Better Late Than Never

Más vale tarde que nunca

Babel Fish translation:
Mejore tarde que nunca

Interpreters and court reporters cannot be late for a deposition. Everyone else can, but court reporters and interpreters… NEVER!

Even though we routinely wait from 30 minutes to 2 hours for attorneys and applicants to show up and it is rare for a deposition to actually start on time.

For example, last Friday morning, a prep interpreter was 15 minutes late for his assignment. The applicant’s attorney basically tore him a new one and told him that if it ever happened again he would stop using that agency.

Even though he was late, I felt terrible for him! He did call the office to inform them that he was stuck in traffic (quite possible considering he was traveling from Inglewood to Canoga Park). And another thing, the attorney that was yelling at him had only arrived 5 minutes before the prep interpreter, so he himself was 10 minutes late! The nerve!

Note: In case you’re wondering what a prep interpreter is... It is very common for there to be two interpreters at a deposition: one for time the attorney uses to prepare his client and another for the actual deposition. The “prep interpreter”, as we call them, is hired by the applicant’s attorney, the “depo interpreter” by the defense. On Friday, I was the depo interpreter.

That same day I had another job at 1:30pm. When I arrived there at 1:25pm, the receptionist informed me that the applicant’s attorney brought his own prep interpreter (Again! Aren’t you glad you now know what that is?). This means that I will have to wait from 30 minutes to an hour for the depo to start. Since I’m pretty familiar with everyone at that particular office, I let the receptionist know that I’m going to go downstairs to the cafeteria in the meantime. She gives me the okay.

So I’m in the cafeteria and about 10 minutes later I get a call from the agency I’m working for. It’s the owner and he’s frantic wanting to know why I’m late for my assignment. I explained that I wasn’t late, but in fact arrived early since I wasn’t needed for the prep. I told him that I had checked in with the receptionist but was told that I wouldn’t be needed for a while. He answered that I should not have left and to return immediately. He seemed pretty upset, so I hurried back upstairs.

When I get there the receptionist apologizes to me about the mix-up, and says they were in fact looking for me to do the prep but that they’ve decided to go ahead and use the prep interpreter instead. So I end up waiting in the reception area for 45 minutes after all. *Sigh*… all in a day’s work, I guess.

Spanglish Word of the Week

"Firiar" (verb). Believe it or not, a lady actually used this to say "feed". "Yo firiaba a los pacientes." I remember cringing everytime she said it. I got the chills just now as I typed it!