Speak English Like An American

  GREAT INTERPRETER RESOURCE

You THINK you know the CONCEPTUAL MEANING of the idioms you hear and use everyday.  But, how will you interpret them when you hear them?  You WILL have to terp idioms ... count on it! (tee-hee)

Highly recommended for your assignment- and test-preparation shelf.

How Not To Say What You Mean: A Dictionary of Euphemisms

  GOOD INTERPRETER RESOURCE

Interpreters know it's not what they say that counts as much as what they MEAN.  Prepare to interpret those tricky American euphemisms BEFORE you're put to the task.

Modern American Slang

"The charms of The Routledge Dictionary of Modern American Slang and Unconventional English bring to mind a younger brother with troubled friends who has memorized long stretches of dialogue from movies starring stoners or mobsters."
 - The Nation, December 2008

"To quote Paul Dickson (author, The Dickson Baseball Dictionary) '...a five-alarm, slam-dunk, grand-slam home run of a book.'"
 - Reference Reviews

A reviewer wrote: "This book takes our thought process through some of the ethical dilemmas that we face in our work. It gives us an ethical compass, as it were, for us to use in making decisions, with a focus on upholding the Code of Professional Conduct from RID. If someone is preparing to take the NIC Performance and Interview test, then this book will definitely boost their ability to analyze situations and take appropriate action. Lots of thought has gone into the scenarios used in the book, as well as how an interpreter should respond."

This book provides a structured syllabus and an overview of interpretation accompanied by exercises in the main aspects of the art. It is meant as a practical guide for interpreters and as a complement to interpreter training programs.

Six new, vital chapters on new curricula and creative teaching methods. Series editor Cynthia B. Roy leads the way by calling for the use of a discourse-oriented curriculum for educating interpreters. In the following chapter, Claudia Angelelli outlines the bottom-line principles for teaching effective health-care interpreting, postulating a model that depends upon the development of skills in six critical areas: cognitive-processing, interpersonal, linguistics, professional, setting-specific, and sociocultural. Risa Shaw, Steven D. Collins, and Melanie Metzger collaborate on describing the process for establishing a bachelor of arts program in interpreting at Gallaudet University distinct from the already existent masters program.

Prosodic Markers and Utterance Boundaries in American Sign Language Interpretation (Studies in Interpretation Series, Vol. 5)
(June 2009) by Brenda Nicodemus

In interpreting, professionals must be able to convey to their clients the rhythm, stress, and length of phrases used by the communicating parties to indicate their respective emotional states. Such subtleties, which can signal sarcasm and irony or whether a statement is a question or a command, are defined in linguistics as prosody. Brenda Nicodemus’s new volume, the fifth in the Studies in Interpretation series, discusses the prosodic features of spoken and signed languages, and reports the findings of her groundbreaking research on prosodic markers in ASL interpretation.

ASL to English Interpretation: Say It Like They Mean It

The focus of this book is not about how the interpreter thinks the English interpretation should be presented, but on how an English speaking consumer, with no understanding of Deaf culture, would best understand the interpreter's voiced message. Producing an appropriate interpretation from ASL to English is often noted as being very difficult. With only two years in most interpreter preparation programs, students may not have a full comprehension of what is expected in ASL to English interpretation.

This book was written to fill the need for a text that covers the task of transliterating. It provides a comprehensive overview of the task of transliterating, and its primary goal is to serve as a standardized curriculum for students currently enrolled in ITPs who have taken at least one semester of interpreting skills.

Encounters With Reality: 1001 Interpreter Scenarios
       (2008) by Brenda E. Cartwright

 HOW IT REALLY GOES ...

Encounters with Reality, 2nd Edition, doubles in value from the 1st Edition with 1,001 real-life scenarios that are sad, funny, perplexing and sometimes downright scary. 

It builds on the first edition with greater organization of challenges and by including responses and perspectives from experienced interpreters, deaf consumers, interpreter training program students, certified deaf interpreters and successful National Interpreter Certification (NIC) candidates.

Additionally, this edition provides a chapter dedicated to challenges in interpreting addressed by Demand-Control Schema Analysis.

Learning To See
       (1997) by Phyllis Wilcox, Sherman Wilcox

This second edition of the work remains by far the best work of its type. It is cogent, well written, and provides a useful and important foundation for those interested in teaching ASL. It should also be of interest to those not familiar with the growing literature on ASL and the Deaf community, as well as for other foreign language educators.

 ESSENTIAL READING

Fantastic introduction and perpetual resource.  This and its previous editions hold an honored place on TerpTopics' reference shelf.

Great Interpreters Don't Grow on Trees 123 Steps to the Top
         (2004) by Kelley Clark

This book was written for practicing interpreters who intend to improve their work product. Interpreters are extraordinary, and to be successful, sign language interpreters must have a skill base as varied as the world is diverse. This book provides 123 strategies that readers select and incorporate it into their daily routine. The tasks outlined require going above and beyond reading this book. Readers will be instructed to find materials and mentors, team interpret and prepare before assignments.

Interpreting: An Introduction
         (1990) by Nancy Frishberg

REQUIRED READING

This introduction to sign kanguage Interpreting includes information needed for written portions of the NIC (certification exam) and many state-level assessments.

Reading Between the Signs
         (2006) by Anna Mindess, Thomas K. Holcomb, Daniel Langholtz

Helps the professional sign language interpreter provide more effective service through an understanding of deaf culture and cross-cultural communication. Mindess, a veteran interpreter, introduces the main concepts of intercultural communication in the first half of her work, drawing on examples from anthropology, linguistics, and related fields. She highlights differences between hearing culture and deaf culture in America that can compromise clarity in translation situations. Finally, Mindess explores the responsibilities of translators and their primary role as mediators, recognizing that ASL translators raised outside deaf culture must learn its nuances to maintain professional quality.

Features include an introductory essay reviewing the evolution of interpreting studies, organization into seven thematic sections-each with an editors' introduction, a comprehensive bibliography and suggestions for further reading.

From interpretation in antiquity to projections about the future of the field, this guide has every essay a student, researcher or practitioner could need.

"The Interpreter's Resource" provides a comprehensive overview of interpreting at the start of the 21st century. 

As well as explaining the different types of interpreting and their uses, it contains a number of codes of ethics, information on community interpreting around the world and detailed coverage of international organizations, which employ interpreters.

In today's multilingual, multicultural society, the need for interpreters has never been greater. This book introduces students, researchers and practitioners to the fast-developing discipline of Interpreting Studies.

Written by a leading researcher in the field, Introducing Interpreting Studies guides the reader through international conference, court and hospital interpreting, in both signed and spoken modalities. The book begins by exploring the ways in which the field evolved, looking at historical developments, concepts, influential models and methodological approaches. It then moves on to consider the main areas of research in the field, before reviewing the major trends of Interpreting Studies, reflecting on how the subject will develop in the future and offering direction to those undertaking research of their own.

Featuring chapter summaries, guides to the main points covered in the book and suggestions for further reading, this practical and user-friendly textbook is the definitive map of this important and growing field. The book can be used on its own, or to accompany The Interpreting Studies Reader (Routledge, 2002).