The Interpreter’s Special Interest Group will be meeting on Saturday February 13th from 10 AM to 12 noon at the AATIA headquarters in the International Center of Austin on 2nd street and Trinity. In the meeting Joseph Brettell, a Licensed Court Interpreter will present on certification exams for court interpreters, training materials available to aspiring court interpreters, and the realities and practice of court interpretation. We will have a practice session of real texts which are commonly seen in the courts. All interpreters or other interested parties are welcome. See you then!

Tha Austin Immigrants Rights Coalition (AIRC) needs several volunteers for the upcoming statewide convention for immigration reform on Saturday, Feb. 20, 1-5 p.m., at the Travis County Expo Center.  Please email if you are interested in volunteering for the following positions:

• experienced simultaneous interpreters
• welcome table staffers (to help with sign-in, hand out programs, and sign out translation headsets)
• peacekeepers (to ensure the safety of conference participants)

The American Translators Association has notified members that in the wake of the Haiti earthquake Translators Without Borders, which works for Doctors Without Borders/Medecins sans frontieres and Medecins du monde, currently has urgent needs for professional-level French-to-English and English-to-French volunteer translators and interpreters. Those working to and from Haitian Kreyol would also be especially valuable. Contact TWB Coordinator Yuliana Hernandez-Anfray for details.

AATIA is pleased to present a complimentary translation memory tool webinar for freelancers during our next membership meeting on January 9. A qualified trainer from Across Systems will demonstrate how to put this tool into practice.

Please join us at the International Center of Austin. The meeting begins at 1:00 and the webinar begins at 1:30. 

If you are unable to attend the meeting, you may also join us online by registering via this link:
 https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/473840274

After registering you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the Webinar.

System Requirements
PC-based attendees
Required: Windows® 2000, XP Home, XP Pro, 2003 Server, Vista

Macintosh®-based attendees
Required: Mac OS® X 10.4 (Tiger®) or newer

The academic overseers of the language of Cervantes have unveiled their first Spanish grammar guidelines in nearly 80 years, Nueva gramática de la lengua española: el español de todo el mundo. The 3-volume, 4000-page tome was produced by the Real Academia Española in collaboration with 21 sister organizations in Latin America and other places where Spanish is spoken, including the United States. According to the website of the Real Academia, the new grammar aims to provide a "map" of the Spanish spoken around the world today. Read more.

The UN Secretariat will hold the following competitive examinations for translators, interpreters, and editors in 2010:

March: exam for Russian-language translators

April: examinations for French-language translators and interpreters

May: exams for Chinese-language translators and editors

June: exam for English-language interpreters

Check the UN website for information on exam dates and application requirements and procedures.

Fillers are sounds or words spoken to fill gaps in utterances. Different languages have different characteristic filler sounds; English speakers commonly use “uh,” “er,” and “um.” “Like,” “y’know,” and “basically” are examples of filler words.

Language learners display a lack of fluency by using fillers from their native tongue, e.g., “Quiero una umm … quesadilla.” Wikipedia gives us some fillers in other languages

Knowing the placeholder words (sometimes called kadigans) of a language (e.g., the equivalent of “thingy”) can also improve fluency, such as the French truc: “Je cherche le truc qu’on utilise pour ouvrir une boîte” (“I’m looking for the thingy that you use to open up a can”). Wikipedia cites placeholders in English and other languages.

Thanks to Languagehat for this pointer.