Tag: conference interpreting
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AI-made podcasts by NotebookLM and Jellypod
AI generated podcasts – are they any good for meeting preparation, or for conference interpreter training? My student Rebecca Bremer, a real podcast aficionado, wanted to find out and did some testing. Here’s what she has found out: Guest article by Rebecca Bremer, student of conference interpreting at TH Köln General considerations Podcasts have become…
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Interpreting Europe – navigating the AI landscape without leaving anyone to their own devices
One minute summary Say “I don’t know” and “it depends” with confidence (Get to) know possible use cases of Automatic Speech Translation (make students) understand AI Let’s do meaningful empirical research Barely a month and a half into the new year, a lot has already been said about AI in conference interpreting, after last week’s…
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Testing Cymo Note
Testing software in a group of tech-crazy interpreters is so much more entertaining and insightful than just playing around on my own. AIIC’s AI workstream (link to LinkedIn profile) recently embarked on its first team testing session, and we chose Cymo Note as our first subject of interest. Cymo offers a whole range of support…
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What’s conference interpreting after all?
How to define “conference interpreting” We will be celebrating AIIC’s 70th anniversary in July. Earlier this year, we celebrated the German VKD’s 20th anniversary in Berlin, where I handed over the responsibility of chairing the VKD admissions committee. Both occasions as well as many inspiring conversations I have had recently left me musing about a…
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Cognitive sustainability for conference interpreters (and other high intensity knowledge workers)
Cognitive sustainability Flight-shaming, banning fast fashion, upcycling old milk cartons, taking financial precautions for when we are old or a pandemic strikes – it’s sustainability all around. But what about our most precious working resource – our brain? Is “cognitive sustainability” a thing at all? Sustainability There are many definitions of sustainability. Although originally coined…
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Kognitive Nachhaltigkeit bei der Wissensarbeit
Kognitive Nachhaltigkeit Es begab sich in diesem Januar 2023 vor dem Dolmetscher-für-Dolmetscher-Workshop (#dfd2023, organisiert durch das fabelhafte Fortbildungsteam von @aiic_de), der sich dem übergroßen Thema der Nachhaltigkeit verschrieben hatte, dass ich mir Gedanken machte zu der Frage, wie kognitiv nachhaltig wir eigentlich sind. Wie es sich gehört, stand am Anfang die Frage: Was ist das…
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Some thoughts on the importance of trust in conference interpreting | by Karin Walker and Anja Rütten
The first time I (Anja) worked with somebody I only knew virtually, without any personal connections or references, was back in 2001, still in times of the Deutsche Mark: I worked on a Spanish translation project together with a complete stranger, a colleague I made contact with via an electronic mail list for translators. We…
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The pivot to remote online teaching on the MA in Conference Interpreting in Cologne: Lessons learned from an unexpected experience
This paper describes and critically evaluates the new online setting encountered when the MA in Conference Interpreting at the Institute of Translation and Multilingual Communication at TH Köln – University of Applied Sciences, Cologne, was forced to move completely online as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. The pedagogical and interactional challenges of the pivot…
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No paper, no travel – can we get any greener these days?
No more traveling, paper coffee cups and the like … instead it’s videoconference interpreting, paperless office, and paperless booth (or no booth at all, for that matter) … so could we be any more eco-friendly at all? We could indeed – after all, we are generating tons of digital waste in our “new normal” everyday…
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Save the Date – Innovation in Interpreting Summit – February 23-25, 2021
Looking forward to talking about How to be boothmates without sharing a booth on the Innovation in Interpreting Summit, hosted by our two favourite tech geeks, Josh Goldsmith & Alex Drechsel, aka @techforword. Registration for free tickets will start soon! Hope to see you there on 23-25 February 🙂 Anja About the author Anja Rütten…
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DeepL – not too bad, even if it turns marriage into war
After Microsoft Translate and Google Translate, last week I decided to take a closer look at DeepL‘s beta desktop application. I had to prepare over 50 Power Point slides filled with text about quite a number of rulings of the European Court of Justice. I was pretty sure these would be read out at high…
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Deliberate Practice – What’s in it for Conference Interpreters
The one thing that strikes me most about deliberate practice is the notion of immediate feedback. How could that possibly work in simultaneous interpreting? You can’t just interrupt each other when interpreting, can you? Well, most certainly not while on the job, but could you give immediate feedback when practising in a silent booth or…
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Great Piece of Research on Terminology Assistance for Conference Interpreters
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Word Clouds – much nicer than Word Lists
I have been wondering for quite some time if word lists are the best thing I can come up with as a visual support in the booth. They are not exactly appealing to the eye, after all … So I started to play around with word cloud generators a bit to see if they are…
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About Term Extraction, Guesswork and Backronyms – Impressions from JIAMCATT 2018 in Geneva
JIAMCATT is the International Annual Meeting on Computer-Assisted Translation and Terminology, a IAMLAP taskforce where most international organizations, various national institutions and academic bodies exchange information and experience in the field of terminology and translation. For this year’s JIAMCATT edition in Geneva, I had the honour of running a workshop on Tools for Interpreters –…
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Speechpool, InterpretimeBank & InterpretersHelp – the Perfect Trio for Deliberate Practice in Conference Interpreting
After testing the practice module of InterpretersHelp last month, the whole practice thing got me hooked. Whilst InterpretersHelp gives us the technical means to record our interpretation together with the original and receive feedback from peers, there are two more platforms out there which cover further aspects of the practice workflow: InterpretimeBank and Speechpool. To…
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Cleopatra: an App for Automating Symbols for Consecutive Interpreting Note-Taking – Guest Article by Lourdes de la Torre Salceda
+++ For Spanish scroll down +++ The perfect symbol has just come to mind! I’ve been racking my brain for ages and I got it, finally! I’ve been inspired! But where should I write it down, now that I’m sunbathing on the beach! Has something similar ever occurred to you? As a millennial the first…
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New Term Extraction Features in InterpretBank and InterpretersHelp – Thumbs up!
Extracting terminology from preparatory texts into a term database seems to be the hot topic of the moment, judging by what the two most active and innovative CAI (computer-assisted interpreting) tools, InterpretBank and InterpretersHelp, are working on at the moment. So while I am still waiting to become a Windows beta tester of Intragloss, the…
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Flashterm revisited. A guest article by Anne Berres
+++ für deutsche Fassung bitte runterscrollen +++ One of everything, please! Have you ever wished there was a terminology management system (TMS) that would provide all the functions you are looking for and prepare for the conference largely automatically? Wouldn’t that be splendid? You’d just have to type in the event’s title and the…
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Extract Terminology in No Time | OneClick Terms | Ruckzuck Terminologie extrahieren
[for German scroll down] What do you do when you receive 100 pages to read five minutes before the conference starts? Right, you throw the text into a machine and get out a list of technical terms that give you a rough overview of what it’s all about. Now finally, it looks like this dream…
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Paperless Preparation at International Organisations – an Interview with Maha El-Metwally
Maha El-Metwally has recently written a master’s thesis at the University of Geneva on preparation for conferences of international organisations using tablets. She is a freelance conference interpreter for Arabic A, English B, French and Dutch C domiciled in Birmingham. How come you know so much about the current preparation practice of conference interpreters at so…
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Zeit sparen bei der Videovorbereitung | How to save time when preparing video speeches
Videos als Vorbereitungsmaterial für eine Konferenz haben unzählige Vorteile. Der einzige Nachteil: Sie sind ein Zeitfresser. Man kann nicht wie bei einem schriftlichen Text das Ganze überfliegen und wichtige Stellen vertiefen, markieren und hineinkritzeln. Zum Glück hat Alex Drechsel sich in einem Blogbeitrag dazu Gedanken gemacht und ein paar Tools ausgegraben, die dem Elend ein…
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Booth notes wanted for a study | Kabinenzettel für Studienzwecke gesucht
Dear fellow conference interpreters! For a study on information management in the booth, I am currently collecting sample booth notes (those papers you scribble terminology, names, numbers, acronyms or whatever on). So if you would like to make your personal contribution to this study, it would be great if you could email or whatsapp me…
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Hello from the other side – Chinese and Terminology Tools. A guest article by Felix Brender 王哲謙
As Mandarin Chinese interpreters, we understand that we are somewhat rare beings. After all, we work with a language which, despite being a UN language, is not one you’d encounter regularly. We wouldn’t expect colleagues working with other, more frequently used languages to know about the peculiarities of Mandarin. This applies not least to terminology…
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Booth-friendly terminology management: Glossarmanager.de
Believe it or not, only a few weeks ago I came across just another booth-friendly terminology management program (or rather it was kindly brought to my attention by a student when I talked about the subject at Heidelberg University). It has been around since 2008 and completely escaped my attention. So I am all the…
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Airtable.com – a great replacement for Google Sheets | tolle Alternative zu Google Sheets
+++ for English see below +++ Mit der Terminologieverwaltung meiner Träume muss man alles können: Daten teilen, auf allen Geräten nutzen und online wie offline darauf zugreifen (wie mit Interpreters’ Help/Boothmate für Mac oder auch Google Sheets), möglichst unbedenklich Firmenterminologie und Hintergrundinfos des Kunden dort speichern (wie bei Interpreters’ Help), sortieren und filtern (wie in…
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Dictation Software instead of Term Extraction? | Diktiersoftware als Termextraktion für Dolmetscher?
+++ for English see below +++ Als neulich mein Arzt bei unserem Beratungsgespräch munter seine Gedanken dem Computer diktierte, anstatt zu tippen, kam mir die Frage in den Sinn: “Warum mache ich das eigentlich nicht?” Es folgte eine kurze Fachsimpelei zum Thema Diktierprogramme, und kaum zu Hause, musste ich das natürlich auch gleich ausprobieren. Das…
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GetSEMPER.com – Charmant-penetranter Vokabeltrainer | Persistant, though charming: your personal vocab trainer
“Aktivierung von Schlüsselterminologie”, “Memor(is)ierung” oder “Vokabelpauken” – egal, wie man es nennt: Eine gewisse Basisausrüstung an Fachterminologie muss einfach ins Hirn. Hierzu kann man sich Listen ausdrucken, Karteikarten schreiben oder eine Reihe von Apps und Programmen nutzen (Anki, Phase 6, Langenscheidt und Pons wurden mir bei einer Spontanumfrage unter Kollegen genannt, auch die InterpretBank bietet…
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How to build one nice multilingual file from several PDFs | Aus zwei (PDFs) mach eins – übersichtliche mehrsprachige PDFs erstellen | Cómo crear un archivo PDF multilingüe
+++ for English see below +++ para español, aun más abajo +++ Wir kennen ihn alle: Den über hundert Seiten langen Geschäftsbericht, vollgepackt mit Grafiken, Tabellen und wertvollen Informationen, und das – Halleluja! – nicht nur im Original, sondern auch noch in 1a-Übersetzung(en) . Einen besseren Fundus für die Dolmetschvorbereitung kann man sich kaum vorstellen.…
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Digital dementia and conference interpreters – article published in Multilingual July/August 2015
To read this article on effects of digitalisation on conference interpreters’ memory and learning habits, please follow the link to multilingual.com (English only). —————- About the author Anja Rütten is a freelance conference interpreter for German (A), Spanish (B), English (C) and French (C) based in Düsseldorf, Germany. She has specialised in knowledge management…
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Summary table of terminology tools for interpreters | Übersichtstabelle Terminologietools für Dolmetscher | cuadro sinóptico de programas de gestión de terminología para intérpretes
This is an overview of all the terminology management tools for conference interpreters that I am aware of. I will try to keep the information in the table up to date. If there is anything wrong, feel free to post a comment! Dies ist eine Übersicht über alle Terminologieverwaltungstools für Konferenzdolmetscher, die mir bekannt sind.…
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Handschriftlich notieren oder tippen – was sagt die Forschung? | Handwriting vs. typing – what does research tell us?
+++ for English see below +++ Egal, in welchem Kreis von Dolmetschern man darüber redet, geschätzte 10 % schwören immer Stein und Bein, dass sie sich die Dinge besser merken können, wenn sie sie mit Stift und Papier festhalten. Sie pfeifen auch auf die Vorteile des papierlosen Büros, darauf, ihre Unterlagen durchsuchen und Glossare sortieren…
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Booth-friendly terminology management – Flashterm.eu
+++ for English see below +++ Wer – womöglich auch fürs Übersetzen – eigentlich lieber eine “richtige” Terminologieverwaltung hätte, die obendrein aber noch kabinenfreundlich ist, der sollte einmal bei Flashterm von der Eisenrieth Dokumentations GmbH vorbeischauen. Flashterm basiert auf Filemaker und bietet die Klassiker der Eintragsmöglichkeiten wie Sachgebiete, Synonyme, Kontext usw. , aber auch das…
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Not-To-Do Lists and Not-To-Learn Words
+++ For English see below +++ To-Do-Listen sind eine feine Sache: Einmal aufgeschrieben, kann man lästige Aufgaben zumindest zeitweilig des Gedächtnisses verweisen, und überhaupt ist man viel organisierter und effizienter. Ich zumindest gieße seit Ewigkeiten alles, was nicht bei drei auf den Bäumen ist, in eine Excel-Tabelle – seien es nun Geld, Arbeit, Adressbuch oder…
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Organise your meeting documents with MS-OneNote – Sitzungsunterlagen perfekt im Zugriff mit Onenote
+++ for English see below +++ Warum scheuen viele Dolmetscher eigentlich davor zurück, völlig papierfrei in die Kabine zu gehen, und wechseln lieber zwischen einem Stapel ausgedruckter Dokumente auf der einen Seite und einem Computer als reine Vokabelsuchmaschine auf der anderen Seite hin und her? Ich vermute, der Grund ist dieser: Man kann einfach nie…
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Verträge auf dem Smartphone oder Tablet unterschreiben +++ Signing contracts on your smartphone or tablet
+++ For English see below +++ Man kennt es ja: Gerade liegt man unter Palmen, da schneit per Mail der Vertrag für den nächsten Auftrag hinein und will sofort unterschrieben zurückgeschickt werden. Und nun? Zur Rezeption laufen, Vertrag ausdrucken lassen (supervertraulich) und unterschrieben zurückfaxen? Natürlich nicht. Denn zu meiner übergroßen Freude habe ich in meinem…
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Do interpreters suffer from decision fatigue? – Entscheidungsmüdigkeit beim Dolmetschen?
+++ for English see below +++ Entscheidungen sind anstrengend. Chicken or Pasta, Sekt oder Selters, Windows oder Mac, vom Blatt dolmetschen oder frei – den ganzen Tag müssen wir uns entscheiden, und je mehr Entscheidungen sich aneinander reihen, desto entscheidungsmüder werden wir, desto weniger gründlich wägen wir die Möglichkeiten also ab oder bleiben im Zweifel…
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Booth-friendly terminology management revisited – 2 newcomers
The nice thing about blogging is that if you miss something out, you are safe to find out within 24 hours. Interestingly, the programs presented in my last article are obviously the “veterans” of terminology management for conference interpreters (most of them have been around for years, since long before tablets and smartphones appeared). Two…
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Booth-friendly terminology management programs for interpreters – a market snapshot
– This one comes in English, as many non-German-speaking colleagues have asked for it. – This article is meant to give you a very brief overview of the terminology management programs that I am aware of (in alphabetical order), made for simultaneous interpreters. I have tried to highlight the merits and downsides that in my…