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...
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 and British national, a Pole by choice. Monika: Jan, let’s first talk about your working languages and...
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 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...