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.