13.1 Assignment Research & Terminology Preparation

CASLI's second Fundamentals domain covers "pre-encounter activities" — everything that happens after you accept and before interpreting begins. Its first task is to "conduct research/reading into subject matter of the engagement (such as looking up information about the situation, assessing and mitigating the environmental aspects of the encounter, finding visual aids and other resources to support the interpretation)."

Preparation is not optional diligence. The CASLI blueprint assumes certified interpreters "work at a technical level of discourse" and can "assess their own ability to perform an interpretation which may require specialized knowledge or vocabulary." You cannot construct meaning in real time from words you have never encountered — and simultaneous interpreting leaves no time to build a concept from scratch mid-utterance.

1. What preparation actually buys you

The cognitive argument is simple. Interpreting requires you to comprehend the source, analyze it for meaning, restructure it in the target language, and produce it — while still receiving new input. Any processing capacity spent decoding unfamiliar terminology is capacity not spent on meaning, register, and target-language fluency. Preparation shifts terminology from live processing to pre-loaded knowledge, freeing capacity for the work only you can do in the moment.

The practical argument is equally simple. Content you have already met arrives as a recognizable pattern rather than as noise, your lag time can safely lengthen because you can predict where the utterance is going, and your error rate falls on precisely the items that matter most — drug names, dosages, dates, statutory citations, technical specifications.

2. Sources of preparation material

Asking for materials is normal professional practice, and CPC Illustrative Behavior 6.3 supports it: interpreters "promote conditions that are conducive to effective communication, inform the parties involved if such conditions do not exist, and seek appropriate remedies." Requesting an agenda is promoting such a condition.

3. Confidentiality governs everything you receive

Preparation material is assignment-related information. Illustrative Behavior 1.1 permits sharing it "only on a confidential and 'as-needed' basis (e.g., supervisors, interpreter team members, members of the educational team, hiring entities)" — so your team interpreter may see the deck, and your social feed may not. Illustrative Behavior 1.2 requires managing "data, invoices, records, or other situational or consumer-specific information in a manner consistent with maintaining consumer confidentiality (e.g., shredding, locked files)."

Concretely: store prep material encrypted or locked, do not forward it, do not keep it after the retention period you have agreed, and destroy hard copies by shredding. If the entity requires a non-disclosure agreement, signing it is ordinary practice — but read it, because some NDAs conflict with your obligation to report abuse or to cooperate with an EPS inquiry.

4. Preparing terminology, not just words

A vocabulary list is the weakest form of preparation. Effective terminology work has three layers:

1. Concept. What does this term actually mean? An interpreter who understands that an "ejection fraction" is the proportion of blood the left ventricle expels per beat can depict it; one who has only memorized a sign cannot recover when the cardiologist rephrases.
2. Rendering. How will you produce it in ASL — an established sign, a Deaf-community sign specific to this region, fingerspelling with a classifier expansion, a depicting construction, or an initial full expansion followed by a shortened form agreed with the consumer?
3. Recognition. How will you recognize it coming the other way, in either language, including abbreviated and mispronounced forms?

The expansion-then-compression technique. For a term that will recur, give a full conceptual expansion the first time, establish a shortened form or a locus in space, then use the short form thereafter. This is a standard ASL discourse strategy and it is how technical density is managed without losing the consumer.

5. Preparation when there is nothing to prepare from

Often you will get nothing — no agenda, no diagnosis, no names. Prepare anyway:

• Prepare the domain, not the case. Review the general vocabulary and discourse structure of the setting: how an intake interview is sequenced, how a sentencing hearing proceeds, how a performance review is structured.
• Prepare the frame. Know the institution's usual process, forms, and typical participants.
• Prepare your controls. Decide in advance how you will ask for a repetition, how you will signal to the team that you need a feed, and what you will say if you need to pause the encounter.
• Prepare your body. Arrive rested, hydrated, and early enough to set up the physical environment.

6. Preparing the materials you will have to sight translate

If a document will be handed to the consumer to sign — a consent form, a lease, a plea agreement, an employment policy — the interpreter will likely be asked to sight translate it. Preparation means reading it in advance, identifying the passages where a literal rendering will fail, and deciding how to depict them. It also means recognizing the limit of the role: sight translating a consent form is interpreting; explaining what the form means for this person's case is advice, barred by Illustrative Behavior 2.5 ("refrain from providing counsel, advice, or personal opinions").

7. The pre-encounter checklist

CONTENT      [ ] Agenda / slides / script / documents requested
             [ ] Subject-matter concepts understood, not just listed
             [ ] Renderings decided; expansions planned for recurring terms
             [ ] Sight-translation documents read in advance
             [ ] Names, titles, place names, and proper nouns collected

PEOPLE       [ ] Participant list and roles known
             [ ] Consumer's language preference confirmed
             [ ] Team interpreter or CDI briefed; pre-conference scheduled

LOGISTICS    [ ] Arrival time, parking, security, on-site contact
             [ ] Room layout and placement discussed with the coordinator
             [ ] Technology tested if remote

SECURITY     [ ] Prep material stored securely; destruction planned
             [ ] NDA read for conflicts with reporting obligations