Monthly Professional Development Speakers Series
Join us online each month for practical workshops led by expert speakers. Explore a wide range of topics, gain new knowledge and resources, strengthen your professional practice, and develop strategies to support a healthy balance between your work and personal life.
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Expert Speakers
Learn from experienced professionals who bring current knowledge, practical insight, and real-world perspectives from across the interpreting and language-service sectors.
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Relevant Topics
Explore timely, practical topics that reflect the realities, challenges, responsibilities, and opportunities interpreters encounter throughout their professional practice and careers.
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Live and Interactive
Take part in live online sessions with opportunities to ask questions, share experiences, and engage directly with speakers and colleagues.
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Practical Learning
Gain useful strategies, tools, and resources that you can apply directly to your interpreting work, professional development, and everyday decision-making.
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Wide-Ranging Content
Discover a broad range of subjects, from interpreting skills and ethics to wellness, business, technology, communication, and long-term career growth.
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Professional Community
Connect with interpreters from across Canada, exchange ideas, learn from shared experience, and remain engaged with the wider professional community.
2026 Speakers Series Line up
Every month, discover a new topic and expert speaker to strengthen your professional skills, personal well-being, and career development.
Preparation Strategies for Healthcare Interpreters with Jane Langes
Effective healthcare interpreting begins well before the assignment itself. In this 2-hour professional development session, we will focus on how to prepare for healthcare appointments with purpose and efficiency.
Participants will explore practical strategies for pre-assignment preparation, including how to identify relevant information, anticipate communicative demands, and conduct focused terminology and context research. The session will also address how to approach different types of healthcare encounters, manage uncertainty, and make informed decisions when preparation time is limited. And how to do it efficiently.
Grounded in real-world practice and led by an interpreter and educator with expertise and over 30 years of experience. This session is designed to strengthen confidence, reduce stress before and during interpreting assignments, and support more accurate and effective communication in healthcare settings.
Interpreting tag questions should be easy, shouldn't it? The four (surprising) uses of tag questions in court interpreting with Jeff Staflund
This interactive workshop focuses on tag questions in legal and court interpreting. Tag questions, short phrases such as isn’t it?, weren’t you?, or don’t you think?, are common in courtroom discourse, particularly during cross-examination. Although grammatically brief, they may function as questions, accusations, or attempts to apply subtle pressure.
Participants will explore how tag questions function in English legal discourse, how similar meanings are expressed in other languages, and how interpreters can convey their tone, implication, and intent accurately.
Topics include:
• Common tag-question structures and their strategic use in court
• Differences between English and other languages
• Tone, register, implication, and subtext
• Brief practice using courtroom-style examples
Remote Practice Reboot: Interpreting Practice in the Age of AI
Remote interpreting is established practice, but the technology, and its risks, continues to evolve. AI-enabled captions, transcription, translation and recording can affect accuracy, confidentiality and interpreter performance.
In this practical 90-minute workshop, interpreters will review professional setup, essential equipment, remote protocols and strategies for managing sound, visibility, positioning and turn-taking. Participants will also explore when to use consecutive or simultaneous interpreting and how to make informed decisions about AI-enabled tools and platform features.
The goal is not simply to keep up with technology, but to understand how to use it responsibly while maintaining professional standards, interpreter performance and client trust. Whether new to remote interpreting or experienced, you will leave with practical guidance you can apply to your next assignment.
Before You Step into Court: Trial Preparation for Interpreters with Jane Lee
Court preparation involves more than reviewing legal terminology. Interpreters must understand the case context, legal process, relevant documents, and professional expectations.
This session presents court preparation as a structured process. Participants will explore how to gather key information, review legal documents, and conduct targeted research to anticipate terminology, participants, and potential challenges.
The session will also examine the distinct demands of civil, criminal, and traffic matters, along with courtroom roles, protocols, professional boundaries, confidentiality, and impartiality. Practical examples will help interpreters prepare efficiently, reduce uncertainty, and enter the courtroom with greater confidence.
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