This year, Irina delivered two presentations: Coping with Challenges of Simultaneous Interpretation into Russian in Courtroom Settings and Distance Interpreter Education: Benefits, Challenges, and Perspectives (with Nestor Wagner of Southern California School of Interpretation as a co-presenter). Both sessions were received with great enthusiasm and interest.

The session on virtual interpreter training attracted interpreter educators, court and hospital administrators, and e-learning specialists and stirred a fruitful discussion on online learning. While only a handful of the attendees are currently engaged in online education, the general consensus of the room after the presentation was that online learning is the way of the future and a great opportunity to expand the ranks of qualified professional interpreters nationwide and across the globe.

Tom Fennell, an English > Russian legal translator, commended the hands-on practical approach of Irina’s workshop on simultaneous interpretation. The participants offered brilliant solutions to challenging linguistic problems and discussed problematic court terminology.  Due to time restraints, one of the discussions on an appropriate Russian equivalent to the term probation was left unfinished, and in continuation of this discussion, Irina offers a short terminology research piece for Russian interpreters and translators: “Probation” in the Criminal Justice System.

It was wonderful to see many of our current and past students in person and learn about their accomplishments. We look forward to next year’s conference in San Diego, CA.

For more information about the conference, please visit http://www.atanet.org/conf/2011/index.htm .

Just in case you couldn’t make it to the conference, here is a link to Irina’s presentation:  Conference_Interpreting_Jesionowski_MiTiN_2011.

Interpreter Education Online understands the vital need for having professionally-trained interpreters in the medical field. That is why we’re pleased to announce our newest single topic unit: “Sight Translation Techniques for Medical Interpreters“. This course is designed to train and prepare medical interpreters to execute flawless sight translations in healthcare settings. “ST Techniques for Medical Interpreters” will be sure to ready any healthcare interpreter to sight translate documents they may encounter while out on an assignment, such as questionnaires and discharge instructions.

This course will also help to satisfy the educational requirements that are needed to take the certification exam. Currently, the Certification Commission for Healthcare Interpreters (CCHI) and the National Board of Certification for Medical Interpreters (NBCMI) are two organizations that oversee the certification process for medical interpreters. Both CCHI and NBCMI are similar in that they require 40 hours of healthcare interpreter training before the certification examination. However, they differ slightly in their certification prerequisites. Be sure to check out CCHI’s Candidate Examination Handbook and NBCMI’s Prerequisites page for more information.

Our “ST Techniques for Medical Interpreters” course is available in the following language combinations: English < > Albanian, Arabic, French, Haitian-Creole, Hmong, German, Korean, Mandarin, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, and Vietnamese. The course lasts 2 weeks and students will receive a Certificate of Completion after successfully finishing the course. “ST Techniques for Medical Interpreters” is the second course in the healthcare series to be launched by Interpreter Education Online. Simultaneous Interpreting for Medical Interpreters is next with a number of short and extended courses to follow.

If you have any questions or comments, or if you’d like to know more about the course, feel free to contact us!

“Bridging the Gap” Interpreter Training
February 21-25 2011 – Seattle, Washington ($750, includes materials)
Bridging the Gap is the leading and most recognized medical interpreter training program in the US today. The quality of health care often depends as much on the interpreter as the provider. This foundation course prepares bilingual individuals to work as medical interpreters in hospital and clinic settings.

GALA 2011 Conference (Globalization and Localization Association)
March 28-30, 2011 – Lisbon, Portugal
GALA 2011 travels to the colorful Iberian Peninsula this year where leaders in global content delivery will collectively discuss, share and debate the latest technologies and advancements in localization, language and translation technology.

Consortium for Language Access in the Courts: Court Interpreter Workshops
April 2-3, 2011 – Las Vegas, Nevada
Interpreters will assist to language neutral workshops taught by experienced professionals for all interpreters at any skill level.

NAJIT 32nd Annual Conference
May 13-15, 2011 – Long Beach, CA
More information, as well as registration forms, will be posted on NAJIT website shortly.

Language Access in Health Care Symposium: Bringing Together Louisiana and the National Dialogue
May 18, 2011 – New Orleans, LA
All are welcome! Healthcare and social services administration, providers, interpreters, people who speak little or no English, advocates, health policy makers.

5th Annual NCIHC Membership Meeting (National Council on Interpreting in Health Care)
May 19-20 – New Orleans, LA

2011 ALC Annual Conference (Association of Language Companies) .
May 18 – 21 – Las Vegas, Nevada

Interpret America Summit on Interpreting
June 17-18, 2011 – Washington, DC
Quality Interpreting in Push-Button World: How Professional Identity & Technology are Driving the Future of Our Field.

2011 RID National Conference (Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf)
July 17-22, 2011 – Atlanta, GA
It is the mission of the RID National Conference to offer opportunities to develop the knowledge, wisdom and imagination of all interpreters through educational events and to promote participation in leadership opportunities to advance the profession and improve services.

7th Language and Technology Conference (IMTT event)
August 13-15, 2011 – Cordoba, Argentina
The main objective of IMTT Language & Technology Conferences is to reflect the global reality of the industry, help deal with the changes at a local level and leave attendees with a positive message. The 7th Language & Technology Conference will set the floor for elevated and in-depth discussions that will result in a better understanding of both, vendor and client.

TAPIT Annual Conference
Nashville, TN
Check out the calendar of events for more information on this conference. Marjory Bancroft will be the featured speaker.

2011 International Medical Interpreters Conference (IMIA :International Medical Interpreters Association)
September 30 – October 2, 2011 – Boston, MA
The format of the conference is grounded in workshop sessions that maximize audience participation, complemented by stakeholder meetings and plenary sessions on key national and international policy issues. IMIA provides the forum for new experts in the field to develop. This conference seeks to facilitate learning as an ongoing, dynamic and social process, and strives to offer engaging sessions in which diverse participants can form bonds, participate as learners and teachers, and feel integral to the learning process.

MiTiN Annual Conference
October 2011 – Michigan

The 9th Annual CFI Continuing Education Conference
October 2011 – San Francisco, CA
CFI is working hard to build on our recent successes in 2009 and 2010 to bring you an even better continuing education experience in 2011. Browse the offerings from 2010, consider submitting a proposal to present, and check back for updates later in the Spring.

ATA 52nd Annual Conference
Oct 26-29, 2011 – Boston, MA
The four day event will include expert presentations, showcases panel discussions, scholarly papers, training workshops, certification testing and networking sessions for participants. It will also feature a vendor exhibit hall and job marketplace.

American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL)
Annual Convention and World Languages Expo: November 18 – 20, 2011
Pre-convention workshops: November 17, 2011
Denver, CO

It’s been more than a year and a half since Interpreter Education Online announced its launch at the 30th NAJIT Conference. Since then, more than a hundred of students have taken our courses.  The vast majority of the students graduated successfully. They significantly improved their interpretation performance and expanded their knowledge of the U.S. judicial system.  However, there were a few students who, despite completion of the course work, did not demonstrate the required growth of their skill level.  And there were those who dropped out at various stages of the program.  These students cause us a great deal of concern.

So I decided to compare our academic performance statistics with other online programs.  Here is what I found out:

The 2010 Sloan Survey of Online Learning reveals that online enrollments have continued to grow at rates far in excess of the total higher education student population, with the most recent data demonstrating continued substantial growth.  The twenty-one percent growth rate for online enrollments far exceeds the less than two percent growth of the overall higher education student population. Nearly thirty percent of higher education students now take at least one course online.[http://sloanconsortium.org/publications/survey/class_differences]

However, e-learning struggles with high dropout rates. There are no national statistics, but a recent report in the Chronicle of Higher Education found that institutions are seeing dropout rates that range from 20 to 50 percent for distance learners. [http://chronicle.com/blogPost/The-Online-Attrition/7228]. I am so happy to see that our dropout rates are much lower than the quoted above. Interpreters stick to their guns!

Still, these figures raise a lot of questions. What type of a student has more chances to succeed in the virtual learning environment? What are the most important factors: computer and software usage skills, self-motivation, self-discipline, or independent study skills?  Would you pay more for synchronized live sessions with a trainer or trade a delayed feedback for lower tuition?  We invite you to participate in a discussion on the best distance interpreter training practices. Share with us your personal experiences, your thoughts and ideas.

It is clear that virtual education is here to stay.  Let’s make it work well for the art and craft of language interpretation!

Irina Jesionowski – Curriculum Director

TAPIT conference that took place on September 10-12 in Nashville, TN, was among the first in the surge of regional and national gatherings. InterpreterEducationOnline, represented by Jinny Bromberg, was presenting on current trends in interpreter education, providing an overview and a comparative analysis of various educational and training opportunities for interpreters.

ProZ Freelance Translator Virtual Conference was a great success! On September 30, more than 10,000 language professionals from all over the world attended this online event. 280 participants followed Irina Jesionowski’s and Jinny Bromberg’s presentation, “Becoming an Interpreter”, now available on our resources page.

MITIN 1st Regional Conference on Professional interpreting took place on October 2 in Novi, Michigan, featuring nationally-recognized experts Holly Mikkelson and Bruce Adelson, who presented on court interpreting and Title VI.

California Federation of Interpreters holds its eighth annual conference in Santa Monica, CA, October 8-10. This conference is known for its engaging, innovating, and unorthodox sessions. Among the presenters are Anthony Rivas, Bethany Korp-Edwards and Tuomas Kostiainen. Take a look at the conference page at http://www.calinterpreters.org/conference/ .

Of course, no conference lineup would be complete without the annual ATA gathering. This year, it will be held in Denver, CO, from October 27-30. Session topics will range from machine translation and its evolution to blogging for translators, from Mexican slang to interpreting in a booth. Multiple sessions will be language-specific: Russian, French, Korean, Spanish, etc.

Any interpreter should take advantage of these well respected speakers, variety of topics, and fabulous networking opportunities. We hope to meet many of you this fall!

Translators and interpreters celebrate September 30th as their day, since it is the Feast Day of the patron saint of librarians, scripture scholars, students, and of course, translators and interpreters. St. Jerome is one of the greatest biblical scholars of all time and earned his place in history mainly for his revisions of the Gospels and the Psalms and translations of the Old and New Testaments into Latin.

May our professional holiday be filled with much joy, happiness and success! We’d like to take this opportunity to thank all of you for your continued partnership and express our appreciation of your admirable work and talent!

Translation is not a matter of words only: it is a matter of making intelligible a whole culture.
Anthony Burgess

To know another’s language and not his culture is a very good way to make a fluent fool of yourself.
Winston Brembeck

Many critics, no defenders,
translators have but two regrets:
when we hit, no one remembers,
when we miss, no one forgets.
Anonymous

To better serve our current and future students, the IEO team has developed new educational packages that will come in effect on August 1st of this year. The Advanced and the Basic Courses for Court Interpreters, our two most popular programs, will be offered in a variety of formats. Students will be able to choose among the following packages:

- Materials Only
- Materials Only + Interpretation Performance Assessment Test
- Materials Only + Interpretation Performance Assessment Test + the desired amount of glossaries and interpretation exercises evaluated by instructors

In addition to expanding the selection of training options, the new system will allow us to open our programs in more language-combinations adding to the existing assortment of 11 language combinations.

For more information, please visit the Programs page.

While the majority of participants were Spanish interpreters, there was a significant growth of language-specific options for other language combinations. Russian interpreters enjoyed Elena Bogdanovich’s pre-conference, day-long, skill building workshop. It was great to learn from a language professional of such caliber! Over ten Russian interpreters came to see our presentation on Courtroom Russian: from Legalese to Ruglish (presented by Jinny Bromberg and Irina Jesionowski). Many participants wished for longer language-specific sessions. “Thank you, I learned a lot from this class! Very, very beneficial. I sincerely hope that NAJIT will continue offering Russian-specific workshops”, wrote one participant in her evaluation form.

Another highlight of the conference for us, Interpreter Education Online representatives, was a chance to meet a few of our students in person. We are very excited for Rosa Bassett, a Spanish interpreter, who passed Florida written exam with flying colors. While taking our Basic Unit course, in addition to her talent for interpretation, she demonstrated a great work ethic and a strong resolve to learn and improve. She earned her success! We wish Rosa all the luck at the oral portion of the examination and in her career!

Maria Weir, a Spanish interpreter working in the Greater Philadelphia area, a board member of Delaware Valley Translators Association, and an IEO student, said, “It was a delight to attend Virginia Valencia’s note-taking and memory developing tricks as well as Agustin de la Mora’s Weightlifting for Court Interpreters. Both presenters were dynamic, entertaining and knowledgeable. They made my trip to the conference!”

Overall variety of presentations and workshops was amazing and it was so difficult to choose which session to attend! While debriefing the conference, Jinny chose Purvi Shah’s presentation, Vicarious Trauma, as the most memorable, and Irina, Melody Kramer’s on a lawyer’s thought process when working with interpreters.

The 31st NAJIT Conference was a great success thanks to our tireless Board and staff members, the Executive Director Robin Lanier and the Administrator Christina Filipovic.

We look forward to seeing everybody again next year in Long Beach, CA, where we are hoping to report on some empirical data regarding online interpreter training.

On April 15th, Essex Region Conservation Foundation debuted EnviroExpo conference, with the keynote opening speaker, President Bill Clinton. The EnviroExpo provides a job fair for the attendees, Enviro-Building Technology Forum and Seminars, as well as EnviroEconomic Roundtable Summit and a Children’s zone.

Keeping our Earth well and healthy is essential, not just for our own good, but also for economic reasons, which was exactly President Clinton’s point. Furthermore, he encouraged all of us to come forward and do our part in promoting environmental consciousness and saving of the Earth. Clinton mentioned LED lights, or use of left over cooking oil to run a mower, eliminating land fills and recycling its waste to create energy and in turn space for housing or other projects.

This is what Interpreter Education Online is about, providing high quality education and being environmentally conscious about it. We offer courses to students all over the world which reduces gas emissions and saves money for our students by cutting all travel costs or any additional expenses. We also save forests by providing courses online and being almost completely paper-free.

Hopefully, the private sector and the government will work together with in organizing and expanding this up and coming idea in helping our Earth. Interpreter Education Online is happy to do its part in making the Earth greener while educating interpreters.