Letter to Count Smorltalk Dear Count Smorltalk, This could be the beginning of a wonderful friendship. Because I believe you need a friend. I believe you must be terribly lonely. In your Trolley Folly post, you painted this sad self-image of a...
9 reasons not to automate glossary building
Autofilling glossaries is, at best, a zero-sum game. At worst, it’s going to make you make mistakes in the booth.
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Why interpreters need better sound than normal listeners. Bad sound...
Why do interpreters say they need better sound than normal listeners? And what’s wrong with sound quality in video...
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5 reasons why boothmates should share a physical space
Sharing a physical space with your boothmate has numerous professional and personal advantages over working alone from home...
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Superpower or extreme sport? Interpreters’ brains need extra TLC
Interpreters’ brains are extraordinary. When we are hard at work, our brain is carrying out multiple processes simultaneously, in...
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7 Superfoods for Brain Health
Interpreting is one of the most stressful jobs there is. So how do we make sure we stay on top of our game? One of the ways to do...
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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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
Conference interpreter, Paris-based member of AIIC, EN<>PL, EN<>FR, PL<>FR, RU>PL, RU>EN, RU>FR. Former semi-professional chess player, author of several original mathematical theorems, globetrotter. Canadian, Polish...
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...