Results: Federal Court Interpreter Certification Exam

The results of the written portion of the Federal Court Interpreters Certification Examination (FCICE) were finally sent out the week of November 15. Judy took the exam at the beginning of August (she reported on her experience here), and we are happy to report she passed. Here's Judy's full report on her grades, which she is disclosing in great detail. Even though the FCICE website emphasizes that no printed communication will...

ATA Conference: San Diego Restaurants

We both look forward to seeing many of our fantastic friends and colleagues at the ATA conference in San Diego in a few days! We are busy putting the finishing organizing touches on our lunches, dinners and meetings, and now our friend, colleague and fellow foodie Marianne Reiner, who lives in San Diego, has kindly put together this list of restaurants. We are grateful to Marianne for taking the time to do this for all her colleagues. We hope you find this list helpful. We are really hungry now.... San Diego Restaurants...

Win a Blogging Toolkit

A few weeks ago, Judy gave an interview sharing what she knows about blogging to fellow translator Olga Arakelyan of Russia, who also runs a Sharp End Training, which offers training for freelance translators with her business partner Jonathan Senior, who works out of the UK. Olga and Jonathan interviewed several translation bloggers and created a nifty how-to-get-started package for beginning translation bloggers. While it turns out that this information will not be free, but will rather be available for...

Advice for Beginning Translators and Interpreters

A few weeks ago, Judy participated in a "Getting Started in Translation and Interpreting Workshop" in Reno, Nevada, which was organized by the non-profit she spearheads, the Nevada Interpreters and Translators Association. She presented this workshop with other industry veterans, including well-known French-to-English chemistry translator Karen Tkaczyk, who made a series of excellent points, which we will include...

The Interpreter's Mid-Career Crisis

Many of the best interpreters in the world have the pleasure of working at the European Parliament. The star of this hilarious video, which is of course completely tongue-in-cheek, is a full-time employee at the European Parliament, where he works in the English-language booth (meaning he interprets from at least three languages into English). Watch Matthew in action! We had a very good laugh about this. We hope you enjoy it as well! ...

Donuts, Please

We always knew that clients love it when you come bearing gifts. That's why we send gifts on special occasions and enjoy buying our clients lunch or dinner. Recently, however, Judy got schooled in the high art of bringing donuts to the people. Read on for a real-life scenario from our small business. Note: some embellishments and funnier-than-in-real-life one-liners have been added for comedic effect. Judy...

The Big Day: Found in Translation

It seems like more than a year ago that we started looking forward to the publication of this book, and now the day is finally here! October 2, 2012, is a big day for our industry, as the long-awaited book Found in Translation: How Language Shapes Our Lives and Transforms the World, written by industry veterans Nataly Kelly and Jost Zetzsche, is being released today by a big publisher (Penguin/Perigree). We had the...