May 1st, 2008 | Interpretation, NCTA Meetings, Reports | No Comments
The first NCTA meeting of 2008 took place on February 9 and featured—in addition to our election results and news of ongoing projects—longtime NCTA member Hany Farag’s presentation on new developments in machine translation.
BY SARAH LLEWELLYN
NCTA Secretary Stafford Hemmer, standing in for the absent Vice President Yves Avérous, began the meeting with a series of announcements, including details of upcoming NCTA workshops, a call for volunteers to present future NCTA workshops and also to contribute to Translorial, and a reminder about the monthly happy hours that take place the last Monday of every month in San Francisco and Oakland.
Alison Dent announced the results of the recent (uncontested) election, and welcomed each of the new board members, who will begin two-year terms effective immediately. Dagmar Dolatschko will take over from Song White as treasurer; Paula Dieli will take over Naomi Baer’s position as membership director; Norma Kaminsky will be responsible for continuing education in place of the outgoing Mateo Rutherford; and Diane Montgomery will take on a new role of director of marketing. Stafford Hemmer will continue in his capacity as secretary. Stafford thanked each of the departing members of the board for their valuable and often inspirational contributions during their tenure.
The Interpreter Machine
The meeting’s featured presentation was given by long-time NCTA member and former board member Hany Farag. Hany works in the fields of language and technology and is a translator and state-certified Arabic interpreter, as well as a technologist specialized in automation and control systems.
Hany’s presentation focused on recent efforts in the development of an automated, real-time speech-to-speech translation device—an “interpreter machine”— under the auspices of DARPA, the U.S. government’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. While machine translation in various guises has been around for some 50 years, the development of such a system was hastened by an urgent need for Arabic-language interpreters in Iraq after the 2003 U.S. invasion of that country.
Iraq: Facts and Challenges
One of the challenges facing the ground forces in Iraq was how to rebuild a nation of 20 million people, while having virtually no knowledge of the native language, Arabic. The number of interpreters needed— more than 5,000, based on U.S. troop deployments—was an unrealistic target, particularly given that in the whole of California there were, at most, 500 Arabic-language interpreters. And using local interpreters posed a variety of problems, not least of which was the reliability of their information for intelligence purposes. In response, DARPA instigated a project entitled Global Autonomous Language Exploitation (GALE) to develop an interpreter machine that could communicate spontaneously in real time in tactical—that is, war or battle—situations.
Competing to Succeed
Three teams of researchers were hired to develop systems: IBM, The Stanford Research Institute (SRI) and Bolt Beranek & Newman (BBN). Each year, their progress would be evaluated, and the worst-performing team could be eliminated—or, the program could be shut down entirely. At any time, up to 200 people have been working around the clock on this initiative: the largest language project in existence.
Due to the fact that the only existing, related technology was machine translation for text, the interpreter machine had to be developed using a series of building blocks. The first was ASR (Automatic Speech Recognition). Machine translation was the second component, involving the creation of a corpora, or body, of words in context to improve the translation. The third building block involved text-to-speech synthesis (TTS), which was already of exceptionally good quality.
By late 2006, two machines were ready for deployment in Iraq: IBM’s MASTOR and SRI’s IRAQCOMM, each using a different technology, and each having an accuracy level for text estimated to be around 75%. R&D is still in progress, with the goal of reaching 95% accuracy—comparable to a human interpreter—by 2010.
Hany concluded his presentation by suggesting that no one can stop the progress of technology, and that we need to embrace innovation by understanding it and contributing to it if we can. Researchers, after all, are not practicing interpreters!
After a brief Q&A session, NCTA presented Hany with a box of Valentine’s Day Joseph Schmidt chocolates, to thank him for his presentation.
May 1st, 2008 | Continuing Ed., Court Interpretation, Legal Interpretation, Legal Translation, Reports | No Comments
Our March workshop offered a crowd of enthusiastic NCTA members a hands-on approach to legal translating and interpreting.
BY ANGELA ZAWADSKI
As a practicing interpreter and workshop provider, I was looking forward to attending the Legal Translation and Interpretation workshops to be taught by Corinne Cline, an instructor with the Sonoma State University Certificate Program. Before the event, all participants received via email the workshop handouts, which included the National Association of Judicial Interpreters and Translators (NAJIT) Code of Ethics and Professional Responsibilities, information about consecutive and simultaneous interpreting practices, and useful legal terms and phrases that interpreters and translators often encounter in English <>Spanish legal texts. Attendees were asked to bring a cassette tape recorder, as sample practice tapes were to be provided.
The morning session, which covered legal interpreting, began with a video created for judges and attorneys about working with interpreters in court. The video showed examples of interpreted hearings with both qualified and unqualified interpreters at work. Some important issues covered included the need to use the first person at all times (except in certain very specific circumstances), problems encountered when there are overlapping conversations, the need for a judge’s intervention to avoid confusion, examples of an interpreter correcting his or her mistakes on the record, and the difference between certified and qualified interpreters.
Clarifying the role
In an important scene and one of the best examples I have ever seen of what is expected of a court- certified interpreter, a judge establishes an interpreter’s credentials, asking questions regarding the interpreter’s education, fluency in source and target languages, specialized training, and other pertinent issues. The video also addresses the importance of the interpreter as “clarifier” when he or she is faced with unfamiliar slang and the serious problems arising from changes of meaning when the interpreter edits, omits, or adds material on the record.
Ms. Cline underscored the importance of the code of ethics with a capital E and reminded us that note-taking is part and parcel of our professional duty. I believe in the need to take notes as well, even when we feel confident that our memory will not fail us. The presenter also provided information about topics such as full-time employment, fees paid by the courts, and training opportunities. Afterward, we broke up into small groups and practiced “shadowing” (same-language simultaneous exercises) as well as target-language interpretation. Before the lunch break, the participants had a chance to ask more questions regarding the certification exam, compensation, and the use of monolingual and bilingual dictionaries. Ms. Cline also provided us with an extensive list of print and online resources.
Translation basics
Because the presenter for the afternoon session was unable to attend, Ms. Cline also covered the topic of legal translation. Since this is not her area of expertise, she focused mainly on sight translation, both as an interpreting skill and as a preamble for good translation. Ms. Cline discussed ways to prepare to become a competent translator and interpreter, using both material from her own experiences and resources from the Monterey Institute for International Studies. Most of the workshop attendees were experienced translators, but it was nonetheless refreshing to review term-research techniques.
The workshop ended with a lively Q&A session. Participants discussed strategies for sight translating repetitive English terms and approaching translation when there are no good target-language equivalents. Overall, novice interpreters felt that the workshop had been very helpful, while experienced interpreters were grateful to have had an opportunity to review the legal process and to go over specialized terminology. There is a continuing need for certified interpreters in federal and state courts, and the positive feedback confirmed that this type of workshop is extremely useful for aspiring interpreters.
May 1st, 2008 | Literary Translation, Related organizations, Reports | No Comments
In a sparkling presentation, the distinguished literary translator Edith Grossman shared her insights at CAT’s “Lit & Lunch” series in San Francisco.
BY ALISON ANDERSON
In her introduction, Olivia Sears, president of the Center for the Art of Translation (CAT), told us that Ms. Grossman had not set out to become a literary translator; her dreams were more along the lines of “a sculptor, or (the blues singer) Bessie Smith.” But in recent years she has been aptly referred to as the “Glenn Gould of translation”—a reference to the famed Canadian virtuoso pianist. Earlier this year she was invited to give a series of lectures at Yale on the art, entitled, “Why Translation Matters.” A longtime resident of New York, Ms. Grossman told us she had been a student at Berkeley and was glad to be back in the Bay Area, although she missed her 24-hour jazz station.
The first part of the literary lunch was devoted to readings from books Edith Grossman has recently translated. The first, from Manuscript of Ashes, was by Spanish author Alberto Muñoz Molina, to be published by Harcourt this summer. Very evocative and atmospheric, set in part during the Spanish Civil War, it was a perfect introduction to Ms. Grossman’s skill as a translator. She then read a more humorous excerpt from Mario Vargas Llosa’s The Bad Girl, published recently by Farrar Straus and Giroux, and this in turn showed her wonderful versatility and ability to take on different styles.
Formalities
For translators, perhaps the most enthralling part of the presentation was the Q&A. Ms. Grossman displayed a wry, self-deprecating humor as she elaborated on a number of issues familiar to literary translators. Asked first about her relationship with publishers—and the certain clout which she can command as the translator of Cervantes, Gabriel García Márquez, and Carlos Fuentes, to name but a few—she pointed to the Vargas Llosa book and said that the publishers had agreed to display her name in large type and provide a short bio on the back flap. But when the book was published, her name was “too small, and there was no bio. The publishers apologized deeply,” she sighed, mock-wistfully. Does she have a lawyer for the negotiation of contracts? At the beginning of her translating career she had “made the mistake of swimming in shark-infested waters” and quickly learned her lesson: she now has an attorney to guide her through the “make-believe language” of publishers’ contracts.
Could she recommend a particular title to help novice translators in their career? “Guide for the Perplexed?” she quipped, and went on to elaborate that she is not an adherent of translation theory, nor does she feel that any one book can provide the guidelines better offered by the “school of servitude.” By servitude she means constant revision and editing, reading out loud, checking for accuracy—and then more revision. And, if at all possible, a cooling-off period for the manuscript to settle, before more revision.
Authors and poets
How does she pick her titles? She does not pick, but is contacted by publishers directly. In earlier years she tried recommending authors she had discovered and loved, but this, she lamented, seems to be the “kiss of death.” Now she never mentions an author to her publishers if she hopes to see him or her in English some day.
On the subject of collaboration with authors, Ms. Grossman said she finds them to be extraordinarily generous. She does not contact them until the final revision, to iron out the “ten or fifteen knotty places” remaining in the manuscript. Had it not been problematic then, translating Cervantes, since she could not question him? She laughed and said she once told García Márquez that it is easier translating Cervantes than a living author, because there is such a wealth of academic and scholarly work to refer to. But regardless of the “bodily state of the author,” she feels a huge responsibility to the writer to get it right; it is less an issue of translating actual words than of translating the author’s intention.
She does not believe you can be taught to be a translator, any more than you can learn to be a poet. The craft can be taught, she said, echoing Gregory Rabassa’s words, but to become a translator or a poet you either “have the impulse or you don’t.” Asked if she misses the sound of the language when working into English, she insisted on the necessity of putting the Spanish to one side after the second draft, to work solely on the English text; only when doing a final accuracy check does she return to the Spanish. She believes in maintaining the foreignness of proper names and place names, but does not subscribe to the position that a translation should “feel” foreign. “It should read like a domestic text” and provide the English-language reader with the same impact experienced by the Spanish language reader. If the text is in any way strange or eccentric, she tries to convey that oddness, too—but it must always read as smoothly as if it had been conceived in English.
Meanings
“The author and the translator are saying the same thing in two different languages,” Ms. Grossman explained. While she hears the Spanish in her mind, it comes out in English. “It’s a mistake to think you can match words.” She illustrated her point by describing a cartoon she once saw in The New Yorker: a translator sitting across from the irate author says, “Do you not be happy of me as the translator of books of you?”
In Edith Grossman’s case, there is no counting how many happy authors— and readers—she has shared her talents with.
May 1st, 2008 | NCTA Events, Reports | No Comments
BY RAFFAELLA BUSCHIAZZO
On February 25 at 5:30 PM, a group of NCTA members, all aficionados of our monthly Happy Hours, met in Oakland at the Pacific Coast Brewing Co. The pub is in an elegant 1876 building where several museum pieces are on display. It’s conveniently located downtown, a block from the 12th Street Bart Station in an area that has been renewed and now hosts cafes, restaurants, and interesting shops, from the well-known Ratto’s European Deli to an exotic African products boutique.
After a hard day of work we enjoyed a drink while relaxing and chatting with colleagues who share the same interests. You can’t talk with just anyone you meet about the difference between cognates and “false friends,” their important role in learning languages, and how excruciating it is to see them badly translated. But at our Happy Hours you have an attentive audience ready to start an intelligent discussion on these sorts of topics. Bob Killingsworth, Sylvia Korwek, and Sharlee Merner Bradley were the key participants in this interesting debate.
I particularly enjoyed exchanging book titles such as Suite Française by Irène Némirovsky and trying to remember the name of that Nobel-laureate Portuguese writer … Salgado? Salvado? We all had his name on the tips of our tongues and Sharlee satisfied our curiosity on the spot by consulting Wikipedia directly on her iPhone. We all exulted when she pronounced the name of the well-known author of several masterpieces: José Saramago!
If you wish to organize a Happy Hour where you live, just drop me a message at events@ncta.org.
May 1st, 2008 | Business Tools, Reports | No Comments
The Tool Kit is an online newsletter that comes to its subscribers’ mailboxes twice a month. In Translorial, we offer a quarterly digest of Jost’s most helpful tips from the past season.
BY JOST ZETZSCHE © 2008 INTERNATIONAL WRITERS’ GROUP, COMPILED BY YVES AVÉROUS
Savor This!
Backups—we know we’ve got to do ‘em, but we just don’t quite know how. Long gone are the days of the floppy disk, and I would venture to say that with the newly released MacBook Air without a CD-ROM drive, another era may also soon be over - we’ve long sensed that CDs and even DVDs are sort of “yesteryear.”
So what’s hip, especially when it comes to backing up your data? There’s no doubt that it’s got to be online backups. However, the hippest thing does not always have to be the best, so I spent some time last week looking at online backup services.
Two of the most popular products at the moment are Carbonite and Mozy. They offer a similar service: with Mozy you have the option to get a free account if you only need to store 4 GB (you’ll need more), but otherwise they are each approximately $5 a month for unlimited storage. They both require to download and install a small program.
Once you have the small program installed, the backup process starts right away. You’ll see a little notification that the first backup may take several days. In my case it took about five days. I disabled it while it was working during the day because it requires quite a bit of processing power and continued the backup at night. It all works seamlessly, and once the initial backup is complete each file that is modified is flagged to be backed up either right away or at a time of your choosing. The restore function also is super-easy: a new virtual drive is created that gives you immediate access to all of your files.
But here’s why I decided to return to my exterior hard drive backup: If you work with large translation memories and/or use Outlook, which stores everything in a large database-like file, the nightly backup may just not be enough to get everything that has been changed written back to the Carbonite server. Then you will have to have the backup run constantly, which tends to steal from your processing power.
This may not be true for you. You may not deal with very large files. In that case, Carbonite, Mozy, or some of their competitors may be the right solution for you.
There is one more thing, though. With the product that I use to run backups on my external hard drive, Acronis True Image, I can do incremental backups that not only keep the data from yesterday, but also from the day before and before and . . . (you get the picture). Quite often I realize that I need to dig much deeper than just a day or even a week to get something that may have been changed many times since, and that’s no problem. Of course, there are limitations, too (at some point the largest external hard drive is full), but these are things I can deal with.
Of course, if my office burns to the ground and wipes away both my computer and the external hard drive, I may regret what I just wrote — so I do use the good old CD drive to burn CDs with the most important files that I store outside the house.
(F)utilities
Working on revising my Tool Box book recently, it really got me thinking: of all the tips and tricks and programs that I mention (or have mentioned) in the book, which do I really use myself on a regular basis?
On my computer, the first group of diehard utilities are those that I’ve been using on a daily basis for the last few years: TrayIt to make room on my taskbar, PushPin to allow windows to stay on top of other active windows, Skype to communicate via voice and IM, IntelliWebSearch to speed and consolidate my dictionary searches (more on that below), and Lookout to index my Outlook mail (sadly this isn’t available as a separate application anymore, but it’s now integrated into Outlook 2007).
Then there are those utilities that I still have on my computer but don’t use the way their developers would like me to. They would like me to start these every time I start my computer, but I prefer to have them come up only when there’s a definite need for their specific function. These include ClipMate for managing my clipboard, SnagIt to manage my screenshots, and AllChars to enter some uncommon special characters or text strings. I’ve found that if I run these applications all the time, they tend to hog my system resources or have conflicts with other programs.
And then there are the plethora of utilities that are not designed to run all the time but are used for specific and relatively rarely occurring purposes. These include programs to convert measurements, data, and files; manipulate keyboards; search/replace text; manage, split, merge, and rename files; crack passwords; count words; track time; backup data; or manage downloads. Since these are used only in specialized instances, they usually don’t run into conflicts with other programs. And if they are well written, their footprint is so small that they don’t use any common resources. These are still installed on my computer as well.
More
If you would like to subscribe to The Tool Kit, visit www.internationalwriters.com/toolkit/ and mention Translorial during the subscription process; Jost will put your name in a drawing for one free Tool Box book per edition.
May 1st, 2008 | Business Tools, Reports | No Comments
BY YVES AVÉROUS
APOLOGIES TO PC USERS
With the advent of Spring, Mac OS X celebrated its seventh anniversary—the Age of Reason, as we call it in France. How appropriate for version 10.5, Leopard. I still remember my first “back to the Mac” purchase in 2002, the articulated iMac, with the second iteration of the OS, 10.1. The machine couldn’t smooth fonts properly and went into kernel panic as soon as I tried to impose Virtual PC on it. So I returned it.
Times have changed! I finally found a good replacement for my five-year old PowerBook G4 12” in the shape of a gorgeous MacBook Air, and getting Windows to work on that new slim machine was a breeze—not to mention that everything else working smoothly under Leopard.
And this is where I need to apologize to my PC-toting colleagues: six years ago, they could smile at my renewed enthusiasm for the Mac, as there were still enough reasons for a translator to find that a Mac was coming up a little short of their expectations. Not anymore, and the comparison is not even fun. Following one misstep after another, Microsoft has left PC users very frustrated, and the delight Mac users are expressing with their machines is only adding salt to their wounds.
So I try to restrain myself, but it is difficult. My new MacBook Air is a dream! Even with the slowest chip in the Mac lineup, it is still one of the fastest machines I have ever used, with one of the best screens I have ever enjoyed. Add to the mix Quick Look, Spaces, the new Safari, the enhanced Mail, iCal, oodles of beautiful and convenient third party applications, and you will find a happy camper. I’m sorry if I can’t hide my enthusiasm.
With all that there is to talk about in the Mac universe these days, do not miss our next TransMUG meeting, on Saturday, May 10 at 11 AM, just before the General Meeting, at The Center (see back cover). We would love to hear about your best experiences with the current tools at our disposal and answer your questions. Don’t miss it!
Feb 1st, 2008 | ATA, Ethics, Reports | No Comments
By Alison Dent
You’d think that handling the press would be easy for an industry that deals with words. But maybe not.
I think everyone who attended the 48th Annual ATA Conference here in San Francisco last October would agree that it was a great success. Hard work and many hours of volunteer time went into the conference, the pro bono project work, and the effort to get local publicity. On the first day of the conference, in fact, reporter Steve Rubenstein of the San Francisco Chronicle interviewed ATA President Marian Greenfield and ATA Public Relations Committee Co-chair Kevin Hendzel. The resulting article, “Translation business booming—terrorists’ languages most lucrative,” was published the next day.
War means business
Although the article successfully captured some of the buzz of the conference, it was impossible to ignore the one point that stood out above all others, and which ultimately served as the basis for the blaring headline: the message that war is good for business. While this statement may be a truism, was this really what ATA had intended to convey? Or, had the words of Ms. Greenfield and Mr. Hendzel been twisted in undue emphasis?
It didn’t take long for the NCTA members’ Yahoo! group to light up with animated discussions among members over this article and its intended message. One member felt strongly that the misrepresentation began within the leadership of ATA, and wrote a lengthy letter to the NCTA Board expressing his concerns. NCTA then contacted the ATA Board to solicit its reaction to the Chronicle article and request clarification of the intended message.
In Mr. Hendzel’s reply to NCTA, he confirmed that the reporter, Mr. Rubenstein, intended to focus on the business side of the T&I industry. However, nothing was published about this subject: neither about the international commercial market associated with globalization, for example, nor about the U.S. domestic market, an area that is growing rapidly as hospitals, courts, and other public venues are beginning to provide translation and interpreting services in response to Presidential Executive Order 13166—topics which were talked about at length in the interview. Instead, Mr. Rubenstein—or his editors—stuck like a dog with a bone to the deliberately controversial notion of war being great for business, despite repeated efforts by Mr. Hendzel to steer him away from this.
Selling out; selling more
“How much can you earn?” “What are the ‘hottest’ languages?” These are the questions that reporters are trained to ask, believing that this is what most people really want to hear about. In the world of journalism, the answers to these questions, after all, create the headlines that sell newspapers. And yes, it was an eye-catching headline; yes, it made us read the article; and yes, we did talk about it at length afterwards. But does that mean that the article accurately portrayed the event and circumstances it was meant to cover? No, far from it. While the article did remind the public that translation is not all done by software on the Internet, it offered very little useful or interesting information about our profession. As with the lack of mention of business issues cited above, there was also no mention of the human side of translating—of any positive contributions made by translators and interpreters in war zones, for example, such as providing assistance in reconstruction and rebuilding efforts. Or of the lowering of civilian and religious conflict by allowing the various parties to communicate.
Somehow the old adage of there being “no such thing as bad publicity” just didn’t hold true in this case. Instead, with its emphasis on the sensational aspects of war-mongering, the article portrayed our profession in a negative, ambulance-chasing light. Because in the world of journalism, after all, sensationalism is what sells.
A different fight
In 2008, with ATA boasting over 10,000 members, and NCTA over 600 in this, our 30th anniversary year, we can look back and see that as a profession we have made great strides. But this episode has clearly demonstrated that we are not beyond having our words twisted. Jiri Stejskal, who took over as ATA President after the conference, agreed that the reporter’s slant was disturbing, and reflected poorly on ATA and the profession. Although a letter from ATA to the San Francisco Chronicle was reportedly being drafted, there is no information on any progress on the issue since then.
There is much, however, that we can still do. Specifically, we need to continue our efforts to get positive publicity for our profession; we need to educate our clients; and we need to get smarter about dealing with the press.
It’s time to use the tools of our trade—words—to fight for our cause
Feb 1st, 2008 | Court Interpretation, NCTA Meetings, Reports | No Comments
By Raffaella Buschiazzo
The December 1st NCTA General Meeting had a bit of everything, from a celebration of our most active volunteers to a presentation on how to become a California Certified Court Interpreter to a lively and pleasant hour of stuffing envelopes, sticking stamps, and general all-around schmoozing as we discussed our plans for the imminent holidays.
NCTA Vice President Yves Avérous opened the General meeting at 1:40 p.m. with a few announcements of upcoming events, and a call for volunteers to replace Alison Dent as manager of the online extension of our magazine Translorial (www.translorial.com). The site will include the full archives of Translorial from its first issue 30 years ago; Alison did a tremendous job putting content online and managing it, and we will all be very sorry to see her move back to Europe. Yves continued his introduction by drawing attention to the fact that 2008 will be a special year for our Association. We will celebrate NCTA’s 30th anniversary with a major event. Suggestions are welcome!
Awards
NCTA gave free one-year memberships to four members who distinguished themselves in 2007 by their contributions to the Association’s activities. Karen Tkaczyk played an instrumental role during the ATA Conference in San Francisco by working at the NCTA table and providing a storage place in her hotel room for all the association’s collateral materials. Patricia Ramos, who served as a board director from 2000 to 2002 and hosted the board retreats at her house several times, made the trip to San Francisco to attend the ATA Conference from Spain, where she currently lives, and helped at the NCTA hospitality table every morning. Tatyana Neronova has managed all the Translorial mail meticulously for a long time. And last but not least, Paula Dieli was presented with the Volunteer of the Year Award for her involvement in the ATA Conference and for setting up and maintaining the NCTA wiki page on the Conference.
Interpreting in the Courts
The NCTA board wanted to have a presentation giving an overview of the role that court interpreters play in the court system, and what is required to become a certified or registered court interpreter in California. The goal was to offer specific information to those translators interested in expanding their careers and to interpreters who are thinking about adding this specialization to their resume.
The two speakers selected for our presentation by the San Francisco Judicial Council of California complemented each other thanks to their different profiles. Cannon Han is a Court Services Analyst with the Court Interpreters Program. Prior to joining the Administrative Office of the Courts (AOC), he was an attorney in the non-profit sector and in private practice. As an attorney, Mr. Han addressed language interpretation and quality of care issues in the mental health system and assisted low-income clients on a wide range of legal issues, ranging from public benefits to patients’ rights violations. Dr. Patricia Kilroe is a Linguistics Analyst for the Court Interpreters Program. Prior to this position she taught linguistics, French, English expository writing, and ESL for many years. Her degrees are a B.A. in French, an M.S. in linguistics, and a Ph.D. in Romance-language linguistics.
Mr. Han opened the presentation by quoting from the California Constitution’s mandate that “[a] person unable to understand English who is charged with a crime has a right to an interpreter throughout the proceedings.” For this reason courts must provide specially trained language interpreters whenever a party involved in a proceeding understands little or no English. The Judicial Council is the organ responsible for certifying and registering court interpreters. Currently, court interpreters can be certified in 12 languages: Arabic, Armenian (Eastern and Western), Cantonese, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Tagalog, and Vietnamese. Only interpreters who pass the Court Interpreter Certification Examination and register with the Judicial Council are considered as “certified court interpreters.”
Exams
Part of the examination tests writing skills in English and in the target language for vocabulary, reading comprehension, and grammar. The written examination consists of 155 multiple-choice questions to be answered in four hours and 20 minutes. If the candidate passes, he or she goes on to the oral component to test skills in simultaneous and consecutive interpreting and in sight translation. Interpreters of spoken languages for which there is no state certifying examination are called “registered interpreters of non-designated languages.” They must pass an English proficiency examination which consists of oral and written tests. In both cases, after passing the examination, the interpreter must submit an application to register with the Judicial Council and pay an annual fee. To maintain the certification, the interpreter must attend a Code of Ethics workshop in the first two-year compliance period, and submit proof of 30 hours of continuing education and 40 recent court interpreting assignments for every two-year period.
Dr. Kilroe explained what kind of knowledge, skills, and abilities are needed in court interpreting. She distributed a very long list of linguistic, speaking, listening, reading comprehension, interpreting, and behavioral skills required for this profession. These include language fluency and interpreting skills, such as the ability to concentrate and focus, to process linguistic information and choose terminology quickly, to think analytically, to conserve intent, tone, style, and utterances of all messages, to reflect register, and to self-monitor and self-correct. There are several colleges that provide training, but Dr. Kilroe offered some tips on how to prepare the for the exam with self-study techniques: expand your vocabulary, develop your own glossaries, develop interpreting techniques for consecutive and simultaneous interpretation and sight translation, develop memorization techniques and practice effective listening. She suggested the exercise of “shadowing” to improve one’s interpreting techniques. This consists of having somebody record passages from magazines and newspapers on tape and repeating everything the speaker says including writing out any numerals from ten to 100. We tried this exercise in groups of two people. For more information on becoming a court interpreter or on official workshops, you can visit http://www.courtinfo.ca.gov/programs/courtinterpreters/becoming.htm
Thank you to Mr. Han and Dr. Kilroe for their very comprehensive presentations and for staying with us until the end of the general meeting to answer our multiple questions. They certainly provided a lot of information and good suggestions for those courageous enough to follow their path!
Feb 1st, 2008 | NCTA Events, Reports | No Comments
By Nina Bogdan
The annual NCTA New Year’s brunch was held at Skates on the Bay restaurant in Berkeley on January 13th. This is the fourth year that the event was held at this location and the general consensus among attendees was that it remains a good choice. Approximately 30 members attended, although apparently 50 or so sent in a positive RSVP. The whereabouts of the missing attendees remain a mystery and they certainly did miss out on a very pleasant social and networking event. This was my first time attending the brunch and I must admit that while I made the decision to go only at the last minute, I am very glad that I overcame my slothful inclinations and took the plunge.
Skates on the Bay is located on the Berkeley waterfront and has a sweeping (one might even say “spectacular” view) of the bay. The weather on Sunday was perfect—clear and bright with a slight breeze. One of the blessings of living in the Bay Area is having these unexpected very un-winter like days that pop up between rainstorms and overcast drizzly periods.
Lunch began with an offering of a variety of beverages. I, not being a designated driver for once, opted for a Bloody Mary and although it looked almost too pretty to drink, it went down quite nicely. We proceeded with ordering brunch and then were presented with pastries, coffee, and tea courtesy of NCTA.
There were quite animated social and business discussions throughout the meal and it was quite apparent that a good time was had by all. I was finally able to put names and faces together, which I find to be an important part of networking when most communications are by email. The lunch ended with what may become a traditional walk on the long pier adjacent to the restaurant and the obligatory group photo. All in all, this was a very pleasant way to spend an early Sunday afternoon.
Feb 1st, 2008 | Business Tools, NCTA Meetings, Reports | No Comments
By Yves Avérous
It’s a Mac Macworld
After the big “Year of the iPhone,” in 2007, it was past time for Apple to give the star treatment back to the Mac in this year’s Macworld Conference and Expo held in San Francisco last month. More than ever, with all the recent product introductions, Mac users have an exciting choice of deft machines offering the best productivity a freelancer can get.
On the software side, the Apple suites iLife and iWork—having been refreshed last June—had to yield the center of the productivity stage to the big suite that finally could: Microsoft Office 2008! (The one that doesn’t support macros …) The good news there is the price, with a competitive $150 Home & Student version. Ars Technica’s first look (http://snipurl.com/1wum2) and Macworld’s review (http://snipurl.com/1y9q4) will show you all there is to like and dislike in this release.
Facing the possibility of no longer using Word on the Mac, I have given more consideration to Pages 2 (part of iWork ‘08) and got to really enjoy the elegant new version.
The Mac marketplace is now flush with applications that are as helpful as affordable. In the recent weeks, members of the TransMUG list (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/transmug) were made privvy to a few amazing online deals. On my short list of tools that you may want to try and find via Macupdate.com, I highly recommend content managers such as Yojimbo, Yep!, and Together; password managers such as Wallet or 1Password; and a fresh crop of “Getting-Things-Done”-inspired applications, from the basic TaskPaper, to the powerful OmniFocus, or the elegant Things.
With so much to discover on the Mac lately, do not miss our next TransMUG meeting, on Saturday, February 9 at 11 AM, just before the Annual Meeting, at The Center’s café. This time, it’s tech support (and switcher) extraordinaire Emmanuel Lemor who will MC the meeting. Don’t miss it.
