Sad as much as we are of missing the outstanding interpreting event of the century (literally speaking!), “100 Years of Conference Interpreting”, in Geneve (3-4 October)?
We have a palliative solution! Below you can find the links to watch the videos of the entire event. Enjoy!
2. Keynote presentation on conference interpreter practice
Prof. Jesús Baigorri Jalón, University of Salamanca, Spain
3. Pecha Kucha presentations on on conference interpreter practice
Jonathan Downie & Graham Turner, Pedro Luis Queiros Duarte & Hugo Filipe dos Reis Cosme, Maya De Wit & Onno Crasborn, Anne Leahy, Maria Mikhailovskaia & Andrei Kalini, Carlo Eugeni & Rocio Bernabé Caro
4. Panel on conference interpreting practice
Prof. Jesus Baigorri Jalon, University of Salamanca, Spain Matthew Ball, Director, Translation Bureau, Canadian Government Juan Carlos Jiménez Marín, Director, DGLINC, European Parliament Uros Peterc, President, Int’lAssoc.of Conference Interpreters Moderator: Barry Slaughter Olsen, Professor, Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey
CONFERENCE INTERPRETING RESEARCH
5. Keynote presentation on conference interpreter research
Prof. Alexis Hervais-Adelman, University of Zurich, Switzerland
6. Pecha Kucha presentations on conference interpreting research
Franz Pöchhacker & Monika Stögerer, Rhona Amos, Yanping Dong, Laura Keller, Laura Babcock & Silvia Fanton & Elisabet Tiselius & Fredrik Ullén, Eléonore Arbona, Yinghui Li & Yanping Dong, Xi Yun Yang, Camille Collard & Bart Defrancq, Koen Plevoets & Bart Defrancq
7. Panel on conference interpreting research
Prof. Alexis Hervais-Adelman, University of Zurich, Switzerland Bart Defrancq, Professor, University of Ghent, Belgium Ebru Diriker, Professor, Bogaziçi University, Turkey Franz Pöchhacker, Professor, University of Vienna Moderator: Kilian G. Seeber, Professor, FTI, University of Geneva
DAY 2:
CONFERENCE INTERPRETING TRAINING
1. Keynote presentation
Prof. Jacolyn Harmer, Middlebury Institute of Int’l Studies, USA
2. Pecha Kucha presentations on conference interpreter training
Marie Diur & Lucia Ruiz Rosendo, Helen Campbell, Carmen Maria Delgado Luchner & Nathalie Loiseau, Marcin Feder, Alicja Okoniewska, Conor Martin, Dirk Verbeke, Joshua Goldsmith Michelle Hof.
3. Panel on conference interpreter training
Prof. Jacolyn Harmer, Middlebury Institute of Int’l Studies, USA Javier Hernandez Saseta, Head, Multilingualism and Interpreter Training Support Unit, DGSCIC, European Commission Ian Newton, Senior Lecturer, FTI, University of GenevaClaudio Fantinuoli, Lecturer, University of Mainz Moderator: Monica Varela García, Chief, Interpretation Service, ILO
Christopher Thiery, Honorary President, AIIC Florika Fink-Hooijer, Director General, DGSCIC, European Commission Agnieszka Walter-Drop, Director General, DGLINC, European Parliament Marie Muttilainen, Director, Interpretation, European Courtof Justice Marie Diur, Chief Interpreter, UNOG Moderators: Jonathan Downie, Alexander Drechsel, Alexander Gansmeier (Troublesome Terps)
From left (badass polyglot) to right (bright & professional): Alessandra Vita, Francesca Manicardi, Alice Bertinotti, and Olga Jeczmyk.
BP will probably sound familiar to you already if you are a translator or interpreter. It is a brilliant translation conference, organised on an annual basis by Csaba Bán since 2014: BP14 in Budapest, Hungary; BP15 in Zagreb, Croatia; BP16 in Prague, Czech Republic; BP17 again in Budapest; BP18 in Vienna, Austria. This year it was Bologna’s turn, in Italy, where the main conference was held on May 2nd and 3rd, preceded by several workshops on May 1st. It has been my first BP and surely not my last one.
What does BP stand for?
According to the BP story available on the website, BP stands for ‘business + practice’, even though it has been commonly associated with ‘badass polyglot’ and ‘bright & professional’, but also ‘birthday party’ (since this year the first conference day was Csaba’s birthday).
May 1st
On May 1st, the following four different workshops were offered. Unfortunately I only arrived in the evening for the welcome reception, so I cannot share my impressions.
May 2nd
On May 2nd, speakers were divided in three tracks (always very hard to choose just one session) and gave one-hour-long talks.
My day started with Tess Whitty‘s session on how to find direct clients (here you can read the full thread on Twitter):
Tess Whitty, BP19
1) To find ideal direct clients, try to clone the ones you already have to get similar ones (only if you like the ones you have, otherwise skip the first step!).
2) Find where your ideal clients are and put yourself in their shoes.
3) Help them know EXACTLY what your brand is all about (e.g. use testimonials or surveys).
4) Decide on where to look for clients (e.g. go to industry events).
5) Pick 2-3 marketing methods that work for you (e.g. get published in clients’ journals; contact them on social media; send warm emails; call them; get a website, and also a LinkedIn account).
After listening to her podcast for ages when driving to interpreting assignments, it was great to finally meet her in person.
Alessandra, BP19. Picture credits: Carlos la Orden
Then I apparently didn’t have much choice but to attend my own talk, on practical strategies to try to work less, under better conditions, while making more money (the ideal goal of every freelancer, I guess).
Later I attended Alice Bertinotti‘s session on remote interpreting (here you can read the full thread on Twitter). Alice started talking about the history behind this phenomenon, with its first use in 1973 in Australia.
Alice Bertinotti, BP19
Then we moved to the related terminology: ‘distance interpreting’ can be with a direct view (‘teleconference interpreting’: ‘videoconference’ or ‘audioconference interpreting’) or without it (‘remote interpreting’: ‘video’ or ‘audio remote interpreting’).
After seeing the different possible setups, technical requirements and infrastructure, we saw its challenges (e.g. liability; obstacles to an effective communication; more stress and fatigue for interpreters compared to onsite assignments, even when good conditions are provided; etc.).
After very tasty tortellini for lunch, I found the Excel session by Javier Ortiz, a fellow interpreter, extremely interesting (here you can read the full thread on Twitter). I am an Excel-geek myself and love checking the cost-effectiveness behind each project, but Javier and his partner, Adam, use it at a whole other level!
Javier Ortiz, BP19
They track their working time with the app atWork to know exactly for which activity they’re using it, whether billable or not. With Excel formulas, among many aspects, they can see exactly how cost-effective a project is taking into account both billable and non-billable hours; where their income comes from exactly, and so on. I will surely implement some of what they are doing to gain more insights on my business.
Irene Koukia talked then about how to backup and protect our data in a GDPR-compliant way. For example, she does a daily backup of her files on Dropbox or Google Drive, among others, and then she adds a second layer of GDPR-compliant encryption, for example with Boxcryptor.
Irene Koukia, BP19
The final session of the day I attended was Jo Rourke‘s talk on retainers. She is indeed an amazing and extremely-funny speaker; plus, the topic was very far from usual, so the attention was constantly high (here you can find the full thread on Twitter).
Jo Rourke, BP19
Retainers should only be used in certain situations, with only specific clients (the ones who pass her 4 Rs: Relationship, Reliability, Return on investment, and Reward), and only if it is a win-win situation for both her and the client, with the following benefits:
Only certain kind of work and documents can fit well with a retainer model. Furthermore, you should clarify very well beforehand the expectations, the scope of the work, the availability, etc. In any case, it is recommendable to start with a test period, and to go on with it only if the experience has been positive for both.
May 3rd
The last day was easier because we didn’t have tough choices to make. We were all grouped in a single room, in which all speakers gave 20-minute talks, moderated by the former-translator and funny comedian, Konstantin Kisin.
The day started with Caroline Alberoni on how to impress clients and make them fall in love with you (here you can read the full thread on Twitter). Caroline recommended that we should never leave our clients in the dark. We should inform them of future unavailabilities in advance and set OoO replies, as well as let them know of any issues during a project.
Caroline Alberoni, BP19
We should adapt to their needs and to their way of working, even when it is not ideal for us (e.g. receiving a translation as text in an e-mail, instead of a Word attachment). We should also mirror the tone clients use to speak to us. To stand out, we should go the extra mile: deliver earlier when possible; notify typos in the source; etc. Caroline reminded us that it all comes down to empathy and that a smile can do wonders. If we work like machines, we’ll be replaced by them.
Olga Jeczmyk-Nowak spoke about how to get more clients in a non-spammy way (here you can read the full thread on Twitter). She recommended having a strong online visibility and studying about our clients to offer a customised solution and stand out from our competitors.
Olga Jeczmyk-Nowak, BP19
After Olga, it was the turn of Susanne Präsent-Winkler on how to raise our rates. She underlined that our prices are not equal to our income, since a big part ends up as taxes (according to her, we can also remind clients of this when they complain about our fees). A good tip she gave is listing in our quotes and invoices all the phases related to the job to make us stand out from the competition. Our service will look more comprehensive.
Susanne Präsent-Winkler, BP19
Peter Oehmen spoke about how to deal with difficult customers. Conflicts might be due to differences in perception, scarce or limited resources, unfair treatment, or independent work. There are different strategies to deal with conflicts, a good one being compromising and the ideal one being finding consensus.
Peter Oehmen, BP19
Jaquelina Guardamagna‘s session was on soft skills, which are a mixture of inter- and intra-personal skills, or “people skills” (here you can read the full thread on Twitter).
Jaquelina Guardamagna, BP19
She regards them as key for our business, and they can be used to soft sell, namely “a sales approach that features subtle language and a non-aggressive technique.”
Magda Phili‘s topic was instead self-promotion. According to her, we should find the method that best works for us and that is compatible with our personality. She also underlined that humility, collaboration, and perseverance are the key ingredients to become a top-notch translator.
Magda Phili, BP19
I truly loved Vasiliki Prestidge‘s storytelling session on professionalism, where she shared several fun anecdotes to make her point (here you can read the full thread on Twitter).
Vasiliki Prestidge, BP19
Our work clearly doesn’t end with an invoice. We have to make sure that our clients are satisfied and say thank you once in a while. We should treat all our clients with the same amount of professionalism (we never know who is our “golden package”, in reference to the Fedex ad). We are the most valuable asset of our business; so we should act as one.
Sherif Abuzid shared with us some productivity hacks (here you can read the full thread on Twitter).
Sherif Abuzid, BP19
One is following the deep work principle, a “process of performing ‘professional activities… in a state of distraction-free concentration that pushes your cognitive capabilities to their limit…’”. In other words, he recommends mono-tasking to get in the flow. We can apply this principle by planning for tomorrow (only 5 minutes needed), focusing on goals rather than only on tasks, and setting tight deadlines for all activities. He underlined that it’s not the quantity of tasks we do that matters but rather if they are important for us and our business.
Francesca Manicardi mentioned the importance of diversification, listing some pros and cons of providing several services instead of only one or two.
Francesca Manicardi, BP19
Timothy Barton‘s talk was about translation in developing countries, whether it is a threat or an opportunity. Since many of us are not familiar with certain markets, it was an interesting topic.
Timothy Barton, BP19
Iwona Piatkowska spoke about effective time management for translators (here you can read the full thread on Twitter). Work chunking is an effective strategy to be productive, and progress tracking has positive psychological effects. As a consequence, we should do 50-60% of the project as soon as possible, set a timer to see how productive we are, and avoid the unnecessary procrastination.
Iwona Piatkowska, BP19
Carlos la Orden Tovar was a great closing speaker, who superbly mixed together many truths with a lot of humour in the same recipe (here you can see the full thread on Twitter). Like in the food industry, Carlos explained that we have different options when it comes to running our business, from untargeted and forgettable services to luxury and high-end solutions. An additional successful option he mentioned is his “classic revisited”, whose features you can find in the picture below.
Carlos la Orden Tovar, BP19
He underlined that it’s not all about the clients, but that it rather depends a lot on us when deciding how to run our business and what service we can offer. In order to deploy our killer strategy, he recommends: studying our ideal clients; engaging with them and finding them; listing our needs; planning buffer time, and considering proper training.
Csaba Bán, BP19 organiser
The conference ended with the words of its amazing organiser, Csaba, who explained the reasons behind choosing Bologna and announced that next year BP20 will be held in Nuremberg, Germany, on April 24th and 25th. I personally find incredible how he could take care of everything all on his own (with the help of his wife, but without a team of 100 people) and treated both attendees and us speakers so well, so thanks so much again for the wonderful experience.
Official group picture of BP19 Bologna
P.S. This post will probably be updated as soon as the official pictures (far more decent than mine) and the announcement of the virtual conference will be made. Stay tuned and see you soon! 🙂
In the last post we talked about the challenges in remote conference interpreting, especially focusing on simultaneous interpreting. Today, instead, I’d like to focus on remote consecutive interpreting, more in particular considering the over-the-phone modality.
Apart from onsite interpreting jobs (95% of the cases for me), more and more often in the last 3-4 years I have provided over-the-phone remote consecutive interpreting services for a US consulting company. It is for small meetings of only two people in general, in which a consultant or an investor from a country contacts an “expert” of the field based in another country, to carry out a market studies or tackle financial enquiries.
I actually started working with this US consulting company for onsite services, with the first meeting in Madrid between an Australian investment group (coming to Madrid all the way from the land down under) and a local expert.
Advantages of over-the-phone consecutive interpreting
Without generalising, I have to say that for this kind of meetings and for my specific circumstances and logistics, I find the remote service much better than the onsite meetings. Since they are never going to take place in Alicante (where I am based), doing it over the phone saves me all the travelling organisation, travelling time, and the client doesn’t have to pay for travelling costs.
Everything goes through an efficient and automatised platform, so I don’t have to send a quote each time (as I would for onsite assignments, always requesting an upfront payment): they already have my fees on their database; they send me an invitation; I accept it indicating my availability; the meeting is confirmed, and at the end of the call I automatically receive the payment.
I would be alone anyway in this kind of consecutive assignments, so the booth mate is not an issue here. I don’t have to fear potential issues with my Internet connection, either. It’s a simple call without video, so I can wear my AirPods (which I am deeply in love with). I comfortably take notes with a big, handy notepad on my desk (I don’t have to hold it in a very elegant yet uncomfortable way as in a face-to-face situation). Plus, I can fill my desk with all the glossary sheets and notes I want. Also, another good advantage is being able to look up anything on the Internet, if I need, without anybody noticing a thing.
Again, it’s a very specific type of meetings, where the non-verbal component plays almost no role, in my experience.
Disadvantages of over-the-phone consecutive interpreting
The only slightly-tricky part might be voice overlapping (e.g. the expert makes a pause and I start interpreting believing he’s done, but then he wants to add something else he just remembered). Yet, this is far from a big issue; I would simply say, “Sure, go on”, and problem solved.
Furthermore, exactly as in onsite meetings, some speakers want to talk for ages, leaving the other person having no clue of what is being said for 20 minutes, and that’s when you should try to delicately set the timings to avoid the listener’s frustration.
In other words, I do exactly the same I would do onsite, but more comfortably; I apply the same economic conditions, and lose no time travelling (and, as they say, time is money); plus, the client doesn’t have to pay for travelling costs. In this very specific case, I think that it’s definitely a win-win situation for everybody involved.
A very different story is remote conferencing interpreting for big events. If you missed it, have a look at the previous post about the challenges in remote conference interpreting, where AIIC guidelines on remote interpreting are also mentioned.
As always, if you’d like to share your experience and insights, you’re more than welcome to do so on the comments below. Thanks and see you soon!
Remote interpreting is here to stay, whether we like it or not. Exactly the same happens in translation with machine translation (MT) and post-editing. Technology is disrupting every industry, not only ours. Yet, we don’t expect them to become a one-size-fits-all solution any time soon, meaning that neither every type of document will be translated with MT and then post-edited, nor will all interpreting assignments be provided remotely, and that is for very good reasons.
New and fear go often hand-in-hand, but in general there always some pros and cons in every change. For several years I have been providing over-the-phone consecutive interpreting for a client, and based on my experience it has great advantages, as I will mention in the next post. Yet, when it comes to remote conference interpreting for a big event, it’s a different kind of story and I think there are still challenges we need to overcome for it to be a viable option.
This is the service I am most skeptical about providing remotely (in fact, I still don’t). The reasons are mainly three:
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Technology
Right now, I don’t trust technology that much to feel comfortable interpreting from my office. That would imply trusting, on the one hand, that my Internet connection will cooperate smoothly and, on the other, that there won’t be any audio and video-related issue (since the AV technician won’t be physically there to solve it).
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Money
So far the only agencies with remote-interpreting platforms that have contacted me for this kind of services tried to impose me a rate per minute (in general €1 per minute) of actual interpreting, which is absurd and far from acceptable. That means, for example, that if the event starts 30 minutes late I am not paid for that time I have been sitting in front of the screen just waiting, nor will I get a cent during coffee breaks or lunch. Plus, what if the conference lasts for only 40 minutes instead of all day? Will I be paid €40? How can all the preparation be cost-effective then?
For all the above, when receiving that amazing offer, I replied that I was willing to give it a try, but applying my standard fees as if it were a standard onsite conference (charging from the minute I am requested to be there, till the moment I switch off the microphone at the end of the day, but not per minute!). The end client could still save on travelling costs, and since I have to travel 99% of the times from an assignment to the other, I would be more than happy myself to reduce some travelling, but only if good working conditions are safeguarded.
I believe it’s too late to expect that everybody could charge decent fees and apply top conditions for onsite assignments, but hopefully we still have time to prevent bad practices from becoming common.
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Booth mate
Simultaneous interpreting is a team effort, every professional interpreter knows it. It’s not just a matter of turns, of you doing your 30 minutes and then handing the microphone over to your colleague so that your brain can recover. Being physically next to your colleagues allows you to communicate with them even non-verbally: you may just look at them during your turn to implicitely ask them if they got the last idea, figure, name or to tell them that it would be a good time to change.
As far as I know, most online platforms currently available in Europe request you to talk with your colleague through a chat, which is far from ideal in my opinion. It’s an additional task that can distract rather than help us. If I were physically with my booth mate in a standard booth, just with a look, the colleague would know if I need help with a term and exactly which one. Via a chat, either colleagues write down everything just in case (which I would find distracting) or I would have to type what I’d need from them. Instead of doing that, I might as well just look it up myself.
For the same reason, according to AIIC guidelines on remote interpreting, both partners should be interpreting together from the same physical location.
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A viable remote-interpreting solution in the US
Image courtesy of KUDO.
The best solution I have heard of so far is KUDO, a US company allowing you to go to an interpreting studio in the main US cities, such as NYC or Chicago; there you would have a standard ISO booth, which you would share physically with your booth mate, and you would follow the conference via a screen. Plus, you would be able to rely on the support of an AV technician taking care of any technical issue for you.
I find this a good solution for a big country like the US, where distances are huge. Yet, personally, I don’t think it is likely to work well in Europe: if they set an interpreting studio in Madrid or London, I might as well just go onsite to the conference, with travelling costs being the same. The only advantage would probably be the chance to provide interpreting services in different time zones (e.g. in the European case, for Asia and the US).
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The remote-interpreting debate is definitely still work in progress, so I reserve the right to change my mind based on new evidence and experience gained in this field.
And you? What do you think about it? Do you already provide remote conference-interpreting services? Which platforms or systems do you use? How has your experience been so far? Leave a comment below. 🙂
In the past few days we have been busy interpreting at the best multilingual conference ever. With attendees from all over the world and 12 amazing interpreters divided in six booths (English/Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, and Russian), this has been the best example of a multilingual conference we have seen so far.
Not even the EU is so multilingual: interpreters of all EU languages might be there ready to do their job, but unfortunately many speakers still decide to speak in English rather than in their mother tongue, leaving the English booth’s microphone off most of the time. In our opinion, this makes their message weaker, less assertive, with potential negative consequences on what they wanted to accomplish with it.
This case, instead, was simply amazing. Each and every person on stage spoke in their mother tongue, even when interacting with people of a different language. The event was taking place in two different auditoriums at the same venue, with more than 2,000 attendees in total.
Some sessions were held by two different hosts talking to each other, one in each auditorium. Most of the times, it was a Spanish-speaking host talking with an English-speaking colleague. This of course was piece of cake for us Spain-based interpreters, all with English and Spanish in our language combination, because each person of every booth could interpret alone this dialogue.
The most complex situation for us interpreters, though, was another session in which a French-speaking person was talking with his German-speaking colleague, again in the other auditorium. The only booth who had both languages covered was ours, the Italian booth, since I could interpret directly from German into Italian, whereas my colleague from French into Italian. We just had to be quicker than normal to keep about the same timing as the original dialogue, but it wasn’t complicated for us.
In the remaining five booths, though, our colleagues had to use what is called relay interpreting, i.e. using a colleague’s interpretation as the source message to be interpreted into their native language. For example, during this French-German session, our Russian colleagues (who had English, Spanish and Russian in their language combination) had to rely on the relay of both the German interpreter and the French one into Spanish, which they then rendered into Russian.
The tricky part is due to the delay. Even if it is called simultaneous interpreting, there is always a slight delay (in general, a couple of seconds) between us and the speaker, so that we have the time to process the information and offer it back in the target language. In this case the delay was double (from French/German to Spanish and then from Spanish to Russian); plus, the speakers were two with short parts each, which meant it all had to be very quick.
Again, the organisation of this event was superb. They provided in advance the scripts of the sessions and scheduled several rehearsals, where we could check whether we had enough time to do it with relay. As they say, practice makes perfect, and everything went great.
So the next time you organise a multilingual event, think about this great example, deliver your message as strongly as possible in your native language, and let us interpreters do the rest!
Lately, interpreters have been all but invisible on the news, especially thanks to US President, Donald Trump. The latest case you may have already heard of regards the secret bilateral meeting between Trump and Putin, with the help of an interpreter. Due to its secrecy, in the US there is currently a significant debate on whether the interpreter and/or her notes should be subpoenaed to shed light on what was said during the event.
We would like to share today our merely-professional standpoint on the matter providing 3 reasons why the interpreter should not be subpoenaed.
1. It is against interpreters’ code of ethics to breach confidentiality
The main pillar of interpreters’ work is the utmost confidentiality of everything that is said during the interpreting service. It is not a coincidence that every interpreting association includes it in its code of ethics. This allows every person involved, whether it is a business man during a commercial talk or a politician attending a high-level bilateral meeting as in this case, to speak freely. Confidentiality is key also in other professions, such as for lawyers, priests, journalists, and many more.
Interpreters are there just to let the communication flow, not to be used as spies or transcribers nor to judge. They should never be asked to breach confidentiality or, as our colleague Barry Olsen rightly states in an interview with the CNN (see below), there will be serious consequences in the long run for diplomacy and trust in interpreters in general.
Below follows the statement issued by AIIC (International Association of Conference Interpreters) on this issue.
2. The interpreter won’t be a reliable witness anyway
Even if neglecting the consequences of breaching confidentiality, the interpreter won’t be a reliable witness anyway. That is because we interpreters are terrible at remembering with enough precision what we interpreted even shortly before. When we work both consecutively (as in bilateral meetings) and simultaneously (from a booth, talking at the same time as the speaker) we store information in our short-term memory. Once we have interpreted a piece of information, it is quickly and efficiently deleted to make room for more.
3. Subpoenaing the interpreter’s notes will be completely useless
Example of my interpreting notes, with a good deal of “doctor-style” handwriting.
In order to be able to accurately convey what has been said during a bilateral meeting of this sort we interpreters take notes, which are more similar to hieroglyphics than what people might understand when hearing the term “notes”.
As you can understand by looking at the picture of my interpreting notes, not only will it be impossible for whoever subpoenas those notes to decipher them, but the interpreter won’t be able to remember what they meant either. In my case, after months, I have no clue of even which assignment they were taken for.
As a matter of fact, interpreting notes are not to be confused with shorthand or any other standardized system to transcribe contents accurately. Rather, they are merely a visual and personally-developed mnemonic help with a very quick expiration time (about 15-30 minutes).
Completely in line with our considerations is the very exhaustive contribution of our colleague, Barry Olsen, who was interviewed by the CNN on this matter. To watch the interview, click on the image below and then scroll down to watch the last video of the page. Enjoy it!
If you want to share your opinion on the matter, add further arguments in favour or against subpoenaing the interpreter, we’ll be glad to read your comments. Thanks in advance!
In the past few days we have been busy interpreting at the best multilingual conference ever. With attendees from all over the world and 12 amazing interpreters divided in six booths (English/Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, and Russian), this has been the best example of a multilingual conference we have seen so far.
