The Month in Numbers: Interpreting

Here's a summary of Judy's interpreting adventures during the month of June. This is meant to be taken with a grain of salt and a bit of Friday sense of humor.

• Spanish-language interpreting assignments: 95%
• German-language interpreting assignments: 5%
• Court appearances in district/justice court: 1
• Court appearances in family court: 0
• Number of depositions: 17 (including cancelled, postponed and cannot-find-deponent depositions)
• Escort interpreting assignments: 1
• Number of times court clerk or court reporter wanted to swear me in as a court translator: 7
• Number of times an attorney fell asleep during a deposition: can't say; well, OK...5 times
• Number of objections voiced by opposing counsel to the other counsel's questions: lost track (in the hundreds)
• Amount of times an attorney wanted to state for the record that he or she found another attorney to be offensive, rude or inappropriate: 4
• Percentage of deponents who really did speak English and did not need a court interpreter: 15 (guesstimate)
• Amount of times interpreter had to ask for repetition because of mumbling speakers: too many to count
• Miles driven to and from interpreting projects: exactly 200 
• Amount of extra-soft European tissues shared with anyone who needs this this month: 0 (it was a good month)
• Dictionaries and books brought to every assignment: Holly Mikkelson's The Interpreter's Companion and Dennis McKenna's Criminal Court Dictionary
• Amount of times I looked anything up in these dictionaries: 0
• Blunder of the month: could not think of the English translation of "perejil" (parsley) fast enough. 
• Person who came to my rescue: an attorney
• Longest amount of time spent searching for car in the parking garage after assignment: 15 minutes
• Percentage of law firms who paid their May invoices within 30 days: 100%

It was a good month indeed! How did June go for you?

Happy Friday, dear readers!

Video: Medical Interpreting in the Netherlands

One of our favorite newsletters, The Interpreter's Launch Pad, is out today--and it's Interprenaut's first birthday: congratulations! As usual, this newsletter, which we highly recommend, is packed with fascinating information about the world of interpreting. It also included this thought-provoking video about the importance of professional interpreters in the medical sector in the Netherlands. Please share it with friends and colleagues!

Making the Call

Invariably, at some point in their careers, translators and interpreters will have outstanding invoices that do not get paid in a timely manner. While we have been quite lucky on this front, we have had to make extra efforts to get some invoices paid -- usually one or two a year. Recently, a new interpreting client in the U.S. had an outstanding invoice that had been on the books for some 35 days.

Instead of sending an e-mail, Judy tried an old-fashioned method: the telephone. Sure, it's fallen in disuse, but it's a powerful way to communicate. It's immediate and a bit uncomfortable for all parties: perfect for a please-provide-payment call. The entire call did not take more than five minutes. Judy called the main number for the law firm and kindly inquired who the correct contact person for accounting would be. She was promptly transferred to the office manager. Judy briefly introduced herself, said that she'd e-mailed the invoice to the attorney (as agreed with him) and gently asked when she might expect payment on the overdue invoice. She also mentioned that it was a small sum and that the reason she was calling was to make sure nothing had slipped through the cracks. Turns out the mortified office manager had never seen the invoice because the attorney had apparently not given the invoice to her for payment. She promised to take care of it immediately and Judy agreed to e-mail the invoice again. She did, and sure enough: two days later, she received the check in the mail. Sometimes a call really is more effective than e-mail.

Here are some guidelines to keep in mind:

• Take a deep breath. You might be a bit nervous, but it's just a phone call. 
• Sit in a quiet room. Make sure there are no barking dogs or children within earshot.
• Be friendly, but firm. Give the other person the benefit of the doubt, especially if this is the first time you have an issue with the customer.
• No diatribes. Say what you need to say, but keep it brief. Then pause for a few moments and give the other person a chance to respond.
• Don't threaten anyone. Be polite and accommodating -- it's easier to get paid this way.
• Offer solutions, including sending the invoice again via the postal service, etc.
• Ask to be added to the customer's vendor database to prevent future glitches in the payment process.
• Be gracious. This might very well be an isolated incident and this customer might turn out to be a superstar long-term client (that's happened to us).

What about you, dear readers? When do you pick up the phone? We would love to hear from you. 

Your Courtroom Ally

If you are a court  interpreter like Judy, chances are you spend a lot of time inside courtrooms. So who's the most helpful person there if you are a court interpreter? The judge? The law clerk? The district attorney? Read on for Judy's take on this.

It only took me a few days during my Nevada-mandated court observing hours (40 of them) to realize who my most important ally in the courtroom would be. I'd wander into a random courtroom, confused because I couldn't figure out the docket and wondering whether I could get the hours of observation that I needed that day. Luckily, someone came to my rescue. The most helpful folks in the courtroom and in the courthouse will:

• Help you get the right piece of paper you need to get paid by the courts
• Hand you the correct schedule of appearances for the day
• Tell you which cases have already been heard
• Convince the court clerk to get your cases heard earlier so you don't have to wait around
• Perhaps let you get away with things you aren't supposed to do in a courtroom, such as check your smartphone and read a book during breaks (as long as you do so discreetly)
• If it's a big enough courthouse, these nice folks might be stationed at a variety of places. If it's a small courthouse, they do everything. They might save you the trouble of going through the metal detector if they know who you are, thus ensuring a longer life for your cream-colored briefcase (I have one).
• Tell you what's really going on in the judge's court, even if the judge insists her drug court is highly effective. Ask the most helpful person in the courtroom how many defendants he or she has seen before and the number will be close to 100%. These folks have no political agenda. It's quite refreshing!
• Share their food with you if you look hungry and are lusting after their donuts, even though you're not supposed to eat in the courtroom
• Make you feel safe, no matter how intimidating the defendant in the orange jumpsuit.
• Really make you appreciate a man/woman in uniform.
• Never get stressed out, lose a piece of paper, or lose their composure
• Get tough if they have to be, and sometimes that's a good thing

Who are these marvelous, hard-working, in-the-know, humble, discreet and sometimes flexible superstars of the courtroom? Meet the bailiffs/marshals (in Clark County, they recently unionized and went from being bailiffs to being marshals). There are a lot of wonderful people in the courthouse, but the marshals take the prize, hence this little ode to them. If you are beginning court interpreter, I suggest you make friends with these wonderful creatures. Next time, the donuts are on me!  

Intro to Translation: Online Class at UC San Diego

On June 26, Judy will start teaching an all-online class for the University of California-San Diego extension. The five-week Introduction to Translation will give students the basics to get started in the industry. Judy has proudly served on the advisory board of the Spanish/English translation and interpretation certificate program at UC San Diego, and has now happily accepted to teach a few online classes. This class is part of the English/Spanish certificate program and costs $225. Fluency in both Spanish and English is required. We are big proponents of online education, especially in the US, where we have relatively few T&I programs, and UC San Diego is a fantastic program! Learn more and sign up if you are interested.  And yes, there will be homework. 

T&I Video: Participate Now!

As many of you might know, our friends Nataly Kelly and Jost Zetzsche are publishing a much-awaited book, Found in Translation in October. You can pre-order it on In Trans Book Service and other sites. Now they've decided to take on a fun project in conjunction with the book: a video starring all of us, if we want! You can make a short video with any simple camera or smartphone, and all you have to do is say ''I am an interpreter" in your non-English language or hold up a sign that says "I am a translator" in your non-English language. For more information, please click here. The video only has to be 10 seconds long. Dagy already made hers in Vienna (the Danube canal), and the Vegas video should be completed soon. We hope many colleagues participate and cannot wait to see the full video.

Open Thread: Mistakes Were Made

Once in a while, it's entertaining to think back on our mistakes and figure out what we learned from them (we usually learn a thing or two). We'd also love to hear your most embarrassing or simply favorite mistake in the translation or interpreting world. We are more thinking about business mistakes rather than linguistic mistakes, but all are welcome. Here is ours.

Almost ten years ago, we sent an invoice to a fantastic client (still a client, actually). It was for a small project and we sent the invoice via e-mail. A day or so later, the client got back to us and very sweetly pointed out that:

1. The invoice contained another company's contact information
2. The invoice referenced the wrong project
3. The invoice thus had the incorrect amount due on it

Ouch. As you might imagine, we were working, in the early days, without an accounting invoicing system and had used a previous invoice (we had simply Word templates back in) and had thought we had substituted the information. Obviously, we had not done so correctly. That was the last time we issued an invoice without a database that keeps track of quotes, invoices and project information. We thoroughly researched many options and ended up purchasing TranslationOffice 3000, which we love (a review will be forthcoming). Our client was not mad at all, but we were beyond mortified. We apologized quickly and sent the correct invoice. We never did make the same mistake again.

Would you be willing to share your favorite mistake with us and our readers? 

Dictionaries: Found

Book signing at the InTrans booth in Denver, 2010.

Every outstanding translator and interpreter we know is quite proud of his or her dictionary collection. We've never really met a serious linguist who is not passionate about acquiring as many top-notch resources as possible, but unfortunately, in the US, it is sometimes quite challenging to find a place to purchase dictionaries that are not widely available. Enter our friend Freek Lankhof from InTrans Book Service. While Freek is a fantastic friend of ours and also sells our book, we've been filling our bookshelves with books bought on his website and at the many conferences he atttends before he even knew that there are two of us.

Judy and Freek after the AAIT in suburban Atlanta, 2011.

In Europe, Dagy is in the enviable position of having several good bookstores at which to buy materials, but in the US, we only purchase from Freek. Imagine this: without InTrans, you might be hunting for that difficult-to-find book on random websites that might or might not ship it to you within a reasonable amount of time, and most dictionaries you won't find at all. Luckily for us, Freek has excellent relationships with publishers around the globe, and he's sure to have the most recent book or dictionary that you just need as reference material. Unfortunately, the book selling business is a low-margin business, and while Freek is very passionate about sharing his books with linguists (mainly for Spanish and German), it's also a tough job: imagine traveling 3,000 miles with hundreds of books to display them at a conference. However, for more than 25 years, he's done precisely that, and he hasn't missed an ATA conference or the 10 or so other, smaller conferences he attends, in years. He's a staple at the conferences, and we'd say, a staple of our profession. We are truly lucky to have him, but if you decide to purchase a relatively-easy-to-find book on Amazon for $3 less than what it would cost on InTrans, you know what might happen. Let's support small businesses, particularly those that sell us somethign we really, really need.

InTrans and Freek Lankhof will once again be an exhibitor at the ATA conference in San Diego, CA, this coming October. We will both attend the conference, and as always, our first stop in the exhibit hall will be Freek's booth, where we get our hands on new dictionaries (we can never have too many). If you are looking for us, try the InTrans booth first, where you will be most likely to find us. Then try the NITA table and the hotel bar, where we might be enjoying a fruity cocktail with friends and colleagues, dictionaries in tow. 

Supreme Court Ruling on T&I

It's been an exciting week for language news: the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that, essentially, translators write and interpreters speak. Of course, it's a bit more complicated than that, and to read up on the details, we'd like to point you to analysis by professor Barry Olsen of the Monterey Institute and co-president of InterpretAmerica, who contributed to the amicus brief that was submitted to the Supreme Court a few months ago. You can read his excellent analysis here.

So now, when you get ready to explain the difference between interpreting and translation to someone, and they question your explanation, you can confidently say that the Supreme Court said so.

Another Giveaway: $100 in Google AdWords

Google keeps on sending us so many free certificates for $100 in Google AdWords for new users, and we are happy to raffle them off. As usual, we will raffle off the certificate to a colleague (freelancers only, please) who answers one question correctly. We will e-mail the access code to the winning person so he or she can get started with Google AdWords. The certificate expires July 31, 2012.

A caveat: you have to be a NEW user of Google AdWords, as this certificate is not valid for existing users (in that case, we'd probably use it ourselves).

Here's the question: where were these pictures taken? Hint: it was not in the U.S. Give us the state/city/area (not just the country; that's too easy!), and you will win the prize. We've made it easy for you by including several clues in the pictures, and both pictures were taken in the same place.