Featured Speakers

Corinne McKay — our 2024 Keynote Speaker — is an ATA-certified French to English translator and a Colorado court-certified French interpreter who holds a Master of Conference Interpreting from Glendon College. A full-time freelancer since 2002, Corinne served on the Board of the American Translators Association for seven years, including as ATA President from 2017 to 2019. When not interpreting or translating, she runs the online learning platform Training for Translators; her book, How to Succeed as a Freelance Translator, has sold more than 15,000 copies. She lives in Boulder, Colorado, with her human family and a rotating crew of foster cats!


Yuliya Speroff is a Russian-English CoreCHI-P™ and WA DSHS-certified medical and social services interpreter. In her current role of a supervisor with Harborview Medical Center in Seattle, Washington, Yuliya supports a team of staff medical interpreters and manages translation projects. Yuliya’s experience as an interpreter trainer includes teaching continuing education classes as well as basic medical interpreters training courses for a variety of major professional organizations across the USA. Yuliya is the author of the The Medical Interpreter Blog, where medical interpreters can find helpful resources for practice and education.


Yasmin Alkashef is a director on the American Translators Association’s Board of Directors. She is an ATA-certified Arabic-English translator, a conference interpreter and a certified court interpreter based in Portland, Oregon, with over 18 years of experience between the Middle East and the USA. She has an MA in translation studies and a PhD in interpreting studies. In Cairo, she taught translation and interpreting at Ain Shams University and the American University. Yasmin currently teaches interpreting for NYU Online’s Masters in Translation and Interpreting and UMass Amherst’s Online Certificate in Translation and Interpreting. She is the Chair of the ATA Education and Pedagogy Committee and a member of both the Professional Development and Membership committees.


Cynthia E. Roat is a national consultant on language access in health care. Since serving as a certified staff and freelance Spanish healthcare/social service interpreter in the early 1990s, she has made significant contributions to the field as a trainer of interpreters, of trainers, and of healthcare providers—as a consultant, as a researcher, as an organizer, as an advocate, and as a mentor. She is the author of a wide array of key resources for interpreters, and her book, Healthcare Interpreting in Small Bites, has been adopted as an ancillary text in many training programs. Ms. Roat has also consulted for numerous healthcare systems around the country and conducted operational research in the field. She is a founding member of the National Council on Interpreting in Health Care (NCIHC), where she currently serves on the Board, a founding member of the Washington State Coalition on Language Access (WASCLA), and a former board member of the Northwest Translators and Interpreters Society (NOTIS) where she helped establish a program to provide high quality, low cost continuing education for community interpreters. Cynthia is recognized nationally as an engaging speaker, a knowledgeable resource, and an energetic advocate for language access in general.


Zakiya Hanafi (PhD, Stanford) is an MLA award-winning translator of humanities books from Italian and French. A former professor of Romance Languages at the UW in Seattle and of Technical Translation at the University of Venice in Italy, since 2012 she has taught global technical communication as an Affiliate Assistant Professor in the Department of Human-Centered Design and Engineering at the UW. She is also a DSHS-authorized medical interpreter in French and Italian, a DOJ immigration court interpreter in Italian, and an active member of the NW Literary Translators group. For more, go to www.zakiyahanafi.com.


Irina Spinosa was born and raised in Moscow, Russia. She graduated from Moscow State Pedagogical University with an MA in Russian Language and Literature and Translation Theory. After moving to Seattle in 2000, Irina continued teaching Russian and working as a freelance translator. In 2002, she completed a localization program at UW and has since worked as a localization project coordinator and manager at Glyph Language Services, Bown Global Solutions, Lionbridge, and Microsoft. Irina is an English into Russian ATA-certified translator. She enjoys both teaching and translating.


Elena Langdon is a certified Portuguese-English translator, conference and community interpreter, and interpreter trainer with over 20 years of experience. She has a Master of Arts in Translation Studies from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Elena is the director of training and assessments at MasterWord Services, and she also teaches healthcare interpreting in the Master in Conference Interpreting (MCI) program at Glendon College. Elena has volunteered and served on the Board of Directors for the American Translators Association (ATA), the New England Translators Association (NETA), the National Council on Interpreting in Health Care (NCIHC), and the National Board of Certification for Medical Interpreters (NBCMI). She co-produces and hosts bimonthly webinars for interpreter trainers with the NCIHC.


Xialin Ding, born in 1963 in Jiangsu Province, China, holds a Ph.D. in English Literature and recently retired from his Senior Associate Professorship of English at Nanjing Agricultural University (Nanjing City, China). He now resides in Seattle, Washington. From 2014 to 2015, Xialin worked as a Visiting Scholar in the English Department at the University of Texas, San Antonio. His dissertation, written in English, was published in China, and he has also published many high-level research papers on United States literature and culture and completed several related research projects.


Elizabeth Adams is an ATA-certified Russian-English translator of legal language and fiction. She has an enduring interest in how translators think about unknowns and search for information and loves finding new ways to make online research more productive and rewarding.

Eunyoung Kim was born in Seoul, South Korea. She has been working as a conference interpreter and WA Court Certified Interpreter in the Korean language since 2011. Along with interpreting for all types of legal and conference settings, she has conducted training sessions for prospective court interpreters for the court certification exams. Emerging technology is an area of focus in her interpreting, and she enjoys the challenge of working with complex technical topics. Eunyoung holds a BA in English Language and Literature from Sungshin Women's University in South Korea and an MBA from the University of Washington with a focus on International business and eCommerce. Her early career was in international commerce and, during that time, she lived and worked in Hong Kong and Germany while traveling extensively. Currently, she is a Court Interpreter Program Coordinator for the WA Administrative Office of the Courts. Eunyoung enjoys cooking, traveling, and spending time with her family. She loves anything outdoors in the PNW and finds equanimity and peace in walking her dog, running, and hiking.


Rosemary Nguyen is a Vietnamese–English interpreter and translator. A native speaker of English, she learned Vietnamese during a 6-year foray to Asia which included managing relief programs in the Vietnamese refugee camps of Hong Kong, studying language at the University of Hanoi, teaching at the University of Ho Chi Minh City, and even a short stint as a folk singer. She began working as a medical interpreter in 1990, earning her DSHS certification in 1993 and her AOC court certification in 1994. In addition to her work as a full-time contract interpreter and translator, Rosemary has translated one novel and two books of short stories, all of which have been published. Rosemary currently lives in Renton, Washington, and splits her time fairly evenly between interpreting for local courts and translating for clients nationwide. She is active in NOTIS, serving as Treasurer and chair of the Member Care & Development Committee.



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