Bilingual Citizen

10/19/2024

The Confident Interpreter Halloween Blog

Translating tricky Holloween terms and scary fantastical Mexican creatures

09/16/2024

New blog from The Confident Interpreter

https://www.theconfidentinterpreter.com/blog/legal-terminology-combatting-human-trafficking-sight-translation

interpreting exercise on legal terminology sight translation combatting human trafficking legal language, interpreter training, court exam prep

09/01/2024

New Blog from The Confident Interpreter

Interpreting Names of Professions and Trades a translation exercise

08/01/2024

New blog post from The Confident Interpreter

07/20/2024

Heard it in the Courtroom

Tricky or just plain odd things interpreters face in the courtroom

By Yvette Citizen, Federally Certified Court Interpreter

Welcome to The Confident Interpreter’s segment of Heard it in the Courtroom, where we share interesting – sometimes bizarre – utterances the TCI team or our followers have heard in the courtroom. How would you have interpreted the following?

Please let us know what you think and don’t forget to submit anything you’ve heard in the courtroom for our next segment.

1) Defense attorney: My client’s name, Yuki, means snow in Japanese and I think that’s a very appropriate name for her, Your Honor. I’ve gotten to know her since the beginning of this case, I can tell you she is a kind person and as naïve as the driven snow. She participated in this because she wanted to help her friend…

Prosecutor: What defense counsel just stated is nothing but an attempt at a snow job, Your Honor. She knew perfectly well…

In this case, the attorney is modifying the very old saying, “as pure as the driven snow,” meaning being pure and virtuous. ‘Driven snow’ refers to the snow carried by the wind.

Here’s the definition of ‘snow job’ from dictionary.com. Slang. An attempt to deceive or persuade by using flattery or exaggeration.

Would you have been able to keep the snow references in your target language/s? I was the one confronted with this encounter and I confess I was feeling quite The Confident Interpreter until I got to ‘snow job.’ I did come up with an equivalent idiom in Spanish, but it had nothing to do with snow.

2) Judge to prosecutor: “I assume you’ll be woodshedding your agents before they testify? You’ll take them out to the woodshed and tell them not to talk about this case among each other or with anyone else who may testify in this trial.”

‘A trip to the woodshed, take someone to the woodshed’ is an old saying referring usually to a parent taking a child to the woodshed, away from the house and other people to reprimand or physically punish the child. In this case, the judge is obviously asking the prosecutor to admonish his law enforcement witnesses in private.

3) Prosecutor: “This defendant appears to have Jack-in-the-box syndrome; no matter what this Court or any other judge tells him, he seems to pop right back into the system.”

Jack-in-the-box syndrome is an expression mostly used for children who “pop” out bed constantly during the night after being tucked in.

If you grew up in a different country and weren’t exposed to jack-in-the-box type toys, click on the link below to see one. The idea is that it pops up, you expect it, but it still surprises you.

jackintheboxyoutube

4) “The Government isn’t asking for a pound of flesh, Your Honor, we just don’t think that time served is an appropriate sentence under the circumstances.”

Here we have a quote from Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice. Here’s a definition from Collins online dictionary:

“Pound of flesh - in American English
Something that strict justice demands is due but can only be paid with great loss or suffering to the payer.”

Shakespearean sayings are common in the English language. This might be a good opportunity for you to research the most popular ones.

And lastly, a classic:

5) Judge: Sir, I realize you’re as nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs, but please try to relax. I’m going to explain some rights that you have, then I’m going to ask you some questions to establish a factual basis for your plea, and finally, I will ask you how you plead to the charges.

In court, we often hear attorneys mix metaphors, create metaphors, and stretch metaphors sometimes to bizarre extremes. We have to be ready for them. If you don’t have a ready equivalent in the target language, you should at the very least be able to state the meaning in plain language.

Let us know how you would tackle these, share your experiences, and don’t forget to check out our Free Resources and other materials at TheConfidentInterpreter.com

Feel free to repost but make sure you give us credit.

Copyright: 2024. The Confident Interpreter. All rights reserved.

07/04/2024

New post from The Confident Interpreter

SIMULTANEOUS EXERCISE: Fourth of July Speech

As all athletes will tell you, it’s good to vary your workouts and exercise your muscles in different ways. And so it is with simultaneous interpreting. The following exercise will help you learn to manage idioms and persuasive language, not unlike to what we face in opening statements, closing arguments, and other legal discourse.

Political and diplomatic speeches are challenging by nature, particularly if you’re not exposed to them frequently. Interpreters find them complicated even if they have experiences interpreting in other settings, which is why we recommend you interpret this speech at a slower than normal speed. We want to build your confidence, not overwhelm you!

Here’s your confidence and skill-building mission, should you choose to accept it.

1. Click on the link below to access President Obama’s 2009 Independence Day remarks.

2. First, shadow it (repeat it simultaneously in English). Try to keep up, focusing on intonation and style. You want your voice to match the clarity and convey the same inspiration of the original.

3. Now, get your recorder (or your phone’s voice memo feature) ready to record your interpretation. Put your headphones on.

4. Go to ‘Settings’ on the bottom row of the YouTube video. Click on Playback Speed. Reduce the speed to .75 or lower. The more speed you reduce, the more distorted it will sound. You can play around with it, but .75 seems to work best. If you play it at normal speed, it may be too fast, and we don’t want you to get frustrated and discouraged. You can slowly build up to higher speeds once you are familiar with this genre and get some practice under your belt.

5. Interpret while recording yourself.

6. If you fall behind, keep going! This is a good exercise to practice your ‘keep going no matter what’ muscles. It’s less than 5 minutes, so even though it may not feel like it, it will end soon.

After you’re done:
1. Listen to your recording while looking that written transcript below the video.

2. Did you have hesitations? With practice, your delivery will improve!

3. Did you have omissions? If so, that’s okay. They will lessen with practice, but were you still able to convey the key points and spirit of the message? Did you finish your sentences?

4. Did you conserve the same style, language level, and tone as the original speech?

5. Below is a list with some of the tricky vocabulary. If you would like to see Spanish equivalents for the vocabulary below, go to the blog on our website:

www.theconfidentinterpreter.com/blog/simultaneous-exercise-fourth-of-july-speech

6. Let us know what you think and as always, feel free to repost as long as you give us credit.

7. Don’t forget to check out the Free Resources we offer on our website as well as the not free (but affordable) materials. www.TheConfidentInterpreter.com

Inspirational words from Kobe Bryant: “Get better every single day. Work on your weaknesses. Hard work beats talent every time.”

Make this fun and have a happy Fourth of July!

https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/weekly-address-president-obama-celebrates-independence-day-and-american-spirit

VOCABULARY

1. Kick back
2. Indomitable spirit
3. Small band of patriots
4. People
5. Unyielding spirit
6. Blaze a westward trail
7. Triumph in the face of tyranny
8. Unrivaled
9. To wilt or cower
10. each of us has a hand in writing America’s destiny.
11. a scale unseen in our time
12. festering (problems)
13. kicked down the road
14. revamp
15. outcompete (any worker in the world)
16. crushing (costs)
17. status quo
18. naysayers
19. standing pat (in a time of change)
20. cluster of 13 colonies
21. summon (that spirit once more)

11/01/2020

BOOK RELEASE

Spanish Interpreter Guides Readers Through Meditation Exercises While Improving Spanish

Bilingual Citizen is very excited to announce the release of Yvette’s new book!

Throughout her career as an interpreter, Yvette Citizen met people who wanted to improve their Spanish. Whether they took Spanish in high school or spoke Spanish at home with their parents, they felt as if their language skills were a little rusty. She came up with a great way to help people improve their Spanish while working on their self-improvement goals with her book, “Bilingual Meditations – Meditaciones Bilingües: Improving Yourself and Your Spanish at the Same Time.”

Written in Spanish and English, this book is a set of meditative exercises that allows people to simultaneously improve their lives and their Spanish. With these exercises, the reader will visualize goals, set intentions, and review favorite quotes and songs - all in Spanish. This way, they can practice their Spanish skills and extend their vocabulary while getting themselves into a more positive state of mind. Each exercise has instructions in English and Spanish and is followed by a glossary to help the reader remember the new vocabulary.

The book is available through BalboaPress.com, Amazon, & Barnes & Noble

Feel free to contact Yvette at [email protected]

And don’t forget to check out her other venture, TheConfidentInterpreter.com for interpreter training material and free language tips and resources

09/15/2020

An interactive webinar designed to explore complex and challenging medical areas and terminology we may encounter in the course of our work.

08/14/2020

Irene Radillo from gives radio interview. Check it out!

06/10/2020

Most lawyers have encountered clients who do not use English as their dominant language. How are these clients adversely affected during the COVID-19 pandemi...

04/25/2020

Great job, Tamber! Thank you for doing all this research for us now that remote interpreting is the norm. Kudos

Interpreter Tamber Hilton (http://www.languagelocus.com/p/interpreting-and-translation.html and ) demonstrates and reviews a number of Mac-compatib...

04/25/2020

Great job, colleagues!!

Iowa PBS, which runs the broadcast of the governor's daily news conferences on coronavirus, launched a new way to connect with Latinos and Hispanics in Iowa through a live audio interpretation of the briefings in Spanish. Vanessa Marcano-Kelly and Ernest Niño-Murcia are the makers behind the magic ...

03/05/2020

02/14/2020

Follow this link or this calendar view for provisional conference schedule (subject to change)! New Mexico Translators and Interpreters Association is pleased to announce our Spring 2020 Interpreter and Translator conference featuring our distinguished presenters: Darinka Mangino Wilhelm, Certified....

12/18/2019

Kudos to a fellow interpreter!

Imagine a job that involves frequent travel around the world, occasionally sharing the same room

11/28/2019

SIGHT TRANSLATION CHALLENGE. Practice your sight translation skills and legal terminology with The Confident Interpreter 's new blog post of a Thanksgiving family altercation.

https://www.theconfidentinterpreter.com/2019/12/07/thanksgiving-challenge-sight-translation-of-police-report/

Improving your skills, expanding your options