Questions we hear often.

Interpreters work with spoken language in real time — at the meeting, on the video call. Translators work with written documents on a deadline. Different skill, different training, different credential. We do both, and the people we send aren't interchangeable.

An IFSP is the Individualized Family Service Plan — the written plan for children under 3 in Early Intervention. An IEP is the Individualized Education Program — the school-age version, written with the district once the child turns 3. Same federal law (IDEA): Part C covers IFSPs, Part B covers IEPs. The IFSP is family-centered and lives in your living room; the IEP lives at school.

Both protect students with disabilities, but they come from different laws and do different things. An IEP, under IDEA, is for students who need specially designed instruction; it lists specific services, goals, and placement. A 504 plan, under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, is for students who need accommodations to access the same curriculum — broader in eligibility, narrower in services.

Yes. In states where Early Intervention follows the federal Part C model, the program covers the cost of an interpreter for evaluations, IFSP meetings, and direct service sessions when the family's preferred language is not English. Families do not pay out of pocket. Service coordinators arrange interpreters through their program's normal channels — ask for ETS by name.

Honestly, depends on the language. For common ones — Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Mandarin — we can usually confirm an interpreter within twenty-four hours, and sometimes the same day for urgent requests. For less common languages — Bengali, Wolof, Pashto, K'iche' — we ask for three to five business days. The further out you can give us the request, the more options we have. For scheduled IEP meetings, two weeks of lead time is comfortable.

Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, and Mandarin are our highest-volume languages. We work in any language a family speaks, including less common ones like Arabic, Gujarati, Bengali, Wolof, Pashto, K'iche', and ASL. We are honest about lead time for less common languages and refer when we don't have the right practitioner for the assignment.

We work nationwide. Our home base is New Jersey — we staff on-site interpreters in all twenty-one counties — and we take on work across the country: document translation anywhere, video and phone interpretation anywhere, and on-site interpretation by arrangement.

Sight translation is reading a document aloud in the target language, in real time. At a meeting it works for short notices, and as the first pass on a consent form — with a written translation to follow. It does not replace written translation of an IEP, IFSP, or evaluation report — those are documents the family needs to keep, re-read, and share.

Not for consent-bearing documents. Machine translation flattens conditional language, drops acronyms, and produces fluent-looking output that does not survive legal scrutiny. We use it sparingly for short drafts, but the deliverable is always reviewed by a human translator.

No. A bilingual receptionist, a sibling, or a family friend is not a trained interpreter. They lack training in interpretation ethics, special-education vocabulary, and the consequences of paraphrasing in a legal-procedural setting. The 2015 OCR/DOJ Dear Colleague guidance flagged this explicitly.

As soon as the meeting is on the calendar. Two business days is the practical minimum for a new request in a common language; once an interpreter is assigned, confirmation usually comes within a day. A week is comfortable; two weeks or more is ideal for district-wide conference cycles or annual review season. For less common languages, give us a week minimum. Last-minute requests are sometimes possible — call us — but reduce language options.

Consecutive interpretation is the standard mode at IFSP and IEP meetings: the speaker pauses every few sentences, and the interpreter renders what was said. Simultaneous interpretation happens in real time, usually with headsets or a whispered "chuchotage," and is used at larger events like board meetings, conferences, or public hearings. Consecutive is slower but more accurate for high-stakes, document-driven discussions. Most special-education work is consecutive.