About Us - Translation Skills Training

About

Translation Skills Training™ (TST) offers a program consisting of a series of six (6) classes that prepare you for a well-paying, stable, and exciting career as an Analytic Linguist. Our expert facilitators work directly with you as you progress and provide prompt feedback about your progress, suggesting how you can improve and enhance your bilingual skills in specific ways that make you valuable as a human asset and team member assisting law enforcement in criminal investigations.

Turn your street smarts along with your education, common sense, and bilingual knowledge of slang (yes, even “Spanglish”!) into an exciting, stable, and money-making career instead of just another job. Translation Skills Training™ (TST) is designed for people like you who want to monetize their heritage-speaker Spanish by focusing on the special set of skills you can master in order to become an Analytic Linguist.

You, as a bilingual person, possess untapped talents—human intelligence assets—that TST can help you develop and turn into a satisfying, profitable living by becoming an Analytic Linguist working full time, with benefits.

TST’s program is unique: there is no other internationally accredited program in the world, not even in government agencies or universities, that specifically equip a person for this elite, professional workforce. Most people who enter this line of work do so with little to no training and often burn out quickly, only to be replaced by similarly unprepared people. TST’s training prepares you for the job through its real-world focus and the hands-on, practical knowledge and skills you really need from day-one.

So, if you are bilingual, a U.S. citizen, have at least an A.A. or A.S. degree, and have a clean record, you owe it to yourself to find out if your bilingualism is optimal for TST’s training. Contact [email protected] today to get started.

Administrators and Professors

Elena G. Rojas

Owner, President, CEO

Translation Skills Training™ (TST) is the brainchild of Mrs. Rojas’s 40+ years of experience engaged in multiple facets of the field of analytic linguistics...

Elena G. Rojas

Owner, President, CEO

Translation Skills Training™ (TST) is the brainchild of Ms. Rojas’s 40+ years of experience engaging in multiple facets of the field of analytic linguistics. Over the years, Mrs. Rojas has held many teaching positions (Spanish and English—in California, Spain, and Venezuela), including language teaching for special purposes. In these many roles, Mrs. Rojas developed curricula, courses, and testing for a variety of language programs. Since 1972, Mrs. Rojas has been the sole owner of her company, Professional Translators & Transcribers, Inc., (d.b.a. Protrans), providing highly specialized linguistic talent to government and corporate clients. This placed Mrs. Rojas in a unique position; first, as a translator/interpreter herself for criminal investigations, and then as an employer to identify the types of knowledge and skills that Analytic Linguists need in addition to “simply” being bilingual, biliterate, and bicultural. Thus, in these roles, and in both theoretical and practical settings, Mrs. Rojas acquired a wealth of first-hand knowledge. She knows what intellectual, linguistic, and emotional demands are made on Analytic Linguists who work in wire rooms. Observing the difficulties that even the most talented, dedicated bilingual people have when they begin working in a wire room, she was determined to educate aspiring Analytic Linguists, and in so doing, she helped professionalize the field. Indeed, until the creation of TST, there was no specific training available anywhere, except for on the job. Her experience and determination—coupled with her focused vision of what training Analytic Linguists need in order to be successful from their first day on the job—enabled her to undertake the Herculean efforts needed to create TST's rigorous curriculum. In 2009, Mrs. Rojas published Investigative Surveillance: Procedures for Transcription and Translation of Foreign Language Communication Intercepts, a hefty primer for anyone interested in becoming an Analytic Linguist. This book deals with essential knowledge about the field and the nature of the work environment, and it is included among the reading materials for the TST curriculum. Mrs. Rojas knew that reading about being an Analytic Linguist could not enable anyone to become one; thus, she gathered a team of experts to develop, deliver, and identify the key skills that Analytic Linguists must hold, and she addresses the full formation and development of these skills in the book. Mrs. Rojas holds numerous government certifications, accreditations, and clearances (state and federal). She serves on advisory boards for translator and interpreter education at two universities in southern California. Mrs. Rojas’s work over the years has earned her many accolades and awards. In 2006, she was very fittingly named as one of the country’s “Remarkable Women” by the National Association of Women Business Owners. In 1997, her company, Protrans, was featured in Hispanic Business as one of the “Top 100 Fastest-Growing Hispanic Businesses in the United States.” Mrs. Rojas’s energy and enthusiasm for her life’s work is contagious. Her team of experts around the world and her staff in Newport Beach, CA, have been inspired to promote her vision and have labored to give it shape and life in TST's fully online training for the formation and continuing education of Analytic Linguists. This course of study was accredited in 2014 by the International Accreditors of Continuing Education & Training (IACET).

Eric W. Vogt, Ph.D.

Professor

Dr. Vogt comes to this position at Translation Skills Training™ (TST) with a long and ongoing career both inside and outside academia. Since 1993, and during a hiatus...

Eric W. Vogt, Ph.D.

Professor

Dr. Vogt comes to this position at Translation Skills Training™ (TST) with a long and ongoing career both inside and outside academia. Since 1993, and during a hiatus from university teaching and research, he has worked as a professional translator (ATA-certified Eng. & Spa., 1993). In 1992, he founded the in-house translation operations for Biomedical Services at The American National Red Cross (ARC) and National Headquarters (NHQ) in Washington, D.C., an operation he administered until returning to academic life in 1995. During his three years at ARC, Dr. Vogt created a digital lexical database of 16,000 terms for use with Globalink Inc. translation software, one of the first commercially available computer-assisted translation tools. This project raised Globalink’s profile, and Dr. Vogt was featured on the Discovery Channel for his innovations. Within two years, he was also invited twice to participate in the United Nations Roundtable for Lexical Database Management. The then-president of ARC, Mrs. Elizabeth Dole, awarded Dr. Vogt for "Best Editorial Practices" and for his success at improving the diversity of ARC’s employees at their National Headquarters. Upon returning to academic life in 1995, he spent five years as a professor of international business communication at Thunderbird and The American Graduate School of International Management in Glendale, Arizona. He has taught Spanish language classes at other universities, as well as Renaissance, Baroque, and Latin American literature from 1981-2017, and he is a Professor Emeritus of Spanish at Seattle Pacific University. Dr. Vogt has published numerous articles dealing with Spanish and English literature and has produced several volumes of critical editions of works of Golden Age Spanish literature, many from original, hitherto unedited manuscripts. He also has produced critical, bilingual editions of works, among them, The Complete Poetry of St. Teresa of Avila (University Press of the South: New Orleans, 2nd edition 2015). In addition, Dr. Vogt has published six books with McGraw-Hill on Spanish grammar for English-speaking students of Spanish (two of them are in second editions). In 2017, Dr. Vogt published a critical, bilingual edition of a play by a contemporary Mexican playwright, José Agustín: Círculo Vicioso (University Press of the South: New Orleans, 2017). This work will be of great interest to Analytic Linguists; while the play is a political protest, the action is set in the infamous Lecumberri Prison in Mexico City, and the book contains a wealth of slang used by the criminal underworld, particularly those involved in the illicit narcotics trade. The work contains a lengthy glossary because even many native speakers of Spanish might not recognize all of the slang used by the characters. For the past several years, Dr. Vogt has worked to update and expand the content of courses developed by Mrs. Elena Rojas and the late Dr. Jackie Córdova nearly thirty years ago, thus creating the training for TST. He is delighted that the content development of this training has called upon many aspects of his previous professional and personal life.

Uriel Barba

Professor

Mr. Uriel Barba earned a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy from UC Irvine and a Master of Arts in Philosophy from Cal State University, Long Beach. In 2008, Mr. Barba began working as a...

A smiling image of a Mexican-American woman with wavy dark hair wearing black reading glasses and a black turtleneck.

Deborah Escalante

Professor

Mrs. Deborah Escalante earned a Bachelor of Arts in English and Spanish (UC Riverside), a Master of Arts in English (Chapman University), and a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing (Chapman University). She has two decades of experience...

Deborah Escalante

Professor

Mrs. Deborah Escalante has a Bachelor of Arts in English and Spanish (UC Riverside), a Master of Arts in English (Chapman University), and a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing (Chapman University). She has two decades of experience in writing, teaching, and administration. In 2003, Mrs. Escalante began working as a Linguist and Translator with Protrans while married and raising a young family. In Mrs. Escalante's work as an Analytic Linguist, she distinguished herself in many projects for federal agencies, including the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF). While working with Protrans, Mrs. Escalante was promoted to Site Director. In this role, she trained and tested newly hired Analytic Linguists, developed English writing workshops and Spanish accent workshops to train prospective linguists to pass ATA language exams, and provided final quality control for all transcriptions and translations. In this capacity, Mrs. Escalante was instrumental in the formative stages of TST for laying the foundation of the courses that have become TST. In 2008, Mrs. Escalante enrolled in graduate school, pursuing two Master's degrees while working for Protrans full-time. After graduation, Mrs. Escalante pursued her desire to teach at the college level, teaching such courses as "Rhetoric & Composition," "English Grammar & Writing Process," and "Critical Thinking and Writing About Literature" to college freshmen and continuing education students. In this context, Mrs. Escalante has developed and organized classes, and she has an extensive background teaching heritage Spanish and English speakers. She has also served on various boards and committees throughout higher education. Mrs. Escalante also has experience working as a Director of the Writing Center for a private university in Southern California, where she interviewed, hired, trained, and supervised approximately 30 staff and student employees to offer writing and speaking consultations for undergraduate and graduate students. Mrs. Escalante's previous experience has allowed her to work with a diverse group of students from various ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds. In addition to her experience as an Analytic Linguist, Mrs. Escalante brings a wealth of expertise from her time as a college professor and academic administrator to the labors of TST. When she is not teaching, she manages her own writing consulting business and publishes poetry, fiction, and nonfiction works. She is currently writing and editing a chapter on marginalization in writing centers for a book entitled On The Writing Center Periphery, which will be published in late 2022/early 2023. Mrs. Escalante’s unique constellation of skills, knowledge, and direct experience in the profession promises to enhance aspiring Analytic Linguists' training experience and outcomes.