Chartered Institute
of Linguists
NEWS & VOICES
Kirsty Low receives the award for Best Candidate in the CertTrans from HRH Prince Michael of Kent at the CIOL Awards
What made you decide to take the CertTrans?
As a translator still at an early stage in my career – I completed my Master’s degree in translation in 2021 and began working as a full-time freelance translator at the start 2022 – I decided to take the...
CIOL Chair of Council Report
Ahead of the AGM on 4 April 2023, CIOL members can download the Annual Report 2017-2023 which summarises our performance since I was elected to Council in 2017.
While writing it, I realised how much has changed over the past six years which have probably been the most challenging in the history of CIOL. Economic, social...
By Séverine Hubscher-Davidson
A challenging environment
Psychological health has become an increasing concern for language practitioners. In 2021, the ITI published a position statement on translators’ mental health and wellbeing, and in 2020 and 2021 the CIOL published two guides on the topic of stress management and resilience. According to the CIOL Insights Survey 2022...
In a previous blog I explored Is Machine Translation replacing human translators? My conclusion was that the best answer for the present and foreseeable future is “Augmented Translation” mutually reinforcing human-machine translation workflows but with the human to the fore.
CIOL explored this topic at a recent All Party Parliamentary Group meeting in the House...
But where are you from?
Where are you really from?
Yes, but where were you born?
I mean where did you grow up?
Yes, but where are you originally from?
If you happen to be a person that was born in one country, moved to another, and was raised in a third, with parents from different cultures or countries, you know the struggle. If you happen to...
It was two years ago that I took my final leave of CIOL’s offices in Fleet Street, caught my last commuter train home and entered what the French call “le troisième âge”, the successor to childhood and a working adult life.
So what is life as a retired linguist really like? Well, the retired bit is easy – newfound time to read, an abundance of hours spent cycling, days out, art...
Asset or irrelevance?
As someone with bilingual Italian language skills and good French and Spanish – but more interested in business than in working as a translator, interpreter or teacher – I have always been puzzled by whether my language skills are an asset or an irrelevance. Do I look for work using my Italian, or is that restrictive? Do I need to live in...
The CIOL Code of Professional Conduct
The CIOL Code of Professional Conduct
The principles of honour and sustainable business practices originated in Europe in Italian and North German trading centres around the 12th century and were embodied by the figure of the ‘honourable merchant’ who could sleep peacefully knowing they had done honest...
When I first received my Masters in Interpreting, I was very proud of myself for completing a challenging course. But I wrongly assumed that a Masters would be enough to cover any kind of work that I might want to do.
I moved to the UK in 1997 to study and had just started my first publishing role in 2002. Although I liked my job, I knew I wanted to use my language skills in future—perhaps on a freelance basis. So, I decided to look into good translation courses and recommended qualifications.
I quickly realised that the CIOLQ DipTrans...