Empowering Interpreters: The Courage and Stamina Behind the Job

Posted on August 13, 2024 by Romina Bona

Interpreters deserve compliments — What every interpreter should tell themselves

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I’ve just completed a four-day interpreting assignment for the WIKIMANIA 2024 event in Katowice, Poland, organized by FOSSASIA. I had the honor of interpreting via streaming at the Ohrid Spanish room. The event was magnificent covering many interesting topics from technology, community health, research, legal & advocacy, governance & strategy, and so on. Useful information related to all the project pages on MetaWiki such as Wikimedia, Meta, MediaWiki, Wikimedia Commons, Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Wikinews, Wikiquote, Wikibooks, Wikiversity, Wikisource, Wikivoyage, Wikijunior, Wikispecies, Wikifunctions, Incubator, and Sep11wiki.

After the four-day interpreting experience I shared with one of my closest friends, Sole, and with Diego, a professional young colleague from Chile, I could not help but wonder how we managed to do that.

I never get tired of telling people that interpreters are gifted people who do an extraordinary job. Diverse skills and qualities required for the job: it takes courage to sometimes face the unknown. It takes stamina to keep up with the speakers’ pace. It takes determination to do it right. It takes perseverance to keep doing it no matter what goes around. It takes hard work and preparation to reduce the occurrence of surprises. It takes resilience to overcome the challenges ahead. It takes so many skills and traits that each of us should remind ourselves over and over again that we are f* awesome!

My fellow interpreters, bravo!

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Podcasts for interpreters: The Complete Interpreter by Sophie Llewellyn Smith

Posted on March 27, 2023 by Romina Bona

Resources for interpreters — Tools for interpreters: podcasts

The Complete Interpreter by Sophie Llewellyn Smith is a podcast to help spoken language conference or public service interpreters stand out in a competitive market by improving their skills, mindset, and marketing.

The different episodes of the podcast include tips for avoiding procrastination, being concise in simultaneous interpretation, refreshing simultaneous interpreting skills, co-working, and improving your performance in the booth.

Check out this fantastic resource here.

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Why are interpreters the best of friends?

Posted on December 6, 2022 by Romina Bona

Interpreters pay close attention to what speakers say.

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Listening is the first step in the actual interpreting process. The interpreter must hear and understand what the speaker is saying to deliver the equivalent message in the target language. So, the first question you should ask yourself if you consider interpreting as a professional career would be, “Am I a good listener?”.

Being a good listener is not an easy task. It is not just about understanding the actual words, but rather the idea the speaker is trying to convey. This cartoon is a fun way to highlight the many superpowers that, in my opinion, interpreters have. I’m in awe every time I see them in action, and having the opportunity to do that for a living is just a dream come true.

If you admire your fellow interpreters or your interpreting service provider, send them this cartoon to let them know.

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If you need interpreters for your upcoming conference, meeting, or workshop, contact @tiendadeingles on Instagram or email tiendadeingles @ gmail.com

Tools for interpreters: Numerizer

Posted on August 26, 2021 by Romina Bona

When searching for material to practice big numbers for my interpreting training, I came across a fairly useful site called numerizer created by Anton Klevansky, who is a professional Russian conference interpreter member of AIIC. According to the tool’s creator:

“Numerizer was designed for (future) interpreters and language learners by a professional interpreter to provide an unlimited source of challenging exercises, such as: jotting down every number in a sequence; shadowing (repeating after the speaker, first being just one number behind the original, then progressively trying to lag further behind); simultaneous or consecutive interpreting.”

Numerizer 1.0.2 beta has features that enable you to choose from several languages and accents, select the pace at which you would like to hear the rendering, and set the amount of numbers to generate. It also includes the minimum and the maximum values.

The languages included are Chinese, English US, English UK, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish.

Note: there seems to be a glitch that does not allow you to set a minimum to a number smaller than 10 000 or a maximum over 999 999 999.

I hope you find this tool useful and have fun with your practice.

Happy interpreting!

Turkish Translation

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Keep calm signs for interpreters

Posted on November 30, 2020 by Romina Bona

Keep calm and interpret — Keep calm signs for interpreters

See this cartoon in Spanish.

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Hi there! I’m currently completing my first year of training to become a professional interpreter — a pending subject I’ve had for so long is now becoming a dream come true. I love interpreting as much as translating, but when I’m not actually doing it and I start analyzing carefully what it entails to be a good interpreter I sometimes panic. Your brain is one of your biggest assets and allies, but it can also become your worst enemy. If you start overthinking it, your own thoughts can get in the way of the message the speaker is conveying and you are trying to get across in the target language. So many times, you should simply relax and worry about one utterance at a time.

Happy interpreting!

Send this card to your fellow interpreters to support them on their amazing job and remind them to keep relaxed.

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Golden Rules for aspiring interpreters by Dick Fleming: express your ideas clearly

Posted on June 8, 2018 by Romina Bona

Golden Rules for Interpreters: express ideas clearly

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This is the second cartoon inspired by a series of YouTube videos about interpreting featuring Dick Fleming, formerly organizer of the EU Commission interpreter training course and subsequently trainer of trainers. In this video, Dick describes the initial “golden rules” for interpreter trainees.

You can also watch the video depicting all the golden rules for trainee interpreters here.

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Golden rules for simultaneous interpreting by Dick Fleming

Posted on June 2, 2018 by Romina Bona

Golden Rules for Interpreters starting out on simultaneous interpretatuib

Golden Rules for Interpreters starting out on simultaneous interpretation

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This cartoon is inspired by a series of YouTube videos about interpreting featuring Dick Fleming, formerly organizer of EU Commission interpreter training course and subsequently trainer of trainers. In this video, Dick describes the initial “golden rules” for interpreter trainees.

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What may happen if two BFF simultaneous interpreters met at the booth

Posted on May 25, 2018 by Romina Bona

Simultaneous interpreters at the booth

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I have recently shared an interpreting assignment with one of my closest friends who is an outstanding interpreter and got the idea for this cartoon. This is cartoon is pure fiction as we did not have even a minute to catch up. However, I cannot help but wonder what if…

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