When I first turned danielgreene.com into a blog in 2006 I asked the question Where are the ASL interpreters blogs? and found only a few. Since I’ve been in grad school for “interpreting studies” with a concentration in teaching, I’ve learned about and sought out other interpreter blogs—not ASL interpreter blogs, but interpreter blogs nonetheless. Here are two:
- The Interpreter Diaries: Smart, academically informed blog about interpreter training and professional practice. I have been following this blog for a few months now.
- The Liaison Interpreter: I just found this blog today, and the most recent post is from today, so it is current. I checked the archives, and it seems the blogger has been quite active since 2007, publishing an average of 175 posts per year— much more active than I have been! This is a blog I am going to give a good viewing.
Googling for the search terms ‘interpreter’ and ‘blog’ just now, and I found something I have seen before: an interpreter blog gone dry. In The Court Interpreter blog, there is a post (only one of four) called Reworking the blog that reads:
You may have noticed I deleted all of my earlier posts.… A lot of what I wrote in the past about interpreting was sophomoric and offensive and this time around my focus is going to be on entertaining and informing the public without compromising myself professionally. (The Court Interpreter)
I mean no disrespect in citing this example; I mention it because it shows how hard it is for interpreters to blog about their work. This is understandable! We deal with many frustrations, challenges, and ethical dilemmas that are hard to talk about publicly without breaking confidentiality. The Court Interpreter’s last post was written on February 24, 2011— almost a year ago today. Let’s take a closer look… that last post, Now tweeting, or twittering, or whatever you call it. I checked out Court Interpreter’s Twitter feed, and indeed, they have microblogged actively since switching to Twitter. So, it may be a loss to the blogosphere, but their voice is still out there— 140 characters at a time.
That is all for now. Believe it or not, this post took me an hour-and-a-half to write, and it’s now 11:30 PM. Slow writer, I guess. How about you? Are you an interpreter/blogger? Do you know of any good interpreter blogs to read? I would love to hear from you.
Daniel Greene 
Comments welcome