Beyond Accuracy: Strategizing Your Interpreting Decisions (Janis Palma)
Webinar Information:
Date: September 23, 2026
Time: 5:30 PM - 7:30 PM Pacific Time
Cost: $60.00
Registration: Register online by September 18th (external link)
Description:
We are entering a new era in the judiciary interpreting profession that demands purposeful strategies when choosing equivalent terms and phrases in our target languages to meet the accuracy standard set forth in our code of ethics and professional practice. Making intuitive choices is no longer enough to rise above the challenges posed by the imminent incursion of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in every field, including ours. This webinar will take a deep dive into the linguistic expertise judiciary interpreters need to make language transfer decisions that go beyond mimicking the source language discourse and propose some strategies interpreters can develop to process information with greater precision by incorporating syntactical, semantic, and pragmatic elements into the targe language renditions. Instruction will be non-language-specific but will take some examples in Spanish from actual interpreting scenarios to demonstrate some of the proposed strategies.
Learning Objectives:
At the end of the course, participants will be able to:
- Understand how human language constructs meaning in contracts to AI Large Language Models (LLMS);
- Identify personal strategies they can adopt to improve SL-to-TL transfers of meaning in both consecutive and simultaneous renditions;
- Evaluate their performance vis-a-vis the accuracy standard in the code of ethics and professional practice for judiciary interpreters.
About the Instructor:
Janis Palma has been a federally-certified judiciary interpreter since 1981 and NAJIT-certified as an English-Spanish interpreter and translator since 2004. She holds a Ph.D. in Language Studies, a Master's in Legal Studies, a Master's in Puerto Rican and Caribbean History and Literature, and is currently enrolled in the Rhetorics, Communication, and Information Design (RCID) Ph.D. program at Clemson University. Dr. Palma has been creating instructional materials and training judiciary interpreters and translators since 1986. She has presented at conferences and published extensively on subjects related to interpreting, language access, and language rights. Her most recent publications are “Literary metaphors in legal English and their conveyance to Limited English Proficient (LEP) individuals in the context of U.S. courts." (Oct. 2024) International Journal for the Semiotics of Law, and “When interpreting does not remove the language barrier: interpreter ethics at odds with due process rights in U.S. courts."Texas Hispanic Journal of Law & Policy, U. of Texas at Austin Law School, Vol. 29, Spring 2023. (pp. 25-45). She is the founder and President of IKIGAI (Integrated Knowledge Institute for the Greater Advancement of Interpreters) a nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization.
