About the course
Legal interpreting is full of invisible traps. Words like "continue," "plea bargain," and "no contest" sound routine or even positive, but they carry consequences far heavier than their everyday meaning suggests. Other terms like "indictment," "bench warrant," and "subpoena" sound alarming when in reality they are procedural rather than punitive. This presentation, the second in a two part series, builds on the foundational formula from Part 1 (Legal English → Plain English → ASL) and adds a critical warning: understanding is not always what it looks like. Familiarity with a word can be the very thing that causes an interpreter to get it wrong. This workshop divides these pitfalls into five clear patterns: words that look smaller than they are, words that look bigger than they are, hidden courtroom customs and idioms, negation traps (where the absence of a word changes everything), and the commonly confused distinction between probation and parole. It then moves into three interactive practice activities: a "Pattern Spotter" exercise that asks interpreters to diagnose which pattern a courtroom phrase falls into, a "False Friend Sort" that separates terms whose legal meaning matches their everyday sense from those that deceive, and a "Three Column Reframe" that walks through what the lawyer means, what the consumer hears, and what the interpreter should actually construct. The core takeaway is that an interpreter's job is not to translate words but to construct intended meaning, and when consumers walk away with the wrong impression, the interpretation has failed regardless of how accurate the individual signs were.
Anna McDuffie CI, CT, SC:L & NIC
A native of Atlanta, Anna graduated from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville in 1996 with a Bachelor of Science in Interpreting for the Deaf. She began her career in Boston as a staff interpreter at The Learning Center for Deaf Children, a bilingual/bicultural school for the Deaf, and also worked part-time interpreting for graduate programs at Boston University. Anna returned to Atlanta in 1999 and has worked as a freelance interpreter for the past 25 years. She earned her Certificate of Interpretation and Certificate of Transliteration from RID in 1999, her Specialist Certificate: Legal in 2008, and her National Interpreter Certification in 2011. Anna began teaching medical interpreting workshops with her co-presenter, Heather Brown, in 2008, and together they co-authored Health Care Providers and the Americans with Disabilities Act, published in the Journal of the American Association of Physician Assistants in January 2011. She expanded into legal interpreting workshops in 2018. Anna is passionate about standardizing best practices for medical and legal interpreting — the driving force behind every workshop she designs. Anna lives in Marietta, Georgia, with her husband, Eric. In her free time, she enjoys spending time with her step-daughter, Cece, her fur kids, Kiwi and Pippa, traveling, and playing tennis.