Chartered Institute
of Linguists
NEWS & VOICES
By Michael O’Laughlin
I work as an expert witness in the courts of Massachusetts, USA. I am in demand because I have found a niche in which language issues come quickly to the fore. I was a court interpreter for most of my life, and I am also the Director of Interpreter Training at Boston University. I realised that I could combine my interpreter experience, academic position and...
By Joanna Ramsden
It goes without saying that recent work circumstances have been even more challenging than usual for everyone.
On the one hand, freelance translators generally work from home on our own most of the time, so the transition to working online has been easier. However, on the other hand, it can be easy to get ‘...
CIOL is pleased to announce that we are now providing our members with a broader programme of CPD and training. As part of this review of our CPD activity, we are making the majority of video recordings from the eCPD Webinars platform available free of charge to CIOL members.
Over the coming months, 150 videos will be added to the library, available from the My CIOL area of the...
By Jessica Oppedisano
With the success of on-demand platforms such as Netflix and Amazon Prime, audiovisual translation (AVT) is gaining more and more visibility. Big companies that plan to release their shows on a global scale have to pay attention to the quality of the translations and to the working conditions of their translators. However, translating for these big platforms covers...
In a small computer room with Mexican-style artwork adorning the walls and Frida Kahlo-inspired cushions softening the benches, Lucy is talking about volunteering at a hispanic nursery while studying for her Spanish A-level. “I went every Saturday morning last term,” says the 17-year-old student at Channing School in North London. “It was really cool to be able to practise speaking...
By James Mallinson MCIL, winner of the 2019 Best Overall DPSI Candidate and Best DPSI Candidate in English Law.
By Magdalena Bartłomiejczyk
In Jonas Jonasson’s The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared, the Swedish protagonist, Allan Karlsson, ends up in Moscow having dinner with Stalin. As well as the dictator, his two cronies and Allan, at the table sits “a little, almost invisible young man without a name and without anything either to eat or to drink”: the...
CIOL announces the launch of a new partnership scheme to bring businesses and large corporations in closer collaboration.
Organisations that become a CIOL partner agree to follow these values which represent a starting point for continually improving the standing of qualified linguists:
Strive to improve the quality of service provided to customers by using members or qualified...
By Jan Murray
Over the next few weeks and months it will become more important than ever for our community to work together to provide strong support for each other and to ensure that whilst having to socially isolate we don’t become isolated.
We are living in challenging times, each of us facing our own challenges and constant uncertainty. When we launched our mentoring...
By Rachel Holland
It’s less than three weeks since I travelled from Copenhagen to London to attend the first CIOL Conference. Yet how our world has changed since then. When I first drafted this, I wrote about how brilliant it was to spend a day in the company of other translators and linguists – and indeed it was! I also wrote about how energising it was to meet people face to face, as...