Interpreting Technology Tasting (for ice-cream lovers!)

The field of interpreting is undergoing some ground-shaking changes. Ubiquitous broadband has made multilingual streaming a reality. Neural machine translation is flirting with voice recognition. And Google has just introduced its first version of a babel fish that you can literally stick in your ear. Pretty exciting news for users who believe they can now […]

Mind your language, you @#x!$%* !

A woman's face, in black and white. Only a part of the face is visible, from the nose to the chin. She has her index finder on her lips.

A few weeks ago, I was interviewed by the BBC in connection with an incident involving the interpreter who watered down parts of President Trump’s speech at the UN General Assembly that were critical of the Iranian regime. Detailed transcriptions of both the original and the interpretation can be easily found online. The interpreter was […]

Henry: The Interpreter Who Beat Magellan

Most people think of Ferdinand Magellan as the Portuguese explorer who first sailed around the planet on a quest to prove that the Earth was round. Now, consider this. While Magellan did sail from Spain on an expedition that eventually went full circle, he never completed the tour. Also, Magellan never set out to sail […]

The Accidental Interpreter

interpreter

This picture was taken in Brasilia, on Tuesday, March 17, 1992. It shows the exact moment when I became an interpreter. The gentleman in a light suit is congressman Ibsen Pinheiro. Sitting diagonally from him is His Royal Highness Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh. I am the young guy in the middle. Yup. The one […]