'Subject To Interpretation' is a weekly podcast that deep dives into the topics that matter to interpreters.🎙 Hosted by Maria Ceballos Wallis
This week we speak with Holly Mikkelson as a part of our Founder Series. Holly shares how she became an interpreter and her important contribution to shaping court interpreting as we know it today.
Holly Mikkelson is the author of the acclaimed Acebo training manuals for court interpreters. She is also the sole author of Introduction to Court Interpreting (Routledge, 2016) and a co-author of Fundamentals of Court Interpretation: Theory, policy and practice (Carolina Academic Press, 2012).
'Subject To Interpretation' is a weekly podcast that deep dives into the topics that matter to interpreters.🎙 Hosted by Maria Ceballos Wallis
This week we speak with Holly Mikkelson as a part of our Founder Series. Holly shares how she became an interpreter and her important contribution to shaping court interpreting as we know it today.
Holly Mikkelson is the author of the acclaimed Acebo training manuals for court interpreters. She is also the sole author of Introduction to Court Interpreting (Routledge, 2016) and a co-author of Fundamentals of Court Interpretation: Theory, policy and practice (Carolina Academic Press, 2012).
Welcome to subject to Interpretation, a podcast which takes us deep into the topics that matter to professional interpreters. I'm your host, Maria Siva Wallace. We're celebrating the 25th anniversary of the De La Mota Institute of Interpretation with a special series recognizing the accomplishment of those individuals who have shaped this industry and are still sculpting its future. Today on what we affectionately call our founder series, we speak with Holly Nicholson, a true trailblazer in the field of court interpretation and legal translation. For close to 40 years, she has trained and formed professional court interpreters directly through her courses as a professor in the graduate school of Translation, interpretation and language education of the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in Monterey, California. Also, through her presentations, outreach and workshops through nat, the American Translators Association and other international organizations, and indirectly, but consistently through the CEBO training material she created when this industry was in its infancy, materials, which have been used by hundreds, if not thousands of interpreters. Yours truly included. Welcome, Holly.
Speaker 2:Thank you. Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1:Well, it is a pleasure to have you here, and thank you very much. Um, you are now professor Emerita of Miss as some like to call it. Can you tell us what that is and what, what, what you're doing these days?
Speaker 2:Well, that's just an honorary title. Um, basically I get a parking lot sticker and a, um, library privileges<laugh>. Um, they invite me to lunch once a year, but I don't usually go. It just is a way of thanking people who have taught for many years and honoring them. Um, it's not all that rare when people retire from a faculty, but still I'm honored by it. Um, I was a professor of professional practice, meaning that I wasn't, I didn't have a PhD and I didn't conduct research. Um, I did write a lot, but I didn't conduct empirical research. So I think I'm glad that they had that category of professor of professional practice, because I think it's necessary in a school of interpreting and translation, you need to have practicing professionals to teach students rather than pure academics who don't necessarily practice the profession that they're teaching.
Speaker 1:So, on that tack, um, could you estimate how many students have taken your courses or workshops or use your materials over the years? No.
Speaker 2:<laugh>, no. Um, I, the, the Institute's own, uh, master's programs, probably in the Spanish English sections, had, um, 40 students at a time. I didn't teach all of them, but then I had summer courses and, and short week long intensive courses, and dozens of people took those over the years. But as far as using the materials goes, I have no idea because they were adopted for courses being taught throughout the United States and in some other countries also. And a lot of people just bought them for self-study. So, I don't know, but, um, I imagine it's a lot of people, and I'm glad that that's the case,<laugh>.
Speaker 1:So let's go back to the beginning. You received your Bachelor of Arts and Sociology from Mills College in 1974, and decided you wanted to go forward with a master's, but you weren't sure what you wanted to do next. Can you talk to me about that period under your life?
Speaker 2:Well, I did speak Spanish, um, and French, but I didn't wanna be a language and literature major. And as far as I was concerned, that was the possibility. If you were going to continue in academia, you were going to teach literature or study, maybe linguistics or something like that. But I wanted to do something more practical. I discovered that I wasn't cut out to be a social worker,<laugh>. And so I, the, the school had a catalog, those old fashioned books that listed all the courses at different universities. Um, there was a catalog for what was then the Monterey Institute of Foreign Studies, and they had courses in translation. And I thought, well, I could be a translator. I've always liked languages. And that's a more practical application of, of the use of languages. And, um, I know you're going to ask me about this, so I'm going to tell you the story. Uh, the year after my freshman, I mean, the summer after my freshman year of college, I went to Mexico to do volunteer work. And I saw a box of corn flakes that said on, in addition to the, the word corn flakes. I think it was Kellogg's. They were selling it in Mexico, but they had the box translated. And I thought, well, I could do that. Somebody must have been paid to do that translation work, and I don't aspire to translate great literature, but maybe I could be a commercial translator. And I took a summer course in Monterey. My husband was at the Defense Language Institute, um, in the Air Force. He was studying Vietnamese<laugh>. And, um, I just thought, this is really interesting. It's something practical I can do. And I discovered interpreting. At the same time, I learned that the difference between translating and interpreting is the difference between oral and written communication. And I thought, well, yeah, I could be a un interpreter. You know, I could imagine myself standing between two presidents and saying, he says this, and she says that, um, I had no idea what interpreters actually did, but I learned when I took that course at Monterey. And then my husband got out of the Air Force. We were in Monterey, and I thought, well, I'll just continue here. So I started the master's program at the same time that they had a new professor come in and start a whole degree program in translating and interpreting. Her name was Athena. Um, eventually she went by the name Athena Chan, and she was a graduate of the Geneva School of Translation and Interpreting, and she really professionalized the translating and interpreting courses at Monterey. Um, so I took the classes there. I got caught by the bug of interpreting. It was, I just thought it was really fun. Um, I like public speaking, even though I'm an introvert. Um, I love translation because of the introverted nature of the, the work, um, surrounded by your dictionaries and looking for just the right term to translate something. But I also liked the interpreting of being able to tell people's stories, being able to relate a message from one language to another. I really liked the challenge of that. So I did both of them. Um, I discovered how woefully inadequate my Spanish and my French were. So I focused on Spanish because being in California, I knew that was a more practical language to be using. And, um, I graduated from that two year master's program. And what was available in the area besides translation work, which you could do from an, I mean, it was done by mail. I worked on a typewriter<laugh> and got my translations in the mail and mailed them off to the clients afterwards. So it was all very slow by today's standards. But what was available for interpreters was working in the newly formed agricultural Labor Relations Board. Um, California had enacted a law allowing farm workers to organize unions, and the labor relations board held hearings when there were accusations of unfair labor practices. So I started interpreting in those proceedings, and again, I discovered how inadequate my Spanish was because the Spanish spoken by the farm workers was not the Spanish that I had heard in practice sessions in class, when we worked with the speeches given at the United Nations and other organizations that were delivered by professional politicians. Um, they weren't always great speakers, but they were well-educated public speakers. Um, so I learned the Spanish spoken by the farm workers. I was constantly challenged by the bilingual attorneys who worked with the farm workers. And it was a trial by fire. I really had to get up to speed very quickly. Um, I did a lot of crying in the bathroom,<laugh>, and a lot of, um, um, driving to assignments. I'd be hoping that nobody showed up and they canceled the whole thing. Um, but eventually I figured out the game. I also started working in court, um, because the same lawyers who did the proceedings in the A L R B also sometimes represented the pharmac or other people in court. So I went to court and started interpreting those proceedings, and I learned as much as I could about criminal procedure. I didn't know anything about it. And so I started reading up. I'd be ordering books from the local booksellers. And, um, they had no idea why I was ordering this stuff. You're a translator. Wh why do you wanna know about the law? But to me, it was fascinating. So that's how I learned. And at the same time, I was teaching part-time at Monterey because there weren't very many people who could do that kind of teaching. And it wasn't that I knew all that much, but I knew just slightly more than the students<laugh>, who were a year or two behind me. Um, so I recognized that for those in the Spanish English combination, they needed to learn about local interpreting opportunities. They weren't all going to go to the UN or to Europe, and those who were gonna stay in the United States needed to learn about court interpreting. So I,
Speaker 1:So did Monterey at the time actually have anything that was geared toward to court interpreters?
Speaker 2:No. Nobody even heard of court interpreting as a, as a profession. Um, and so they taught conference style interpreting, including long consecutive, where you'd listen to a speech for 10, 15, even 30 minutes, taking notes and then deliver a version of that speech in the target language. Um, so that was the method that I took into these hearings in court proceedings, and realized right away, it just wasn't working. Um, I saw another interpreter who was going practically word by word, interpreting the testimony with all the A's and ums and the pauses and the self corrections. And I thought, oh, well, we were told not to do that, but I guess you have to do it in court. So I started developing materials to train students in Monterey to do that in their consecutive classes. We would teach long consecutive also, but, um, we'd devote a certain time during the semester to interpreting, uh, question and answer dialogues. And that was how I started developing the materials. And within a few years, I started offering summer courses for people who didn't wanna get a master's or couldn't afford to get a master's degree, and they wanted to become certified court interpreters. So that's how I started developing those materials.
Speaker 1:Now, it sounds to me like, um, prior to you joining, um, miss, there hadn't been any exposure of the faculty and even the students to court interpreting, which is something that you brought, um, you know, more attention to over the time that you were not just studying there. But after, when you stayed on as an adjunct, um, why do you think it was so difficult for them to think that court interpreting, you know, or to dismiss court interpreting so easily rather than, um, think of it as, as, as what we know today to be an intrinsic part of mm-hmm.<affirmative>, you know, language access and justice system, et cetera.
Speaker 2:Well, the conference interpreters who worked at the schools of interpreting Monterey was one, Georgetown was another. Those were the only two in the US and the others were in Europe. Um, they focused on interpreting for international meetings, and there were plenty of those in Washington where Georgetown was, and there were plenty of those in Europe. So they interpreted for the delegations from the different countries, or if it was an international medical conference, for example, they'd interpret for people who would deliver speeches about the research they were doing or about their country's healthcare system or whatever it was. So they were always interpreting in a booth, uh, for people who were delivering speeches. And if occasionally someone asked them to interpret in a court proceeding, they kind of looked down on it because these were criminals. These were people who were the, from the lower echelons of society, and they didn't necessarily know the kind of language that was used. Um, and at the time, there were no standards. I think a lot of times, if, if a court had a foreigner who was a defendant, they'd look for a lawyer who spoke that language and just relied on the lawyer to tell the, the defendant what was going on. They didn't provide interpreting services. Um, so defendants got, if anything, a summary after the fact, um, they found you guilty,<laugh> or whatever. I mean, they didn't know what was going on. And the pay, if there was any, was dismal. So the conference interpreters didn't wanna have anything to do with that. They were busy fighting for their own standards to have interpreters working in teams in the booth to have standards of how long someone would interpret at a time about the study materials they were to be given in advance to prepare. And none of that was provided in courts. So they looked down on it, they didn't wanna have anything to do with it. And in the United States, there weren't that many international conferences going on, and there was lots of court work going on with defendants who didn't speak very much English. So there was just a need for it, which was recognized by the late seventies, um, states like California, New York and New Mexico were passing laws requiring standards to be upheld and testing of interpreters and the federal courts. Uh, by 1978, the Court Interpreters Act was passed by Congress. So people were recognizing that this was a basic right of criminal defendants, and they started implementing those standards of practice, including testing.
Speaker 1:So let, let's set the, um, I guess let's set the stage for this kind of unique time in history, which you were, uh, privy to. Um, first of all, we're talking about the mid to late seventies, and I guess you, you know, you cut your teeth working with the, um, the labor hearings. Um, before we, we go into everybody's, you know, favorite, um, interpreter's act of 1978. Um, I did want, um, to let people know that you, you had a very special time, or I guess a very special moment where you interpreted for somebody that was crucial to that whole era, um, in the labor movement in California. Can you tell us about that?
Speaker 2:Well, I did have an opportunity to interpret for, say, such chaves, not that he needed an interpreter. He was bilingual, he was a great public speaker, and he was speaking at a conference held Atmar, California, which is right near Monterey. They have a conference center there. And there were a lot of English speakers in the audience who didn't speak Spanish. He chose to speak Spanish because he was proud of his Spanish speaking ability. There were a lot of Spanish speakers in the audience too. So they decided to have an interpreter, and he could speak Spanish, and I could interpret it into English simultaneously. I don't remember if they had a booth set up or not, but it was one of the easiest assignments I had because he spoke so beautifully, uh, slowly and clearly. Um, and his message was known to everyone. Anyway,<laugh>, um, I was familiar with what he was going to say. So it was not a difficult assignment at all. It was an honor to be able to interpret for him. I had a similar experience with later on in the late eighties maybe. Um, she was a Guatemala indigenous person who worked with UN agencies after the Guatemala Civil War, and all those horrible atrocities that happened. So I was asked to interpret for her. And she also was a beautiful speaker of Spanish. I think she spoke an indigenous language too, but her Spanish was native, I think. Anyway, uh, she spoke clearly and slowly about crime crimes against humanity. And it was an, again, another honor and privilege to be able to interpret for her. It wasn't particularly difficult. The most difficult interpreting I did was with people who were poorly educated and who did not speak standard Spanish, and, um, were expressing things with raw emotions, um, about what had happened to them. And that I found much more difficult and more challenging. But the, the two famous people that I interpreted for were really, um, highlights of my career. I could say.
Speaker 1:I, I, I think that a lot of people, a lot of interpreters share, you know, that with you, you, um, we like to tell war stories about things, you know, gone wrong and everything else, but usually the ones that we hold dearest to our hearts are the ones where we have, you know, been in a place in a moment in time that just supersedes, you know, that's just that, that's just beyond anything we could have imagined. So, um, I, I, I think it's, um, wonderful that, you know, you are able to share those stories with us. Um, in addition to that, you, I mean, you just were really in the right place at the right time because as you said earlier, um, you had finished your masters in 1976, and now we've got in your, we are teaching at ms, and we've got, in 1978, the, you know, president Carter signs the Court Interpreters Act, but California was also extremely active in, um, professionalizing interpreters. What was going on there that, I guess, yin in a way, um, you got caught up in?
Speaker 2:Yes. Well, um, there was a law passed about, um, requiring interpreters to follow certain rules of ethics and to demonstrate their skills by taking a test that was administered by the State personnel board. And they started testing in 1978 before the federal exam actually got started. Um, the, the law for the federal courts was passed in 78, but it took them a while to put the exam together because they had a, a commission or a panel of experts who developed the exam. But California was a little bit earlier than that. And, um, they developed this exam with the aid of Spanish professors and bilingual attorneys, and they didn't know anything about interpreting. They didn't know anything about testing that sort of skill. Um, so it was a pretty amateur-ish exam. For example, the, the simultaneous part of it, it was all delivered live. There were no taped, um, recordings. So they would just read a script, and they were told that if the interpreter fell behind in the simultaneous exam, they should just stop and let the interpreter catch up. Um, they didn't have any kind of, um, what they now consider to be, uh, a list of possible correct interpretations and a list of erroneous interpretations and how many points they would take. There was none of that. It was all very subjective, yeah, this person was pretty good, let's pass the person, or nah, let's not pass them. It was really amateurish. Um, I left after interpreting that thinking I had done a terrible job, and unbeknownst to me, I was one of the better candidates, and they asked me to the following year, be an examiner. Um, that was how I discovered how amateurish it was, because I was serving on the, the panel of examiners, which did finally include interpreters, but they still didn't have any kind of objective test taking standards in place. So we were just told, you know, stop, if they don't catch up, if it, it appears to you overall that they meet minimum standards, then you pass them. So that was the way it was in the late seventies in California. Fortunately, it became much more professionalized, and they raised the standards of what it took to be a qualified interpreter after that. So by the eighties, I think California's exam was pos possibly as rigorous as the federal exam. Um, people would differ with that, but it, it got better. Um, so I took that exam, and at that, by 1979, maybe the federal exam was ready to give. So I took the first one of those and passed that. My certification is dated 1980, so I think I probably took the exam in 79.
Speaker 1:And you passed it the first time around?
Speaker 2:Yes, yes. And it was no big deal. It was just another test. Everybody was testing. All of a sudden, um, our local county courts had their own test for some reason. Um, they didn't, I guess they didn't respect the state board, and they wanted their own standards in place, so they didn't know what they were doing either. But I took that test, I just took whatever test came along. And so at the time, I didn't know the federal exam was gonna turn into this big deal where you, if you didn't pass it, you felt like you were a total failure, and if you did pass it, you were the queen of the world. Um, I, there was none of that yet.
Speaker 1:So how did you prepare for these tests for the California exam and also for the federal exam? Did you, were there any materials for you to use at that time?
Speaker 2:I went to the first conference at the California Court Interpreter's Association gave in Los Angeles, right around the time the state began its testing, they wanted to help their members, um, prepare for that test. I think maybe Los Angeles had developed its own test for the county courts, and there were people who were staff interpreters who knew a lot about interpreting. They were really good interpreters. They had high standards there. Um, Frank Al Madea, Sophia Soler, I don't remember the names of all the interpreters there, but, um, they created a manual, which I used to study to find out about the role of the interpreter in the ethics. Um, the exam was, didn't feature any of that. The written exam that you took to qualify for the oral was just, I think, vocabulary and reading comprehension. Um, and that I was good at, because I, my Spanish was pretty strong by then, and I have always read a lot in Spanish and English, so I didn't have any trouble with the vocabulary and the reading comprehension. What was difficult for me was the oral part, and they did provide, um, practice. They gave workshops and vocabulary lists and things that people could study. So I studied everything I could get my hands on, and I was working every day by then in court or in hearings. So I was pretty ready for the exam. Um, the, the federal exam also was very similar to what I was already doing, and I was using materials to help my own students learn how to interpret in the court style of interpreting. So since it didn't seem like that big of a deal, I don't think I studied particularly hard other than reviewing terminology lists. Um, but I just, it was what I was doing all the time.
Speaker 1:So now that there was this need for court interpreter training, did you feel vindicated after, you know, all those years at Miss and that, you know, you had kind of, you know, opened the path towards court interpreting being, you know, one of the disciplines that was taught there?
Speaker 2:Well, I, I don't think I had really emphasized it that much. I, I mean, this was shortly after I started teaching myself. Um, this was 78, 79, 19 80. I hadn't been teaching that long, so it wasn't like I had been this crusader advocating for training court interpreters for years and years. It was just, um, something that I recognized was happening as it was happening. And I think we were at Monterey, um, we were on the ground floor, et who was the head of the program. And my mentor was also on the panel that developed to the Fed federal exam. So a lot of what that exam consisted of was also what she had taught us in our classes, memory exercises. And she taught us simultaneous interpreting in a certain way that I really related to. And the materials I developed were based on the way I had learned to interpret in simultaneous with the shadowing and paraphrasing, um, and the memory exercises for consecutive, that was what we had done when I was a student there. And I think that was the approach she took to developing the federal exam. Um, she didn't do it single handedly. There were other people who had their own input, but I think that probably helped that my mentor was one of the people who developed that exam. And so I, I think that I just increased more and more the emphasis on working in the local community. I was also doing medical legal evaluations for workers' compensation cases. So I did medical interpreting, and I didn't realize how different it was from clinical medical interpreting in hospitals, which I had never done. Um, and then eventually in the, I don't know, late eighties, mid nineties, I guess it was, California, decided to test what it called medical interpreters, but it was really medical legal interpreters. And that was why I developed a manual, the Interpreter's RX, to help people prepare for that exam. But, um, I never practiced or developed materials for, or taught straightforward medical interpreting in healthcare environments. Um, so throughout the eighties, I was teaching primarily court interpreting with a little bit of medical thrown in here and there,<laugh>.
Speaker 1:But you started to expand upon the materials you yourself used to prepare for the exam that you used to, um, help train your students at around 1978. And the materials that have made you a household name are called[inaudible] mm-hmm.<affirmative> as most people like to say it in English.[inaudible] Yes. Tell us about, first of all, what does Cebu mean and how did that, how did you come up with that name and, and let's talk a little bit about that journey.
Speaker 2:Well, Sable means Holly, and apparently it's not a very common plant in Latin America. It's actually a surname in Spain, not a common one, but, um, there's a[inaudible]<laugh> in Spain. Um, but anyway, it, it was, I had a freelance translation interpreting business. My husband was a technical writer at the time, and he came up with the idea that I could call my business Sable. Um, and we, we called it a Sable Language Arts in the beginning. And I had a little business card that had a, a Holly Sprigg with the name of Sable. And then when we started publishing the materials, the reason that came under the head of Sable was that I was constantly photocopying things for students. And then after they left either, uh, the master's program or one of these intensive summer programs, they would ask me for copies of the materials because they lost them, or for whatever reason, they wanted to have more materials to study, or they were asked to teach a course and they didn't have anything. So I was always mailing photocopies to people. And my husband said, why are you doing this? We could be selling this. So he came up with the idea of putting them first, it was a three ring binder and formatting them so that they would look professional and doing, he was into desktop publishing and technical illustration and writing of various things. So we published them. We just, we took out the language arts and just called it a sable. And amazingly people started asking for the materials from all over the country. And we've discovered that the three ring binders didn't hold up too well in the postal service<laugh>. So then we started using a, a bindery that, that actually produced bound books and things got more and more professional looking. And that was, thanks to my husband, he really, none of this would exist without him. Um, so he eventually started working with the materials providers, the, the printers and publishers, and he started working with the customer base and dealing with sales. And a, a few times over the years, we did appear at conferences and had a table. He would be there selling books. Um, he didn't like that aspect of it very much, but, um, that was how the book started spreading all over the place. It was first by mail and then by, um, appearing at these conferences. And it was word of mouth. We didn't do much advertising, and that's how it spread. Then people started coming and saying, well, I'm a Korean interpreter or a, um, Chinese or Japanese interpreter, and I'd like to develop those materials in my language. Can I do that? And we would work with them to, um, provide the look of the, the materials. You would have so many consecutive lessons, so many simultaneous, so many site translation. And we would do the desktop publishing part of it. Um, we would oversee the recordings, and then they would either get a lump sum for their part of the work, or they would get royalties as we sold copies. None of them ever sold very much, but, um, that was how the other languages came into being.
Speaker 1:So were you involved in any of the original recordings? Cuz I remember speaking to you about it and you said that a lot of it was kind of homegrown recordings at the beginning. Yes,
Speaker 2:Yes. Uh, we did some at the Monterey Institute, um, campus. I remember there was a motorcycle in the background and people clumping up and downstairs because it wasn't a soundproof studio. Um, there was one where my son was practicing the piano in the background. It was our voices, um, my husband and me and friends, students, family. Um, it was a variety of voices and they were all very amateurish. Eventually we did start recording them in studios and improving the production values. Um, so the early recordings, and it was all on cassette tapes were pretty primitive. Um, but eventually we started selling CDs and, um, they were a little bit more professionally produced.
Speaker 1:One of the things that I liked about the cebo materials is that in many cases there are Spanish, for example, in the English Spanish, there are Spanish tracks, which are versions of what an acceptable interpretation would be. Now were those planned out in advance, or were those done on the spot by an interpreter who had to just, you know, do the best they could at the moment? Yeah,
Speaker 2:Well, no, they were planned somewhat. The first interpreter's edge, um, had glossaries at the end of each chapter of all for all the lessons. So there would be suggested translations of key phrases in all three types of lessons. And I liked that, um, that was the way I preferred to approach it, because I didn't want to give one interpretation to give people the impression that there was only one way to do it. But people kept asking, I want the answers. I want you to tell me how to site translate this text or how to interpret this recording. And so when we developed the Edge 21 series, my husband had the idea of me recording an interpretation. And at the time, everybody had stereo CD players, so they could turn down one side or the other and listen to only the source, or listen only to the interpretation or listen to both at once. And part of it was for the, um, simultaneous part so that they could hear the de collage, the lag between the source and the interpretation. So I recorded all of those interpretations, and it was really difficult because I would stumble, I would fall behind. Um, and so I did cheat<laugh> basically, and I had disclaimers all over the place saying, this is only one version. And bear in mind, Spanish is not my native language. You may hear an error here or there, but I can assure you that this is good enough. This is enough that you can perform at a level that is sufficient for people to be able to rely on you or at a level that is sufficient to be able to pass the exams. But it's not perfect. And invariably, people would send me emails and say, well, I don't like the way you interpreted this, or Why did you say it that way? Or You made a mistake. And so I pointed them again to the disclaimers,<laugh>, and I will never do that again, because I felt pressure to do a really good job, um, on these recordings. And it wasn't that easy. It was not spontaneous. If it had been, there would've been a whole lot more stumbling and more errors in them. So I felt like I had to produce something that was better than acceptable. And to do that, I did start and stop and rerecord a few times.
Speaker 1:Well, I mean, it goes to reason that you, you would need to do something like that because of course, as interpreters, we, we are often right on the ball and there are times where we are, we are not as accurate and we're not as, um, fluid as we would like to be. Yes. And of course, you know, perfection is the enemy of the good. And yes, when you overthink things sometimes that makes it even worse, right?
Speaker 2:Yes. And I do, um, in one of the recent interviews that I did, I said, you know, interpreting is the, the art of good enough. And I really emphasize that to students over the years. You don't have to be perfect to pass the exams. You have to be good enough. If you make a mistake, don't fall apart. Just keep going. You'll be good enough. And that sounds like a defeatist attitude. You should always strive to be perfect, but you have to know that you're not going to achieve it. And that's really difficult. Interpreters tend to be perfectionists and they wanna be perfect, but if you think that you have to be perfect or you're a failure, you won't be able to perform. And especially for test taking, I tell people, you have to ha take a strategic approach to it, and you have to accept that you are going to make mistakes, but keep them to a minimum. And by all means, don't get hung up on something. You have to leave it behind and keep going.
Speaker 1:Well, I recently interviewed at Tina Mattels and we did talk about this same topic. Um, you know, the importance of acknowledging that inner voice that's, you know, critiquing that, you know, critiquing your work and then saying, you know what, that's fine. I've acknowledged it. I know that, you know, it didn't come out as perfectly as I would've liked it to, but let's move on and let's just keep on going with what we are doing. So I think that's really, really good advice.
Speaker 2:Yes, I often, after an interpreting assignment, I would drive home and I would get a bad case of the should have said, I should have said this, I should have said that. I should have done it this way. Um, and it's good because you improved, but it doesn't help your ego much<laugh>.
Speaker 1:Now the, um, cebo materials began as a tool and turned into a business, but probably ended up being more labor of love. Would that be fair to say?
Speaker 2:Yes, yes. I mean, we did make money as the, the products continued to sell and we didn't have to invest a whole lot in advertising, and we created them in our spare time. So, um, there wasn't a monetary investment that went into it, but there was a tremendous time investment and it didn't occur to me to go and try to get a bank loan and present a business plan or to try to get a government grant. Um, I just did it in my spare time. That's, it's the way I do things. I am kind of a loner. I like to just get things done and not have to rely on a lot of other people. That's not always a good thing,<laugh>. But that was how those things were produced and I'm glad that we did it that way. I've worked with other people on curriculum development and sometimes it never does pan out. They start with great intentions, but they have a whole lot of people working on different things, and some have more time than others to devote to it. And sometimes the effort just sort of runs out of gas. Other times it, it does produce really good work. Um, but it's at a lot of time and a lot of expense. It's usually with a big government grant that has a lot of strings attached to it, and I don't like to work that way.
Speaker 1:Now, you yourself has said that the, uh, the[inaudible] material could stand to be updated. Yes. Um, to modern times. I mean, it was written a very long time ago, and it does, you know, thematically or, and in its, um, I guess structurally it's serves a very, very good purpose because it really allows you to be, um, focused and disciplined about how you study and how you, um, do your practice. But what about the content? How do you feel about that these days?
Speaker 2:Well, I do think that it's out of date. Um, but as you say, and as I told you, I think that the, the skill building part of it is still valid. It's still a good way to learn to interpret. But some of the vocabularies out of date and some of the content, um, this was all done before cell phones, let alone smartphones or the internet. So those are things that need to be incorporated. When I read Murder Mysteries, police, detective Procedurals, which I do a lot<laugh>, and they're from the nineties, it's really evident that people don't have cell phones, they don't have the internet, they have to go find a phone booth. Well, that's the time when our materials were being developed. So they reflect that and
Speaker 1:A fax machine, right.
Speaker 2:<laugh>. Yeah. Um, and my son and daughter-in-law now are running the company as Sabo. Um, they're at a sable products.com if anybody wants to find it. And they have rerecorded things, they've updated things a little bit, but they're both very busy doing it in their spare time also. And they haven't updated things as much as I would like them to, but it's their business now. And, um, I can't impose that on them. And if somebody else who's entrepreneurial out there wants to develop their own materials to compete with it, um, by all means, I I welcome that. But I don't think that plagiarism is right. Um, occasionally people do just publish our materials without attribution and we have to send them a letter<laugh>. Um, so yeah, sometimes there is plagiarism and I don't agree with that. But if people want to set up a competing business, and some people have developed other material, and I know Tine de Lak, um, does his own workshops with his own materials and other interpreters and other schools do the same. That's fine. I have no problem with that. The more the better.
Speaker 1:And, and precisely, I'm so glad you, um, spoke about attribution, cuz that's, that's a really important, I think that's something really important, at least for me. I'm always very careful in my teachings that, um, either to try and create original materials or if we are using a, you know, the assemble materials that we're working from a sanctioned copy, um, because, you know, it does take a lot of effort. It did take a lot of effort for you to create those materials and for them to be available, um, all of all of these years later. And, and you should definitely be, you know, be compensated for that. Um, so do people actually contact you and say, Hey, Holly, um, I'm gonna be teaching this course and, um, I'd like to, you know, use these couple of exercises Yes. In this course as long as it's, you know, there's attribution. Would you be okay with that?
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, they do fairly often. And I tell'em, go ahead, um, and encourage your students to buy the materials, which they say they already do, and that's fine. It's a good advertisement.
Speaker 1:Okay. Well that's, um, that's good to know. And we encourage everybody who's listening, anybody who, um, has at one point or another obtained a bootleg copy of the Interpreter's Companion or, um, the Interpreter's Edge, which we know they're out there, of course we know that they're out there and, and, and also, and they may be out there inadvertently. What I mean by that is that, for example, once upon a time, the interpreter's companion was only available in a paper format mm-hmm.<affirmative>. So now it's available in a digital format. But between that time, somebody who might have wanted to have that copy that they themselves purchased in a, um, paper copy, it turned into a digital for, they might have created Yeah. Their own digital format and then maybe, you know, shared it around. Yeah,
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So it's just good for people to, um, to, to realize the amount of effort that goes into creating these materials.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And a lot of people don't understand copyright law, which is very complex, but they think, well, if it's for educational purposes, I don't need to worry about copyright. That's not true.<laugh>. Um, there are strict limits on how much of something you can use, even for educational purposes. So it's better to be safe and sorry, and make sure that you follow the law about using things with attribution and using only a, a small portion of something rather than reproducing the entire thing.
Speaker 1:So with regards to teaching or training interpreters for tests, um, what has changed the most would you say, in terms of the kinds of skills that you, you believe need to be taught to interpreters in order to sit and successfully pass these exams, whether it's a state or a federal exam? Um, have things changed during the entire time that you have been, um, doing this?
Speaker 2:No, I mean, the exams are much more professional than they were back in the seventies, more objective. And, um, they are now based on recordings so that there can't be different, um, versions of something for different candidates. Everybody is taking the same test and they're judged by the same standards more or less. So that's an improvement. But I think interpreting is interpreting to a certain extent, and you still need to know how to interpret the three modes of interpreting accurately. And, um, you still need to practice. I think overcoming test anxiety is something that wasn't recognized so much in the early years, and it was approached as more of a memorization technique rather than learning how to think and solve problems. And I think overcoming test a big part of it, but also having confidence in your ability to solve problems, um, is a key element of preparing for tests rather than just memorizing word lists. So the more that's recognized, the, the better people are prepared for the exams. But I think that, um, in the courses come and go, universities have a degree program for a while, and then it dies because they lose the personnel or they lose the funding or something changes. Sometimes it's en enmity,<laugh> academic, um, enmity and competition can be really vicious. So unfortunately the courses come and go, but they do come, so they're popping up all over. I wish there were courses in more languages than Spanish. Um, it's really demand driven. And in languages other than Spanish, they usually just don't have the numbers to justify it. But in someplace like Southern California, they have viable courses in Vietnamese and um, Mandarin, Cantonese that have continued to go on. And I imagine that in other regions there are some other languages that justify running courses. Um, but I don't think that much has changed in the exams per se or in how you need to prepare for them.
Speaker 1:Now, in addition to the, um, exam preparation material, you are also known for being a prolific writer, particularly about issues, um, that are practical for interpreters. And, you know, now that research in the interpreter field is coming of age, how do you distinguish between the type of writing that you have done, uh, including, for example, a co-writing with, um, other, um, very seasoned, um, interpreters, the fundamentals of court interpretation and the type of writing that is required to, I guess, promote research in this area?
Speaker 2:Well, um, fundamentals, uh, the, the full title of it is Fundamentals of Court Interpretation Theory, policy and Practice. And I was the Practice part<laugh>. Um, in fact, Roseanne Gonzalez is, uh, primarily a policy person, um, and a language person. She never worked as an interpreter, nor did Victoria Vasquez, Victoria was an attorney is I guess, um, and neither one of them ever worked as an interpreter, but they taught interpreters and, um, established programs or interpreters. And one time at there was an argument in the Supreme Court about the difference between translating and interpreting, and the final decision issued by the court quoted Gonzalez at all. And I was so proud. I was the et all<laugh> was quoted by
Speaker 1:Congratulations. That's
Speaker 2:Wonderful. Yeah, I'm at all. Anyway, um, that was a, a joint effort by people with expertise in different areas. And the second edition brought even more experts in different areas of the field. I also wrote Introduction to Court Interpreting, which was my own very practical textbook, much thinner, um, that didn't have all the policy parts. Uh, it did cover the, the practice of interpreting in court and ethics and the role of the interpreter and a lot of that. But it, it was a little bit more practical in its approach. And my study materials were intended for people to work just on the skills. They didn't cover ethics or anything like that. The articles that I published in journals and newsletters were more informative. They were telling people about what court interpreters do, what they need to know, comparing the ethics of court interpreters to those of other types of interpreters or, um, bringing in, uh, the insights, for example, that Healthcare Interpreters had developed. And the distinction between the collaborative environment that healthcare interpreters at least theoretically work in as opposed to the adversarial environment of the courtroom. So I wrote articles and analyzing that and looking at what court interpreters could learn and take away from what the healthcare interpreters were doing. Or the same with sign language interpreters. They work in different environments, and so their needs are different and the expectations, the standards are different. And I did a lot of analysis of what's different and what's the same about those different areas. So that's mostly what I wrote about.
Speaker 1:Now we've been, we've spent a lot of time talking about your experience and interpretation, but obviously you are also a, um, a translator and you spent a lot of your life working as a, a translator. You were also awarded the A t a Alexander Gold Medal for Outstanding Service to the Profession in 2011, um, which is actually only, um, awarded every so often. So out of 57 years that it's been in existence since 1964, it's only been awarded 41 times. So it's not like every year they're going to definitely awarded to someone. But talk to us about, um, a little bit about your experience and your background in translation, what you love about translation, so that, um, those people who are listening to us who are interpreters and translators, those who might be interested in exploring translation a little bit, can get a sense of your passion for it.
Speaker 2:Well, I, I did mention that I just love finding the, the ji the just that right way of saying something. Um, I particularly like legal translation because the language is so convoluted and there is a message in there. You just have to dig deep. And I really like sinking my teeth into something that is really hard to follow, but not impossible to follow. Although there are times it, it amazes me how sloppy some of the writing is in laws. And that's not just Spanish, that's English, and probably other languages too. Um, legislation gets slammed together in committees and, and passed in the middle of the night and nobody's really read it. So there isn't always pristine writing in laws and court decisions can be that way too. Um, but the, when it's really well written, it's just a real pleasure to be able to sort it out and then convey that message in a way that is clear and understandable to the reader. I think that what many interpreters, court interpreters in particular don't understand about translation is that you do have a little more liberty with conveying meaning. You can take the time to convey what was intended, and you don't have that verbatim requirement of reflecting all of the errors and the, um, infelicitous wording that you might hear in someone's statement. Well, sometimes there's infelicitous wording in written materials too. Um, but you can clean some of that up and justifiably so as a translator, as long as you're not inserting your own message<laugh> or distorting the message. Um, but, but I really enjoy the research involved in translation and the writing. I mean, I like to write and you don't get to show that off as a court interpreter very much so. It's another outlet for my creative juices, I suppose, to be a translator.
Speaker 1:I think that, um, there's two things you have mentioned, um, throughout this interview, which I find, um, very, very interesting because, um, you mentioned that you're a very shy person and you also, um, spoke earlier about your, um, your limitations in terms of the Spanish language and how over the years you, um, took courses, you lived in Guatemala, you went to Mexico, and you, and you and you really, you know, went in there to, to perfect your language abilities. I think that, you know, looking back at where you started and where you are now and all of the time that has passed between, um, how do you reconcile, you know, your, for example, your shyness with the idea of of having to be a court interpreter who in a certain way, although there, there obvi, there's obviously a certain requirement to, you know, be unobtrusive, but you also have to be assertive and you have also have to, um, be able to command a presence that allows for you to be able to do your work. So, you know, just just a little bit about kind of the road that you've been on and those things that, that you have, you know, really, um, been challenged by over the years. Talk about that if you could.
Speaker 2:Well, I think it's actually not unusual for introverts to be good public speakers because you have something that you've prepared and you have a captive audience. What I really fear is boring people and having people just sort of wander away<laugh> or not being able to get their attention. Um, and that's why I avoid social situations. I don't like big parties or anything because I can't think of anything to say. I can't get people's attention. Um, if I'm in a crowded restaurant, nobody notices me. I go up to the counter at a store and they don't notice that I'm there cuz I'm short<laugh>. Um, so that aspect of social life is really challenging for me, but public speaking and then that includes court, even though I don't control what's being said, I'm speaking somebody else's word, so I don't have to worry about being boring because it's not my fault if what they say is boring. Um, so I don't own that message and that's kind of a relief, I guess. And when I speak to conferences, you know, I have, as I said, a captive audience. People are free to leave, but um, I have something that I think they want to hear so I can deliver that message and I have confidence about that. Um, but my nightmares are all about trying to teach a class and nobody's listening and everybody's walking in and out of the room<laugh> and I run out of things to say that's the kind of thing that I, I worry about. But, um, the public speaking aspect of court interpreting never bothered me that much. I always worried about making mistakes, misunderstanding something, not being able to come up with a word. But I think that's something that all interpreters worry about. And, um, interpreters say that translators have all the time in the world and they can take forever to come up with the right wording, but as not really true because translations in the real world, in the business of translation have to be delivered by deadlines and often they're very unrealistic deadlines. So you don't have all the time in the world, but you have a certain amount of time, certainly more than an interpreter does. And I like that. I like being able to think things through and be sure I understand them before I convey that message.
Speaker 1:When a student comes up to you, um, who perhaps is not so sure of their language abilities in, in one or another language, um, do you, you know, is, do you recommend that they practice their language skills through translation? Or what do you say to them? Um, cuz it certainly, it, it seems like, um, I mean, you're living proof that you don't have to start, um, at the peak of your language abilities to become a good interpreter or translator over time.
Speaker 2:Well, I do, I don't necessarily encourage them to practice translation if what they wanna be is interpreters. Um, but I encourage them to read and to read very attentively in their weaker language and read, looking at, um, questioning it all the time, why did they phrase it this way and not that way? Um, why did they use that word and not this other word? And looking things up. Um, in reading translations side by side, bilingual, if, if it's a good translation and if you don't know very much, you don't know what's a good translation, what isn't. But if you looked at, look at professionally produced translations in the international organizations, everything is published multilingually, you can compare the different language versions and see what the translator did with the material. Um, so I do encourage them to read a lot and to listen a lot to build up their listening comprehension in their second language. If they are native Spanish speakers living in the us they're surrounded by their second language and they're absorbing it constantly. If they are native speakers of English and like me, they never lived abroad, they have to work harder to surround themselves with the language. I do live in California, which is practically a bilingual country, um, but I still have to go outta my way to hear Spanish. I read Spanish novels all the time. I read Spanish newspapers. I listen to Spanish podcasts and news broadcasts to keep up my Spanish. Um, but it, it is something that I have to make an effort to do, and that is just a fact of life. Um, if you wanna be an interpreter, you need to keep working on your listening comprehension, reading comprehension in your second language without neglecting your first language because it's easy to just forget what you used to know,<laugh> of your native language.
Speaker 1:And of course, although, um, you're using Spanish as an example because that is a language that you work with, um, this same methodology can be applied to any language, whether it's Vietnamese, Mandarin, Cantonese, French, German, um, hark, Tigrinya, et cetera. Yes. Um, yes, you just basically it's, you know, it's the same procedure. You just have to, um, be very meticulous about looking for good sources, which are using a language that, um, you know, a a high level of language that, um, you can ensure that, that that is, um, you know, grammatically correct, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 2:Yeah. The only problem with minority languages like, um, h and Tigrinya is that they aren't the languages of international organizations. You don't find a lot of published translations that you can compare and, um, it's not the language of governments or court systems necessarily. So it's a lot harder for them to find materials to work with. And I really admire the efforts they have to make to become accomplished translators and interpreters.
Speaker 1:So when you are not, um, giving interviews for podcasts or, um, updating any of your numerous publications, w what keeps you busy these days? I, I believe you're also still very active with the E A T A, is that correct?
Speaker 2:Yes, I do, uh, work as a greater, I'm a deputy chair of the certification program and I grade Spanish to English certification exams. Um, I do translate as much as I can. Um, but I also, uh, I just read all the time. I'm sort of a news junkie. I read a lot of news materials, mostly in English, but also Spanish. I'm now trying to read more in French and revive my mor und French. Um, it's mainly a passive language. I have started practicing the piano again. I was always sort of an intermediate piano player. I could never play to entertain anybody. Nobody'd wanna listen to it<laugh>. But, but I do that to keep my brain active. Um, and I work in my garden and I hike and, uh, I volunteer at the animal shelter and just keep busy. I have two grandkids that I try to keep up with, although they're in San Diego, which is pretty far away, but that's what I do.<laugh>.
Speaker 1:Well, it sounds like it's a pretty busy life. Do you have any closing words of wisdom for interpreters or translators who have been listening to this podcast?
Speaker 2:Um, no. Just know that you are performing valuable work and you are not going to be replaced by a machine anytime soon. Um, it may happen someday, but not anytime soon. And I think that it's, it's a lifelong learning experience to be a translator or interpreter and, uh, it keeps your brain, you're not as likely to be senile if you continue to use your languages all of your life.
Speaker 1:Well, Holly Nicholson, thank you so much for spending this hour with us. We really appreciate it. And to our, um, viewers and listeners, thank you for joining us today. Please share your comments with us on this platform or via email@podcast.delkinstitute.com. And if you're listening to us, don't forget to subscribe so that you don't miss our upcoming episodes. Never. Stop learning. Take care.