Alaska Immigration Justice Project-Medical Interpreter Training

The Alaska Immigration Justice Project received $15,000 from a Donor Advised Fund from The Alaska Community Foundation to help increase access to social, legal and health-care services for Alaskans whose English proficiency is limited.

The medical interpreter training program was sponsored by the Language Interpreter Center, a component of the Alaska Immigration Justice Project.

The goal was to create a cadre of trained and certified Alaksa Native and foreign language interpreters and translators to remove communications barriers. Fifty two interpreters participated in two sessions last  year, speaking Lao, Yupik, Spanish, Tagalog and Portuguese, Arabic, Korean, Nuer, Russian, Hmong, Vietnamese, Croatian, and Chinese. 

The programs were facilitated by Holly Mikkelson, an internationally known interpreter trainer and adjunct professor at the Monterey Institute in California.

Both of the training programs focused on the ethics and terminology of social service and legal interpreting.