Happy New Year! Interpreters and Language consultants. 2015 will prove to be one of the most exciting years in the growing profession of interpreting. That right! you heard me say it. Our industry is expanding exponentially and we will see a 12% average growth rate in opportunities. However, there are some things we must do in order to position ourselves to take full advantage of these opportunities.
One of the first things that all interpreters be they medical, community, or legal must do is seek a professional certification in their field of preference. A certification will almost secure your future. It is the key to getting noticed and being hired. So if you are not yet certified you must do so. contact the National Board of Interpreting in Healthcare. they will provide you with all you need in order to get certified.
The second most important item on the list of must do's is professional association membership. That right! just like attorneys, doctors, nurses, carpenter, electrician, you get my drift, you will need to join a professional organization of your choice. Now don't be persuaded to join one because of the name. Do your home work and see which one gives you the most for your money. Call them up and have a conversation with a representative of the organization and ask them questions regarding the organization and opportunities that they have for members. You can contact the IMIA or CCHI, or one of many others.
Thirdly, as an interpreter you must decide what your preference for employment is. What I mean is, do you want to be contracted, hired as a per diem, hired as a 40 hour employee, become a freelancer or incorporate as an LLC. This is important due to changes in the industry. Some of the best employers in our field will not contract you unless you are an established Limited Liability Company. Also, some of the previously mentioned do not pay as well. So do your due diligence and really think about this one and whats best for you. If you have to, consult with a language consulting company.
These are the three top items for an interpreter to consider going into 2015. If you want the most bang for your dollar of training in the field and really want to get ahead you must know exactly what you would like to do and how. Therefore consider your options and go full steam ahead. Success is right around the corner.
If for some reason you don't know which way to turn maybe we can help. Northeast Consulting and Interpreting are in the business of assisting professional interpreters find there way in this market and establish themselves as a contender in the field. If you would like more information feel free to contact us via email or by phone at neconsultinginterpretingllc@gmail.com or 617-934-1165. Have yourself a prosperous 2015.
08 January, 2015
27 October, 2014
You want to be successful. Everyone does. But your actual words might be undermining your chances of success. The things you say in the office, no matter how innocuous they seem to you, might be knocking you down the career ladder and putting the top position you dream about out of reach.24 October, 2014
Defining A City By Its Professional Skill Set with Data From LinkedIn
By their very design and origins, cities have always been linked closely to opportunity. In addition to providing concentrated access to a more diverse set of cultural, culinary, and educational options, cities also attract and nurture clusters of workers with complementary and contrasting skills. For workers considering a move, the professional attributes of a city can matter just as much as the attributes of a particular company or opportunity.
Some professionals considering their next career move may be interested in an area that has a rich ecosystem of talent in their specialty. Others might want to find places where they’d stand out and offer a unique capability and point of view. Businesses evaluating a new location, or a new talent pool to tap, also pay close attention to where those pockets of talents lie.
Over 175 million LinkedIn members are located in the United States and Europe, and by mining the skills and location data in their profiles, we built two maps that highlight the skills which define almost every major city in each region. To see which skill categories are most uniquely found in each city in the US, click any of the colored dots on the map. Click or hover over the legend to highlight cities that have similar skill categories.
A few things stood out when looking at our map of the US.
- Follow the oil! Its always fascinating when geological features present themselves in socioeconomic data. Members with skills valued by the petroleum industry are much more likely to found in Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and most recently North Dakota.
- Rust belt remnants. The automotive industry’s impact on Michigan and parts of Indiana, Ohio, and Pennsylvania is evident in the manufacturing and engineering skills held by its members.
- Some cities really do fit their stereotype. When we looked at Los Angeles and Nashville, we were a bit amused to see the prominence of music, TV, and drama-related skills. After all, LA has Hollywood, and Nashville is the country music capital of the world!
To see which skill categories are most uniquely found in each city in Europe, click any of the colored dots on the map. Click or hover over the legend to highlight cities that have similar skill categories.
As with the US map, we noted a few interesting trends in Europe.
- Many European cities have tech skills, but not all are the same. Madrid and Sevilla have just enough java development skills to rank as the dominant category, whereas Hamburg and Berlin have user interface design, game development, and mobile development skills – indicative of the region’s booming startup scene. Meanwhile, LinkedIn members in Poland have the most variety of technology skills found anywhere in our map.
- Industries make their mark in several cities. Airbus’s global headquarters are located near Toulouse, made apparent by its aviation and manufacturing skills. Fashion skills in Milan shouldn’t surprise any of the millions of tourists who visit every year. Public policy and international relations skills are featured prominently in Brussels, the de facto capital of the EU.
- London is multitalented, as it has several skills vying for the top category. Finance, business, and entertainment are almost equally represented, with entertainment barely edging out the other two.
As we continue to develop the Economic Graph, a digital representation of the global economy, we’ll be able to build a global map of supply and demand for every skill on LinkedIn, and in the process, help members find opportunities by offering a change in scenery.
Methodological details: The results of this analysis represent the world seen through the lens of LinkedIn data. As such, it is influenced by how members choose to use the site, which can vary based on professional, social, and regional culture, as well as overall site availability and accessibility. These variances were not accounted for in the analysis.
The cities included in our US map represent almost every major city in every state, with the exception of Wilmington, DE, Manchester, NH, and Newark, NJ. Members in these cities tend to state on their profile that they work in their respective greater metropolitan areas (Philadelphia, Boston, and New York City) and were grouped together in our data set accordingly. The cities included on our Europe map were individually chosen to optimize geographic and economic diversity in each country.
Because there are thousands of individual skills (and growing!) that members can put on their profile, our first step was to group these skills into several dozen categories. For example, skills like “portfolio management” and “credit analysis” would fit under the “Trading and Investment” category. From there, we looked at the skill categories present in our cities of interest, and compared their distribution to the regional average (US and Europe were treated as separate and independent regions). Skill categories that had a greater share of a city’s population compared to the national average were considered to be “unique” to that city.
Interactive maps by Skye Riley
17 October, 2014
State court interpreter certifications could turn meaningless. October 16, 2014 § 3 Comments
ar Colleagues:
A couple of weeks ago I received an email that concerns me enormously. I am sure that many of you who are based in the United States have received similar emails from state-level judicial agencies. In my case, I got an electronic communication from the Administrative Office of the Courts of one of the fifty states in the U.S. (not the federal government) this was one of those global emails that are sent out to everybody on a master list. Basically, the message was that the National Center for State Courts in the United States (NCSC), apparently in coordination with (at least) some states, is planning to offer remote telephonic interpreting across state lines, and for that purpose, the states (and I assume the NCSC as well) are compiling lists of state-level certified court interpreters who may want to be part of the interpreter pull that will be used to interpret court hearings from a different state. Although I hope the message’s meaning was different, this is what I understood. The email is written in such a way that, to the reader, this idea looks good and beneficial for everyone: the interpreters, because they will have more work (although I would guess that the fees offered by the state governments will not be anything to brag about) the states with underserved populations due to the lack of interpreters, because they will get somebody who has been certified somewhere by a state-level judiciary, and the foreign language speaker, as they will have the services of a professional interpreter instead of a family member or a paraprofessional.
Does it sound good to you? Well, if I understood the email as a communication asking permission to include interpreters’ names on a master list to indiscriminately interpret by phone, regardless of the state, it did not sound even half decent to me. Let me explain:
It is true that state-level certified interpreters are better equipped than paraprofessionals, and therefore the service provided should be of better quality. It is true that all state-level certified interpreters have attended a basic orientation and they have passed a court certification test (now administered by the NCSC or CLAC) and in many cases they have also taken an ethics and professional responsibility test. This obviously puts them ahead of those unscrupulous people that are roaming through the hallways of many courthouses in the United States. Unfortunately, and this is the real and very big problem: these interpreters, who have been certified by one of the fifty states, would now interpret cases from other states where both substantive and adjective law are different. That is the problem. The interpreter will interpret legal proceedings based on legislation that he does not know. Unlike U.S. federally certified court interpreters who work nationwide because they interpret the same federal legislation all across the country, these state-level individuals will have to deal with fifty, sometimes very different, legal systems.
Just like the age to get married and gun control laws vary from state to state, the catalog of crimes and civil law contracts are different. Think of one single situation: battery and assault; or is it assault and menacing? Well, the answer is: it depends on the state, and the differences are radical. Penalties and procedures also change depending on the state. This is why attorneys can only practice in those jurisdictions where they have passed the Bar Exam. It is a very delicate matter.
If this is indeed what the NCSC and the states want to do (and I hope I am wrong) then I am extremely concerned as an interpreter, because this will be another attempt to de-professionalize our jobs and make them look more like the legal secretary who can work anywhere, and less like the attorneys who can only practice in the state (or states) where they are members of the state bar. Sure, I understand that state-level agencies will praise the “benefits” of this solution, which in reality will solve their own problem (not the interpreters’ or the foreign language speakers’): Compliance with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. This is a state-level priority because states that do not comply will lose federal money.
I am also worried as an attorney for several reasons: First, states will allow interpreting services across state lines using telecommunications. This could be an interstate commerce issue where the federal government has to participate (at least); but the second reason is the one that motivated me to write this post: interpreters who do not know the legal system of a particular state will practice in that jurisdiction. They may physically be in the state where they are certified, but their services will affect a court system, and litigants in another state where they have never demonstrated their capacity to practice. I believe attorneys who represent foreign speakers need to be aware of this potential “solution” so that from the beginning they know that perhaps the case could later be appealed for ineffective assistance of the interpreter. Attorneys need to know that when they are advising their client on an assault charge in their home state, they may be using the services of an interpreter from a state where assault really means battery. Lawyers will need to assess the potential procedural complications in case they sue the interpreter. Jurisdiction will have to be determined, and these lawsuits could end up in federal court.
If this “program” has also been planned for civil cases, then the problem is worse. Remember, there are at least three different civil legal systems in the United States, the one followed by those states who have a system based on the Anglo-Saxon tradition, those whose system comes in part from the days where these territories were part of the Spanish Crown (just think divorce and community property division) and then Louisiana and the Napoleonic written system. As an attorney, or a foreign language speaker, I would not want to have an interpreter from another state, much less one from a state where the system is different.
I sure hope that this “solution” (if conceived as I understood it) is discarded and the states look for better options such as a higher fee for those interpreting in state courts. There are very good and capable interpreters everywhere in the United States, it is just that they will not work for the fees currently offered. A more attractive fee would also encourage others who would like to join the profession but are reluctant because of the lack of money to even make a decent living.
By the way, these problems apply to those languages where there is no certification and the interpreters are registered or qualified to work in court by a particular state.
I really wish I am mistaken and this is not happening in the United States, but if it is, I will continue to watch the developments of this program, and if needed, I will speak up in legal forums to bring awareness of the potential risks generated by using state-level certified interpreters in places where they have never been certified. I now ask you to share your thoughts, and concerns, about this potential change that would end up rendering a state-level court interpreter certification useless.
30 September, 2014
Interpreter pay threatens court system
Translator Lorena Pike hasn’t taken any work in Clark County courts for more than three months.
It doesn’t pay enough.
The president of the Nevada Interpreters and Translators Association can earn at least twice as much working for a law firm or at one of the many conventions around Las Vegas.
But she and other translators understand the need for their services in the halls of justice. Recently, Pike was one of 20 Spanish interpreters who signed a petition requesting a pay structure that “reflects both the expertise required and the increased cost of living.”
That petition was forwarded to Timothy Andrews, the Eighth Judicial District Court assistant court administrator, who oversees interpreter services in Clark County.
Andrews has launched a study to determine whether the raise is viable by analyzing translator pay rates in comparable jurisdictions across the country.
“It’s no secret we’re running pretty lean, and it requires some creative scheduling on the part of our staff. But we’re able to manage,” Andrews said.
If the pool of interpreters gets any shallower, however, thousands of cases in Clark County could be backed up or stalled.
Four years ago, as the Las Vegas economy spiraled, the pay for Spanish interpreters was cut to $36 per hour, and the group has not received an increase since.
“We hereby request that a two-hour assignment, at a minimum, and the reinstatement of the $50 per hour fee be approved and granted to help us cope with such financial burdens,” the petition said.
Andrews called the role of interpreters “critical. You can’t dispense justice without the interpreters.” He expects to present his findings to the County Commission during budget proposals in January.
Clark County translators for languages other than Spanish, meanwhile, still receive $50 per hour, “which creates an un-level playing field for the Spanish interpreters,” the petition said.
The two full-time county interpreters earn between $45,000 and $70,000 a year. One works at the Regional Justice Center, and the other works in Family Court. Both perform Spanish translation. Another eight part-time Spanish interpreters work about 1,000 hours a year at $25 per hour.
When the pay was cut in 2010, the county had about 90 interpreters on the payroll. Of those, 45 were Spanish interpreters on contract, while three were on staff. As of this month, there were 55 interpreters working for the county, 16 of whom were Spanish-language contract interpreters.
At least 10 interpreters refused to sign a new contract about two years ago, Pike said. Now she and others are finding more work in the private sector and turning down courtroom interpretation, unless they’re handling civil cases.
“The county courts are not good clients anymore for many of us,” Pike said.
Every month this year, there have been anywhere from about 3,000 to 3,500 requests for interpretive services at the Regional Justice Center and about 1,200 to 1,700 requests in Family Court. Those figures dwindled slightly since 2010 but remained relatively steady for the past couple years.
About 90 percent of those requests are for Spanish, Andrews said.
“We currently have enough resources to cover the requests that we get,” Andrews said, but he conceded that there are sometimes delays in the court process because of the drop in workers. “It would be nice to have a bigger pool.”
That group of county interpreters must cover a lot of ground: all criminal and civil matters in Las Vegas municipal and justice courts, Eighth Judicial District Court, North Las Vegas Justice Court, and cases with the Nevada Division of Child and Family Services, Clark County Child Protective Services, Nevada Parole and Probation, Nevada Mental Health Services, the Clark County Detention Center, the state unemployment division, and anything in the outlying courts in Clark County.
Aside from Spanish, translators in Las Vegas facilitate court proceedings in Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Thai, Tagalog, German, Russian, Serbian, Arabic, Bosnian, Cambodian, Farsi, Swahili and American sign language.
“We just want to help people bridge the language barrier,” Pike said. “That’s our mission, and that’s what I do. That’s my job.”
If the hourly rate doesn’t return to $50, Pike believes, Las Vegas courts could continue to see a drop in translator availability for Spanish-speaking defendants.
“In order for interpreters to be able to afford to practice at the high levels expected of us by the Las Vegas Municipal Court Administrator and the state of Nevada, we must be justly compensated,” the petition said.
District Court Judge Valorie Vega, who was instrumental in establishing the Nevada Supreme Court’s Committee on the Certification of Court Interpreters, worked as an interpreter before she started law school.
Without interpreters, justice would be “unattainable” for those who cannot speak English, said Vega, also a member of the Latino Bar Association. “That and you’re going to end up with a lot of reversals on appeal.”
Vega is married to Review-Journal business reporter Howard Stutz.
Mastering the skill of interpretation, especially in a courtroom setting, takes years of language dedication and continued study, Pike said. Being bilingual is only the first step. Pike works on her craft every day, studying the intricacies of English and her native Spanish.
She was born and raised in Mexico City and studied for a year at a Florida high school. After earning a degree in accounting, she worked for companies that required bilingual speakers. She knew English well, she said, but was not as familiar with “street lingo.”
About 10 years ago, she met her husband while on vacation in Las Vegas and moved to Nevada to get married. Not long after, with years dedicated to fluency in both languages, she started her own translation business.
“If I just repeat it verbatim in Spanish, the message isn’t going to make any sense,” Pike said. “You have to know what you’re saying. It’s not like a parrot just repeating what is being said.”
Vega agreed.
An interpreter must listen, compute a translation, understand the nuances of the language and the culture from which it stems along with any idioms that might pop up in conversation, then find the right words in the “target language,” all in a fraction of a second while speaking as others are speaking.
And a defendant has a right to understand every word that is said on the record.
“You may be able to listen to a beautiful piece of music and appreciate it,” Vega said. “But that doesn’t mean you can sit down at the piano and play it.”
Pike said she would return to work for the county if the $50 per hour rate were reinstated.
Andrews said the economic downturn forced officials to tighten the budget, and the courts saved about $500,000 on interpreter services. But the current petition could help sway commissioners.
Smartphone technology helps maneuver interpreters throughout the 52 courtrooms more efficiently, allowing for fewer workers. Interpreters cannot take phone calls in court, but they can respond to text messages and emails.
There was a time when a quick loss of interpreters might have had an even bigger impact on the court system. Most importantly, court officials want to make sure defendants’ rights are preserved.
When Vega was first appointed as a Municipal Court judge in 1989, she heard interpreters confuse “bumper” with “fender” and “curb” with “sidewalk.”
That needed to change, she thought.
She recalled one case in which she told a defendant he had the right to remain silent. And if he chose to remain silent, that could not be held against him.
She asked if the defendant understood and waited for the interpreter to start speaking.
Eventually, the interpreter turned to the defendant and said simply, “Do you want to talk or keep quiet?”
16 September, 2014
The Anatomy of the Job Interview
- SOURCE
BUSINESS2COMMUNITY
- AUTHOR
PERSONAL BRANDING BLOG
- 10
SEPT
There are a few basics that every person who’s preparing for, or facing a job interview, should know. What are the types of questions the interviewer might ask? Here are a few examples.
- The common interview questions. There are probably 20 or 30 common questions typically asked in interviews. They’re easily found because most books or articles about job interviewing list many of them.
- The behavioral or situational questions. These questions start with “Tell me about a time when . . . ” or “What’s been your experience with such and such a situation?” Most of these questions pigeonhole you into a situation from your past, and the interviewer wants to hear how you handled it. The intent is to predict your future based on past behavior.
- The creativity questions. Yes, some interviewers get pleasure from asking such questions. For example, “What would you do if one morning you woke up and found out you’re a frog?” Here they’re checking on your creativity, on the ways you deal with ambiguity, how well you communicate ideas, and so on.
- The high-tech questions. These types of questions are industry specific. For example, “How many jelly beans can fit into a one-gallon jar?” These types of questions are checking on your logic, your ability to estimate, your intuition, your mathematical ability, and your ability to make assumptions. These questions are common at Microsoft, Apple, Google, and the like.
From the outset, the interviewer is approaching the interview with an open mind. He wants to find out your particular strengths that the company can use as well as your weaknesses. If he finds the weaknesses critical, you’ll lose the competition.
The best way to prepare for an interview is to make a list of, say, 20 potential questions and then answer them in a simple format by starting with a brief description of the background and situation, followed by what your contribution was and ending with the results and benefit to the company. The caveat here is to make the telling succinct and eloquent. Most people ramble on and on instead of giving a brief and pertinent answer. And that’s a sign that you’re not fully prepared. To be able to recite your answers in the best form possible, it’s wise to sound them out with a professional career coach or someone else who’s well experienced in this area. Good luck! You’ll need it!
11 September, 2014
Mandatory Paid Sick Leave for All California Workers
Big news came out of Sacramento yesterday as California Governor Jerry Brown signed Assembly Bill 1522 into law. AB 1522, also known as the Healthy Workplaces, Healthy Families Act of 2014, requires all California-based employers to provide employees with up to three days of paid sick leave per year, beginning on July 1, 2015.
The Law
Under the new law, aside for a few limited exceptions, all employees working in California will earn a minimum of one hour of paid sick leave for every 30 hours worked. Governor Brown’s office estimates that the new law will provide sick benefits to about 6.5 million employees, or 40 percent of California’s workforce, who do not currently receive paid sick leave.
The new law also requires that once the hours are accrued, up to 24 hours (or three days) of paid sick leave per year, they can carry over to the next calendar year. Employers are allowed to limit, or “cap,” the total accrual of paid sick leave to six days (48 hours).
The law in this regard is not dissimilar to vacation accrual caps that are permitted under existing California law. That is, if an employee reaches their 48 hour paid sick time cap and has not used any of it, they will stop accruing additional hours until they used some of the accrued time. Employers, at their discretion, may set a higher maximum limit to the amount of hours that may be accrued.
It should be noted that an employer is not required to provide any additional paid sick time to its employees if its existing policy already meets the law’s minimum requirements.
The Reaction
As would be expected, the reaction to the new law is split. Governor Brown’s office issued the following statement:
“Whether you’re a dishwasher in San Diego or a store clerk in Oakland, this bill frees you of having to choose between your family’s health and your job. Make no mistake, California is putting its workers first.”
And House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi had this to say:
“Paid sick leave is essential for the health of our families, the strength of our workers, and the success of the middle class. California’s Healthy Workplaces, Healthy Families Act will help lower health care costs, reduce employee turnover, prevent the spread of illnesses, and support both women and men caring for their families. In order to jumpstart the middle class, Congress must now follow California’s lead and guarantee paid sick leave for workers across the entire country.”
On the other side of the aisle, conservative business advocates argue that the new law will add more financial strain on already burdened employers and will damage the state’s business climate.
John Kabateck, the executive director of the National Federation of Independent Business in California stated:
“Our small business owners, who make up more than 99 percent of the employer community in California, already face an increase in minimum wage, among the highest taxes and more regulations than any other state.”
If you have any questions about this newest California employment law, CPEhr is available to provide assistance and guidance in creating a compliant paid sick benefits policy.
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