Mr. Homayun Kabir Saifi, is an Afghan-American with an excellent command of Farsi-Dari, as well as strong verbal and written American English skills. He is a multilingual individual with fluency in Farsi – Dari and efficiency in Pashto, French, and beginner / comprehensive in Spanish. Born in Afghanistan and was forced to flee the county like million other Afghans due to the Soviet invasion.
He immigrated into the United States in June of 1986 after living in France for few years. He began building a fresh foundation and a new home in San Diego, California by continuing his higher education. Having gone through heavy obstacles and hurdles, he finally completed his higher education in Telecommunications and Film from SDSU in 1993 and obtained a professional degree in Multimedia Development from University of California, San Diego- UCSD and began working in the media field. Due to personal passion and interest in his native language, he continued his linguistic education online. He is a Certified Booth Simultaneous interpreter and language tester.
Mr. Saifi had been providing his linguistic services to the US Department of State, the Interpreting Division of Language Services (LS) as a contractor in support of today’s diplomacy. He can interpret at the most demanding skill levels for the Department of State, and the Executive Branch of the Federal Government. From public policy to diplomacy, from current events to scientific and military topics, the daily activity of the conference as an interpreter, he is required a well-rounded and up-to- date repository of general knowledge.
Mr. Saifi have been also assisting federal law enforcement agents with narco-trafficking, human trafficking, counterfeiting, terrorism, fraud and money laundering investigations under authorized wiretaps policy in English as well as Dari and Farsi languages. He has also provided document translation, audio transcription, interpretation and monitoring to support the law enforcement and intelligent community. He has been offering secure, rapid audio transcription services in English, Dari and Farsi languages. He is a Certified Electronic Surveillance Monitor by the State of California.
Mr. Saifi is an official certified language Dari language Tester, with American Council on the Teaching Foreign Languages known as ACTFL. He assesses individual language comprehension via Oral Proficiency Interview as it often called OPI, using Interagency Language Roundtable (ILR) Scale. This is a valid and reliable testing method that measures how well a person speaks a language. Mr. Saifi is also a certified ACTFL Writing Proficiency Test (WPT) tester, which is administered by Language Testing International (LTI), is a standardized test for the global assessment of functional writing ability in a language. The WPT measures how well a person spontaneously writes in a language
Furthermore, he has been an instructor for the US army- SOFTS program & non-governmental agencies and National Languages Services Corps- NLSC where he had thought Dari / Farsi language through the use of the most high tech resources for those time challenged individuals that are not able to participate in classroom training. Focusing on the communicative needs of our students, he emphasize active use of authentic language and view grammatical knowledge not as an end in itself, but as a tool to convey and comprehend intended meaning in the target language. In his capacity as a classroom instructor, curriculum developer and editor, he helped create constructive lesson plans and review subject materials for accuracy.
As an active member of National Language Services Corps, Mr. Saifi have worked as a consecutive and simultaneous interpreter at conferences in support of U.S. CENTCOM mission for the Regional Cooperation Conference (RCC) and other international assignments including CONUS-OCONUS- Seminar / Conference / Simultaneous & / Sideline delegations consecutive interpretation and translation.
Similarly, Mr. Saifi has been providing interpretation, translation and transcription services in support of today’s paced business community. In his capacity as a linguist, he assists companies with a variety of industries to aid in all their business communication needs. As a consecutive telephonic interpreter (aka over-the-phone interpreter) program he provides a comfortable experience for the non-English speaking client. As an On-site interpreter, he assists clients with face to face consecutive and simultaneous interpretation including court hearing and depositions.
Backward design is a way to authentically put the learner in the center of instruction. Mr. Saifi has the ability to incorporate the five elements of effective teaching in his classroom known as 5 C’s National Standards: Communication, Cultures, Connection, comparison, and Communities. Through, San Diego State University, under Language Acquisition Resource Center known as LARC, he continuously enhances his teaching acknowledge by enrolling through ‘Startalk’ teaching training program.
As a Target Language Expert and Content Developer National Foreign Language Center-NFLC-University of Maryland and other agencies, Mr. Saifi had provided linguistic support for varies project and his task was to select authentic written passages or audio recordings such as classified advertisement, weather reports, letters to the editor, book reviews, newspaper articles, editorials and Radio /TV / Internet news passages, provide a rendering (rough translation) of the target audience text into English, and then assign a passage-difficulty rating based on the Interagency Language Roundtable (ILR) Scale. These authentic texts will be used to develop reading comprehension tests for learners of the target language. His role with NFLC was to provide government linguists with the opportunities to practice the analytical reasoning skills that they will need on the job by developing authentic passage using ILR scale. In short, it helped to bridge the gap between what government linguists learn in the classroom, and what they’ll later need while working in the field.
Ultimately, now Mr. Saifi understands thoroughly the cultural, economic and geopolitical issues Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, Mid East and Arab-speaking countries as well as of the Europeans and North America.
Having in depth linguistic knowledge and passion for the industry, he founded Legal Languages International (LLI) in the City of San Diego in 2000. Now, his company is able to provide linguistic services to the legal community, government agencies, and private sectors. LLI founder, Homayun Kabir Saifi – a professional linguist, legal videographer, and multimedia expert – is committed to offering exceptional services to clients, by making the best use of his expertise and by leveraging his team skills.
