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A wrench in the plan
By Kate | October 5, 2007
I went to take the pre-test to be a court interpreter today. I would like to think that my Spanish is pretty good but, I showed up and out of 17 people taking the test, I was the only gringa.
The test itself is one part of about 45 hundred little steps in the court interpreter certification “process.” All parts of the certification are spread out so as to make it a minimum of a year long “process.” All certified interpreters are on a list and work on an on-call basis. I think they make the “process” so difficult to keep the list small.
I did pretty well on the English section, with a few glaring exceptions about legal terms. As for the Spanish section, I think you only realize how little vocabulary you have when you are asked to translate word like fender or wrench. For fender I simply made up a non existant word & for wrench I said “large tool.” I was able to wiggle around some other tricky vocabulary, but spelling & accents may get me down.
You can all rest assured that the court interpreters are properly screened & trained to bring forth justice. This apparently involves knowing the word for wrench.
October 9th, 2007 at 11:18 am
i’m impressed. several years ago I checked my swissarmyknife at the entrance of the matheson courthouse for hours and hours of training as court interpreter, started logging my practice hours and eventualy gave up. it was too hard for me.
October 14th, 2007 at 2:44 pm
As an update, I passed the test with 91%. Hoorah!