Are you giving everything you’ve got?

We can’t ask for more than we’re willing to give. This is a maxim for everything we do in life. A common outcry I hear more and more often from judiciary interpreters is that the workplace is becoming unresponsive to the specialized nature of the work interpreters perform. There is no acknowledgement of the difference between a credentialed interpreter and a bilingual person, contracting practices often bypassing the certified interpreter in favor of some intermediary agency that will simply make life easier for the courts by taking one “problem” off their hands: procuring interpreters. Compensation for professional interpreting services is now reflecting this demeaning mindset. If you have “bilingual” people covering court events who are not professional interpreters, they will be happy with whatever pay they get that is above minimum wage. It just makes one wonder why states spend their money on orientations and credentialing programs when they don’t use the very people they certify.