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Woods with beautiful purple flowers on the forest floor

Expect the Unexpected

Happy April, everyone! Wow. We are one quarter of the way through 2021. It always amazes me how time just keeps on dashing by. I do love this time of year. Even Montreal is starting to wake up from its

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A word collage highlights the word Telemedicine

The Perils of Telephonic Interpreting

“Excuse me, speaking as the interpreter, could you please move the phone closer to the patient? The interpreter is struggling to hear everybody.” That was me, a week ago, attempting to provide telephonic medical interpreting services. The nurse complied, and

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A paintbrush dips into vibrant oil paints

The Fine Art of Making Mistakes

“Oh, that was terrible! I can’t believe how bad that looks,” said my 8-year-old niece the other day. She was referring to her own drawing, which was actually a very nice depiction of a butterfly. My niece would never speak

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Abstract multicolored dots with a golden star

A Year Like Any Other

Well, folks, it’s December. And looking back, 2020 was just another boring year, right? Nothing momentous happened. Nothing eventful—just a year like any other. Same old, same old. With the exception, of, well, you know. EVERYTHING. The interesting thing about

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Blue-green lagoon

Lessons from Grace

On a sunny fall day in 2013, I received a phone call from Grace. Who is Grace, you ask? It is hard to say who Grace is to me. She is a colleague, certainly. A mentor. A friend. My personal

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A rock-climber seen from above

An Honest Conversation with Fear

The terror of performing never goes away. Instead, you get very, very comfortable being terrified.” ~Eric Whitacre I like that quote. It speaks to me. I think you could replace the word “performing” with “interpreting” and paste it on the

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Arrows in a bullseye

Interrupting Without Intruding

“One moment, the interpreter needs a repetition,” I said in English, followed by “Excuse me, could you repeat that for the interpreter?” in rapid-fire Spanish. It was about fifteen minutes into the interpretation, and the fourth time I had interrupted.

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A rainbow over the desert

Hard Doesn’t Mean Impossible!

Another trip back in time. Athena Matilsky’s 2018 article seems very apropos. Enjoy. This week it was my turn to post on the NAJIT blog, and I asked some of my colleagues what I should write about. I was told,

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A green deck lounger looks out at the grass.

No Pressure or Anything

7:30am I wake up with a quick, optimistic check to my inbox. No email. Oh well, I sigh. I wasn’t really expecting the results to come in that early. I roll over in bed. Thirty seconds go by. I check

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Orange on blue: I believe in me. There is an orange heart.

Self-love in the Time of Corona

Dear Colleagues, Well, goodness me. It would appear that since my last blog post, the world has spun a teensy bit sideways. All of my own carefully made plans have been turned upside down, along with the plans of…every single

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A girl at a laptop. A blackboard behind her reads variations of the word "hello" in different languages.

Language Skills-Building for Interpreters

Interpreters face somewhat of a conundrum upon entering the profession. That is, we are expected to have “native-level” discourse and comprehension skills in all of our languages. Advertisements boast “perfect fluency,” and respectable interpreting courses necessarily steer their content away

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