Trolley Folly

Count Smorltalk asks the question: is this the end of the road? When I was little, nobody had had the genius idea of adding wheels to suitcases. I reckon that the late dawning realisation that you could add wheels to bags is a prime...

Who wants to be a ninja? RSI and the...

The issue of interpreter visibility has been discussed many times, and it remains an ongoing discussion. I was reminded of it just recently when I read an interview with an interpreter who repeated the old mantra of the invisible interpreter...

How to perfect perfect speech

Count Smorltalk does voiceover Many moons ago I wrote about heteronyms. You know, those awkward words spelled the same but pronounced differently in different contexts. If you only have a second to think about it, how do you know it is second...

Je pense, donc je suis

Count Smorltalk cogitates on the machinery of translation Je pense, donc je suis. These famous words, penned by Descartes in his 1637 Discours de la Méthode, are a cornerstone of Western philosophy: the fact of thought means that the...

Were Dare Aerate

Count Smorltalk speculates on WER “Well there you are, four candles!’ “No, fork ‘andles! ‘Andles for forks!” If you haven’t ever seen the Two Ronnies sketch The Hardware Shop, do it now: It immortalises the kind of chaos that ensues when...

Artful Intelligence

Count Smorltalk fails the Turing test On some dark days in the depths of the Covid lockdown if you had asked my friends whether text messages emanating from my account were generated by human or by computer, they would have answered that the...

“Note-Taking for Consecutive...

  Count Smorltalk takes a look at the 2nd Edition of Gillies’ seminal work     I was contemplating sending these notes into Mme Blog as proof that I had read the book I was asked to review. And I thought I might leave it at that. But I had a...

Tips on helping interpreters prepare for...

Preparation is the invisible work that contributes to the success of meetings large and small – and one of the main reasons why interpreters are so often heard but not really noticed. Preparation is essential, whether working face-to-face with...