Cultural Connector

A while back, I shared a sample story from my own experience, in order to give contributors to the From Our Lips project an idea of what types of stories might be of interest. I also encouraged trainers and educators to use the story in trainings, newsletters and other ways of reaching interpreters. I was pleased to see various individuals and organizations take me up on the offer.

In the October issue of The Cultural Connector, published by UMass Medical School's Office of Community Programs, The Right Answer was published.

This is just one of countless stories that exist regarding true-life experiences witnessed and lived by interpreters. Many more are coming in each day, and will be on their way soon in book format!

The Connection Newsletter

Fantastic news! The Utah Department of Health featured the From Our Lips to Your Ears project in the August 2007 (#14) issue of the Connection Newsletter. Special thanks for helping us spread the word throughout Utah and beyond!

Irish Translators and Interpreters Association

Special thanks to the Irish Translators and Interpreters Association (ITIA) for featuring the From Our Lips to Your Ears project in the August issue of the ITIA Bulletin!

For those who do not subscribe, this newsletter is an excellent source of information regarding interpreting issues in Ireland, as well as elsewhere in the world.

Ever since this issue came out, there have been a large number of web site hits from Ireland for both the main project site as well as the blog. With such a wonderful history of writers in Ireland, I anticipate receiving some great submissions for the book from the Emerald Isle.

Sincerest thanks to ITIA Bulletin editor Elizabeth Hayes and all of our colleagues in Ireland who work to bring interpreting issues to a more prominent place in the public's eye.

Another Great Week

This has been another tremendous week for the project, with stories pouring in and all kinds of great support! Here are a few updates:

• Special thanks to Amparo Alvarez of The Wellness Community of Greater Miami for helping to spread the word throughout Florida and the rest of the nation! I've noticed several more hits on the website from Florida-based locations as a result of her efforts!
• The program was also featured in the New Routes electronic newsletter, and on the project website, located here.
• A radio show in a Western state has expressed an interest in featuring the From Our Lips project on an upcoming program. More to come on that soon!
• The sample story, titled, "The Right Answer", shared here and on the project site, will be featured in an upcoming issue of a newsletter for University of Massachusetts Medical School.
  

More Support!

Another exciting week for the project!

Story submissions have been coming in from around the globe, including several that are wonderfully thought-provoking, with great potential for publication.

Special thanks to our friends in Canada at Interpreters Niagara/Hamilton, a program of a larger organization funded by the provincial government called Information Niagara, which provides information services and is devoted to volunteer opportunities. As a program of Information Niagara, they provide interpretation services free of charge for victims of domestic violence to non-profit human service agencies.

They were kind enough to feature our program in their Interpreter Information newsletter for interpreters, pictured above.

Recently, there has been a lot of interest in other countries (Australia, Japan, Argentina, Turkey, China, U.K., Spain, Ireland, Israel and more), and I've discussed the worldwide interest here, but I also wanted to share that the national reach within the United States is helping tremendously too to spread the word.

I am especially happy that interpreting associations have been so supportive. In addition to getting in touch with me to share their kind words, many have taken the initiative to spread the word through their newsletters, listservs, websites and more!

Special thanks to the California Healthcare Interpreters Association for letting members know about the project. I've already begun hearing from interpreters as a result of these efforts! Check out their newly revamped website by clicking on the link above.

Also, the Northwest Translators and Interpreters Society (NOTIS) shared the Call for Submissions as well! I've started hearing from interpreters in the Northwest as well. NOTIS has a great quarterly newsletter worth checking out called the Northwest Linguist. You may download copies of it from their website.

Nearly all major providers of telephone interpreting services have been in contact to voice their support for the project, and in an effort to help out, they have been sharing the call for submissions with thousands of interpreters through their newsletters and interpreter relations staff. As a result, I've been hearing from interpreters for languages that I don't get to deal with every day (Thai and Bulgarian, for example). I really appreciate this wonderful support that enables me to reach literally thousands upon thousands of interpreters!

Special thanks also to Lola Bendena, who kindly shared information about our project through the multi-languages email newsletter.

Thanks also to utranslate4me.com for spreading the word about the project!

It's also amazing how many interpreters have connections in the publishing world. If the response so far is any indication, I expect you may see some translations of the book into other languages shortly after publication, as well as publishers overseas who are already starting to express an interest in the project.

And, who knew that so many interpreters are also writers? I've begun to hear from many interpreters that are either published authors or shopping around manuscripts. This gives me a great chance to share information about the writing and publishing processes with them while learning about their projects.

I already had some lists in Amazon to help interpreters find books about interpreting all in a single place, but I've since updated them with additional finds. By the way, these lists are purely to help interpreters - they do not generate profits of any sort for this project. You can access them through the links in the right sidebar.

The main project website continues to receive hundreds of new hits as a result of all of this help in getting the word out, and that's exactly the goal - for interpreters in all settings to have a chance to contribute!

In fact, while it is quite a surprise, this blog itself is also beginning to see more and more traffic - not nearly as much as the main website of course, but more than what I originally could have anticipated.

I already knew our main project was receiving visitors from around the world, but I didn't expect the blog to receive so much international attention as a result of it. The site stats indicate that this blog has had visitors from several continents already. In fact, I even added a little visitor map at the bottom to show who is visiting from what locations. It doesn't track every single person, but it's fun to see the different locations of visitors who've stopped by.

The blog has now been submitted to lots of RSS and Atom feed directories such as Blogaholix, and we're starting to see more and more traffic on the main project site as a result. Searching for the project name in Google now yields nearly 1,000 results. Not bad for only a couple of weeks!

Also, I feel blessed that so many university professors and other interpreting colleagues are helping to share contacts and resources, as well as potential writers with great stories to share about interpreting.

Feel free to email me to let me know how you are helping to spread the word, and I am happy to reciprocate with a mention here if you like.

And for the single most exciting accomplishment for the week with relation to the project goal of striving toward greater appreciation of interpreters in society, I am happy to report that the Associated Press did a story on the national need for interpreters in the U.S. courts. The story was picked up by newspapers in nearly every state, not to mention many countries around the world. Both the American Translators Association and the National Association of Judiciary Interpreters and Translators were quoted in this important story.

Little by little, interpreters are getting more recognition. And it's about time! I am thrilled that our project is helping to fuel this effort.

The Word is Getting Out!

Over the past couple of days, I've been hearing from our colleagues from Down Under as a result of the project being mentioned in the eNewsletter for AUSIT, a professional association for interpreters in Australia with more than 750 members. Thank you, AUSIT!

The national symbol for interpreting services in Australia is pictured at left.

I am also happy to report that many university professors around the world have also been willing to help spread the word among fellow faculty and students.

Our project continues to receive mentions in the blogosphere! It has been mentioned on Transblawg, a blog for German translators, the N-Zone blog, written by Norayda de Leon-Jones, a Spanish<>English court interpreter, and the Translation Blog, written by Céline Graciet.

This week, I also heard from a colleague to let me know that she had already heard about the publication in a variety of ways. The fact that people are hearing about the project from multiple sources is encouraging. Still, my hope is that all interpreters will have the opportunity to participate in the project, if they are so inclined. So, there is still work to be done and still more interpreters to reach. If you are interested in helping get the word out, feel free to visit the project website for some ideas.

The media release continues to be picked up by so many sites, we've lost track! A few new ones we received through Google Alerts include the SmartMoney site, ABC7 news (Los Angeles) and WLS-TV / ABC (Chicago).

In response to the recent story in the Washington Post, I am also supporting other journalists who are writing about interpreting issues. More items are currently in the works. If this project is mentioned in any of them, I will be sure to post an update here.

You can now subscribe to the From Our Lips to Your Ears blog in a reader. To do that, simply click on the small orange icon in the right-hand column. This enables you to view this blog using the news reader of your choice (Yahoo, Google, Explorer, AOL, etc.).

Within just a couple of days of adding the subscription feature this week, the FeedBurner stats indicated that quite a few people are already subscribing to this blog in a news reader. That was a surprise to me, but I chalk it up to the fact that we all enjoy reading positive things about our profession. Also, I may have underestimated the number of contributors who like to stay updated about the project.

I've also been getting requests from individuals for me to receive my "newsletter" and be added to my "mailing list". I had not yet planned for either of those, but given the interest, it looks like I will need to do so in the near future. For now, I've added another new feature, so that now, you can receive blog entries via email. If you're interested, it's easy to do - just enter your email address into the little box in the right-hand column.

Each day, more and more submissions, questions and ideas keep pouring in! So much so, in fact, that it's very hard to keep up with it all. Still, it's inspiring and encouraging to see so much support, both within the U.S. and internationally, for the project.

At this point, several of the interpreters and colleagues who have contacted me have said that this project is a wonderful public relations effort for the entire interpreting community. I consider it an honor to help people understand the value of interpreters in society. So, I can see why the project is being viewed this way. Still, my goal is much simpler: to collect and record anecdotes that demonstrate how interpreters are changing the world, and make them available through a publication. I believe that one of the project's benefits will be greater outreach to the public at large, in a positive way.

Thanks again for the amazing support, now evidenced through hundreds of emails, thousands of unique hits on the project website, as well as your continued phone calls and comments on this blog. As a special treat, click here to learn how to say Thank You in 465 languages.

Around the World and Back

The news about the project continues to spread across the globe, and the collaboration and support being received are truly inspiring. We continue to receive hundreds of new hits on the project website each day.

In addition to our earlier posts today with updates from Ireland and Australia, special thanks go out to Ravi Kumar, President of the Indian Translators Association in New Delhi, India, for spreading the word about the project to ITA members.

More and more places have also picked up the news release, including ABC-11 (Raleigh-Durham), another Law firm (specializing in worker's comp), the Oregon Herald, the San Gabriel Valley Tribune, and AOL Hispanic Business.

Also, I am excited to share that the project has also made its way to Turkey in the July issue of a newsletter that reaches 6,000 Turkish linguists. Special thanks to A. Erol for making this possible, and for taking the time to actually embed images from our project's site. To use the only Turkish I know (aside from the names of dishes and songs): Teşekkür ederim.

Thanks to everyone for helping to spread the word about our project!

Activity in Ireland

A wealth of connections, recommendations and resources were kindly shared by Professor John Kearns from Ireland. Dr. Kearns is the editor of the award-winning journal Translation Ireland, published by the Irish Translators and Interpreters Association.

Dr. Kearns also works as reviews editor for the Interpreter and Translator Trainer, a journal that may be of interest to many readers of this blog, published by St. Jerome.

Another publication of potential interest to readers is the ITIA bulletin. There is a lot of great work being done in Ireland at the moment in the T&I fields.

Of special note in Ireland is the work of Mary Phelan, who is very interested in the professional status of community interpreters in Ireland, as well as the new challenges which mass immigration to the country is bringing. She is the author of the Interpreter's Resource, published by Multilingual Matters (UK).