If there was one topic it was impossible to get around this week, it was the presidential election in the US of A. And as seemingly everyone has had to have their say, I thought I’d share my two cents worth, as well. But don’t worry, it’s not going to be political in any way. Nope. The thing I would like to get off my chest, now that Donald Trump …
interpreting
I recently decided to replace the netbook I had been using in the booth with a tablet computer. Actually, this was long overdue, as the netbook – not the fastest to begin with – had been getting slower and slower, taking somewhere around 5 minutes just to start up and deciding to freeze up at the most inopportune moments because its little RAM was simply not up to the task …
Just this week I had to remind my interpreting students how important it is to address people correctly – and then this pops up on Facebook: This won’t be part of their exam in two weeks – but it would have been interesting to see how they deal with it… To be fair though, I wouldn’t have known all the correct translations, either… Would you have?
The news is not new in itself (the post is from February), but it was new to me – even though the content of it wasn’t. (Have I confused you yet?) What am I talking about? The fact that the interpreters of the European Parliament have asked its Members to speak slowly and use their mother tongue when saying something (read the article here). Anyone who has ever interpreted knows …
Last week I was on an interpreting assignment with a colleague regarding finance matters for a German company. The clients were two Americans, the rest (about 20 people) were Germans. The interpretation into English was simultaneous through earphones, when the Americans spoke, consecutive out loud, with no microphones used by anyone. The acoustics were less than ideal, and the German speakers often forgot to make sure we could hear them, …
The principal of the school I teach at a couple of hours a week recently asked me about my opinion on video remote interpreting, since he had just learned of it and was extremely fascinated and utterly taken with it. While he saw only the positive sides and opportunities of it, my first thought was of a more sober nature: it’s harder to do (in my experience, consisting of having …
If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you’ll know that I also teach interpreting, at-sight-translation and CAT-tools at the (still) new Fachakademie für Übersetzen und Dolmetschen in Weiden. This year, the first class has its final examinations to become “staatlich geprüfter Übersetzer (und Dolmetscher)” and things have been a bit hectic because it is new territory for all the teachers, as well. Today we received the schedule for …
Yesterday I had my first interpreting assignment at a press conference, doing a mixture of simultaneous and consecutive interpreting. It was at the organic trade fair “Biofach” in Nuremberg, and my colleague and I were told beforehand that we would be interpreting for two ladies from Mexico and the Philippines respectively. Since most of the press conference happened in German, we were to whisper into our charge’s ear simultaneously, and …
This week I was interpreting for two days during the works council meeting of a large international company. On the first day, the works council met alone, discussing internal things and various issues they wanted to talk about with the management on the next day. There were only two English speaking members, none of them a native speaker, but they didn’t say much, so we mostly had to interpret into …
I’m sure by now everyone has heard of the South African sign language interpreter who was on stage with and supposed to interpret among others the speech by President Obama during the memorial for Nelson Mandela this week. It even made the evening news here in Germany! (Here is one of many articles detailing what happened.) I don’t know sign language (except for “Thank you”), but even I could …
Since I started teaching interpretation, I have had to think a lot about what it means to be an interpreter, what knowledge, skills and also talent are required, and how to teach this to or, in the case of the talent, how to find out if they have it and then coax it out of the students and help them develop it. I have found some books on techniques …
I was on an interpreting assignment yesterday afternoon, relieving a colleague who had been working the morning shift at a conference organized by the city of N. Having worked for them before under less-than-perfect conditions (that’ll be the topic of another post), I was curious what the setup would be like. When I got there, the booth sat in nice view of the stage and screen, the technician was …
I debated with myself whether to write this post or not. To ‘fess up or not to ‘fess up… Is it professional or not to talk about this? Will this hurt the way (potential) clients see me? Might it maybe even help? And finally: Don’t most freelancers have these times at some point in their careers? In the end I decided to do it: I confess. I confess that …
I was out of town the last two days, interpreting for that new customer from Switzerland who had asked me to make them offers including technology (I wrote about this here). Everything went really well, both the customer and the guests I interpreted for were full of praise and thanked me repeatedly for my excellent interpretation, and the setup with microphone and headphones, sitting behind a partition worked surprisingly …
Agencies – for many translators and interpreters, it almost seems to be a dirty word, probably because of the bad experiences they had with them. I know there are many different types of agencies out there, and so far I’ve had the great fortune to work with mostly those that are worth the name, not what I call “re-bagers” (“Umtüter” in German), meaning someone who simply passes a job …
Reading Nataly Kelly’s article “The Words We Use to Describe Ourselves” published in the October issue of the ATA Chronicle, I came across the neologism “interpretator“, a hybrid of the words translator and interpreter. I think it should become the new word for those of us who both translate and interpret. I do, so from now on I will refer to myself as interpretator… Who’s with me? 😉 …
I apologize beforehand, but this is going to be a bit of a rant… Comments and differing views are of course welcome! 😉 Source: Wikipedia I was watching the movie “The 13th Warrior” the other day. Not wanting to evaluate the movie or the story, there are some things I just have to say, because it’s just so… impossible not to say anything about them as a language professional. …
I read this article about natural translators and musicians a while ago, and it got me thinking. Being a musician myself and having started my musical education at the tender age of three, I wonder if my musical talent has anything to do with my linguistic ability – or if it maybe even helped it emerge. To be sure, I’ve met plenty of musicians, including professional ones, who have …
Although I had been thinking about it off and on for quite a while now, I only recently decided to go ahead and purchase me – a Dragon. One reason why it took me so long (I first heard about him at the BDÜ Conference in Berlin 2009) was that I thought I had to purchase a license for every language I work with, i.e. one for German, one …
Yes, I’m German. So using beer and work in the same sentence is therefore absolutely normal, you say? Well, it may be more common and less frowned upon to have an alcoholic beverage during lunch time over here, but honestly, I don’t drink (alcohol) while working!! (Just liters and liters of water, tea and coffee.) I still get to use beer and work together, though, because last week I got …
Last week I was the interpreter at a German-Australian wedding “out in the country”. I had requested and received the mayor’s speech beforehand so I could translate it – anyone who has ever interpreted at a wedding knows how fond the officials are of quotes, poems, pithy sayings and clever plays of words, and how hard it is to translate those off the cuff?! The speech consisted of five pages …
At the interpreting assignment yesterday, my usual partner in crime was on vacation, so I had the pleasure of meeting a new colleague. She is just starting out, both as an interpreter and a translator, and of course was full of questions on how to find work and clients. As expected, she asked for my “secret” after hearing that I had started freelancing not so terribly long ago myself, yet …
So I just finished my first interpreting job over several days for a direct business client. That’s two firsts in one go! And it went really well, which makes me very happy! 🙂 It was the first direct client for me that was not a private person needing some documents translated or someone to interpret at their wedding. How I found this client? Through a colleague who called me before …
Dear fellow sworn translators and interpreters. Most of you have probably been in this situation before: a customer, a private person, wants to get married to someone from another country, so they need a ton of documents translated and certified for the civil registry. If one of the two has been married before, add to the usual birth certificate, visas or what have you the divorce decree, which can be …
