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 suitcase-lugging, colleague-bugging conference interpreter who had to wrestle through the work day. What...
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 example of linguistic determinism: we called it luggage because we lugged it. End of. I was lucky to...
Count Smorltalk takes up rocket science As I was just saying, I’m going to give up interpreting and try something a little easier. You see, I just don’t know if I can do this much longer. It’s not the interpreting. No, that’s the easy bit. Bring on the interpreting! No, it’s all the other stuff. All the stuff that has to happen before I even get...
Count Smorltalk pulls his hair out It lies in wait in at the cheese counter – Cornish Yarg? Bath Blue? Double Gloucester?… Decisions, decisions! It ambushes you in the socks department – cotton Argyles? woollen cable-knits? thermal ribbed?…. Decisions, decisions! It has you by the short and curlies in the Ford dealership –Oxford White? Sterling...
Recently I realised that I have been interpreting for 34 years and perhaps it’s as good a reason as any to write a few lines for this great blog. But what should I write about? The fee-battle – still raging, but a lost cause if you ask me? The lack of solidarity between interpreters – not really an issue, they tend to be nice to each...
I’ve just read a very disheartening interview with an anonymous conference interpreter, who was basically explaining the doom, gloom and misery of working in this field. Indeed, it is a difficult profession, with no financial guarantees, with no major possibilities of career development. Indeed, it is often a thankless job, since the interpreter...
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...