest of honor was Holly Mikkelson, who, among other notable accomplishments, created the ACEBO self-study interpreting materials. She never ceased to amaze me during our conversation,...
The following article by Athena was published a while back. The NAJIT Observer team would like to offer it for your reading pleasure once more. Enjoy! Have you ever taken a dash of one language with a sprinkle of another, mixed them together and simmered to taste?...
We have all been there: tired and in need of a partner. Could there exist a machine that does the notetaking for me? I started to ponder about speech recognition many years ago when ASR (automatic speech recognition) was accessible via software (think Siri). I...
You may have heard of the ATA (American Translators Association) Certification Exam. It has been around for a long time, and it is recognized as a legitimate credential; passing it demonstrates that one is a competent translator in that pair of languages. In fact, for...
The Couch is a place for readers to engage in stimulating discussion. The subject of this month’s Couch is...
Have you ever taken a dash of one language with a sprinkle of another, mixed them together and simmered to taste? Of course you have! You’re bilingual. You’re bound to have stirred your languages together at one point or another. There’s actually a fancy name for...
“Welcome to one of the world’s most beautiful professions.” That’s a variation on a book title I heard during my second year of translation studies, in the fall semester of 2015. The book title was Profession: Traducteur by Georges Bastin and Monique C. Cormier, and the student...
One of the hardest things in our profession to get a handle on is how much to charge for our work. I’m certainly no expert on this, but perhaps my recent experience will be useful to you as you deal with this never-ending question. Although I’ve...
It’s January 1st, and like everyone else, I hope 2021 will be a better year. We all look forward to the end of this pandemic that has affected us all in many ways. With that in mind, I wanted the first post of The NAJIT...
I pride myself on being a team player. I look at each client as a partner. After all, if I do not help them shine, I have a problem! In this specific case, I was asked to translate a brief manual and I was ecstatic...