Lawyer vs. Attorney

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, hello, how are you?

Good, who’s this?

This is Angelica Brito.

Where are you calling from, Angelica?

I’m calling from Atlanta, Georgia.

Oh, welcome to the program. How can we help?

Well, first of all, I want to really congratulate you for this wonderful show.

Thank you very much.

It’s been a great tool for me, and I’ve been sharing this great tool with all my colleagues, interpreters, and translators.

You’re an interpreter?

Yes, I’m an interpreter.

Spanish-English.

Spanish-English?

And where are you from originally?

I’m originally from Mexico.

Oh, okay.

Okay.

And what kind of interpretation do you do?

Well, I started doing medical interpretation. That’s what I’ve been doing for the last 15 years.

-huh.

And then I moved to the legal interpretation, for which I had to, like, relearn a different language.

Right, right. Now you’re trilingual, right?

Yeah, sort of. Pretty much. Yeah.

Angelica, so you’re a court interpreter?

Yes, I am a state-certified interpreter. I’m not federally certified.

And that was, in fact, one of my questions for you, because I took the test to get my certification as a federal interpreter.

And I didn’t pass a test.

Oh, really?

Yeah, because the idioms.

Yeah, yeah.

I didn’t know enough of idiomatic expressions in English, and so they came up with some questions that I was totally lost.

Really?

Questions that I have, like, no way to relate to, you know, like, I know this expression now because I check it after the test, but there were like 20 questions about idioms that I was not even there.

Like, wet behind the ears.

Oh, yeah, yeah, wet behind the ears.

Now I know that it’s like with no experience.

Yeah.

But then it was like, what is this? My God.

Yeah, it’s a vast well of idioms in English. It’s hard even for natives sometimes, native speakers of English, to keep up with those sometimes.

Oh, yeah.

Particularly if you’re in your 20s and the speaker’s in their 50s, they might have a whole different collection of idioms.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, and Angelica, I’m fascinated that you do this work because I spent a day with court interpreters here in San Diego, and it is such intense work.

I mean, you’re translating not only legal things, but you’re translating aloud. You’re having to listen and speak at almost the same time, right?

I mean, this is really, really intense work. What do you do to unwind?

It’s very difficult. And sometimes it’s difficult not just because of the nature of the work, but also to detach from the problems that you see on your day-to-day.

Exactly. Difficult. For me, it’s very difficult.

Exactly.

And so did you have a question about some of your work?

Well, I have a question, and I have asked these questions to some people who I work with, like in the court or attorney, because why is it that we have, for somebody that works with the law, three different names, attorney, counselor, and lawyer? Which one is the one that we should use? Which one is proper, or why do we have three different words? I don’t understand.

-huh. Well, I think the short answer to that is they all mean the same thing. Historically, attorney didn’t necessarily have to refer to somebody who worked with the law. An attorney could be somebody you hired to work with your business, not necessarily in a legal sense. You see the word turn in there. It’s the same as in English. It’s somebody who’s turned to. We get the word attorney from French.

And do we see that left over in the phrase power of attorney?

I think so.

I think so.

So any of those words actually work fine. I think lawyer is the one that most people use.

But you know what? I don’t use it because people make fun of the way I pronounce the word.

Oh, your southern accent comes to the bear?

Yeah, I’ve had people laugh at me because I say lawyer.

Lawyer.

Somebody who practices law.

But I have dictionary.com here on my computer, and I’m going to play you the audio file of the pronunciation.

So you’ve built your stall man and now you’re going to burn it.

That’s right.

Yeah, but they all basically.

Lawyer or lawyer.

Yeah, but that’s a computerized voice. Let me play this again.

And it’s dictionary.com.

Yeah, but it’s.

Lawyer or lawyer.

See, you can pronounce it either way.

Lawyer or lawyer, right?

Yeah, but the short answer is these days there’s really no difference. Even within the profession.

Yes.

Oh, and my other question is, is there any book that I should refer to to learn the idioms that I have to learn to pass a test?

Oh, boy.

Well, there are probably several thousand books of English idioms out there. I would encourage you to go for Houghton Mifflin’s American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms. Not only do they have the idioms and their definitions, they give you a little bit of the history behind them, and that helps you remember and helps you understand what the idiom means. And it’s a great start.

Yeah, because if I don’t relate to it, it’s like it does not get in my head, you know?

Thank you so much, Angelica. And we’re glad to hear from you and pretty pleased with your description of the important work that you do. It sounds amazing and difficult, and it sounds like you’re bearing up under the load.

Thank you so much.

Thank you for your time and for all your helping me.

All right.

Okay, keep listening.

Bye-bye.

Okay, sure.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

If you’ve got stories about language in your workplace, give us a call, 877-929-9673. We can solve your disputes, settle your arguments, send it all to words@waywordradio.org.