Featured Speakers

Dr. Devin Gilbert — our 2025 Keynote Speaker — is a translation/interpreting practitioner, educator, and researcher. He teaches Spanish Translation and Interpreting as an Assistant Professor at Utah Valley University’s (UVU) Department of Languages & Cultures. His research interests include translation/interpreting pedagogy and technology, and translation process research, and his qualifications include a PhD in Translation Studies from Kent State, an MA in Interpreting and Translation Studies from Wake Forest University, and a CHI-Spanish interpreters certification. Devin enjoys developing software for the web and is constantly trying to expand his developer skillset. In 2022, he started developing Terp, a web-based interpreting training platform that seeks to make quality, authentic interpreting practice dialogues more accessible and interactive.  |  Devin's NOTIS 2025 Conference sessions include: 

• Keynote: Articulate Your Human Value in a Language Services Industry Grappling with Artificiality

• Live Audience Thoughts on Ethical Dilemmas in Interpreting

• The Basics of Terminology Management: Simple Yet Powerful Things that Many Linguists Get Wrong

Rachel E. Herring holds an M.A. in Translation and Interpreting (English/Spanish) from the Monterey Institute of International Studies, a Masters of Advanced Studies in Interpreter Training from the University of Geneva, and a PhD in Interpreting from the University of Geneva. She was Faculty and Program Director of the Translation and Interpreting Program at Century College and a per diem staff interpreter at Children's Minnesota until summer, 2025, when she transitioned into the role of Interim Dean of Liberal Arts at Century College. She has presented nationally and internationally on aspects of interpreting and interpreter training and is a longtime member of the NCIHC’s Home for Trainers Webinar Workgroup. You can find her on Bluesky at ‪@reherring.bsky.social‬.  |  Rachel will offer two 2-hour workshops for interpreters:  

• Introduction to Note-Taking for Dialogue Consecutive

• Refining Consecutive Note-Taking Skills

Wendy Call (she/ella) is author, co-editor, or translator of nine books, including the annual anthology that she co-founded, Best Literary Translations (Deep Vellum, since 2024). She has translated three books of trilingual poetry by Irma Pineda, including Nostalgia Doesn’t Flow Away Like Riverwater (Deep Vellum, 2024), which she translated thanks to a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship. Her co-translation of How to Be a Good Savage and Other Poems (Milkweed, 2024), by Mikeas Sánchez, won the Gold Medal for Best Translation from the International Latino Book Awards and was longlisted for several other prizes. Wendy was a 2019 Fulbright Scholar to Colombia for poetry translation and the 2023 Translation in Residence at the University of Iowa. She teaches creative nonfiction in the Rainier Writing Workshop at Pacific Lutheran University and lives on Duwamish land, in Seattle, and Mixtec and Zapotec land, in Oaxaca.  |  Conference session: 

• Poetry Translation A to Z: From First Poems to First Book

Dulce Bustamante is a passionate advocate for healthy sleep and she now brings this passion to the work of the interpreter, blending her interpreting and clinical skills. She is a Federally Certified English-Spanish court interpreter, and is certified in WA State for both court and medical interpreting. She interprets in court and conferences, carries out translations, and consults on ethical issues. She is a Licensed Mental Health Counselor and Certified Specialist in Psychometry and interprets and translates for neuropsychological evaluations. She and her husband run a neuropsychology clinic, and they have often co-presented in clinical issues. Her interests include issues of bilingualism and sleep hygiene. She is co-author of a chapter on cognitive-behavioral therapy for sleep disorders in a medical textbook entitled Medicina del Sueño, published in Venezuela, her country of origin. By blending her professions, she aims to help interpreters achieve healthy sleep, considering its effects upon neuropsychological functioning in everyday life. Dulce is a member of NAJIT and NOTIS. In her free time she enjoys practicing Shotokan karate, taking pictures of random beauty, and of course, sleeping.  |  Conference session: 

• The Interpreter as a Sleeping Beauty: Topics and Strategies
  

Zakiya Hanafi (PhD, Stanford) is a DSHS-certified medical interpreter in French & Italian, a linguistic quality reviewer and translator for the medical device industry, and a scholarly translator specializing in the humanities. Drawing on her research background as an Assistant Professor of Romance Languages at the University of Washington, she has published over a dozen translated books, in addition to her own work The Monster in the Machine: Magic, Medicine, and the Marvelous in the Time of the Scientific Revolution. In 2023, she won the prestigious MLA prize for the best translation of a scholarly work on literature. While living in Italy, she worked as a technical translator, with a focus on medical, legal, and financial reporting texts – subjects she also taught at the University of Venice from 2003 to 2009. During the same period, she developed her own business offering linguistic services and training to companies and government agencies in the Veneto region. Since 2012, as an Affiliate Assistant Professor of Human-Centered Design and Engineering, Zakiya has taught graduate and undergraduate courses in technical communication and cross-cultural design at the University of Washington.  |  Conference session: 

• Intercultural Competency for Translators and Interpreters: What Is It? Why Do I Need It? How Do I Get It?

Andrew Belisle is a Federally Certified Court Interpreter and conference interpreter with eight years of experience across legal, medical, and governmental settings. He holds court certifications for Spanish in three states and one district, is authorized by DSHS in French and German medical interpretation, and is professionally qualified by U.S. Courts as a German interpreter. Andrew earned an MA in Conference Interpretation—English, Spanish, German—from the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey and a BA Hons in German, French, and Spanish from Bangor University in the United Kingdom. He regularly speaks on skill development, interpreting as a profession, business practices, and language learning, and has trained interpreters across the U.S. and Latin America.  |  Conference session: 

• Practice Makes Progress: Creating Effective Interpreter Practice Groups

Rainer Klett is an ATA-certified English-to-German translator with an M.A. in Art History and English. After moving from Germany to Philadelphia in 1997, where he spent several years working in museums, Rainer also developed a passion for translation and cultural exchange. He later moved to Seattle, where he now works as a freelance translator and voice-talent specializing in art history, tourism, corporate communication, and marketing, including audio-visual projects. In his spare time, Rainer can often be found exploring the many hiking trails in the Pacific NW. He can be reached at rainer@rainerklett.com.  |  Conference session: 

• How to Handle Ambiguous or Unclear Source Sentences
  

Marian Schwartz is a prizewinning translator of Russian fiction and nonfiction, including works by Nina Berberova, Mikhail Bulgakov, Ivan Goncharov, Mikhail Shishkin, Ludmilla Petrushevskaya, Leo Tolstoy, Leonid Yuzefovich, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s The Red Wheel: March 1917, and, most recently, Alexander Podrabinek’s Between Prison and Freedom: Memoir of a Soviet Dissident. Learn more at www.marianschwartz.com.  | Conference session: 

• Russian Literary Translation and Human Rights in the Putin Era

Cynthia E. Roat is a national consultant on language access in health care. Serving as a certified staff and freelance Spanish healthcare/social service interpreter in the early 1990s, she has since made significant contributions to the field as a trainer of interpreters, trainers, and 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 WA State Coalition on Language Access (WASCLA), and a former board member of the Northwest Translators & Interpreters Society (NOTIS), where she helped establish a program to provide high quality, low cost continuing education for community interpreters. She is recognized nationally as an engaging speaker, a knowledgeable resource, and an energetic advocate for language access.  |  Conference session:  

• The Revised National Code of Ethics and Standards of Practice: What’s Changed?