Count Smorltalk asks the question “To be, or not to be, that is the question”. That is the question? Well, if you say so. It doesn’t look or sound much like a question to me. I mean where’s the question mark for starters? I guess that the Bard himself must have had doubts about whether it was a question, so added the bit about it being “the...
Count Smorltalk hogs the microphone again Take a walk in Parc de Bruxelles this spring and you may suspect that someone is lobbing tennis balls from treetop to treetop. These balls of greased lightning zip across the sky trailing green streaks behind them like miniature comets. Blink and you miss them. As they screech overhead the sound barrier...
Count Smorltalk calls a spade a spade “Apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?”1 What indeed? Actually they gave us their language. Well I say gave, but of course they didn’t so much give it as impose it whilst they...
Count Smorltalk talks a load of old cobblers A good friend of mine, and a stupendous interpreter to boot, once made the profound and ever so slightly arch utterance, that the way to be a good interpreter was quite simple: “Know all the words”. Well, thanks for that! Clearly, knowing all the words is going to be a considerable help since words are...
To study conference interpreting was nothing more than a random thought at the time when the economic and financial crisis hit the world the hardest in 2008. I was an executive assistant to vice president of SsangYong Motor Company – one of Korea’s largest automobile companies acquired by SAIC Motor Corporation Limited, which is the...
Count Smorltalk’s pearls “How was it for you?” I asked the nice blonde lady into whose ear I had but moments before been whispering sweet nothings. “Oh, very good. Very good indeed!” she purred. “I so admire your technique”. Now that is a gratifying thing to hear, since a chap can never be too sure whether he’s doing it right. We had bumped into...
Count Smorltalk on the case again The Smorltalk column is back by popular demand, but don’t be surprised if this turns out to be my last. When the NSA terrorism algorithm chomps its way through this piece about murdering delegates I may be forced to up sticks and disappear for a while to a location where the long arm of the law cannot reach me...
So here I am again, leaving home at an ungodly hour, somehow tired already (and the journey hasn’t even started properly!). Not having set foot in the booth for almost four weeks, I admit to myself that I am feeling anxious, dreading the challenge ahead in the City of La Tarte Flambée. As I’m trying hard to relax and catch up on sleep, I remember...
Count Smorltalk reveals all How the Dickens did I end up agreeing to write about interpreting? After all, the only spare time I have is on the Eurostar and those deliciously semi-idle hours are more than adequately filled with vacant flicking through House and Garden Magazine. Ok, on a good day I might take a quick shufti at tomorrow’s docs on...