Welcome to the Law Division Website & Blog!

The Law Division of the ATA has been a long time coming; it is a result of the efforts of a group of dedicated legal translators and interpreters, most of whom now belong to our leadership council, and of the Board of Directors of the ATA. They had already been hard at work long before I joined the team; it’s only fair, then, that the first post on our website highlights what was, and will continue to be, its defining feature: collaboration.

We have a wealth of distinct voices within the ATA. We hail from different countries, cultures and backgrounds; translate and interpret from or into English, in dozens of languages; and find solutions to issues specific to our own language pairs. These distinctions are precisely where our strength lies and one of the many resources we plan on employing to build the division into something that can both provide resources that will prove useful to experts and newbies alike, and be a proud representation of our diversity.

If you work solely with translation and are not part of the more gregarious world of interpreters, you are probably used to working alone—many translators, myself included, see it as a perk of the profession, in fact. But we still collaborate. How could we not? We have all learned from someone more experienced, benefited from deft proofreading, seen skilled project managers organize seamless group translations.

Even beyond the ATA, we will seek to collaborate and make connections with legal associations throughout the world—to share, learn, make new contacts, and more.

First and foremost, however, what we want on this website is your voice added to our chorus. The idea is to use the richest resource of the ATA, its members, to build our Law Division.

Our website will have a blog, and we already have some ideas for monthly columns, most with rotating authors. Do you want to write for us? Send us your pitch to divisionLawD@atanet.org.

Please note, we are asking for pitches and proposals only at this point, not already-written pieces! There will be a selection process.

Full circle is achieved as our welcome post segues into the closing paragraph, one of gratitude for ongoing collaboration. Effusive thanks go to the ever-capable, kind, and patient Jamie Padula and Lucy Gunderson, who helped us every step of the way; to Corinne McKay, president of the ATA, who warmly welcomed us; and to the Board of Directors, for their guidance. Also, while most of this post was written in first person plural on behalf of us all on the leadership council, at this point I’m jumping back to first person singular to thank everyone else: Ana Gauz, our first assistant administrator—her help and support were invaluable when we were taking our first steps—who had to step down from her position for personal reasons, but is, thankfully, still a member of our council and one of our Facebook page’s moderators; Liz Herron-Sweet, our new, dynamic, and equally amazing assistant administrator and Google Group moderator; our trusty advisor Paula Arturo, ringleader extraordinaire; Arnold Winter, who always lends a helping hand and gives us thoughtful, useful suggestions, both as a member of the LC and Google Group mod; and the rest of our LC, without whom this division would have not taken off: Emanuel Weisgras, Sandro Tomasi, and Mariano Vitetta.

We hope you join us in this new venture, and are waiting for your pitch!

Amanda Z. Morris

LawD administrator