Bromberg & Associates Develops and Successfully Launches Training Guides

When Bromberg & Associates has developed the Training Guides for medical and legal interpreters, we knew that there is a great need for these materials. With interpreting services rapidly growing over the last decade, there is a considerable shortage of qualified interpreters. Multiple research data shows that performance of fully bilingual but untrained individuals serving as interpreters is saturated with mistakes, which has dangerous consequences in legal and medical settings. However, the formal training for interpreters is scarce in the U.S. There are very few interpretation schools, most of them in the coastal states. Likewise, the professional development resources are also lacking.

To fill this educational gap, Bromberg & Associates has put together guidebooks for medical and legal interpreters of Arabic, Spanish, Russian, and French languages. The guides were successfully presented to the language industry professionals all over the country. The guidebooks received favorable reviews from leading language industry professionals and high purchasing requests at the Interpreting in Health Care conference in Chicago, at the Tennessee Professional Interpreters and Translators Conference, and at the American Translators Association Annual Conference in New Orleans. Yousif Raad, a Michigan State Certified Arabic interpreter had this to say: “The Guide is a must have for any interpreter.”

Bromberg & Associates continues working on the next edition of the Guides and plans to have the guides for Serbian, Bosnian, Vietnamese, Chinese, and Korean languages available soon.

This is a must have training guide for every court interpreter for few reasons: first of all, its not only a Legal glossary, although it contains one of the most comprehensive legal glossaries I have ever seen, but because it explains the whole legal process that any professional legal interpreter should be aware of, starting from the Role of Legal interpreter, the skills that are needed for such job, the code of ethics, than it takes you to an overview of legal systems: Criminal and civil Justice systems, overviews the immigration justice system, and there is a full chapter of how to get ready for an assignment, interpreting in a deposition, how to improve your skills and dealing with cultural issues and problematic situations, an explanation for legal documents you will be dealing with, and a lot more. And it really doesn’t end with the legal glossary, but there is a full chapter of the phrases that are used in the court-room translated professionally to [Arabic], with a full [Arabic] translation of the advice of rights form. If I want to keep going, one page won’t be enough to give this guide its worth, but in a word: This is the most comprehensive Arabic legal guide I have ever seen.”

Raad Yousif
(a Court interpreter since 1996, Michigan State Certified Interpreter)