Category: language access

court certification, court interpreting, grad school, health care interpreting, interpreter life, interpreter services, Interpreter Training, language access, leadership for interpreters, medical interpreting, new interpreters, Personal, self discovery for interpreters, teaching and training, working with interpreters

A Day in the Life of a Freelance Interpreter

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As a freelance Spanish interpreter working in legal, court, and conference settings, my days vary. A lot.

Working from the booth, one of my favorite places to be!

A bit of background first: I’ve been in the freelance market for two years now, and it’s been three years since I finished my graduate work in interpreting. Before grad school, I worked as a staff interpreter and an interpreter services supervisor for about ten years. Before that, I worked as a subcontracted interpreter for an agency for a couple years while I was finishing my bachelor’s degree in Spanish, and for a while after I finished undergrad. So while I’m not new in interpreting, I’m still pretty new as a freelancer.

Continue reading “A Day in the Life of a Freelance Interpreter” →
health care interpreting, interpreter services, language access, medical interpreting, working with interpreters

Five Things To Know About Working With Interpreters

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5 things to know about working with interpretersCurious about what interpreters do? Wondering how to best work with interpreters? Here are some common misconceptions surrounding interpreters, and some helpful points to know about working with them!

Translators write and interpreters talk. Although there are some professionals who do both interpreting and translating, the terms are not interchangeable. If you’re speaking, you’re working with an interpreter. Now you know. Continue reading “Five Things To Know About Working With Interpreters” →

health care interpreting, interpreter services, language access, leadership for interpreters, medical interpreting, supervising interpreters

Defining and Evaluating Bilingual Hospital Staff and Interpreters

thatinterpreter

IMG_3830Back when I was supervising my Language Services department, one of my responsibilities was overseeing our bilingual staff and interpreter approval program.  Honestly?  It wasn’t ever anything I wanted to be in charge of.  But I thought it was important.  I think it just made me uneasy in the beginning because I could never really pin anyone down to help guide me and answer my questions: Whose language should we evaluate?  What should we evaluate?  How do we know if they’re “proficient”?  What does that mean?  How do we evaluate language?  Who can be an interpreter?  What’s the difference between interpreters and bilingual staff?  How do we come up with an evaluation process that people will actually use?  Why do we evaluate them?  How do we follow up?  Essentially: How can we make sure that patients are getting what they need through effective communication when they’re being served by interpreters and bilingual staff?

I’ve got some basics here that may be helpful if you’re responsible for these kinds of things, or if you yourself are a bilingual person working in healthcare, wondering what it means to be an interpreter. Continue reading “Defining and Evaluating Bilingual Hospital Staff and Interpreters” →

language access, leadership for interpreters

Delivering Bad News for Interpreters

thatinterpreter

people sitting in front of wooden table
Photo by rawpixel.com on Pexels.com

Last year, I was doing some research to prepare for a workshop that I named, “How Much Do You Want To Know: Delivering Bad News for Interpreters”. If you’re a medical interpreter, and/or if you’ve ever received really bad news in the hospital, you know what’s coming after the doctor says, “How much do you want to know?” Well, maybe you don’t know what’s coming exactly, but you do know one thing: It’s not going to be good news. I wanted to develop a workshop that would prepare interpreters to interpret bad news. So, what’s the big deal with bad news? Continue reading “Delivering Bad News for Interpreters” →