Monthly Archives: December 2012

Saying Adiós to 2012 and Setting No Goals for 2013

This little business has me doing fantastically interesting and varied work all over Dallas/Fort Worth and sometimes beyond. And it just keeps getting better. This year was off the charts and I am thankful.

Inspired by this article in the Harvard Business Review, rather than specific goals I’m going to look at what I want to spend time on in 2013:

Continuing education. From a course on advanced legal editing to a workshop on improving my speaking voice, regular continuing education has been worthwhile both to improve my skills and, best of all, to get to know more people. Interpreting is solitary work most of the time so these relaxed learning days are refreshing and a great way to keep improving my game.
Pro bono services. This year I got to provide almost four weeks of conference interpreting and bilingual multimedia services for nonprofit groups.
Mentoring. I believe that we are all able to reach back and help someone who is not quite as far down the road as we are. This year I got to help two local interpreters improve their skills and earn higher rates, share advice with a translation student at my alma mater, and continue providing real-world practice for my intern.
Criminal cases. Although I’ve interpreted hundreds of hours in administrative courts and almost as many in civil cases, so far I’ve been timid about criminal matters. But the criminal cases I have taken have gone great, with very good feedback from defendants, attorneys, and judges, so for 2013 I’ll stop giving preference to civil cases.
Translation. Interpreting is exhilarating but even after extensive preparation you always drive home from an interpreting job thinking about things you could have expressed better. Translating documents, on the other hand, affords me the chance to be a writer, mulling over the best way to phrase a sentence, researching a little more, sleeping on it and tweaking the text till I’m totally satisfied.
Non-work. As I ease back from my habitual emphasis on productivity and advancing toward goals, I want to spend more time on spiritual edification and personal interests like photography, guitar, Crossfit, and homemade ice cream.

Does your outlook for 2013 look similar? Is there anything you definitely want to spend more time on this year?

Hat tip to Catherine Christaki, Greek translator, for sharing the Harvard Business Review article on LinkedIn.

Worst Corporate Buzzwords

This week one question on LinkedIn garnered more than 400 responses:

Maybe we should make our marketing copy more customer-centric

What are the corporate buzzwords we’d like to banish?

Buzzwords are fascinating because when they’re fresh, people often use them to signal membership in a social group. But, much like fashion trends, when they become ubiquitous the group considers the word pedestrian and moves on. Never one to overlook the opportunity to do some sociolinguistic analysis, I did a little back-of-the-envelope calculation to find the top ten offenders:

at the end of the day
leverage (as a verb)
socialize (a project or idea to someone)
low-hanging fruit
clear/clearly
going forward
ask (as a noun -”My ask is this…”)
blue sky (as a verb)
strategic/strategize
value-added

Clearly, being out of the corporate world since forever has kept me out of the loop, because I have never heard several of these. I have no idea what it means to blue-sky something to someone, for example, but it came up a lot. And, although it wasn’t in the top ten, productionize struck me as particularly useless. It turns out, though, that it does have a nuance that produce lacks; productionize means to roll out a new product or service after a pilot period.

Any buzzwords you’d like to go ahead and banish?

Announcement – 2013 Federal Court Interpreter Exam

A few months back, I received the great news that I had passed the Phase One (Written) portion of the Federal Court Interpreter Certification Exam. Since then, I have been compulsively checking the FCICE web page to see when registration will open for the Phase Two (Oral) Exam. Since the Phase Two exam is only offered in odd-numbered years (2013, 2015, 3001, etc.), I have been eager to set up my study timeline and meet this beast head on in 2013.

So I am thrilled to announce that the wait is over, as the FCICE has announced the registration period:

Registration Opens: Monday, March 25, 2013 8:30 A.M. ET
Registration Closes: Friday, May 17, 2013 at 5:00 P.M. ET

No word yet on actual exam dates, but I registered for the Phase One exam in May 2012 (got the last slot in the location most convenient to me, whew!) and all exams were administered within a short period in August 2012. It looks like this year’s timeline may be similar. More details at the FCICE site.