“Interpreting and Technology: Interplay and Transformation” is taking place on 7-9 December 2022 The hybrid conference organised by the Hong Kong Baptist University promises to be an exciting event for interpreters, both established and aspiring; interpreter trainers; researchers; industry watchers; and anybody who is curious about the...
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 and not second? How did you know it was “How to perfect perfect speech” in the title? Context, as always...
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 thinker is real. Later, the words Je pense, donc je suis were translated into...
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 one human says one thing and another human hears something else. Genius.Of course, we interpreters listen...
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 thing the other end was definitely not human. Sadly, at some points during these bleak times I would have...