Founded in 1979, The National Center for Interpretation (NCI) is a research and outreach unit at the University of Arizona located in Tucson, Arizona. From its inception, the unit was charged with promoting intercultural communication and social justice for language minorities, mainly through training and testing for interpreters and translators. A corollary objective was that of advancing the professionalism of the field. Our previous director and founder, Dr. Roseann Gonzalez, provided the groundbreaking work that lead to the establishment of the process to assess and certify federal court interpreters in Spanish, Navajo, and Haitian Creole. Her work set the standard for interpreter testing for the entire profession of court interpreting, and helped to expand interpreter testing and training across many regions and professional fields in the USA. In 1983, Dr. Gonzalez founded the then 3-week Summer Court Institute for Court Interpretation. She also created the Medical Interpreter Training Institute and both institutes’ curricula continue to be valid -- and even considered a gold standard by some-- in today’s ever-changing world of interpreting.
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