By Marisa Rueda Will If the COVID-19 pandemic has taught us anything, it is that change is inevitable. Perhaps that is why Gabriela Siebach’s 2021 ATA Conference presentation, Maintaining a Career as a Language Professional: An Endless Journey, caused me to reflect on how staff interpreters have been forced to unexpectedly reevaluate their career trajectories as a result … [Read more...]
Finding your power in ethical decision making
By Milena Calderari-Waldron How many times has a colleague approached you with, “The other day [fill in the blank] happened to me. What do you think I should have done?” When confronted with an ethical problem—as opposed to an ethical dilemma which is where one must choose between two conflicting codes, inevitably transgressing one of them—, one approach to answering the … [Read more...]
Lessons for the new year
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Here we are. 2021 has staggered to a close and a new year has begun. COVID is still in the daily news, our professional world is still a constant mix of virtual and in-person, and we never did get our “old normal” back. In fact, it seems to me that we’re learning to hold this “new normal” lightly, knowing full well that it can change again at any time. As professionals, this … [Read more...]
Portable equipment for socially-distanced simultaneous interpretation in court
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By Flavia Lima & Monica Guelman After months of near-total lockdown in many US states, courts are reopening with a massive backlog of cases to work through as a consequence of the pandemic and interpreters are in high demand. We need to find solutions to assist court attendees who are Limited English Proficient (LEP), while maintaining social distancing. In the pre-COVID … [Read more...]
Robert Joe Lee: Distinguished Speaker
-By Carol Shaw There are people in this world who see a disconnect in a system and ask what can be done. Then there are those who see the disconnect and ask what they can do. Meet Robert Joe Lee, doer. Not that he started out to fix the system nationwide. He started down that road as a seminary student and prison chaplain in New Jersey, trying to fix the holes in language … [Read more...]
Language services, hurricanes and pandemics: Overcoming crises to ensure access to Education
By Andrew Dafoe CHI™ If I had to pick a defining word for the year 2020, at the top of my list would be crisis. It really became what felt like a never ceasing stream of natural disasters, global pandemics, the resulting economic downturns, political divisiveness, and racial injustices. Collectively, we’ve experienced and continue to experience more crises than could be listed … [Read more...]
Media interpreters play a critical role in news reporting
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To protect the integrity of information, interpreters need to focus on accuracy, impartiality, and completeness By Margarita Martín-Hidalgo Birnbaum When Steve Mines was a journalist in China, he relied on interpreters to help him in his reporting. Years later, those experiences served him well once the shoe was on the other foot. On a recent assignment, Mines … [Read more...]
New challenges–and opportunities–for educational interpreters during a pandemic
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The good, the bad, and the not-so-tech-savvy By Alina Avelar Roque On the morning of March 13, 2020, Anaheim Elementary School District, where I've been working for over five years as an interpreter/translator, held an emergency board meeting to vote on suspending in-person learning due to the COVID-19 pandemic. That same day, all students were sent home with … [Read more...]