Primaries, Caucuses, Gerrymandering, and Other Words I Hope I Don't Have To Interpret

The Presidential campaign is upon us, and it brings with it democracy and democrats, the election and the electoral college, constituents, primaries, the commander-in-chief, and of course, gerrymandering.  In short, the election presents unique interpreting challenges from the language of politics.  This workshop is for interpreters who believe that if there are people willing to talk or teach about American politics, we should do a super-heroic job interpreting for them.  This is a brief, but deep dive into elections, government, the constitution, ideology, and parties, and presidential power. 

Educational Objectives:

The goal of this workshop is to prepare interpreters for the challenging language that appears during the electoral process.  But language doesn't exist in a vacuum, and in order to truly interpret for meaning, one requires a deep understand of the material.  While stopping at points all along the way to develop interpreting strategies for difficult concepts, participants will:

• Describe how the Constitution defines the electoral process for the President and the Congress
• Discover the historical differences between Democrats and Republicans
• Interpret 26 keys political terms
• Define role and structure of U.S. Congress
• List 9 presidential powers and describe 3 in detail
• Analyze the complexity of the primary and general election processes