Like Wildfire...

This is how the news about the project seems to be spreading- like wildfire, albeit in a positive, non-destructive way, of course.

Our project got a mention on the Multilingual Computing site, and the release was picked up by ABC12 (Flint and Bay City), ABC6 (Philadelphia), the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the Pasadena Star-News, the Business Press (Southern California's Business Newspaper), La Nación USA,

A blog post about the project was also picked up by a newsfeed in Finland, and was also posted to the Talk to Japan newsgroup, as well as another blog in Japan.

I was also thrilled to see that the project is showing up on a translation studies blog in China. Thanks very much to the blog owner for doing a translation of the call for submissions!

Also, the project was picked up by JuraBlogs, a site in Germany, and Vivendo e Traduzindo, a blog from Fabio M. Said, a translation colleague in Brazil.

The project was also kindly mentioned on the Twisted Tongues blog, featuring the very insightful writing of Dena and Daniel Shunra. They run the Shunra Translation firm and work between English, Hebrew, Dutch and German. If you are a reader of the ATA Chronicle, you might recognize Dena's name - she is a frequent contributor.

I was also pleased to see that the Metroplex Interpreters and Translators Association (MITA) was so kind as to share our call for submissions on their website.

Also, the call for submissions was posted at the Yahoo Group site for a community-based organization called Invisible to Invincible: Asian Pacific Islander Pride of Chicago.

I am very pleased to see the word spreading so quickly, and to so many unexpected (but much appreciated) places.

Manic Monday - Part 2

The news about our project continues to travel fast!

I heard from a colleague who belongs to the Japanese Association for Interpretation Studies (JAIT) and informed me that the association sent out information about our project via email to their members. The JAIT has about 220 members, many based in other countries as well. Thanks to Professor Kumiko Torikai for sharing information about our project! We hope to receive some stories from our colleagues in Japan, and elsewhere in the world!

I also learned that the project has reached Translatum, a forum for Greek interpreters. Special thanks to Anastasia Giagopoulou and Elena Petelos for helping us share the news about the project with our Greek interpreter colleagues, throughout Greece and around the world!

We are also grateful that the word is being spread in France as well. Sara Freitas-Maltaverne, author of the In Other Words blog, posted information about the project on her site.

Also, thanks to kind volunteers, our project will be hitting the conference circuit in full force! Flyers will be available at the following additional events throughout the U.S. in the months to come:

• "Interpreting at the End of Life", an all-day workshop at Truman Medical Center in Kansas City, Missouri, on August 4th.
• The annual conference of the Washington State Coalition for Language Access (WASCLA) in Ellensburg, Washington on September 7th.
• The annual conference of the Tennessee Association of Professional Interpreters and Translators (TAPIT) in Nashville on September 14th.
• The Fall Forum of the Medical Interpreters Network of Georgia (MING) in Atlanta on September 15th.
  

The calendar for our project has also been updated to reflect these events. Special thanks to Cynthia Roat for her kind support.

Manic Monday

The word continues to spread, far and wide!

Over the weekend, the counter on our website showed that we have already received more than 1,000 visitors to our site since the release went out. Not bad for only a few days!

I've exchanged emails with colleagues from across the globe at this stage, and am excited to report that many of our friends in various countries are planning to share the project with their association members and colleagues too. If you are planning to spread the word, feel free to tell me about it - I'll be glad to reciprocate with a mention on this site.

It's truly a blessing to be meeting so many great people from around the world, and from so many disciplines either within, or related to, the profession of interpreting!

Now, for some media updates:

• The media release was picked up by several other news sites, including the Denver Post, KGWKAIT (ABC channel 8), KGO-TV (ABC channel 7 - San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose), and the Whittier Daily News.
• It was also picked up by website sources such as FindLaw, MedWorm and Kwintessential. Law firms based in New Mexico, Minnesota, DC, Georgia, Mississippi and Texas also posted the release.
• I was also happy to see it get picked up by websites devoted to Latino readers, such as Hispanic Abilene, Hispanic-American Chamber of Commerce of Greater Boston, and others.
• The Memphis Area Library Council also posted a notice about the project. We love libraries!
• And in the category of "most unexpected", our project's release was also posted on the Pink Sheet Daily, the Hollywood Reporter and a soap opera site (?)
  

Moving back to more familiar ground, I also posted the call for submissions in the interpreting forum at TranslatorsCafe. Our friends over at TranslationPeople were also kind enough to post the release on their various sites. Also, a notice about the project was posted to the Multilingual Computing site.

We are also happy to report that, as our call for submissions makes its way around the world, several friends are starting to post it to forums for interpreters in various language pairs. A colleague from Turkey was kind enough to post it to a forum for Turkish translators and interpreters, and it will be mentioned in the July issue of a newsletter for Turkish translators that reaches 6,000 linguists and agencies.

In addition, the Human Dignity and Humiliation Studies group kindly shared our call for submissions with their network, and posted our call for submissions to their site. We really appreciate that they have been so willing to support us in this way.

We've also made some new friends in the blogosphere. One blog in particular by Céline Graciet is worth checking out, and she was kind enough to mention our project.

An interpreter based in Japan named Lionel Derset wrote about our project on his main blog and another blog located here. I really loved what he had to say about the project:

"There are a very few single life testimony of conference interpreters I have read about in the past, and several life records and essays in Japan by veteran interpreters. [...] It also means that Nataly Kelly may usher in a little bit of multiplicity in the perception of interpreting where A class conference interpreters are seen at the top of a pyramid under which everything is undistinguishable. Any move to expand the view and perception of the scope encompassed by interpreting is a welcome move."

This is precisely one of the things I hope to accomplish with the book: to gain greater recognition and appreciation for interpreters. All interpreters.