Why do interpreters say they need better sound than normal listeners? And what’s wrong with sound quality in video-conferencing?Here’s a quick guide. Why is my interpreter saying the sound quality isn’t good enough? I can hear the speaker just fine!There are two issues here. The first is that interpreters need to be able to hear...
Sharing a physical space with your boothmate has numerous professional and personal advantages over working alone from home. Covid lockdowns and the rise of the Remote Simultaneous Interpreting (RSI) platform have had an extraordinary effect on the interpreting profession. One of the big changes is that conference interpreters are no longer...
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...
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. It was something along the lines of, “I know I’ve done a good job when no one knows I was there.”...
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...