Will my clients find me in this association’s directory?

Dear Colleagues:

I am tired of getting this call repeatedly: “Hi, I got your name from the ATA directory and I was wondering if you would be available for a medical evaluation (or a worker’s compensation hearing) this Friday…”

Maybe those providing the service would be happy with these calls, but I am not.  Every time I must answer the phone to tell somebody I don’t do that work, and that I refuse to work for peanuts, is a waste of my time.  I do conference interpreting and I don’t like to explain two or three times a week I do not work for fifty dollars an hour.

For years I have almost exclusively worked as a conference interpreter, doing some court or legal interpreting for established Law Firms I regularly work with, generally in civil cases or some federal criminal matters.  Motivated by ATA’s outreach campaign regarding the credentialed interpreter designation and database, I thought that maybe, if I clarified it on the ATA directory that my credentials are United States Department of State Conference-level, and Federal court certification, all these people would stop calling asking me to do work that I do not provide.

I have been an ATA member for many years, and even though the association does many things I am very much against, I also get many benefits from my membership: a monthly publication with some very good articles, a discount on my errors and omissions insurance, good divisional activities, valuable webinars, and a well-known directory.

I logged in to the members section of the website to update my information and take advantage of the new credentialed interpreters’ database in their directory. This happened:

I must start by confessing that I rarely access ATA’s website, so I found it a little bit too crowded; maybe appealing to translators, but I believe it could be a little intimidating for clients looking for an interpreter or translator. After I accessed the “members” section, I looked for a section called “Interpreters’ credentials”, or something similar, but I found nothing. I clicked on the menu where it says “update your contact information” and “update your online directory profile”.

As I got to the profile section, all my information was already there (so I had entered it before). I did not need to change anything. Since I was already inside the program, I reviewed it anyway to see if I needed to make any changes. When I got to the “Interpreting Services” section, I saw that I had previously highlighted “consecutive”, “court”, “escort”, and “simultaneous”. Since I saw a “court” category, I scrolled down to see if I could also highlight “conference”, but the only category left for me to highlight was “sign language”. I thought it was odd. On one hand, if all you are listing are the interpreting you do, then “court” does not belong in here. If they added “court” to make the search easier for the clients, then I would like to see “conference” as an option. I suppose that healthcare interpreters would argue the same for their specialization.

Under the “Certifications” section, I entered my federal court interpreter and my two state-level court interpreter certifications from the drop down menu. I saw nothing for other credentials that are not certifications, but equally important, such as AIIC, U.S. Department of State, European Union, etc. The menu had another category: “other” where I entered my conference interpreting credentials, constantly wondering why I could not find the so much talked about “credentialed interpreter” menu for the new database ATA has been advertising so much. I thought the reason the place to enter that information was somewhere else, perhaps later on the form, was because these other credentials are not certifications and ATA had included them separately.

I kept looking, and my search only found a different category towards the end of the page called: “Additional Information”. That was it. No other place to enter conference interpreter credentials. Knowing I would not get what I wanted, I tested the directory, so I looked myself up. On a simple search I found my information, not as advertised with the credentialed interpreter information, but as I had entered it earlier. I immediately thought of the unwanted agency phone calls that would keep on coming as before.

I ran an advanced search just for English<>Spanish interpreters in Illinois, where I live, asking for State Department conference-level credentials, and the result was “we found none”.  I found this interesting, so I dug deeper to see if there was a problem with the directory search engine. The first thing I tried was a search for interpreters with that same language combination and credentials in the largest state: California. I know several colleagues there with the credentials and are members of ATA. The result was: “we found none”.

At this time I decided that maybe it was a glitch on the search engine, but before concluding that, I wanted to see if I had missed the section where you enter these credentials. I went over the form two more times and I found nothing. At this point I am thinking that maybe I needed to submit my credentials for a verification before the information was displayed, so I went back to the form once again. I read it carefully looking for some instructions or description of such process. I found nothing.

I did the only thing left: I went to the search menu at the top of the page and I typed: “credentialed interpreter process”. The search took me to a page with all the results. At the top I saw one that looked like the information I was looking for, so I clicked on it.

I finally found the explanations and instructions, with a link to a form to start the process. The first thing the program asks you to do is to reenter your ATA membership information. Once you are in the form, you are greeted by a message in red that tells you to submit a separate form for each credential and that you must pay $35.00 USD. As an attorney I must confess that although the red-inked message clarifies that one fee covers all requests, it is ambiguous on a second matter: it reads: “A $35-administrative fee covers all requests for one year.”  I did not understand if this means that for your information to continue to be available indefinitely you must pay $35.00 USD every year, or that any request filed after twelve months is no longer covered by the initial $35.00 USD fee and therefore you must pay again for the new credential.  Finally, I also learned that the process could take up to something like forty days.

After reading this, I stopped for a minute and reflected on what I was about to do: I was ready to send $35.00 USD to ATA (with my documentation) to be a part of this new database, but so far I had had a miserable time looking for, and finding any colleagues with the desired credentials; so far I had found zero conference interpreters. I even had a difficult time finding the instructions to get my credentials reviewed.  My friends, I am pretty active on social media, and even though I am not a computer genius, I am resourceful. Can you imagine how tough it would be for a regular individual looking for an interpreter to navigate through these? Even if I do this, send the documents, pay the fee, and wait the forty days, will my clients find me?

I concluded that I had to do more research first, so I did.

I went back to the directory and tested it:

I did this trying to think like a client and not like an interpreter or an ATA member. The first thing I noticed was that to look for an interpreter, the person doing the search must go through the translators’ section of the advanced search; they must scroll down passing through a section with very confusing questions for somebody who, let’s say, wants to hire an interpreter for a marketing conference at the Marriott downtown. Without being an interpreter, I would not know what to do when asked to indicate if I want an ATA certified or non-certified translator, or what translation tools I will need. As a client, even before reaching the interpreter questions, I would probably close the page and look for a conference interpreter in Google or somewhere else.

Since I had already tried Illinois and California with a result of zero interpreters, I looked first for any conference interpreters with an English<>Spanish combination, with a U.S. Department of State Conference-Level credential in New York State. The result was: none. Then I did the same thing for Washington, D.C. (where most conference interpreters live) Again there were zero. I got the same result in Florida and Texas. Next, I searched the same states for any interpreters with the same combination, but with the AIIC membership credential. The result was: nobody. I considered doing the same for every state in the Union, but (fortunately) I decided against it. Instead, I looked for any conference interpreters with any credential and living anywhere in the world. The result was: 2 interpreters. One U.S. Department of State Seminary-Level colleague in the United States, and one AIIC member in Argentina!

Based on these results, I looked for interpreters in all listed categories. I found this: Under certified court interpreters I found 10 colleagues. Under Healthcare certified I found 4 (2 were also listed as part of the 10 court certified). Under conference credentials I found 2 (one of them is also one of the 11 under court certified). I found 1 telephonic interpreter (also found under another category), and I found zero sign language interpreters.  Looking for simultaneous interpreters I found 10, under escort interpreters I saw there are 9, and as consecutive interpreters they have 14. As expected, all interpreters under the modes of interpretation categories are the same ones listed by specialization. I also noticed that some interpreters I found in this group are ATA Board members.

The page also asks the person doing the search to state if they are looking for a “consecutive, court, escort, sign language, simultaneous, or telephonic” interpreter. My relevant question was stated before in this post, but it is worth repeating for another reason: If I am a client looking for a conference interpreter, how can I find one under this criteria? Ordinary people do not know that conference interpreters do simultaneous interpreting. Even worse, they also do consecutive interpreting in many events such as press conferences for example.

If people we deal with regularly have a hard time referring to consecutive or simultaneous interpreting by their correct name, why would everyday people looking for a conference interpreter know who they need based on this question? If ATA included “court”, and even “telephonic”, they should include conference. Once again, I am sure my healthcare interpreter colleagues want to be heard here as well.

After reviewing the directory my decision was simple. Why would I want to pay $35.00 USD, and perhaps wait up to forty days, to be part of a directory listing a microscopic portion of the interpreting community? Should I encourage my clients to look for a credentialed conference interpreter in a directory that does not even list us as an option, and flatly ignores conference interpreting in their most common questions section, where all explanations and examples are geared to court and telephonic interpreting? And why as interpreters should we reward the work of an association that continues to treat us as second-class professionals by including the interpreter search criteria after the translator search options, instead of having two separate search pages: one for interpreters and one for translators to make it easier for our clients, and to give some respect to the many interpreters who are ATA members? There is no excuse or justification for this.

I know there are plenty of capable people at the helm of the American Translators Association whom I know and respect as friends and colleagues. I also appreciate many of the good things they do for the profession, but at this time, for all these reasons, until we interpreters get from ATA what we deserve as a profession: Unless the search criteria and credentialed interpreter designation process is as prominently displayed on the website as is the translators’ certification; and only when the search criteria addresses the conference interpreter community on a client-oriented, user-friendly platform, I will stay away from the “advanced-options” directory. I hope this post is welcomed as constructive criticism, and as the voice of many interpreters all over the world. It is not meant as an attack on anybody; it is just an honest opinion and a professional suggestion from the interpreters’ perspective. I now invite you to share with the rest of us your thoughts about such an important issue for all interpreters and for the image of ATA.