NAJIT conference wrapup

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Off to Providence for NAJIT!

I was flattered to be invited to present the keynote speech and a preconference workshop at the conference of the National Association of Judiciary Interpreters and Translators (NAJIT), held in Providence, Rhode Island, from May 17-19. My fabulous friend and colleague Judy Jenner is on the conference planning committee and had actually invited me last year, but I was in Iceland, so we finally made it happen this year! NAJIT was held from May 17-19 at the Omni hotel in Providence, Rhode Island.

Executive Summary: I loved the conference, and I was impressed with the sessions and the overall organization. It was also interesting to attend a small(er) T&I conference, since most of my language profession conference experience is at ATA, which is probably 4-6x the size of the NAJIT conference. Details below!

Hotel and venue

We lived in Boston for a long time before we moved to Colorado, and at that time, Providence was Boston’s, uhhhh, “gritty?!” southern neighbor. I was pleasantly surprised to see that Providence, at least the section near Providence Place and the riverwalk, is now very, very nice! The Omni hotel is quite stylish, the neighborhood is walkable and felt very safe, and there were excellent food options in the vicinity. Judy and I are both vegetarian, and we went twice to the Plant City food hall, a pleasant 15-20 minute walk along the river from the hotel. The hotel restaurant was tasty and stylish, and my room was large and very comfortable. I give the Omni and Providence two thumbs up! It was also very cool to see the public transportation connections in the area. The Amtrak station (from where one can take the commuter rail to Boston in an hour!) was just a couple of blocks from the hotel.

Overall vibe

One of the most interesting things about the experience was, as a former ATA conference organizer, observing the general vibe: who was there, the sessions, the social experiences, etc. NAJIT is open to anyone in the judiciary translation or interpreting professions, but trends heavily Spanish and court interpreter. I did meet a number of other French speakers, and there were tons of languages represented.

NAJIT’s attendees seem to trend younger than ATA. I’m 52, and if I’m at a random table of six to eight people at the ATA conference, I tend to be, no kidding, on the younger side of the group. And at ATA, if you meet someone under 30, that person tends to stand out. Not true at NAJIT: for the sit-down lunch (more on this below), I was one of the older people at my table, and there were lots of attendees in their 20s and 30s, which I really enjoyed.

Again, from the perspective of a former ATA Board member, it was also interesting to hear that NAJIT is growing. Don’t quote me on this, but I think their statistic was a membership increase of around 10% in the past year or so. NAJIT is a much smaller association than ATA with a very specific focus, but I still thought this was interesting, given that ATA membership has declined in recent years. My sense here (based only on my own, admittedly limited, knowledge of the professional association environment): NAJIT is perhaps an easier “sell,” because it has more members who have salaried jobs, and it has a more targeted membership base (mostly court interpreters, rather than anyone and everyone interested in T&I).

At this smaller conference, I also found that I was able to at least have a conversation with everyone I wanted to see. I love the big-group energy of the ATA conference, and it’s always frustrating to get home and hear from someone who was there, and who I never even saw! I really liked the size of the NAJIT conference!

Sessions

The NAJIT conference is a lot shorter than ATA. Preconference workshops on Friday (I taught one on preparing for an interpreting exam), main conference all day Saturday, plus Sunday morning. Personally, I liked this shorter format. Presumably, part of the motivation is to align with the schedules of interpreters, whose jobs are less portable than translators’, and who tend to work more of a 9-5 schedule. But honestly, it was good. It was long enough to have a good variety of sessions, but short enough that I didn’t feel like I’d been run over by an 18-wheeler by the end of the thing. Personally, if I were still on the ATA Board (which I’m not, and I avoid giving them my opinion so that the current members can do things their way!), this is something I’d consider: have the whole conference be just three days: Friday, Saturday, Sunday.

Here again, NAJIT has a leg up, because they’re offering sessions for people who work in only one specialization. However I did find the sessions, especially the preconference workshops, more engaging and pertinent than a lot of the sessions at the ATA conference (yes, including the ATA conferences that I organized!). It’s a hard call: part of the reason that people attend a large conference is that there’s something for everyone, whether you do Japanese literary translation or Spanish court interpreting. But/and, that also means that a lot of the sessions are not going to be interesting to a lot of the attendees, and you need a lot of presenters to fill all of those slots. At a smaller conference with a more targeted base of attendees, you can cover a narrower range of topics, and you can choose presenters who you know are going to be really good. Specifically, NAJIT’s preconference workshops are primarily/exclusively skills-based, where you learn an immediately applicable skill: how to interpret for fast speakers, how to interpret for depositions, how to take better notes, how to interpret in immigration court.

In addition to sessions

NAJIT does a nice job with the non-session part of the conference. In particular, registration ($475 for the early bird member rate) includes a sit-down lunch during the NAJIT annual meeting on Saturday. This leads to my only constructive criticism of the conference: the sit-down lunch is a great idea, and the NAJIT Chair’s address (a sort of “state of the association”) is also a great idea, but combining the two is something I would recommend changing. At most networking and fundraising events I attend that involve a sit-down meal plus speeches, the speeches start at the very end of the meal (dessert/coffee time), so people have had most of their substantive conversations and are ready to listen. NAJIT has the Chair start the “state of the association” address as soon as the lunch is served, while asking attendees to keep the conversation down and listen to the speaker. This is a nice idea, but doesn’t really work, when a lot of the people in the room want to network and haven’t seen each other in a year, so they’re talking loudly, and you have servers circulating with the food, asking, “Who had the vegetarian dish?” etc. I felt terrible for the Chair: I was sitting pretty close to the podium and it was still almost impossible to hear her, and at one point a member even got up to the mic and asked people to quiet down. Personally, I think this would be easy to solve: keep the speeches short, and have them during dessert, when it’s also less awkward for people to leave if they’re not interested in the annual meeting portion.

Otherwise, registration was very smooth, breakfast was good, the a/v was well managed, and I was really impressed with the conference, particularly for a small association with a small but clearly mighty staff! Congrats to NAJIT, and I hope to attend next year in Indianapolis!