With more meetings between world leaders, skilled translators and interpreters are finding their services in higher demand. Program at the University of Arizona is preparing them in response to local and national demands.
The three-week course offered at the UA's National Center of Interpretation is an intensive professional development program for legal interpreters.Students receive over 120 hours of instruction, including lectures about legal procedure, ethics and protocol and many other subject matters. The annual Court Interpreter Training Institute, takes place in July in Tucson and is now open for registration.
The federally certified and highly experienced instructors, combined with extensive curriculum, offer a level of quality not easily matched and is an ideal way to prepare for the State Court or the Federal Court Interpreter Certification Examination (FCICE). "We have simultaneous exercises that are based on real cases, we give them feedback on strengths and weaknesses," course instructor Yvette Citizen said. The three-week program is like a boot-camp, at the end students are prepared to take the certification test, in a time where certification and confidentiality are crucial, she added. "The interpreter is crucial in making sure that the communication is accurate," Citizen said.
Diane Hernandez graduated from UA in December, she has a degree in deaf studies with an emphasis in sigh language interpreting. She recently decided to follow her life-long dream of becoming a court interpreter. "I just like the facilitation of communication aspect of it, I never wanted to be a lawyer so this gets me as close as I can to the action," Hernandez said. Today she's a step closer to fulfilling that dream because it was her last day of the three-week course. "It's really helping me build my skills," she explained.
According to The Department of Labor, the number of people employed in the translation and interpretation industry has doubled in the past seven years, and the number of companies in the industry has jumped 24 percent in that same time period.
More information about the UA's National Center of Interpretation here.
