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Through various legislative acts and executive orders, court interpreting has received recognition as a vital part of the judicial system. Yet, the demand for court interpreters has far exceeded their availability. Meanwhile, the courts, language services companies, and the court interpreters themselves are currently facing several critical issues.

Congress Democrats want State Department interpreter Marina Gross to answer questions about the July 2018 meeting between Trump and Putin. The idea was first suggested almost immediately after the summit was over, when it became clear that there might be no other way to discover what was said in the meeting.

The question is, would this be a positive step, not only for Congress, but for the government, the interpreters, and the American public?

When is the best time in life to learn a foreign language? People of all ages can benefit from learning a new language, of course. But recent studies have revealed two key life phases when language learning has a tremendous impact.

Whether you’re young, old, or in between, you can learn a language you’ve never spoken before. If you’re young, you can become fluent more easily. Even if you’re quite old, you might very well put off age-related damage to your brain.

The language barriers that deaf people have always faced are beginning to come down. Around the world, businesses and organizations are beginning to open their doors to the hearing impaired like never before.

Read about a sign language café in Pakistan, an Uber app for deaf drivers, a Starbucks signing store and an Austrian language class for deaf refugees.

When judges, lawyers, and defendants can’t communicate with each other, the judiciary system quickly grinds to a dead halt. Unfortunately, it happens all too often. That’s because many courts lack the court interpreters that they need to keep the wheels of justice turning. In a country with both non-English speakers and limited English speakers, court interpreters play a critical role.

With efficient interpreter scheduling, the court runs smoothly and defendants get fair treatment. Everyone wins.

As the U.S. moves steadily towards the next election, interpreters are helping to make voting easier for people who speak languages other than English. Although the Voting Rights Act was passed decades ago, in 1965, states have been slow to put systems in place for fulfilling its goal of giving everyone the ability to vote. Recently, that has begun to change. Interpreters are being called on to help with a variety of tasks related to multilingual voting.

Yep. It happened. Somebody made an app for deaf people who use American Sign Language (ASL) to interact with Amazon Alexa. While all the bugs haven’t been worked out yet, the app promises a world where the deaf will no longer be excluded from technologies based on non-text input. Since most people can enjoy the benefits of voice-assisted technology, it’s a step in the right direction.

The question for people who do real-time interpretation for a living is: How soon will computers take over the industry? The answer is that such a future hasn’t arrived yet, and it isn’t likely to come tomorrow. Still, wise language service providers need to be ready to explain the advantages of human interpretation in situations where every word counts.

How is your interpreter scheduling system working for you? If you find that your organization is plagued by missed appointments, communication overload, or general scheduling confusion, you’re not alone. Scheduling is a tough task for any organization or busy individual. The good news is that with the right approach, you can accomplish all your interpreter scheduling tasks efficiently and effectively.

Managing an interpreter’s schedule at different locations and times is a daunting task. With your financials, interpreter’s information, client information and a list of upcoming unfilled jobs all being on separate platforms, it makes the whole process very difficult. Interpreter Intelligence was created to solve these issues and provide benefit to language service providers who struggle with the wide range of activities not located on a centralized platform.

The ways in which mobile phones can be utilized have changed an astronomical amount in recent years. With massive advances in technology, this means the scope for SMS activity has dramatically increased. Managing interpreter schedules has now become a lot easier, with the ability for an interpreter to directly reply to an SMS offer, this will shorten the length of the confirmation process.

With advances in technology, people would think that interpreter and translator jobs would be at jeopardy, but actually,  this is not the case. Globalization today is bigger than it has ever been. The huge multinational companies such as Apple and Facebook for examples are making big steps in innovation, which in fact is creating more of a demand for interpreters.

One of the main worries about being a court translator is that the smallest mistake in translation could mean injustice at a catastrophic level. With a legal requirement of the state to provide an interpreter, it is crucial that the chosen interpreter has the ability and experience level to make accurate translations in the correct context, however, this is not always the case as in many situations, states choose to ignore these requirements.

Regardless of your political affiliations, as a US citizen and eligible voter you have the right to access language services at the polling station to ensure you can make the best possible informed decision when casting your vote. Federal law requires that access to interpreters be provided either via the phone or in person at the polling station for those voters who require it.

Many small businesses find great success managing their operations, schedules, and financials with Microsoft Excel. It’s certainly a powerful tool. However, in a highly transactional environment such as Interpreting Services, Excel can show its limitations pretty rapidly. And this is exactly the scenario that Translation.ie, now the largest independent Language Service Provider in Ireland, found themselves in.

The snowstorm that hit the East Coast last week was dramatic. And New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio’s television briefings could be described similarly. It wasn’t the Mayor’s delivery of his updates that were so eye opening, but that of his American Sign Language interpreter partner, Jonathan Lamberton. It’s worth watching just how effective he is.

You may or may not be a fan of John Stewart, but his commentary on the Veterans Affairs (VA) Scheduling System challenges is pretty funny. Unfortunately, the problems that the VA is facing are anything but humorous.

Skype Translator is very exciting for a number of reasons as the promise of real-time audio translation has incredible potential in both consumer and business settings. This technology is literally decades in the making and there are a number of players making significant investments in the technology. NTT Docomo released a “nearly real-time” voice translator in late 2011 and Google (of course) has developed a real-time translation technology with “near-perfect results”. As we all know in the interpreting world, “near-perfect” is exactly the reason why the technology won’t be able to be relied on for quite some time.