The Complete Interpreter

Sophie Llewellyn Smith

A podcast to help spoken language conference interpreters or public service interpreters stand out in a competitive market by improving their skills, mindset, and marketing.

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Episodes

Language interference when interpreting
Oct 20 2024
Language interference when interpreting
Hi! Welcome to the Complete Interpreter podcast by the Interpreting Coach.Why 'Complete Interpreter'? Because you're not just a translation machine, you're also a person and a business owner, and I hope to help you take a 360 view of yourself and share some great tried-and-tested strategies to improve your interpreting skills, mindset, use of target language, and marketing.This episode is dedicated to linguistic interference.Here are some of the exercises I suggest:- in simultaneous, start every sentence in a different place from the original.- try making your EVS (décalage) longer.- practise sight translation, giving yourself time to think about whether the output sounds natural.- do gap filling exercises (Cloze tests).- in simultaneous, press pause after an idea, then reformulate it, looking for concise and natural formulations, as opposed to parroting.- work on your target language (collocations, particularly).- when you encounter a tricky word to translate, where it's tempting to use a calque (e.g. précarité in French), look it up and consider the various contexts in which it is used. How can you make sure you're expressing the idea, rather than translating the word?- think about how speakers frame/introduce ideas in your source language(s). Can you think of good ways to render these introductory phrases in your target language?Let me know what you'd like me to talk about next! Sophie (aka The Interpreting Coach)Support the showMy website and blog: https://theinterpretingcoach.comFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/interpretingcoach/Twitter: @terpcoachLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/the-interpreting-coach/Or email me at info@theinterpretingcoach.com
Working on analytical skills
Oct 7 2024
Working on analytical skills
Hi! Welcome to the Complete Interpreter podcast by the Interpreting Coach.Why 'Complete Interpreter'? Because you're not just a translation machine, you're also a person and a business owner, and I hope to help you take a 360 view of yourself and share some great tried-and-tested strategies to improve your interpreting skills, mindset, use of target language, and marketing.This episode is dedicated to one of my hobby horses: analytical skills.I gave several examples from a French speech on the EU's Speech Repository. It's by Michael Picq (speech number 32840). Here are some of the exercises I suggest:- listen to a speech and enter the information in a 4-column table (links, main info, secondary, details)- listen to a speech then write the outline (e.g. bullet points)- work on summarising texts/speeches - do a 'bare bones' simultaneous, just getting the main ideas across- pick an interview, listen to the question and the first few words of the answer. See if you can anticipate what the speaker will say next.- gap filling exercises (Cloze)- listen to a speech in chunks and ask yourself questions: why is the speaker saying this? What are they likely to say next? Is this fact or opinion? What biases does the speaker have? etc.- get a speech transcript and annotate it. You can write little notes based on your background knowledge, or link parts of the speech with arrows, or circle the logical connectors, etc.I highly recommend the Listening & Analysis resource on the ORCIT website (orcit.eu) for more 'theory' and exercises to help with analysis.Let me know what you'd like me to talk about next! Sophie (aka The Interpreting Coach)Support the showMy website and blog: https://theinterpretingcoach.comFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/interpretingcoach/Twitter: @terpcoachLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/the-interpreting-coach/Or email me at info@theinterpretingcoach.com
How to get the best out of a language tutor to improve your retour
Sep 9 2024
How to get the best out of a language tutor to improve your retour
Hi! Welcome to the Complete Interpreter podcast by the Interpreting Coach.Why 'Complete Interpreter'? Because you're not just a translation machine, you're also a person and a business owner, and I hope to help you take a 360 view of yourself and share some great tried-and-tested strategies to improve your interpreting skills, mindset, use of target language, and marketing.In this episode, I talk about how conversation classes or 'language enhancement' can help you improve your B language, and the sorts of exercises you could do with your tutor, e.g. :- preparing a speech in advance, and incorporating 4-5 phrases and one or two useful idioms- watching a video or listening to a podcast, then giving an oral summary- chatting about everyday stuff, e.g. an item you saw on the news- role plays- describing a picture, going from the more concrete to an abstract discussion- listening to your tutor giving a rather informal speech, and turning it into a more formal registergap filling exercisesHere's the link to my blog post (for interpreting students) about working constructively with a tutor.Let me know what you'd like me to talk about next! Sophie (aka The Interpreting Coach)Support the showMy website and blog: https://theinterpretingcoach.comFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/interpretingcoach/Twitter: @terpcoachLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/the-interpreting-coach/Or email me at info@theinterpretingcoach.com
Interpreting a speaker with a strong accent
Feb 19 2024
Interpreting a speaker with a strong accent
Hi! Welcome to the Complete Interpreter podcast by the Interpreting Coach.Why 'Complete Interpreter'? Because you're not just a translation machine, you're also a person and a business owner, and I hope to help you take a 360 view of yourself and share some great tried-and-tested strategies to improve your interpreting skills, mindset, use of target language, and marketing.In this episode, I talk about speakers with strong accents.This is a subject I love, and so I may have become a bit carried away and shared lots of anecdotes (or....what some people may consider waffle) at the beginning of the episode. 😊Here are some suggestions for dealing with speakers with strong accents in simultaneous:don't try to 'translate' - in seeking a balance between sentence-level, 'micro' interpreting and 'macro' interpreting ('the big picture'), err towards the big picture.interpret defensively, i.e. don't commit too early. Give yourself time to understand whole ideas - this may involve having a longer décalage.Keep your output simple. You might want to summarise more than usual.Use salami technique to give yourself more space for listening.Say what you HAVE understood and/or know to be true.Listen out for big ideas in the speech, e.g. is a proposal good or bad? Is the budget increasing or decreasing? Is an amount more or less than last year?Pay attention to anything that conveys the speaker's OPINION, including linking words, intonation, and facial expressions or body language.Make sure you use your background knowledge to fill in the gaps in what you can hear/understand.If necessary, use what the audience knows to interpret in a way that is less explicit, but that the audience will still understand.Even when you're not interpreting, listen to the rest of the meeting to make sure you're up to speed.Prepare the assignment very thoroughly, and if you have the speakers' names, search for them on Youtube to see if you can find videos to practise from.These three things will help you improve your comprehension of strong accents:exposure. Get some practice! (If you're looking for interpreting practice with a variety of English accents, why not check out my collection of modules (E4T) focusing on specific topics, and designed to help interpreters improve their English C? Topics include vaccination, fake news, the circular economy, the gig economy, taxation, and supply chains. Just scroll down my home page to find the links to each module.).enlarging your vocabulary.making sure your working memory is in good shape.I mentioned the following podcast episodes:Tips for keeping your memory in top shapeShort decalage vs salami technique in retourBeing concise in simultaneousHere is Tony Rosado's blog post about heavy accents.Let me know what you'd like me to talk about next! Sophie (aka The InterpretinSupport the showMy website and blog: https://theinterpretingcoach.comFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/interpretingcoach/Twitter: @terpcoachLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/the-interpreting-coach/Or email me at info@theinterpretingcoach.com