The Juan José Peña Scholarship
This $500 scholarship from NMTIA will help an NMTIA member in good standing to attend their first national interpreter-translator conference. To be eligible, members must fulfill two conditions: (1) they must not have attended a national conference in the past, and (2) they must commit to taking NMTIA materials to the conference and reporting back on their experience to membership. All members in good standing are welcome to apply, but preference will be given to interpreters and translators who work in languages other than Spanish.
Click here to apply by November 30, 2025.
The Sandra O. Caldwell Scholarship
This scholarship is dedicated to the memory of Sandra O. Caldwell, certified court interpreter for the state of New Mexico. Sandra was a proponent of guiding fledgling court interpreters, “baby interpreters” as she would fondly call them, into the profession, and she was a mentor to many certified court interpreters.
- The scholarship focuses on Spanish-language interpreters.
- Recipients must be aspiring court interpreters and NMTIA members in good standing.
Two ways to receive the scholarship:
- Candidate takes JSI course through the New Mexico Center for Language Access and passes all portions of the state oral exams at a JSI level (55%-69%).
- Candidate does not take JSI course through the New Mexico Center for Language Access, but gets a minimum of 64% in all portions of the state oral exams (to pass at a certified level a candidate must get a minimum of 70%).
NMTIA will reach out to offer the scholarship to candidates who achieve the required score on the exams.
What do scholarship recipients get?
- All recipients will get The Interpreter’s Companion (5th edition) by Holly Mikkelson, a glossary of legal terms, traffic and automotive terms, weapons terms, and medical terms.
- All recipients will have the option of free mentoring from NMTIA volunteers. The focus of the mentoring will be mock state oral exams utilizing exercises from ACEBO’s simultaneous interpreting, consecutive interpreting, and sight translation textbooks. Scholarship recipients should use The Interpreter’s Companion glossary to aid themselves in the mentorship process.
- For recipients who did not take the JSI course, NMTIA will pay for the next round of oral exams from the SOC scholarship fund.
Goals of the mentor program:
- To help JSI interpreters reach full certification.
- To help interpreter candidates who did not take the JSI course reach full certification.
Please consider making a (non-tax-deductible) contribution to help fund this scholarship: