Telephone Interpreting Book

Exciting news!

Today it was announced that my book, Telephone Interpreting: A Comprehensive Guide to the Profession, will be published through Language Line Services. Click here to read the full press release.

While this book is entirely separate from the From Our Lips to Your Ears project, many readers have written me as a result of stumbling across information online about the telephone interpreting book. So, it seemed important to share this update here as well.

For more than a year now, I've received your emails asking me how you could obtain a copy of the telephone interpreting book. Up until now, I was unable to let you know when the publication might actually reach you, and could only thank you for your continued patience.

Now, I am able to reassure you that, thanks to Language Line Services, my book will finally reach the public and help others learn more about telephone interpreting.

As many of you know, telephone interpreters worldwide comprise a large part of our family of interpreters. They serve an important purpose in ensuring the delivery of all kinds of services that are provided via telephone in a variety of fields, including insurance, 911/emergency calls, finance, telecommunications, health care, social services and more. As such, their work can be extremely difficult, yet vital to both the lives of individuals and the functioning of society.

The publication of this book will expand the knowledge base for researchers, consumers and language professionals alike, hopefully enabling greater levels of quality to be reached through telephone interpreting.

The book will be published in the course of the next few months, and more updates will be shared through both my and the publisher's websites.

Thanks again to all of you for your patience - now that the wait is nearly over, the book will soon be out there, helping the world, just like the very interpreters who inspired it to begin with.

2008 - The International Year of Languages

This is our year!

2008 is the International Year of Languages, as proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly.

Koichiro Matsuura, Director-General of UNESCO, stated the following:

"Languages are indeed essential to the identity of groups and individuals and to their peaceful coexistence. They constitute a strategic factor of progress towards sustainable development and a harmonious relationship between the global and the local context."

Interpreters play an enormous role in these contexts as well.

Matsurra also writes:

"Our common goal is to ensure that the importance of linguistic diversity and multilingualism in educational, administrative and legal systems, cultural expressions and the media, cyberspace and trade, is recognized at the national, regional and international levels.

The International Year of Languages 2008 will provide a unique opportunity to make decisive progress towards achieving these goals."

The From Our Lips project is timed perfectly to coincide with this important year, and is poised to help make an impact on public awareness of the important role interpreters play in our society.

HAPPY 2008!

Interpretopia

Special thanks to Nicole Montagna at Interpretopia for sending so many readers to the From Our Lips to Your Ears site! Written by Nicole, a graduate of SUNY Geneseo and the Ohlone College Interpreter Preparation Program, the Interpretopia blog makes for some very interesting reading.

Arcelia Paskett

"Everybody has 10 fingers," she said in explaining the sophistication of interpreting over simply translating words. "That doesn't mean they can play the piano."

This was court interpreter Arcelia Paskett’s pithy and accurate retort to the notion that anyone who speaks two languages can be an interpreter.

Arcelia recently passed away, working right up until just weeks before cancer took her life.

In a tribute to her in The Stockton Record, Scott Smith interviewed Arcelia’s daughter, who stated that “courtroom interpreting was her mother’s way of participating in the judicial system and helping right the injustices the poor often suffer." The full story is available here.

Interpreter Training Resources

A big word of thanks to the folks at Interpreter Training Resources, a wonderful site with resources for conference interpreters and their trainers.

The From Our Lips to Your Ears site has been linked to the front page for a while, and it has generated a large number of visitors to the site.

While the site is mainly for conference interpreting, there is an excellent section on Note-Taking that should benefit interpreters in nearly any setting.

Definitely a resource worth bookmarking!

Zesty Dormouse

Special thanks to a colleague in Belgium whose blog devoted to translation topics, Nouvelles News de Zesty Dormouse, now links to the From Our Lips to Your Ears project. This is enabling readers from around the world to learn about the project!