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The Newsletter of the Carolina Association of Translators and Interpreters
Also in this issue
Expert witness evaluation of an Interpreter during a pre-trial interview
By Javier Y. Castillo, Jr. . . . . . . . . . . 3
Virtually the perfect choice Part 1: The incentive to go digital and
the practical issues
By Mike Collins . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . 6
Book Review
By N. Grace Aaron
Medicine in Translation: Journeys with
My Patients . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
News and upcoming events . . . . . . 11
A welcome to new members . . . . . 12
From the Editor’s desk: There’s no such thing as a “useless” language
By G. David Heath . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
CATI is a chapter of the
American Translators Association.
For more information, see the
ATA Web site:
www.atanet.org
or contact the ATA at:
American Translators Association 225 Reinekers Lane, Suite 590
Alexandria, VA 22314 Phone (703) 683-6100
Fax (703) 683-6122
Visit the CATI Web site at:
www.catiweb.org
From the CATI President
Welcome to Our World
By Mike Collins
Summer 2010
Dear CATI
colleagues,
M y best wishes to everyone and my hopes that you all will
have a chance to get away for a bit this summer, if you have not al-ready.
We are now in the second sum-mer of the most serious recession we have faced in over 25 years, and the uncertainty, disruption, and economic and emotional stress it has brought with it have affected us all to one degree or another.
But all is not dire, and this sum-mer‘s issue of the Quarterly con-tains some great reminders about the need for and value of our profession in today‘s world.
As I read this is-sue, I find myself wishing I could place it into the hands of every person who considers translation and interpretation to be unimportant, low-level clerical work (if they think about it at all). I want to hand it to them and say: ―Welcome to Our World!‖
Javier Castillo’s excellent piece on assessing interpreter qualifications in the legal setting could not be more pointed. What
Continued on next page
could be more important than accu-rate information when a person‘s freedom, possibly a person‘s life, hangs in the balance? His article con-tains one of the best quotes I have seen in a long time about how we should approach our work:
―At the end of the day it is not about us as individuals. Our profes-sion is about facilitating communica-tion between parties so that they can fulfill their duties and responsibilities as interviewers, witnesses, attorneys, doctors, care givers, or anyone else who relies on us to bridge language gaps.‖ (p. 5)
Grace Aaron’s book review takes up this theme as well, as she
recounts a physician describing how her difficulties in bridging the lan-guage gap often come between her and her patients. In this insightful and thorough review, you can feel the physician‘s struggle to balance com-munication and empathy without the help of the professional guidelines and training experienced interpreters
―As I read this issue, I find myself wishing I could place it into the hands of
every person who considers translation and interpretation to be unimportant, low-level clerical work (if they think about it at all).
I want to hand it to them and say:
‗Welcome to Our World!‘ ‖
2
Welcome to Our World continued
end, in our professions, it comes down to what we as people bring to what we do.
In a bustling, hectic, ―bigger-is-always-better‖ business world, the human element is frequently ne-glected or dismissed. In the case of our profession, however, the human element is its very essence. Without you, the dedicated professionals who care deeply about the importance of what you are doing, much of the world would come to a screeching halt for want of effective communica-tion.
That‘s not a world that would be much fun to live in — I much prefer our world!
Sincerely,
Mike Collins
CATI Board Members
2009-2010
President Michael Collins Global Translation Systems, Inc. 920B Martin Luther King, Jr., Blvd., Suite 212 Chapel Hill, NC 27514 [email protected]
Vice President Georgia Betcher 1606 Redbud Dr Fayetteville, NC 28311 [email protected]
Secretary Memuna Williams 10912 Robinson Rock Ct Charlotte, NC 28277 memuna@
avantgardetranslations.com
Treasurer Severina Pagliara 3623 Hamlin Rd Durham, NC 27704 [email protected]
Directors Manuela Garcia 2 Trump Court Durham, NC 27703 [email protected]
John Milan PO Box 1058 Chapel Hill, NC 27514 john.milan@
gypsytranslations.com
Sandy Reul 261 Beckingham Loop Cary, NC 27519 [email protected]
Graciela White 114 Greymist Ln Cary, NC 27518 [email protected]
Administrative
Manager Heather Hille 127 Windsor Circle Chapel Hill, NC 27516 [email protected] Tel: (919) 698-0721
We would like to hear
from you! If you have an opinion that
you would like to share with
your CATI colleagues on any
of the ideas expressed in
this newsletter, please write
to the editor,
G. David Heath, at:
Submissions are subject to
editing.
have at their disposal.
But things are changing. As CATI Quarterly Editor David Heath reports, a summary of job prospects for translators and interpreters released by The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statis-tics (p. 11) includes a prom-ising outlook and another memorable quote:
―…while technology has made the work of interpret-ers and translators easier, it is not likely to have a negative impact on the employment of interpreters and translators because ‗such innova-tions are incapable of producing work comparable with work pro-duced by these professionals.‘ "
My contribution to this issue is Part 1 of a two-part series describ-ing my company‘s decision to go virtual and the application of some of that technology to cut costs while maintaining the level of service. The array of options available to us nowadays is extensive, and I hope this information will prove useful to any others who are rethinking the way they are doing business. All these technologies help, but in the
―In a bustling, hectic, ―bigger-is-always-better‖ business world, the human element is frequently neglected or
dismissed. In the case of our profession, however, the human
element is its very essence.‖
3
CATI Gold Sponsor CATI gratefully acknowledges the support
provided by the following Gold Sponsor:
Accessible Languages, Inc.
Accessible Languages is one of the fastest growing interpreting and translating companies in the North Carolina area. We are extremely proud to be a Gold Sponsor of CATI.
We provide professional and courtesy service through onsite interpreting, as well as both
phone and online translations. Our services are available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. We are here to serve and we take great pride in our services.
Contact: Fran Smithson/CEO 919-567-3383
Sheila Best/Executive Director
919-567-3383
For more information, please visit us at www.accessiblelanguages.com or call (877) 567-3383.
This article describes the process that the author underwent
to prepare an Expert Witness Report and testimony on
interpreter performance in a legal setting, and it provides
some points that interpreters and clients can use to gauge
interpreter competency.
L ast year, I received a phone call from a lawyer who had a DVD inter-
view of a possible witness to a homicide. The person being interviewed was a child who spoke only Spanish. The in-terview was conducted with the help of an ―interpreter.‖ Though the lawyer and his staff only knew limited Spanish, it was obvious to them that there were errors with interpretation
Knowing that the interpreter needed a professional‘s as-sistance, the lawyer asked me to serve as an expert witness on interpreter issues during a Motion to Suppress Hearing (a hearing to try to exclude evidence from being introduced) and then later during the trial.
My job was to evaluate the interpreter and gauge her work, prepare an expert witness report based on my findings, and then testify as to the accuracy or rather the inaccuracies of the interpretation.
To carry out this task, I watched the video in its entirety, made a transcrip-tion of the original audio, and then translated the Spanish into English. I compared the original questions and answers with the interpreted version and made note of the errors.
It was obvious to me from the first 10 seconds that the interpreter on the DVD was not qualified to interpret in a legal setting. The interpreter walked in without a notepad or anything to write with, was incorrectly positioned with respect to the inter-viewer and witness, and had no access to any dic-tionaries or reference mate-rials. Then, once the inter-view began, the interpreter began doing shout-over simulta-neous interpreting (interpreting by ―shouting over‖ the speaker) rather than consecutive interpreting (which, by the
Expert witness evaluation of an interpreter during a pre-trial interview By Javier Y. Castillo, Jr.
way, made the transcription a nightmare!).
The ethical and protocol errors continued later in the video when the interpreter made comments on what she heard, failed to interpret some statements, stated that she didn‘t know what certain terms meant, and still continued to interpret without getting clarifica-tion.
Moving on to the actual interpretation, it began to get worse. The interpreter made numerous grammati-cal and lexical errors, misinterpreted questions and answers, and deleted or omitted information.
While the errors were extremely evident to me, I
Continued on next page
―My job was to evaluate the interpreter and gauge
her work, prepare an expert witness report based on my
findings, and then testify as to the accuracy or
rather the inaccuracies
of the interpretation.‖
―It was obvious to me from the first 10 seconds
that the interpreter on the DVD was not Qualified to interpret
in a legal setting.‖
4
CATI Gold Sponsor CATI gratefully acknowledges the support
provided by the following Gold Sponsor:
Choice Translating, Inc.
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knew that it might be difficult to explain them to those who could not tell the difference between a person who calls herself an interpreter and a trained professional interpreter.
To do this, I first had to establish a foundation of what it means to be an interpreter, and then expand on what it means to be a court or legal interpreter. After doing so, I had to explain in detail why this particular interpreter did not meet the standards of what is required to interpret in legal matters.
The following is the series of questions that I used as the basis of my review of this legal or court interpreter.
Does the interpreter appear to be prepared for the inter-view?
Does the interpreter have a sufficient command of the
languages in which he or she will be interpreting?
Does the interpreter know the role of the court inter-preter and adhere to the Code of Ethics and Profes-sional Responsibility for court interpreters?
Does the interpreter use the correct mode of interpreta-tion?
Does the interpreter interpret in the first-person, or does the interpreter interpret in the third-person?
Does the interpreter have conversations with or ask questions of the witness that were not asked by the in-terviewer?
Does the interpreter remain impartial and limit his or her activities to only interpretation?
Does the interpreter summarize, edit, or not interpret a message completely?
Does the interpreter offer answers or information in-stead of interpreting?
After each question, I explained in detail why each is-sue was critical and how it related to the process of inter-preting and then specifically for interpreting for legal mat-ters.
Once I had established the criteria for gauging the abili-ties of a court/legal interpreter, I built on this knowledge and used excerpts of the video and the transcript to point out all of the different types of errors the interpreter made. I relied on grammar books and explained the interpreter‘s basic grammatical errors, such as confusing the very basic Spanish verbs ―ser‖ and ―estar‖ (―to be‖), using improper verb tenses, and making up words.
Using the Code of Ethics and Professional Responsi-bility as a model, as well as many other established sources, I was able to point out protocol and ethical er-rors. Using my transcript and translation, I was able to show that there were incomplete and inaccurate interpre-tations: At times the interpreter added, omitted, or substi-tuted information and there were questions or answers that were not even interpreted at all.
It doesn‘t take an expert or a professional interpreter to spot many of these interpreting errors. They should be
Expert witness evaluation of an interpreter continued
Continued on next page
―… I first had to establish a foundation of what it means
to be an interpreter, and then expand on what it means to be a court or
legal interpreter.‖
5
CATI Gold Sponsor CATI gratefully acknowledges the support provided by the following Gold Sponsor:
Fluent Language Solutions
Since 1991, Fluent Language Solutions has helped tens of thousands of clients across the Carolinas and the nation overcome language barriers with the high-est quality interpreting and translating services avail-able in over 180 languages.
At Fluent, we are experts in the field of interpreting and translating; it is our only business. With the broadest array of services available and the most stringent qual-ity control processes employed in our industry, our integrated approach to service delivery ensures you will receive the highest quality service in the most cost effective manner possible.
Contact: James Pfeiffer VP, Sales & Marketing Direct: 704-926-5015 Cell: 704-996-0008 Toll-Free: 888-225-6056 E-mail: [email protected]
For more information, please visit Fluent Language Solutions at www.FluentLS.com.
obvious to anyone who knows what is expected from an interpreter – what an interpreter can do and should do and what an interpreter is prohibited from doing within a particu-lar field.
It is often the case that people are unfamiliar with inter-preters and do not investigate these basic guidelines. At-torneys, judges, interviewers, and others will use whoever is available or whoever claims to know how to interpret, often to the detriment of their work.
While those who hire interpreters should know some basic signs of good interpretation, the interpreter has the responsibility to understand what is entailed in being an interpreter. It is not just the ability to transmit information accurately from one language into an-other. For each field, the interpreter needs to know what is expected and required, and the consequences of doing an incomplete job or going beyond the scope of interpreting in that field.
For example, in the world of legal or court interpreting, the recognized Code of Ethics and Standards of Protocol apply to interpreters in all legal settings (interviews, jail vis-its, attorney-client meetings), not just when interpreting in the courtroom. Even if the interviewer knew nothing of standards for interpretation, the person who was working as a legal interpreter should have known and had the re-sponsibility to know.
As interpreters, it is our job to know and adhere to the standards of our profession and to hold others to the same. At the end of the day it is not about us as individuals. Our profession is about facilitating communication between par-ties so that they can fulfill their duties and responsibilities as interviewers, witnesses, attorneys, doctors, care givers, or anyone else who relies on us to bridge language gaps.
In this case in particular, the interpreter‘s inability to
interpret correctly and failure to adhere to the established
standards and protocol resulted in the interviewer receiving
incomplete information, an inaccurate or an unclear version
of the events that this person may have witnessed and, for
the attorney who hired me, the exclusion of this evidence
from the trial.
Javier Castillo, Jr. is President and Founder of Castillo Language Services, Inc. He is a Federally Certified Spanish Interpreter and has extensive experience work-ing in state and federal courts in NC and VA since 1999. Mr. Castillo has taught workshops and training in NC and VA. In addition to his court interpreting experience, he works for the U.S. Department of State as an admin-istrative, consecutive, and simultaneous interpreter. He has taught at Campbell University Law School and has been a presenter at various legal and medical confer-ences on interpreter issues. He is a member of CATI and TAPIT.
Expert witness evaluation of an interpreter continued
―While those who hire interpreters should know some
basic signs of good interpretation, the interpreter
has the responsibility to understand what is entailed in
being an interpreter.‖
6
I often reflect on how fortunate it is to be alive at the dawn of the digital
age. The array of options at the dis-posal of today‘s professional is truly dizzying. Whereas a hundred years or so ago, change in the work environ-ment was slow and incremental, and one might see two or three fundamen-tal changes in the way one worked
within a lifetime, our current workplaces are changing almost beyond recognition within the short span of a decade or two. This is particularly true in the field of translation.
We are all familiar with the rapid advancement of trans-lation memory technology. The transition from translating using handwritten copy, typed foolscap, and carbon paper has taken place within the life-times of all but the youngest members of our profession. The quality and variety of software solutions available to us is exploding.
The rapid advancement of digital office solutions No less significant for our profession, however, is the rapid advancement of digital office solutions. While these may not directly involve the translation process, their advent is never-theless reshaping the way we work and live. In this article, I will describe my company‘s experiences with these tech-nologies and the decision-making process we used to adopt them.
The ability of teams to work across distances almost as efficiently as if they were in the same office has reached a high level of practicality, making it possible for agency own-ers to rethink how they organize their businesses. New technologies can be leveraged to reduce overhead while minimizing any reduction in efficiency.
Traditionally, translation agencies have been more or less physically organized as follows: One or more offices located in metropolitan areas, staffed with project managers,
CATI Gold Sponsor CATI gratefully acknowledges the support provided by the following Gold Sponsor:
Global Translation Systems, Inc.
Global Translation Systems, Inc., is proud to be a Gold-Level Sponsor of the Carolina Association of Translators and Interpreters. CATI has served T/I workers in the Carolinas and beyond for over 20 years, and has la-bored hard during that time to raise the level of profes-sionalism and ethics in our field.
Global also wishes to recognize the many CATI mem-bers it counts among its vendors, contractors, and em-ployees. Their efforts have contributed in no small part to our success over the years.
Global Translation Systems is a full-service agency pro-viding multilingual translation, interpretation, and desk-top publishing services. Founded in 1992, we serve a broad clientele, ranging from individuals to large corpo-rate customers around the world. Our specializations include the fields of medicine and telecommunications.
Located in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, in one of the most technologically progressive areas of the country, Global is dedicated to providing high-quality, efficient, and effective service to our customers, and to promoting fair, honest, and respect-based relationships with all those who work with us.
For more information about our company, please visit us at www.globaltranslation.com.
For information on obtaining translation services or join-ing the Global team, please contact us at [email protected], or call us at (919) 967-2010.
Continued on next page
―The quality and variety of software solutions available to
us is exploding.‖
business administrators, and certain specialists, such as DTP (desktop publishing) experts. Offices have been trending increasingly smaller as more and more ancillary services are farmed out. In the 1980‘s and early 90‘s, for example, the agencies I worked in had as many as 12 staff translators and editors, a DTP department, and two or three business administrators.
By 2000, the Internet had eliminated the need to
―The ability of teams to work across distances almost as
efficiently as if they were in the same office has reached a high
level of practicality ...‖
Virtually the perfect choice By Mike Collins
This two-part article describes the various advantages and disadvantages that had to be taken into account when a digital office solution was evaluated for a translation agency.
Part 1: The incentive to go virtual and the practical issues
7
have a large translation staff on site. In fact, improved access to a wider pool of translators in cyberspace has led, in my opinion, to a general improvement in the quality of translation.
Economic downturn led to hard choices In 2008, the economic downturn forced many of us to face hard choices. In our case, we found ourselves rethinking the paradigm of maintaining a large physical office space. In our business, we typically have two large fixed overhead ex-penses: payroll and rent. Cutting back on staff has always been a last resort for us, so we turned to the latter. As we looked at our options, we considered the following questions:
1. What are the benefits and disadvantages to occupying a common office space?
2. Can the benefits be adequately replicated in the digital environment?
3. What are the disadvantages of a digital, or ‗virtual‘, office?
We broke the issue down into two facets – practical and per-ceptual. The practical category concerned issues such as tele-phone service, commu-nication, file-sharing, etc. The perceptual category dealt mainly with the impact such a change might have on the way we all worked together and in the way our clients perceived us. Obviously, it would do us no good to make the switch to a virtual office if it created a negative perception of us in the minds of our clients.
The practical issues The practical issues fell mainly into three areas: intra-office communication, business-to-client communication, and intra-office data transactions. As we debated how to move forward, we examined and discussed these issues in the context of questions 1-3 above with current staff members and col-leagues, advisors, and other associates.
Generally, the benefits of having an office large enough for our entire staff seemed to distill down to a few items. Staff members liked the social context of the office. They liked be-ing able to walk across the hall to consult with a colleague. They liked the daily face-to-face meetings. There was concern that without the discipline of having to come into an office, work performance might suffer. Some worried about having to explain the transition to clients.
On the disadvantage side, we looked at the monthly over-head, a large part of which was office rent. Most office space requires a lease of some length; to obtain the best terms for our current space, we would have had to consider a five-year lease, something that seemed more and more risky as the economy deteriorated in the fall of 2008.
The technical options To answer question 2, we began investigating the modern technical options available to us.
CATI Gold Sponsor CATI gratefully acknowledges the support
provided by the following Gold Sponsor:
Department of Languages and Culture Studies
The DEPARTMENT OF LANGUAGES AND CULTURE
STUDIES (LCS) at UNC Charlotte (www.languages.uncc.edu/) offers a well estab-lished curriculum in translating and translation studies (TTS):
UNDERGRADUATE CERTIFICATE IN TRANSLATING
(CT in English-French, English-German, and English-Spanish), created in 1979 (http://languages.uncc.edu/undergrad-programs/
undergraduate-certificate-programs.html)
BACHELOR OF ARTS IN SPANISH (B.A.) with two
emphases: - One in Applied Language, which provides the op-tion of taking three upper-division courses in trans-lating (http://languages.uncc.edu/undergrad-programs/spanish.html) - The other in Literature and Culture
GRADUATE CERTIFICATE IN TRANSLATING AND
TRANSLATION STUDIES (GCTTS in English-Spanish), created in 2001
MASTERS OF ARTS IN SPANISH, also created in
2001, with two tracks from which to choose: - Translating and Translation Studies (TTS) - Language, Literature, and Culture (LLC)
For both of the above courses, please see http://languages.uncc.edu/graduate-programs/63-masters-in-spanish.html.
The TTS track of the Spanish M.A. degree consists of graduate course work in the history and theory of translation and the analysis and translation of major discourse domains: e.g., business, medical, technical, legal, scholarly, and literary. It also includes special topics courses in Spanish-English translation, up to 3 hours of professional internship in translating, study abroad possibilities, and a translation thesis option.
Course work in applied language areas such as Business Spanish, a strength in the department is es-pecially appropriate for the TTS track. This specialized track serves individuals interested in a career related to professional translation or in enhancing their career or work opportunities as language and culture special-ists in today's global economy and in a nation where Spanish is becoming increasingly important. It also provides preparation for those who may wish to pur-sue a Ph.D. in fields such as Spanish, linguistics, translating and translation studies, intercultural com-munication, or international studies.
Please visit www.languages.uncc.edu/ for more information.
Virtually the perfect choice continued
―We broke the issue down into two facets –
practical and perceptual.‖
Continued on next page
8
CATI Gold Sponsor CATI gratefully acknowledges the support provided
by the following Gold Sponsor:
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The first order of business was telephone service. We quickly discovered that there is a large number of virtual telephone services in operation today. Basically, for a rela-tively low monthly fee, these services give your company a virtual switchboard, complete with extensions, fax service, and other options. In our case, we found we could set up
our individual exten-sions almost identi-cally to the way they had been done on our traditional in-office phone system. Callers dial in, hear a pre-recorded menu, and select an extension, which then rings at whatever phone the staff member has
mapped it to. The system can be managed using a Web browser, and messages can be retrieved by phone or e-mail. Staff members who are going to be away from their desks simply map the extension to their cell phones.
Regarding intra-office communication, we considered several options. These included telephone conference call-ing, instant messaging, videoconference software, and oth-ers. We quickly eliminated videoconferencing, as the only workable options required transmission bandwidth much greater than was available to our small enterprise. While teleconferencing turned out to be a feasible option, it en-tailed a number of inconveniences, such as remembering/subscribing to a teleconferencing number, remembering access codes, etc.
In the end, the most feasible option turned out to be Skype, which allows no-cost group calling with reasonable audio quality, albeit without video.
The need to securely mimic the work environment Solving the last issue, intra-office computing operations, was of critical importance. Our chief concern focused on being able to securely mimic the work environment of an office. In other words, we required the ability to remotely perform every task that we had previously performed in our office and in exactly the same way we were used to doing it. That meant no cumbersome workarounds, no tedious e-mailing, and no long and unverifiable chain of file hand-offs. And we needed to do this at low cost, low demand for tech-nical expertise, and generally maintenance-free application.
We found the solution to this problem with LogMeIn software. For a very reasonable annual subscription fee, this company‘s software can be installed on a certain num-ber of computers and can then be used to set up a virtual private network (VPN). A VPN allows network members to exchange data via secure ‗tunnels‘ so that the information is never available on the Internet, where it could be subject
to interception, decryption, or hacking. Once the VPN is set up, computer drives can be mapped exactly as is done on any LAN (local area network). Thus, we were able to reproduce the same working network, complete with the exact same drive letters that we had had on the LAN in our office.
So much for the practical issues. But what about the perceptual ones? Part 2 of this article will describe the perceptual issues that had to be resolved in implementing the virtual office.
Mike Collins is an ATA-certified Russian-to-English and German-to-English translator, co-owner of Global Translation Systems, Inc., since 1992, and the current president of the Carolina Association of Translators and Interpreters, a chapter of the American Translators Association.
―The first order of business was telephone service.
We quickly discovered that there is a large number of virtual telephone services
in operation today.‖
Virtually the perfect choice continued
9
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Author: Danielle Ofri
Publisher: Boston: Beacon Press
Date of publication: 2010
Number of pages: 251
Price: $24.95 (hardcover)
ISBN: 978-0-8070-7320-9
D anielle Ofri, a physician at Bellevue Hospital in New York City, a Jewish American, a wife, and a mother of
three young children, opens windows into her world‘s inter-section with those of her immigrant patients through this first-person narrative. Arranged in three parts, it honors the suffering and resilience of these otherwise nameless, face-less individuals by telling their stories, weaving her own into the fabric: treating survivors of torture, legal and illegal immi-grants, spending a year in Costa Rica to become fully profi-cient in Spanish and then re-entering her former routine. In the process, she broaches cultural, linguistic, human rights, and political issues as they emerge over time. Most compel-lingly, she conveys her profound sense of helplessness as she confronts her patients‘ immense losses and her own limitations.
Her patients‘ stories are powerful page turners. The reader meets and revisits them as they appear on Ofri‘s clinical roster each day, so their past, present, and future unfold in just those same fragments. They range from the most appalling human rights violations to a most irksome hypochondriac—precisely as a physician would see them. Dr. Ofri reserves one appointment each Monday for a new patient in the Survivors of Torture Program that Dr. Allen
Keller founded at Bellevue in 1995, and through those encounters the reader comes to know Samuel Nwanko, a young Nigerian man at-tacked by a ―cult‖ (university gang) after his father, a Pentecostal pastor, mentored a noted polit ician‘s nephew.
As a result, the high-profile con-vert renounced the cult and outed high-ranking members. In retaliation, the cult burned the pastor‘s car, chased him from his office with sticks, and finally broke into Samuel‘s apart-ment, beat him, cut off his ear, and poured sulfuric acid down his throat. Samuel is one of several survivors of torture in Dr. Ofri‘s clinic who came to the U.S. for political asylum and to piece together lives after horrific detours.
In contrast to Samuel, there is Julia Barquero, an un-documented young Guatemalan woman with congestive
heart failure who is ineligible for a transplant because of her immigration status. Dr. Ofri grapples with both her intermediate Spanish and the overwhelming sadness of trying to answer Barquero‘s recurring question, ―Will they [her four medications] make me better?‖ knowing the grim probabilities. Among others, there is Jade Col-lier, from New Zealand, paralyzed from a diving acci-
dent. Unlike most able-bodied immi-grants whose invisibility protects them, Collier embraced the attention her wheelchair attracted by becoming a Big Apple greeter and an advocate for the handicapped.
Linguistic issues are a constant in the narrative: immigrants‘ English or lack
thereof, Dr. Ofri‘s Spanish, and Bellevue‘s medical inter-pretation system. Elderly Mrs. Geng‘s inability to speak anything but Chinese after years of living in New York made Dr. Ofri incorrectly assume her Alzheimer‘s dis-ease was more advanced than it actually was. Dr. Chan‘s slow, but technically proficient English required patience and stretched the allotted fifteen-minute time slots. Besides taking offense at the veil a Bangladeshi woman wore, it roiled Ofri that she kept her daughter out of school to translate for her excessively frequent visits.
Book Review
By N. Grace Aaron
Medicine in Translation: Journeys
with My Patients
―Linguistic issues are a constant in the narrative: immigrants‘ English or lack thereof, Dr. Ofri‘s Spanish,
and Bellevue‘s medical interpretation system.‖
10
CATI Silver Sponsor CATI gratefully acknowledges the support pro-
vided by the following Silver Sponsor:
Bilingual Communications, Inc. English/Spanish
Bilingual Communications, Inc., has been facilitat-ing communication between Spanish and English in North Carolina since 1989. As an expression of its commitment to the objectives of the Carolina Asso-ciation of Translators and Interpreters and of its de-sire to support the organization, Bilingual Communi-cations is pleased to be a Silver Sponsor.
Bilingual Communications offers services in Span-ish and English exclusively. By concentrating its time, energy, and resources on a single pair of lan-guages, the company is able to offer expert services in its specialty areas.
The company's president, Jackie Metivier, is from Mexico and travels there often. This enables her to keep up with her native language and culture, a ne-cessity for service to the local North Carolina His-panic market, 69% of which is from Mexico.
While most of the company's work is from English to Spanish, Bilingual Communications uses qualified native speakers of English for translation from Span-ish to English. For further information, please visit our Website at: www.bicomms.com
There are other anecdotes that indicate, at the time of Ofri‘s encounters with them, Bellevue did not subscribe to the Na-tional Code of Ethics for Interpreters in Health Care by allow-ing family members to interpret for patients. In her uncertainty over whether she should interrupt her Spanish-speaking pa-tients‘ emotional, complicated narratives for clarification or go for the gist, Ofri indirectly validates the need for trained, pro-fessional medical interpreters.
Apparently, Bellevue uses AT&T‘s phone interpreters, which Dr. Ofri alternately rejects and affirms, ―To me inserting a telephone as a go-between in such delicate proceedings was like adding construction boots to a pas de deux‖ (page 228). On the other hand, she recounts her experience with Evans, a Haitian interpreter in French, who actually took the pains of calling her back to ask about the distinction in English between illness and disease. His intellectual curiosity and pro-fessionalism were the impetus for her commitment to take her family to Costa Rica for a year.
Her family‘s experience there was an adventure in lan-guage acquisition and cultural acclimatization. Just after filing for her leave of absence, she became aware she was preg-nant and her third child was born in Escazú. Her observations as an expatriate are telling: poor roads and a frightening lack of street signs and names contrast with a surprising warmth toward mothers and children seen in special lines for them in banks, airports, and government offices, for example. She notes with awe that, rather than rushing out when her daugh-ter was born, the obstetrician and anesthesiologist stayed on with her for an hour, doing all the cleanup themselves.
Dr. Agosín-Buksztajn summarized their generous view, ―This is the best part… we can relax and enjoy the new baby with you‖ (page 124). With anecdotes about nurses standing outside the shower to help her when she fainted, a restaurant owner who took her to her own home so she could change the baby, a proprietor of a craft shop offering to hold the infant while she browsed, Ofri underscores, ―I felt so completely cared for in a way I‘d never before experienced as an adult‖ (page 124). Too, her account of her instructor‘s resolve to purge her of Spanglish is as entertaining as her reflections on the regional variations in her patients‘ Spanish.
Besides these considerable merits, Ofri‘s existential effort to metabolize the suffering she encountered in her patients‘ lives constitutes the crescendo of this book. Chapter twenty-five, in which she explains disease as intransitive versus tor-ture as transitive in that one human being inflicts it upon an-other, is unparalleled. The way she episodically interposes playing her cello as an antidote to pain is reminiscent of the structure of the Quijote.
The only time Ofri seems afflicted with ―M Deity‖ is when she values her patients‘ personal connection to her over accurate interpretation (page 59). Otherwise, this book offers much to debates over language, healthcare, and immigration policy. Mostly, it is a tes-tament to the power of story.
N. Grace Aaron is a Lecturer in Spanish at the Uni-versity of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and can be reached at [email protected].
Book review continued
11
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CATI Bronze Sponsors CATI gratefully acknowledges the
support provided by the
following Bronze Sponsors: ATA 51st Annual Conference The American Translators Association 51st Annual Confer-ence will be held in Denver, Colorado, October 27-30 at the Hyatt Regency Denver. Events at the conference will include:
A job marketplace that will enable freelance translators and interpreters to market their services by displaying their résumés, brochures, and business cards while meeting with owners and managers of participating language ser-vices companies
An exhibit hall that will bring companies together in one place to fit the unique needs of translators and interpreters
A speed networking session that will provide an effective way to meet people, make contacts, and generate busi-ness
A welcome reception that will enable conference atten-dees to spend the evening with colleagues and friends, and
A Division Social that will provide an opportunity for atten-dees to meet fellow Division members
For more details, go to: www.atanet.org/conf/2010/highlights.htm.
Big increase projected in jobs for linguists The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics is projecting a 22% in-crease in the number of jobs for translators and interpreters between 2008 and 2018. This represents a "much faster than average" increase in employment when compared with all other occupations.
The Bureau‘s analysis of economic trends attributes the high demand for translators and interpreters to a broadening of international ties, an increase in the non-English-speaking population in the U.S., and the growing need in health care. All of these trends are expected to continue over the next decade. Taking future innovation and technology into account, the Bu-reau‘s 2010-2011 Occupational Outlook Handbook (OOH) notes that while technology has made the work of interpreters and translators easier, it is not likely to have a negative impact on the employment of interpreters and translators because "such innovations are incapable of producing work comparable with work produced by these professionals."
Language skills are hot career option According to a recent report of employment trends, Spanish/English translation and interpreting are among the hottest ca-reer options for U.S. college graduates. The survey conducted by the University of California San Diego is based on the school‘s enrollment figures, national employment statistics, and interviews with San Diego business executives. The au-thors of the study note that the use of Spanish is spreading faster than other languages — there are more than 350 million Spanish-speakers worldwide, and it is the official language in
21 countries.
The report emphasizes the importance of gaining experience through practical internships in specialized fields such as law, medicine and business.
From "Study: Top Ten Hot Career Trends for College Graduates" UCSD News (CA) (05/17/10) DeVries, Henry
News and upcoming events
Continued on next page
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A welcome to new members
Marvic Titus, Greenville, SC. English>Spanish T/I, Span-ish>English I. Medical, business administration, religious, customer service, landscapers, marketing.
New student members
Luz Bautista, Cary, NC. English<>Spanish T/I. Medical, biology, science, community service, network.
Aida Iturrino, Fayettville, NC. English<>Spanish T/I. Health care, education.
CATI’s Online Book Blog CATI‘s new online book club is officially up and running. If you are
interested in the club or just following the blog, please e-mail Heather Hille at [email protected].
All members are welcome!
CATI welcomes the following new members who have joined the Association in the past 3 months. The mem-bers are listed with their language pairs and preferred fields, if available.
New regular members Sarah Carden, Oak Ridge, NC. Japanese>English T.
Peter Floyd, Charlotte, NC. Spanish<>English T/I, Por-tuguese<>English I. Legal, pulp and paper, forestry, general medicine, education, management.
NYC has many endangered languages Experts estimate that as many as 800 languages are spoken in New York City, making it one of the most lin-guistically diverse cities in the world.
It is also home to languages rarely spoken any-where else, even in the countries of their origin. "We're sitting in an endangerment hot spot where we are sur-rounded by languages that are not going to be around even in 20 or 30 years," says Daniel Kaufman, an ad-junct professor of linguistics at City University's Gradu-ate Center.
Kaufman has helped launch a project called the En-dangered Language Alliance to identify and record lan-guages at risk of becoming obsolete.
Two years ago, he also founded a research center called the Urban Field Station for Linguistic Research. The university‘s Graduate Center is in the process of creating an endangered languages program with the help of linguist Juliette Blevins.
Robert Holman, who teaches at Columbia and New York Universities, is working with Kaufman. He says, ―It‘s hard to use a word like preserve with a language. It‘s not like putting jelly in a jar.‖ Researchers say at-risk languages spoken in New York City include dozens of Native American languages; Aramaic, Chaldic, and Mandaic from the Semitic family; Bukhari, which has more speakers in Queens than in Uzbekistan or Tajiki-stan; Chamorro from the Mariana Islands; Irish Gaelic; Kashubian from Poland; indigenous Mexican languages; Pennsylvania Dutch; Rhaeto-Romanic from Switzerland; Romany from the Balkans; and Yiddish.
It is likely that only one person in the city speaks Ma-muju, an Austronesian language from the Indonesian prov-ince of West Sulawesi.
From "Listening to (and Saving) the World's Languages" New York Times (NY) (04/29/10) Roberts, Sam
Translated prescriptions often wrong
A recently released study says that Spanish prescription labels translated by pharmacies are frequently inaccurate or misleading. Writing in the May issue of Pediatrics, the study‘s researchers report that they found an overall error rate of 50%.
In some cases, translation software generated mis-spellings and inaccurate text. In other cases, entire words and phrases, such as ―take with food" and "apply to af-fected areas," were not translated. The study notes that prescription information delivered in Spanglish is a frequent problem.
"If we can't do this right in Spanish — the most com-monly spoken non-English language in the US — I'm afraid to think what happens with the other languages," warns Iman Sharif, a pediatrician and the lead author of the re-port. She says that one of the biggest challenges is the lack of standardization for English prescription instructions, which makes it impossible for the available databases to translate every word that doctors use in writing the pre-scription.
From "Translated Prescriptions Often Wrong" Chicago Tribune (IL) (05/12/10) Woodward, Whitney; Cancino, Alejandra; Deardorff, Julie
News and upcoming events continued
13
From the Editor’s desk
There‘s no such thing as a ―useless‖ language By G. David Heath
W ell, here it is summer in the Carolinas. The heat index is over 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Naturally
we find our thoughts turning to cooler climes. Iceland will do for a nice break, so here goes.
It took a collapsed banking system and a major volcanic eruption to make Ice-land fully appreciate the value of translators and interpreters who are qualified to work be-tween Icelandic and English. According to a report in the Wall Street Journal on April 30, 2010 by Charles Forelle, things ―have never looked better‖ for the small number of Icelandic translators who render the North Germanic tongue of 320,000 is-land-dwellers into something the rest of the world can understand.
Native English speakers fluent in Icelandic command a premium. There aren‘t many. And even the best translators need special skills — especially in areas like finance. There are three genders, four cases, and a ―bewildering‖ number of declensions.
The language has changed little in 800 years, and is used for all official business. The Icelandic people are fiercely proud of their language, and I totally understand.
CATI currently has no translators or interpreters who list Icelandic among their languages.
Iceland's three major banks have been conducting creditors' meet-ings in Icelandic, and because many of the creditors are from elsewhere and do not speak Ice-landic, interpreters are needed.
For translators, the assignments include bankruptcy cases, criminal probes, fraud suits, and a 2,000-plus-page report on the banking situation created by the Icelandic parliament (Alþingi).
Daniel Teague, an American translator who has lived in Reykjavík for decades, de-scribed the situation as "A big uptick for me."
The demand for translators in-creased dramatically in the fall of 2009 when Iceland applied for membership in the Euro-
pean Union. The Icelandic currency — the króna — had plummeted in value and Iceland‘s government wanted to replace it with the euro.
The EU application included 2,500 questions that the Government officials answered in Icelandic. Their responses totaled 8,870 pages that required translation.
Even before the banking collapse in 2008, translators had plenty of work. After they were privatized a decade ago, Iceland‘s banks began doing business in Britain, the US, and Asia. Assets of the three big banks reached 10 times Iceland's annual economic output and the banks produced voluminous reports that had to be translated into English for foreign investors.
And now, according to Jón Skaptason who did a lot of the translation for the banks before their collapse, "Many of the freelancers who formerly worked for the banks are now busy working for the people who are suing the banks."
So what can we learn from all this? Maybe that even economic recessions can present opportunities for language professionals. The same goes for volcanic eruptions, al-though it‘s relatively unlikely that we will see one of those in the Carolinas. And one other thing: It reinforces the conven-tional wisdom that there‘s no such thing as a useless lan-guage, even if it is spoken by only 320,000 people.
Sincerely,
G. David Heath
―It took a collapsed banking system and a major volcanic eruption to make Iceland fully appreciate the value of
translators and interpreters … . ‖
―Native English speakers fluent in Icelandic command a premium. There aren‘t many.
And even the best translators need special skills — especially in areas like finance. ‖
The CATI Quarterly The CATI Quarterly is a publication of the Carolina Association of Translators and Interpreters, a non-profit organization to promote the recognition of trans-lating and interpreting as professions in the Carolinas. Opinions expressed herein are the author‘s and not necessarily those of the Editor, the Association, or its Board of Directors.
Reader submissions are welcome. Suggested length limits are:
Articles 1500 words
Reviews 500 words
Letters 300 words
Submissions become the property of the CATI Quar-terly and are subject to editing. For details, see the ―Submission Guidelines‖ at www.catiweb.org/guidelines.htm
If you have questions or would like to submit an arti-cle, please contact the editor, G. David Heath, at [email protected]
Please contact CATI at (919) 698-0721 for advertis-ing information.
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The CATI Quarterly would like to hear from you! If you have an opinion that you would like to share with your
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