Session 602

Sarika Mehta

Interpreter (In)Justice: The Ethics of Interpreter Access in the Judicial System

Bio

Session Abstract

This presentation will explore wrongful convictions of inmates due to interpreting failures, specifically with Deaf (includes deaf, HH, DB, Deaf with disabilities, Deaf people of color) inmates. People with disabilities make up 60-90% (Lewis, 2016) of the prison population, from correctional facilities to immigrant detention centers. In fact, this statistic is such a wide margin due to the lack of tracking of this demographic information. There are tens of thousands of deaf people in jails and prisons across the nation. Most departments of corrections do not track numbers or locations of deaf prisoners. HEARD has located more than 500 deaf prisoners, but this is just a tiny fraction of deaf prisoners across the nation. For example, the Louisiana Department of Corrections recently announced that it has more than 2,000 deaf prisoners but HEARD has only been able to find two deaf prisoners in Louisiana. For these linguistic minority inmates, lack of interpreter or worse, interpreter error, can create serious communication barriers and block fair access to their arrest warrant, Miranda Rights, interrogation, and trial. Some deaf inmates have attempted to legally appeal over their inability to receive a fair trial, while some Spanish-speaking inmates, for example, have been denied interpreters when a judge deemed their English-language skills sufficient.

Session 603

Eliana Lobo

Stress Management for Translators and Interpreters

Bio

Eliana is a native speaker of English and Brazilian Portuguese. After graduating from high school in Brazil, she came to the U.S. to study at Brown University, earning two bachelor’s and two master’s degrees. After completing her master's degree in Bilingual Education while teaching Portuguese as a Teaching Fellow, she was subsequently awarded a Fulbright Grant to conduct research in Brazil.

Eliana has taught Portuguese and English as a second language to learners of all ages. Currently, she teaches the Professional Healthcare Interpreter course online at Highline College in Des Moines, Washington every spring and fall quarter.

An experienced court and medical interpreter, Eliana is a WA state authorized medical interpreter, a certified Trainer of Trainers (ToT) of medical interpreters, and a nationally certified CoreCHI™ healthcare interpreter. She is also a proud member of Interpreters United, WFSE/AFSCME Local 1671.

Eliana was formerly the Director of Multicultural Awareness Programs & Services, for IEO (Interpreter Education Online). Prior to that, she was the National Director of Interpreter Quality for In Demand Interpreting, and the Supervisor and Trainer of Interpreters for seven years at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle, (a regional, Level 1 trauma center, teaching hospital, and safety net hospital, with 49 staff interpreters and an in-house VRI center). Eliana served as a Commissioner with CCHI (Certification Commission of Healthcare Interpreters) from 2015–2021.

As part of the NCIHC’s “Home for Trainers” work group, she has hosted over fifty webinars for medical interpreter trainers since 2015. The “Home for Trainers” webinar series development group won the ProZ Community Choice Award for "Best Training Series" twice, the first time in 2014, and then again, in 2016.

Currently, Director at Lobo Language Access, Eliana serves as the Chair of the Standards & Training Committee of the NCIHC. She was just re-elected to serve a second term on the NCIHC Board of Directors

Session Abstract

Attendees will learn how stress negatively impacts performance, and what they can do about it. This training explains how the physiological effects of stress impact and impede language production and conversion, while providing tools and techniques to help manage stress and improve performance.

Training strategies, techniques for self-calming and study plans for interpreters will be shared with the goal of better preparing working interpreters to be better at handling stress in the moment of interpreting.

Session 604

Dr. Laada Bilaniuk

The Impact of War on Language

Bio

Laada Bilaniuk is a Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Washington, with adjunct appointments in the Departments of Linguistics and Slavic Languages and Literatures. She received her PhD in Anthropology from the University of Michigan in 1998. Her research interests include language politics and language ideology in Ukraine, purism and mixed languages, discourse analysis, gender, race, nationalism, and popular culture. Her book, Contested Tongues: Language Politics and Cultural Correction in Ukraine (Cornell, 2005) examines the sociolinguistic situation in Ukraine, drawing on historical sources and contemporary ethnography to untangle the ideologies and practices surrounding Ukrainian and Russian, and their roles in nation-building. She has also published articles on language ideology, surzhyk, rock music in Ukraine, and language politics on television. Her recent publications include a chapter on “Ideologies of Language in Wartime” in the edited volume The Battle for Ukrainian: A Comparative Perspective (Harvard, 2016), and journal articles “Race, media, and postcoloniality: Ukraine between nationalism and cosmopolitanism” (City & Society, 2016), and “Linguistic conversions: Nation-building on the self” (Journal of Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Societies, 2020). She is currently working on a book on the politics of popular culture in Ukraine.

Session Abstract

This presentation provides an overview of the language situation in Ukraine, how it has changed during the last three decades of the country’s independence, and how Russia’s war on Ukraine has affected language use. Ukrainian and Russian languages both continue to have a significant presence in the country, but their spheres of use have been shifting. While in Soviet times Russian had been instituted as the language of prestige and power, in 1989 Ukrainian was declared the sole state language of Ukraine. This legal status, along with the country’s independence, set in motion changes in language use in all spheres, from government and education to popular culture and personal life. At issue was not only language choice, but also perceived correctness, language purity, and the question of how language is linked to identity. Russia’s war on Ukraine, which began in 2014 and escalated to a full-scale invasion in February 2022, has made the language issue more poignant. Many Ukrainian citizens who used to speak Russian have been making the choice to use more Ukrainian, as their personal contribution to decolonization and the strengthening of the sovereignty of their country.

Session 605

Eliana Lobo

Master Class on Ethics for Medical Interpreters

Bio

Eliana is a native speaker of English and Brazilian Portuguese. After graduating from high school in Brazil, she came to the U.S. to study at Brown University, earning two bachelor’s and two master’s degrees. After completing her master's degree in Bilingual Education while teaching Portuguese as a Teaching Fellow, she was subsequently awarded a Fulbright Grant to conduct research in Brazil.

Eliana has taught Portuguese and English as a second language to learners of all ages. Currently, she teaches the Professional Healthcare Interpreter course online at Highline College in Des Moines, Washington every spring and fall quarter.

An experienced court and medical interpreter, Eliana is a WA state authorized medical interpreter, a certified Trainer of Trainers (ToT) of medical interpreters, and a nationally certified CoreCHI™ healthcare interpreter. She is also a proud member of Interpreters United, WFSE/AFSCME Local 1671.

Eliana was formerly the Director of Multicultural Awareness Programs & Services, for IEO (Interpreter Education Online). Prior to that, she was the National Director of Interpreter Quality for In Demand Interpreting, and the Supervisor and Trainer of Interpreters for seven years at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle, (a regional, Level 1 trauma center, teaching hospital, and safety net hospital, with 49 staff interpreters and an in-house VRI center). Eliana served as a Commissioner with CCHI (Certification Commission of Healthcare Interpreters) from 2015–2021.

As part of the NCIHC’s “Home for Trainers” work group, she has hosted over fifty webinars for medical interpreter trainers since 2015. The “Home for Trainers” webinar series development group won the ProZ Community Choice Award for "Best Training Series" twice, the first time in 2014, and then again, in 2016.

Currently, Director at Lobo Language Access, Eliana serves as the Chair of the Standards & Training Committee of the NCIHC. She was just re-elected to serve a second term on the NCIHC Board of Directors

through a broader perspective.

Session Abstract

Session 606

Miriam Hurley

Perks and Pitfalls of LinkedIn for Language Professionals

Bio

Session Abstract

Session 607

Mateo Rutherford, M.A., CHI™

A Preview of Basic Genetics Knowledge and Terminology for Healthcare or Court Interpreters

Bio

Mateo Rutherford, M.A., CHI™-Spanish, CCHI Commissioner and Vice Chair, has worked as Supervisor, Administrative Director, and Systems & Technology Manager for Interpreting Services at UCSF Health since 2012. He has worked as a freelance interpreter since 1987 throughout Latin America, Europe, Asia and the U.S. Mateo was a disease prevention trainer/curriculum developer for the CDC, has presented on topics related to medical interpreting nationally and internationally. Mateo holds a master’s degree in Biology from the University of California, Berkeley, and a master’s degree in Spanish Interpretation & Translation from the Monterey Institute of International Studies. Mateo serves on the Education Committee of CHIA. He taught Molecular and Cell Biology at UCB several years while a graduate student, was as a bilingual disease prevention trainer at the CDC for over 4 years and has conducted several trainings on interpreting for genetic subspecialties throughout California.

Session Abstract

After delivering Cindy Roat’s training curricula on “Interpreting for Cancer Genetics, Prenatal Genetics and Pediatric Genetics,” the presenter realized that there is a foundation of general molecular, cellular and genetics knowledge that would greatly enhance the medical interpreter’s ability to understand medical appointments involving any conversation about genetics. In these five-to-six-hour trainings, much focus is on the particular specialty of genetic counseling and practice exercises. This workshop would take the interpreter on a journey of deeper understanding of how genetics work from the molecular to organism level with simple explanations, diagrams and analogies. Presenter will also have handouts and group exercises to help conceptualize the terminology and science. Come and learn why heterozygosity and homozygosity have nothing to do with the patient’s sexual orientation (or does it?), why crossing-over is not about pedestrians vs. drivers or dying, why even a simple genetic error in the cells recycling center can lead to devastating consequences for the patient, and much, much more. This training will provide interpreters with a well-grounded understanding of the basic concepts of human genetics. Interpreters will better be able to understand the hows and whys of any medical appointment involving genetic testing, treatment, counseling. And most important, will give interpreters the tools they need to know what they don’t know and how to ask for clarification.

Session 609

Lilly Lee

Key Anatomy for Translators or Interpreters: Low Back Pain, Physical Therapy, and the Importance of the interview

Bio

Lilly Lee is a physical therapist with 20 years of clinical practice in a rural hospital-based setting, Astoria, Oregon. She holds a master’s degree from the Mayo Clinic Allied Health Physical Therapy Program. Her primary focus of specialty is orthopedics, and she obtained an Orthopedic Clinical Specialist certification in 2019. She has been a certified Manual Physical Therapist through the North American Institute of Orthopedic Manual Therapy since 2008. Her current interests include telehealth physical therapy.

Session Abstract

A primary reason for someone to see a physical therapist is because of pain, often a pain that causes immobility in the body and interferes with a person’s life and happiness. As physical therapists, we strive to make recovery as efficient and conservative (meaning without surgery and without pain medicine), as possible.

Collecting the right information from a client is critical for understanding their condition and relaying to them what to do about it. Pain is one of the biggest impediments that prevents a patient or client from healing.

This presentation will be an overview of conditions, and their associated anatomy, that can lead to inefficient functional movement and lasting pain. The former explanations will then be applied specifically to low back pain because of its frequent diagnosis in physical therapy. Topics will include questions that a physical therapist asks a patient in an intake session; pertinent medical terminology used in physical therapy notes, and low back anatomy/conditions.

A detailed description of pain can alert the therapist as to what structures are the cause of pain. Details from the incident when pain began may help a therapist reverse engineer the mode of injury to develop a treatment plan.

The goal in translation and interpretation in this case is optimal communication between the physical therapist and client/patient for best outcome for assessment, treatment, and protection against litigation (in a medical or legal context).