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Conference

Wednesday, August 19th, 2009 Plenary: Dr. Camayd-Freixas on Ethics

Plenary: Current Challenges in Interpreter Ethics
Dr. Erik Camayd-Freixas
Director, Translation and Interpretation Program, Florida International University
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After Postville, interpreter voices criticism in national press,
then vindicated by US Supreme Court

Dr. Camayd is a federal interpreter and respected educator whose essay of June 13, 2008 “Interpreting after the Largest ICE Raid in U.S. History: A Personal Account” made international headlines, starting with the cover of The New York Times. It prompted a congressional hearing–built around Dr. Camayd’s testimony–to investigate violations of due process and civil rights in Postville, Iowa. It also led to a challenge of identity theft charges, which prevailed unanimously at the U.S. Supreme Court with an amicus brief filed by NYU Law School including contributions by Dr. Camayd.

Dr. Camayd was selected as the recipient of the American Immigration Lawyers Association 2009 Human Rights Award. Camayd’s legal analysis of the Postville case was published in The Progressive magazine. In scores of interviews, lectures, and editorials, Dr. Camayd-Freixas has emerged as a national voice for human rights and immigration reform.

Dr. Camayd has been a simultaneous broadcast interpreter on Telemundo and Univision for high-profile international events with eight different heads of state, including President Obama and Pope Benedict XVI, with an estimated audience of 3 to 10 million per event. Erik has also been a simultaneous booth interpreter for dozens of international conferences, including the OAS.

He has been a federally certified court interpreter since 1985, during much of which he has served as an expert witness in forensic linguistics. His expertise in the legal field, ethics, and discourse analysis, together with his graduate teaching on social theory, rhetoric, and the Latin American essay, came together last year in his denunciation of the criminalization of migrants following the Postville, Iowa raid. With his work in this area, Dr. Camayd is leading a profound revision of the legal interpreter’s code of ethics as outlined in his article “Statement to the Profession” published by NAJIT.

Links:
Dr. Camayd’s essay published in the New York Times
New York Times Editorial
Article about Dr. Camayd in the New York Times
AILA Award – pdf
Dr. Camayd’s Statement to the Profession, Proteus Fall 2008 – pdf
Guatemala: A Tale of Two Villages, PBS documentary on the economic impact of the Postville raid

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