Eighth Anniversary Celebrations – Part 1

Deborah Lockhart, the daughter of Sir Louis H. Lockhart, was bestowed with an Honorary Doctoral Degree in Humane Letters by the Canadian International Chaplaincy Association (CICA) on the occasion of her Company’s eighth anniversary, which was observed with a thanksgiving service and awards ceremony on August 23, 2104, in Queens, New York.

Dr. Lockhart is the founder and president of The Language Shop, a full service language solutions provider offering translation, interpreting, editing, proofreading, transcription, desktop publishing and voiceover recording and dubbing in all languages and all areas of specialization including legal, financial, entertainment, film and media, online games, medical, humanitarian and refugee issues, website localization and more. Since childhood, she excelled in languages with English as her native language. She works to preserve the standard in all languages and dialects and in the respective cultures with which they are associated.

After she graduated in 1985 from the University of the West Indies (Mona Campus) with an Honors Degree in History with (French and Spanish) Language and Literature, she launched her career in translation and interpreting in Antigua and Barbuda where she provided translation and interpreting services to government offices such as the Elections Office, the Office of the Prime Minister, the Ministry of Legal Affairs, the Ministry of Public Works, the Immigration Department, the High Court and Magistrates Court, et al. She translated and interpreted for the Venezuelan and US Embassies and for various law firms, medical practitioners, media and advertising and commercial entities.

After nine years, she moved to New York, USA where she obtained Certificates in Translation and in Court Interpreting at NYU SCPS. She worked as a freelance translator while serving for about a decade as a legal secretary in New York City law firms.
In 2006, she established The Language Shop where she directs project managers and their teams in every time zone to provide top quality language support to the Company’s diverse, worldwide clientele on a full time basis.

Dr. Lockhart speaks English, Antiguan Patois, Jamaican Patois and various other Caribbean dialects, Spanish, French and basic Arabic. Her interests are pets, gardening, language and culture, film, food and entertaining. Some of the causes close to her heart are the needs of the poor and hungry, the rights and needs of abandoned animals and the needs of the aged.
When accepting the doctorate, she stated among other things that she was accepting it more as an indictment than as an honor since she feels that “there is so much left to do to make a difference and so little time; that life is one big ‘to do’ list that keeps getting updated as often as new needs and crises arise in the lives of our fellow human beings and in this world because, after all, that is what we are here for: to meet needs and resolve crises not just locally or nationally, but globally also. We each need to continually analyze our own situations to determine how we may be most effective in accomplishing this.” She also noted that “You don’t have to be famous to be great. You just have to make a difference.”