67: Podcastival

All right, all right, all right.

Hello, hello. Hello, everyone. This is troublesome turfs and we're coming to you. Live today is Monday, the 15th of November 20 21, and since the pandemic is still ongoing, we still all in our respective locations. But we still join together everyone on this platform tonight to bring you a podcast of all. That's the idea. So the idea is to celebrate all the wonderful shows that we have out there that deal with interpreting translation, localization and all the other Asians that are out there that sounded. We are sorry about that. Let me hand it off straight to the first co-host for tonight, Sarah. Sarah, how are you?

Hey. Yeah, I'm actually super sick. But I was saying in the intro to the guests as well that I had FOMO and [00:01:00] so I decided to be here anyway. I couldn't miss this because when you ever get all these language podcast celebrities in one room, you know, so I just had to be here. So yeah, happy to see everyone. I'm really, really impressed that everyone showed up. So yeah, yeah, I guess. Sorry, I'm totally messing up the intro, but handing over to Alexander Katzmaier.

Hey, everybody. It's great to be back on a life, so we haven't done one in quite a while. And just in case you're wondering, from a couple of episodes back, this is this is the Avengers Endgame of podcasts that we promise you. This is basically all the biggest players coming together to do to put on something special. So this is super exciting. Thank you, everybody for being here.

It's probably going to break the internet or something. I mean, figure it out. Also, it's the first time we're doing a live stream from this platform right now. So fingers crossed, everyone, that everything works fine to get us started. We have prepared a well, [00:02:00] actually, we have several messages, several voice memos from those podcasters who weren't able to join us tonight. And we will be starting with a message from Lauren and Gretchen from the lengthy awesome podcast. So let me just get that ready for you all, and let's listen to them. Here we go.

Hi, I'm Gretchen McCulloch and I'm Lauren Gordon, and we are the co-hosts of Enthusiasm, a podcast that is enthusiastic about linguistics. It's not just translation between languages that can be an interesting linguistic challenge. Sometimes translating between varieties of English can also show some quirky differences. I'm an Australian and Gretchen, you

Are a Canadian, and we have had to

Navigate some of the differences between our varieties of English over the years and thought we play one of our favorite games, which is guess what? This regional English word means? Are you ready? I am ready. Ok, my Australian word for you is the word Doona Doona. Ok. This sounds maybe like a [00:03:00] desert. It sounds very smooth and fluffy. You've got the fluffy bit, right? Hmm. It is a I think the British word is duvet. Oh yeah, we have duvets in Canada as well. So a big kind of quilted, possibly downy or at least very fluffy as you intuited blanket for sleeping. All right. And my Canadian word for you to guess is keener. Ah, I am a non fruitcake Australian accented person. So do Nat and Kina. The sound was similar for me than they do for you. They totally do. Any guesses what this means? Does it have anything to do with the word keen? It does someone who is more keen than other people. That is true. It also shows up specifically in more of an academic context. So a student who's coming to office hours or something, you'd be like, Oh, that's so and so they're one of my cleaners. And I think one [00:04:00] of the missing pieces in the Canadian English context for why keener is a term is that other varieties of English have words like teacher's pet or brown noser or something like that that can refer to a, you know, academically interested student.

But a keener isn't necessarily a pejorative like teachers and professors will say this of their students of like, Oh yeah, you know, that's one of my teachers. They're enthusiastic about something, and you can sort of apply it in another context as well. If you're showing up early for your, you know, exercise class or something, you might be a keener in that context as well. That's lovely. I feel like we need more positive terms for enthusiastic engagement. I think so, too. And I also think that we could definitely have a children's cartoon with the characters Duna and Quina. Oh my gosh, that would be so cute. We did a whole episode on being speakers of varieties of English other than British and American English on the show, and we had a lot of fun with similar regionalism and navigating life as people who speak different varieties of English. [00:05:00] And of course, we do get enthusiastic about other linguistics topics and enthusiasm as well. If you just want a chance to listen to a Canadian, Australian and practice what sort of subtle regional varieties you might want to get exposed to. And I'm sure there are lots of localism you have in your own varieties of English that you can test each other on as well. All the best to the troublesome tribes for the rest of the live show. I'm sorry, we can't be there from our other corners of the world.

That was pretty cool. It was lovely. Yeah, that was really lovely, so huge. Thanks to learn and Gretchen, and thanks for joining us in the form of this lovely voice memo. And with that, we'll actually. Was I the only one who was thinking about whether the word brown noser was actually not safe for work? I'm not. I'm not sure anyway, but that, well, we'll be moving on straight to our first panel, so we'd like to

Welcome about where it comes from. Ok. Don't think about

It. All right. The voice you heard there is Michael Stevens voice. He'll he'll be joining us for the first panel. Hello. Michael Stevens and [00:06:00] also joining us for the first panel are Fran Fast from Slater and Tucker Johnson from Nim's. And Tucker told me, You've never met Florian before. So this is the first time you're actually meeting virtually, I guess, Florian.

I don't think that is. Does it premiere? It's the first time. Ok, good.

Well, this is what.

Is like, live streamed of me. Like four. Like, yeah, we've met six times.

I think you have a lot to talk about. I, you know, from the conversations I've had with you both, I'm glad I can be a part of this to sort of mediate.

You've always been the mediator.

That's awesome. This should be interesting. Exactly. So should we just hand it over to you, Michael? No, I'll at least say what the what the whole idea was. And the funny thing is, or the interesting thing is we had two of you on before. So, Florian, we head on to to discuss sort of business intelligence and researching the language industry so you can go back to that episode and listen to that if you have missed it and we've had Michael on before as [00:07:00] well. But in the context of a different podcast. So maybe we'll start with you, Michael. Tell us a little bit about your, I don't know latest recent current podcast project, the global podcast.

Yeah, latest and greatest. So exactly. Yeah, it was a distinct pivot for us. We, the first podcast that I started, was corporately sponsored. It had a team of people who supported the wild work that me and my co-host, Renato Bernardo, did. And it was thoroughly reviewed and scrubbed and check to make sure that all things were appropriate for corporate communication. The second one we launched when I left that company, and it's just our work, it's it's two people. I liken it to the type of conversations you would have going to a localization conference and after you're you're in the bar pretty late at night and you're talking to experts the way they really talk [00:08:00] about the work they do. This was really what we wanted to push because I find that they're they're very not just capable, but people who are doing remarkable work and many times at a podium or even around people they don't trust. They may not come as clean with how remarkable the work they're doing is. And so to be able to get to that level just to, for me, mostly satisfy my curiosity, to hear what are really the greatest and latest things going on in our industry that may not get to be talked about publicly.

That's great and a great reason to to do a podcast, I think, is to satisfy one's own curiosity, for sure.

I think that's probably important enough topics, right?

Exactly. That's probably also the reason for you, Tucker. I just said before we started half jokingly that your live 24-7 these days. Yeah. So what were the sort of last conversations that that you that you had on mimsy life? What was what was the really cool [00:09:00] stuff you did recently?

We have all sorts of different conversations on AMC Live, and that's one of the reasons I kind of wanted to start it, actually, you know, I never really wanted to start it. I'm really an unwilling podcast host in many respects. But one of the things that I've grown to love about it is just giving a platform to all sorts of different things. So just recently we had John Finlay, the CEO of Land Bridge, coming on and talking about all the cool stuff they're doing over there. We're not corporate sponsored, so I don't have to suck up to anybody, but neither do we have any like gotcha moments on there. Salvo from Airbnb came on to announce the big, big, big stuff that's going on over Airbnb in regards to machine learning and machine translation and the scale that they're rolling it out there. And just on Friday, I'm down here in California right now, visiting my folks, visiting the family, dialing in from my brother's house. And just before I left for just before I got on a plane, I was with a bunch [00:10:00] of folks over at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies playing a card game live. Yeah, they come up with this wild card game to teach about vendor management, so all sorts of different stuff. How cool is that?

Yeah, that sounds super geeky. Has any of you seen that card game? I missed the broadcast, so I'll have to rewatch that.

That's like a. Yeah, the fruit. When you think that cool thing, I recommend it for companies that want to like, train their vendor managers and have interesting conversations.

So, Mary Newsome, you clearly have seen it and who you just heard again was Florian and Fish from Slater. So Florian, you've seen this as well?

Yeah, yeah. I think we I think we put in our newsletter and somebody super enthusiastically wrote back that they love it and they started using it with their well, with the company. But also some people are training. So I didn't play myself. But you know, we don't have vendor managers, so it's it's quite cool.

Yeah, I mean, you can't all be doing the same stuff. So that's that's [00:11:00] that's cool. Yeah. But yes, later part, of course. Tell people a little bit about what you've been up to over its later part, and you're I think you're busy with later on remote as well, right?

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. In front of the bonci, that's my life now. So yeah, you guys are responsible for, for me, starting slate apart. I listen to troublesome turps and I'm like, Oh man, it's like so regular and it's so good and it really needs to get this started.

So I'm already in my

So then

And I committed to a weekly schedule, which you know, in hindsight, turned out to be insane. Kind of ambitious. But we well, so far we've managed so. And then after 40, 50 episodes, we started bringing on guests because it got a little kind of too, I don't know, self like how often how many times can you just chat with each other? So I'm doing this with that extra bond. Our research director in London, right? So and so we still do our kind of industry chit chat before like, you know, 15, 20 minutes and then we bring on a guest. And [00:12:00] yeah, we've also had, you know, great guests. It's such a fascinating industry, so you never run out of interesting guests. So it's, you know, for example, we recently a good example is we had Kenneth Heathfield from the University of Edinburgh and we we invited him because we got into a Twitter fight a couple of hands down. Well, it was he. He called us out for an article and basically said, we got everything wrong and then I'm like, No, no, no, we didn't get everything wrong. And then and so it goes back and forth. I'm like, Hey, why don't you come to the podcast and tell us what we got wrong? And he accepted the challenge. And, you know, a couple of weeks later, it was on the pod. So that's why I love doing this.

That's how things get done these days. Yeah, it's awesome. So, Michael, we're approaching the the end of the year almost slowly. Quickly, I don't know. And the troublesome times are definitely going to be doing a year in review episode again. But but from your point of view, what were sort of the big highlights, the big developments, [00:13:00] I guess, in 2021? Anything that stood out to you?

I would say two things, and one we're probably going to talk about is whether we're going to cover it from the perspective of recovery or great resignation or whatever you want to define this last year, as that will be something that will be explored pretty thoroughly. One of the things that I, I appreciate about what you guys are doing in our industry as a whole is doing is the ability to really be known. And this movement that we're having is giving a lot of people, platforms and voices for the work they're doing. And in a world where deep fakes become more and more relevant, where there's a lot of information, there was a lot of time for people to sort of sit around during twenty twenty and think about what would resonate with people and whether they can actually do it or not is sort of secondary. [00:14:00] Florian, I saw that there was the interview and it was about the fake LinkedIn profiles that are out there in interpretation in that piece, and there's always been in recruiting. I think that that's going to become more and more valid is sort of community are more and more relevant is community validation and making sure that some of the things that companies are committing to and being able to do are actually proven in the work that they do. And so that's something that is is my curiosity right now because if you look at a lot of the themes, especially for localization companies, they're all kind of the same. They're all saying kind of the same things. And then it's like, Well, who is actually doing this work?

I see Tucker was moving, so. Disagree. Agree.

I mean. Or you get called

It looked like you were getting ready to say

No, no. Okay, I know I don't disagree. I think it's like to me, the watchword moving forward is authenticity. [00:15:00] You know, when I when I was shaking my head, when Michael was talking about deep fakes and all of that stuff, and people are expecting a different engagement from the brands that they consume and, you know, the services that they offer these days, and that's reflected in everything. It's reflected in how they relate to people. And this overproduced, highly like five years ago, video marketing was all in overproduced stuff. And but nowadays people want to see authenticity. People want to see brand leaders be humans to a certain extent. And I think podcasting is a great format for that, and I like to do the live. I've just doubled down on on the live streaming. And like I said, I was an unwilling entry into this field, but started doing it and people, people were digging it. And I think a big part of it is because you can't fake it. When you're live on air, you can't go back and fix your voice and photoshop your pimples [00:16:00] out and end. All of that stuff is like what you see is what you get. And I think there's a strong appetite for that.

And my my watch, my my mantra as I go into 2020 too is still the same. It's to kill the webinar. I hate webinars. Webinars are not audience focus. I'm chairing the marketing manager. Preach, Tucker. Yeah, no, I mean, how many God? Every time I see a webinar and I'm like, I'm going to go sign up for this and within 15 seconds, I'm so frustrated that I'm like, Screw this, they're not getting my business. People want to just be able to log in and see something. Information wants to be free, right? No one wants to give their contact information to watch an over rehearsed slide show presentation, PowerPoint presentation. There needs to be some entertainment value. There needs to be some intimacy. There needs to be some audience engagement, not just a Q&A session at the end, but throughout, right? And I am [00:17:00] hopefully trying to. I'm encouraging everybody I can to get into livestreaming, because why would people go to a webinar when they can just log in to LinkedIn and see who's streaming today? It's kind of cool. I took that in a different direction, but hey, he was in a room together and you expect to happen

On a live show.

Well, no, I'm not sure about the over rehearsed webinars, but OK, that's a different discussion. Maybe.

Yeah, the commitment in that is is is tough too, because if it's if you're looking at like a half hour or an hour of my time, like I need the 15 minute, 15 second, 30 second hook that makes me go, OK, this might get there or some sound bites. So I mean the level, like stylistically, we we all vary even on this call and like how overproduced or under produced shows are. But it's the it's the content that's being put out. It's the it's the story that's being told, it's the data that's being [00:18:00] expressed to our people that we really need to focus on because the the the slick stuff in the the time are just a waste, a waste. So and Floyd, I'm kind of setting you up, man. Bring the data.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, no data. Go, go to know there's others that are doing that. The podcast data, right? Know what I like about podcasting is, I mean, the video to us is was and still is a little bit kind of an afterthought. Despite the bonci and so we I like, listen, I mean, I'm kind of a podcast podcast, edit myself like I use it for. I mean, when I go running, when you know, do other stuff like like literally every, almost every second of my life, that's non dialog. I basically have the airports in. So I'm in terms of the overproduction. I totally hear you. What I do like is good audio, right? That needs to get sorted out. You need to get a good mic. And I'm still I think I'm like [00:19:00] 90 percent there, but I want to get one hundred percent there. But it's almost, I don't know. I need to better setting and like the walls and, you know, like some of that. So yeah, no, I don't know. Industry to me, this year was super cool in terms of all that frontier language tech. I mean, Michael mentioned the deep fake stuff before, and yeah, I'm glad you bring that up. Yeah, we had a company on the podcast called Synthesis, and they're basically they don't do deep fakes, but they allow you to do like avatars that speak different languages. I mean, that just continues to blow my mind. And I use it in every single industry presentation I give, and I think I think people who listen to a couple of them are starting to get bored of it. But it's just it's so groundbreaking.

I love it. Yeah, I saw a demo of that. Well, this year on unfortunately, on a webinar, but that was truly mind blowing, like, yeah, that was actually pretty impressive.

You could do it in like five minutes, I could do one now and show you right.

And I can confirm it could be joined the motion. Yes. Yeah.

You've actually used it before Florida.

Yeah, [00:20:00] I've got a subscription. It's like fifty dollars a month or $40 a month. That is too cool. Yeah.

Yeah, it's pretty mind blowing what you can do with with that kind of stuff. Yeah. What about what about Slater Cotton that has moved online, I guess, quite a while ago already. But how did that change the game for you?

Oh, it's convenient. It's so convenient. Travel and everything. Getting years of live. Yeah, no, I love it. Look, it's OK. I've traveled enough in my life. I mean, I feel for anybody who hasn't. But for me, this is this was this was great. I mean, we do have I mean, there's some if we're using hoppin, so there's some networking component to it, people like that too. And so far, so good. You know, let's see. I think there's there's others that, you know, blazing the trail in terms of in-person conferencing. I like that. And it's it's I think it's webinar plus, you know, so there is some engagement in there.

Michael, any any thoughts about that, about [00:21:00] how the conference space is changing or industry conferences are changing?

Yeah, I

Have not, like I said a lot. A lot of my value is in the interpersonal peace and the quiet conversations that take time. You guys probably are familiar with Tim Ferriss in his interview style and how he does these like three hour plus interviews of people, and it gets them past the first sort of normal 20 minutes of talking points that they get into really deep content that you may not have heard from someone who you hear from all the time. So put that into the event space. The online part of being it's the criticism of webinars, the online part and being talked at really doesn't sort of feed my soul the way that getting eye to eye with people tends to. Maybe I need to set up like three hour phone calls with [00:22:00] people. I think I would drive them in saying,

Wait until the Metaverse, Michael.

Yeah. Oh, Tucker Tucker, what should we have a three hour phone call, Tucker?

I want to listen in on that.

Sorry. My battery just died, so I had to go switch machines really quickly. You know, welcome to life streaming everybody. You got you got to be.

I can't confirm you did that pretty quickly and very smoothly. So congrats. That was pretty smoothly. I hardly I barely noticed. Yeah. Any any words from you, Tucker on the on the sort of changing. I mean, we thought about your dislike for webinars, but the change in online conferences and meetings and stuff like that, any anything you've seen from your perspective and.

Yeah, I don't I mean, they're still a very strong appetite for getting together as a people or as an industry, as a our industry is an industry of people. [00:23:00] And if you think about our industry attracts the type of people that have a passion for building communities and building cross-cultural communities and connections and facilitating conversations. Of course, we are a gregarious bunch and people I think are chomping at the bit to get back to in person because that's where the magic happens. That's where the innovation happens. That's where the the the really stupid sounding but potentially awesome ideas are formed late night at the bars. And I think the the online events have served their purpose and they've they've helped scratch that itch during the pandemic when getting together as a group was not, not possible. But it's far from replace the in-person events. What it's done actually is provided increased competition to the in-person event space. And I think increased competition leads to innovation. So the the traditional [00:24:00] events are now going to have to be having a hybrid option in order to capture both sides of the market and from an accessibility and inclusion standpoint. It's been a great thing because people that would never dream of having a budget to be able to go to a low world or a slater con or all of these other great conferences that we have in our industry now, all of a sudden they have this option where they can dial in remotely and perhaps not get the full experience, but nonetheless feel included.

Mm hmm. So you kind of veering into the topic of accessibility, so maybe we can talk about that a little bit as well and just any any thoughts on on that topic accessibility, maybe also from a point of view of automatic speech recognition, automatic captioning. Anything interesting you've been seeing recently there? Question to all of you, I don't know who wants to jump in for a step.

Well, I can tell you, I think everyone's kind of like recognizing [00:25:00] the lack of visibility we have on our podcast and kind of not wanting to talk, but yeah, I would. It's something that I've thought a lot about because we do. There's a visual component to us hours and the audio component. We do use auto generated captions and I recognize that frankly, that's not good enough. We could do better on that. It's difficult with live. I would love to and I've had lined up a few times, but just always ends up not falling through it the last minute. I'd love to have ASL interpretation on video podcasts and. But that's just me. Right, but I think it's it opens up a whole new world because I think the the signing community out there is a community that frankly, well, I don't know, it's troublesome turps, you guys probably don't. But the larger localization the local world crowd, the usual suspects, we kind of overlook [00:26:00] that. And I think it comes out of a place of ignorance on honest, honest ignorance, ignorance that's honestly come by, right? Just because we were not open to that space. But I'd like to see a lot more accessibility for for for that out there. From myself, too, I'm not like blaming anybody else, I was thinking I could be forking over the Bucks to do all that stuff too, because I have gotten the feedback that the the auto generated captions. Yeah, yeah, it's it's a trick. We try it with, yeah, we tried it with A.I. media, the Australian company. They offered us one for one Slater Con. But it was it went through a re speaker. And this was the first time I heard about Re speaking. So there's this is for captioning. It's something that that they actually do, sort of somebody who sits and actually speaks what we're saying. And because the system is trained on that person's voice, it works a lot better. [00:27:00] So that was the first time I heard about Re speaking, and it was it was good.

It was good. Yeah, that's what's used on German TV,

At least here. And they also correct the the captions.

Yeah, the corrected captions. And I mean, there's probably all the ums and hours and all that is taken out, but you've got the human in the loop again.

So, so I think it's good that we feel sort of guilty for not addressing this more for us personally. But you look at what the big companies have done during this time, like Microsoft and the level of accessibility they have offer. And it's extraordinary. It's been wonderful to witness that every single conference that Microsoft has had this year has had sign language through hybrid. It's had more languages offered than they ever have in their history and that those big platforms have been able to really execute on them. There's a company I'm close to here in Seattle that has facilitated that for them, [00:28:00] the barrier of entry. I mean, we have a sound engineer who works on my current podcast. It's it's a lot for a couple of guys who like to chat with people to put together on the back end. So but I'm thrilled to see the amount of work that's being done in this space.

Great. Thanks, Michael, for acknowledging all the work that can go and should go into a into a properly produced.

But I think it will get to us. I think it's it's going to be the sort of thing where it's just a level of understanding that is delivered that years past we could have never imagined that we can really understand each other and have understanding for others.

Great. Awesome. So I guess to wrap this panel up, can I can I ask you to look into the either to look into the crystal ball or maybe tell us a little bit about what you would like to see next year or in the near future? What you're excited to, to [00:29:00] see what, what should be coming. So anything that you'd like to see. Anything you can share with us in that space.

Yeah, I'll go first, I'll volunteer here, I'd like to see less of me out there like you guys are joking around. Oh, Tucker Tucker's livestream in 24-7, I'm like, No, it's like 23 seven. Like, don't don't get too dramatic, but I'd like to see less of me out there because I'd like to see more people out there, live streaming. I see my role here and perhaps I'm a little bit grandiose and my self image, but I kind of see my role as paving a way for other people to go out there and experiment and do fun things. Go live, make an idiot out of yourself on air, do stupid stuff, do stupid stuff in public and learn from it while you're doing it. And the reason I think that I can do that is because I I work for myself, right? Like, I don't have a boss. I couldn't do that back when I was [00:30:00] working at my previous company, right? I'd I'd get pulled into pulled into rooms. I did get pulled into rooms back when I was at my previous company. But nowadays I can go out there. I can, you know, invoke my inner honey badger and just tear shit up in the hopes that people are going to see that and be inspired to go tear shit up themselves.

Well, you did already pass it on to me the whole not being afraid to

Fail, already roped into it to fail in public. She's doing a great job. A quick plug for last week and localization with Sarah Hickey.

Yeah, Monday was regular every Monday until recently when I got a bit less regular.

They don't need to know that.

Yeah, now it's every Monday.

Yeah, exactly. Except for not, you know, I was listening to Floria and you know, you're committed to a schedule. That's your first mistake. That's your first mistake. Don't commit to a schedule. I mean, just

You hop on the bandwagon. That's it.

I did commit it myself, though I don't know. But like, you know, you got [00:31:00] all these kind of superstar podcasts that are like episode two thousand three hundred and forty five, right? So like, we're coming up to 100. So I guess my goal for 2022 is let's get to a hundred and fifty. So just sticking to the schedule is nice. I love it. I love talking to people. I mean, I'm sure that's what you appreciate about this as well, right? I mean, you get to talk to so many incredibly interesting people. Plus, you've got to be really switched on yourself like you can. I mean, at least I have to. I can't like if I, you know, like, lose focus, it gets embarrassing quite quickly. So and we don't edit anything. So it's kind of it has to feel like as if a live stream we've only edited once in like 100 episodes. So yeah, so you know my goal, let's get two hundred and fifty two episodes in by the end of 2022. Cool. Fingers crossed, Michael. Maybe check out live streaming Tucker. I'm inspired now.

That's fabulous. Oh yeah, the streaming. I look forward to getting to the in-person interviews again, [00:32:00] that that part that that is really where I like to mix it up and where I feel personally the most energy in what we're doing. And I think that the most interesting content, we've had some interesting shows that aren't in person, but there's there's just I get more out of it, frankly. And you know, it's it's about us. Yeah, right?

Some people dull it on me.

Yeah, it's so well done for acknowledging the vanity aspect of broadcasting. That's cool, though. Great. Awesome. Oh, thanks to all of you. Thanks for this for this first panel. And with that, we'll move on to our next voice memo. And we've talked about this a little bit already because one of you I forget who was brought up sign language and we got a ASL. Yeah, exactly. So we got a lovely voice message from Romi and Kiera over on the Lean podcast. So let's take a look at that. And after that voice memo will talk to other Kerri and Megan [00:33:00] in our next panel. So let's listen to Romi and Kira first here.

It is the podcast. Hello, hello, hello. Hi. My name is Kiera. And my name is Romi, and this is what is it, what is it is? First, do you want to say a big thank you to the troublesome Turks for having us here today and ask you to be involved? It's a very exciting it. Absolutely. It's such a cool opportunity to show our work off to so many different people. We're really, really grateful. Thank you. Thank you so much. And maybe as you're watching, you've noticed there's something a little bit different about our podcast. I don't know, Kira, do you want to say a bit more music? That's right, Robi. Well, you might notice that we're using sign language. [00:34:00] We're specifically Irish sign language ESL because we are both Irish sign language interpreters now. Irish sign language is the recognized indigenous language of the deaf community here in Ireland and it's got its own grammar. It's got its own structure. It's not based on spoken language. It's very much its own language. I don't know. Maybe you know a little bit about sign languages or not, but every country has its own national sign language. Not only that, some countries even have to sign languages as an example. In Spain, they have to sign languages, they've got Spanish sign language and Catalonian sign language as well. So there you are. Little fact. And not only that, it is worth mentioning that Irish sign language as its own language is different from British sign language, also known as BSL.

And it's also different from American sign language ASL. You know, even though they all speak the same spoken language of English, they all have their own sign languages. So, yeah, [00:35:00] little fun fact for you there. So maybe you've guessed by this point what our podcast is all about. But if you haven't, we talk all things sign language, interpreting absolutely everything to do with sign language, interpreting anything you could imagine reading Typekit. That's exactly so. Normally, Kira and I, we pick a question for an episode. So as an example, we'd say what we think team interpreting is just as an example. Normally, what would happen is here, and I would then talk about this topic for the first part and go, OK, well, what does this actually mean for us? You know how we team interpret how we work together. We go on our practical knowledge and our academic knowledge. We chat about it and then we invite someone way more knowledgeable and more than we are. And we have a conversation, the three of us about the topic. At the end of the day, it's just a chat about various topics related to interpreting right here. That's exactly it. And my thinking, why did you set up your podcast? How did it all begin? [00:36:00] Well, basically, if you don't know, already myself and Romi are two muscle parents, self-confessed nerds.

We love talking a lot about interpreting linguistics, language, learning as much as we can, and we've been like that for quite some time because the two of us actually study together and we became interpreters. So we've always been having these conversations in these discussions, and what we normally do back in the day is we'd use WhatsApp and still, do you use WhatsApp voice notes to send messages to each other? And this was a constant daily occurrence. So one day I thought, why are we just the two of us having these conversations? I'm sure there's loads of interpreters out there. They're having the exact same issues, same challenges, same dilemmas coming up for them. So I think we definitely need to share to share that conversation with others. That's how we began the lean podcast. Absolutely. We kind of were going back and forth a little bit about what languages we wanted to record the podcast in, particularly because we felt it's not just hearing interpreters who work in sign [00:37:00] language. We have deaf interpreters and deaf interpreters are those who are first language Irish sign language users who are part of the deaf community and know the various language requirements that would be needed for the community. And it's a very valued and necessary skill.

We felt if we only used English for the podcast, we would be excluding parts of our professional body, which wouldn't be OK and we didn't want that at all, which is why we decided to make our podcast as accessible as possible. So that means our podcasts are always in English Irish language and we have English captioning as well. This is to kind of try cater to as many audiences as possible to listen and watch our podcast. Did you want to add anything else about that, geeks? But it's funny that you mentioned deaf interpreting Romi, because that's actually one of the topics we decided to talk about and one of our episodes of our podcast. Yeah. So maybe I don't know if you want to have a look, have a watch, have a listen, so you can find out more information about it there. Absolutely. I think at the end of the day, we're a open podcast [00:38:00] and all we want to do is talk about all things interpreting, right? That's it, reading. It's a very simple idea, and that's why we're so grateful to the troublesome turps to have invited us here today. That's a really cool opportunity to show a little bit about who we are and maybe a little bit about sign language, and maybe you'll have a new perspective about interpreting in general. That's the aim.

That's right. So if you'd like to see more or learn a little bit more about us, you can watch our podcast in Irish Sign language on our YouTube channel, or you can listen along to our English version wherever you like to listen to your favorite podcasts. You can find us there. So just to say thanks so much again for watching. Thanks so much for inviting us. We hope you have a great day.

Thanks for watching by. It is. Podcast. [00:39:00]

I mean, I know we're usually announcing Segways, but the whole discussion about inclusion and accessibility that we just heard on the previous panel could not have come at a better point right before this video. So that was excellent. That was an excellent rendition, and thank you so much for the sake. That incredible emperors. But so that brings us actually to our second panel where we have two podcasts on. One is Civil Service, a culture with Ada Faulkner and the Vocal Fries, which is Carrie Gillan and Megan Figueroa. So welcome to the three of you. I think we're all having all. Yeah, everybody's on line. Welcome to all three of you. Do you maybe even want to talk about the names of your podcast? Because I think that might be the first thing that a lot of people are wondering about. What is service's future? What does that mean? And [00:40:00] also, what's the vocal phrase? What is a vocal fry ADA? Do you want to go first?

Maybe so I'll go first. So services culture means seen and heard. We are a podcast about language justice, about interpreting and about organizing in the U.S. South. So for me, I wanted the title to kind of convey that language justice is work that you hear that you, you know, mostly we talk about interpreting English, Spanish, interpreting, but it's also something that you should feel. And so that's why we wanted to say they say escuchar. So yeah,

I like that. Yeah, and it's true. There's there's definitely all these components in there. So, Carrie, you, Megan, how did you guys come up with your name or your podcast?

Well, we were talking about, you know, what the podcast was going to be about from the very beginning. [00:41:00] It was always going to be about linguistic discrimination and why that's bad. And you know, at the time, Vocal Fry was talked about a lot. So that's the way of using your voice. It's a little bit creaky, and a lot of people think it's only young women who use it. But it's basically all English speakers use it at least somewhat, and it's not even young women who use it the most. There are men. There are some men who use it the most. But anyway, so we're just like banning ideas back and forth, like what would be a good name that, you know, incorporates vocal fry. And I can't remember who came up with it, I think might have been me, but I can't remember for sure. I was like, Oh, the vocal fries. So then I then I asked my husband to create

Little fry icon for us because he's a graphic designer, so. And its iconic iconic at this point, at least to me, in my eyes. And also, it's perfect because one of the things that women get disparaged for as podcast hosts is vocal [00:42:00] fry, so it works on that level too.

That is very true, but I think already from the introduction of the two podcasts, maybe you can kind of derive why we we lump you two podcasts together, you know, with the whole angle of sort of linguistic discrimination, justice and language justice and interpreting. We figured this would be a very potentially socially conscious panel discussion. And kind of the first question that I want to ask the the three of you is why did you think that a podcast was the right format for you to talk about these potentially relatively heavy topics? You know, at times, I mean, you know, just as an organizing, but also linguistic discrimination can be pretty heavy handed or pretty heavy topics, I should say. And if not handled correctly, can be pretty heavy handed. So what did you guys figure out? Podcasts will be the right way to go.

Um, I guess for me, I thought because Megan and I have been friends for so long, [00:43:00] at least we could keep it lighter if it was like if it was a podcast that you can have a conversation and you can make jokes that it's easier to like. I think totally hit the right note in text. It can be harder. I think although that's we're writing a book about it too right now. So it's now I really know how much harder it is to do

When you talk about the book as well. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, we'll talk about that later, but yeah, so I just I think for me, it's like you could do it in video for sure, but there's an it's easier to just do audio like in terms of like becoming being an amateur. It's a little bit harder, I think, to also do video, at least for me. So I think that's why I listen to a lot of podcasts. I like getting my information editorially. So for me, that was just like

It made sense in their. I mean, maybe I mean, like 2016 17 when we were thinking about [00:44:00] it or twenty seventeen, I guess not that they're not in their heyday. Now, I don't even know what we consider their heyday now, but podcasts are very popular and they were when we were talking about it, so.

Hmm. The golden age of podcasting, Ada, what about you?

For me, so I'm a freelance English Spanish interpreter, but I also train interpreters, and we had written a manual like a training manual for social justice interpreters. And so as soon as we printed that manual and that manual was based on several years of community interpreter practice sessions. So we published this manual. It's beautiful. It has these nice illustrations. And as soon as we publish the manual, it was kind of outdated and I wouldn't have said that anymore, and I wouldn't explain it that way anymore. And me and my co-host who started the podcast, we were podcast [00:45:00] nerds like Florian, said, like always with the earbuds on. And so we thought that the podcast would be a way to continue the conversation from the interpreter training curriculum. So we thought of it kind of as an extension of it. And it was a good way to kind of like as things adapt, as things change, we can put it into the into the podcast instead of going back to the manual and like editing version three point five version four point two version. Mm hmm.

Ok, can I ask a really simple question, we've talked about the idea of linguistic language, justice and linguistic justice. Could you get all three of you give me a really potted definition of what you mean by that?

This is my least favorite question, and I was like, They're going to ask me what it is. This is my least favorite question. But for me, language justice has to do with the right of being a being able to, to speak and to be [00:46:00] understood. And it has to do with the right to participate fully, no matter what language you speak and no matter how you speak that language. So interpretation and translation are a part of that. But I think it's for me. How do we use language as part of our movements for climate justice, gender justice, racial justice? How? How are we thinking about language in our movements for social justice?

Yeah. Similarly, for me, it would be like linguistic or language justice would be when we stop, we get rid of the barriers to material and immaterial resources and opportunities based on how someone speaks or signs.

And for me, it's just being able to speak the language that's part of your heritage, right? So for [00:47:00] me, I get to speak that every day, right? I, as I saw, told Megan one time I have no idea how many generations ago my ancestors wouldn't have spoken English, maybe Scots at some point, but it was a while ago. But for many people, especially indigenous people. Their access to their language has been taken away by by US colonizers on purpose. It was the languages have been purposely suppressed. And so for me, language justice involves just even being able to speak your own language, being given the opportunity to learn it in whatever way it works for you.

And another kind of difficult question coming from the research now, our translation and interpreting always helping. Language justice or do they sometimes hold it back?

I've [00:48:00] been thinking about this a lot. Speaking with deaf colleagues and just about podcasts in general, too, that there's no real way for their message to be heard or seen through them. It's going to be through the interpreter, no matter how you really look at it. So that, I think, is just, I mean, I don't know if there's a way to solve that problem, but that is an issue that I've heard from deaf colleagues.

No, I think that there's a bad bunch of bad translation and bad interpretation that is hindering access to to justice. And one of the things that we sometimes talk about kind of when we introduce language justice to clients or to folks who are trying to incorporate it into their work is there's access and there's justice. [00:49:00] And I think about the hospital here where I live in in North Carolina. Right now, if you give birth in the hospital, you have access to an interpreter via a language line. And for me, that's not justice, right? So to think about those two things I think sometimes helps as well.

Hmm. So Megan and Carrie, you mentioned that you're writing a book. So is that sort of something that you're touching upon in the book as well?

Yes, that is part of what we're talking about, I mean, it's a we have this like big idea of like, OK, linguistic discrimination. People don't really know what it is and people engage in it all the time. So how do we explain what it is and to stop doing it and how to stop doing it? And yeah, one of the topics is has to do with tribalism, autism. But we talk about so many different things [00:50:00] because it's everywhere. You know, it involves class, race, sex, gender. Like anything you can possibly think of. Basically, there is a way that we can discriminate based on language. And so it is kind of a huge thing.

Yeah. And it's a lot harder than I thought I was going to be emotionally to. I research things and then or write things, and I feel emotionally just drained because it's hurtful things that we're talking about, things that hurt people. So it's it's harder than I thought. Writing a book is hard writing a book that is so painful, like some of these topics are so painful and then trying to be like, How do we make this digestible so that we? I, you know, like the podcast, so it's a lot of things are making it difficult.

Yeah, for me, I

Think the hardest [00:51:00] thing is like like hitting the right note of like this is a really serious topic, but also like, I don't want you to be depressed, I want you to be like enjoying the read, and it's actually quite

Difficult. So. Hmm.

Yeah, I would imagine striking the right balance there, getting the right tone, that can't be easy. But so we're slowly having to move on to the next video message and then the next panel. But I did want to ask you guys sort of a this is probably a question that we could discuss also for for like an hour as we could with anything with anyone here. But I think especially in the in the United States, the whole notion of social justice, you know, the social justice warrior is at sustainable use and stuff has gotten a really bad rap. And I feel like what you guys are doing and what you guys are talking about is incredibly important. And I'm wondering, is there anything that you think that we can do to kind of help destigmatize social justice and kind of take that, take the stink away from it again? Because I mean, we should all want social justice, right? Linguistic [00:52:00] justice, social justice? I don't know. That just occurred to me, it might be a totally, totally off base question.

No, no, I think it's a good question. So. So I mean, here's the thing I don't think it's actually bad or wrong to be a social justice warrior. So to me, as being called a we're called

All the time and Marxist cars

And scared by our fire. So I just think it's fine. I don't. I don't. If that's what you want to call me, that's fine. If you think that that's a bad term that says more about you than it does about us. And that's to me, like just saying stuff like that actually can be helpful, like, Oh, what's wrong with being a social justice warrior? Explain to me.

Yeah, yeah. Push them on it. And I think that they you'll see they can't really take it much further

Because they don't even know if Marxism is. I know you don't know these Marxist characters.

Yeah.

And they don't even understand what Karen is.

I think [00:53:00] I'm beginning to think that if someone doesn't think that you're a danger, you're probably not doing it right.

Hmm.

Yes. Yeah. Yeah, that kind of thing that reminds me of one thing which which sort of leads us into the next video message that will have is that because it's from one of the podcasts, this is called Corin, and the speech recognition engine sort of kept rendering it as Karen for some reason. But I was glad I was the human in the loop and was able to to fix that there. But that Harry and Meghan

Or the tales I could tell you as a Glaswegian about what speech recognition has done to my

Guess, I'll have to put the link to the

Video. But the elevator?

Yeah, exactly. All right. I just want to go ahead.

I just wanted to say, Alex, I grew up Alex G. I grew up in Mexico and I went to school in the United States, in Texas, and the first day that my mom signed me up for school, they started to call me Ada and my my mom came the next day and she said, [00:54:00] La Nina say the other names is Ada. So I have to like, do do do my own family just absolutely get that officially on the record? Sorry. No, that's OK.

Yes. Well, we'll change them both. But no, that's of course important. The names, the names are important.

They are. They are really. Yeah. And I tell that to my kids all the time as well as you have a right, you know, to to get for people to get your name right? Exactly. So I thought that was super interesting. Basically, other you and the team, you moved kind of from the book, from the manual to the podcast, and the vocal fry is kind of moved from the podcast to the book. I think that's amazing and I'm really looking forward to that book. So I don't know. Do you have an ETA already or should we not ask about it? When's it? When's it going to come out?

And probably there's a little rule here that I don't think get rid of. As someone who's written two books, you never ask someone their age and you never ask an author when the book will be finished.

I see my bad. That's fair, but that is a very. It's just I'm so curious to see it. That's all. I'm really excited about it. [00:55:00]

Yeah, I don't like the rule, to be honest, Jonathan. We have to talk about that again. I think you should ask someone that age. I think there shouldn't be shame associated with age. Exactly. But I am OK with the other.

I've been 29 plus something for a number of years now. That just plus number just

Gets bigger and bigger. You're such a baby face anyway.

Doesn't matter.

Oh, but it's funny. You should mention that because the age thing will come up in the next voice memo. But before we get to that other Kerry and Meghan, thank you so, so much for joining us. Thank you and everybody. You should really check out these two podcasts. So again, for for all the hosts we have on tonight, we'll have the links in the show, notes Alex. She's going to make sure of that right? So we'll have all the links to the yes, the shows

Link to all of your other projects, your shows.

And with a vocal fry as we did a crossover before so he can listen back to that as well to learn more. Great. So thanks to the three of you for joining us, you're welcome to stick around, of course, if you if you have time. And with that, we'll move on to a little message from if Buddy and Corinne McKay, whose [00:56:00] podcast speaking of translation, is currently on a bit of a hiatus because they were really the OG podcasters, I think, in our space. So let's see what they have prepared for us. Just a second. Here we go.

Hello, I'm eve boded from the podcast speaking of translation, and I'm Corinne McKay, and we are thrilled to be here with troublesome turps today. Thanks so much for inviting us, and we're going to share an anecdote about interpreting. As luck would have it, Corinne spent the last school year pursuing a Masters and conference interpreting at Glendon College in Toronto. So she is going to enlighten us with a little story about that. And I, too am super excited to hear more about her experience there and what she learned in the big picture. So Corinne have at it. Thank you. So even I are the co-hosts of the podcast Speaking of translation, which we hosted monthly for 13. Count them 13 years. We've [00:57:00] now put the podcast on hiatus for a little bit, but all of our. Hives are still there at speaking of translation. So my message to all of you troublesome turps listeners would be basically, if I can do it, you can do it. I've been a freelance translator since 2002 and I always really wanted to pursue interpreting, but it was logistically really difficult until my now almost 19 year old daughter was older. So in 2018, I had this moment where I thought, OK, this is now or never. I need to pursue my interpreting ambitions now, or I'm never going to do it. And after a year and a half of intensive studying, I passed the state of Colorado, where I live in the U.S.

state of Colorado, French court interpreter exam in 2019 and then during the most recent school year in twenty twenty twenty twenty one. As I've said, I did a master's in conference interpreting [00:58:00] English, a French B at Glendon College, which is part of York University in Toronto, Canada. So my message to you is when I started pursuing interpreting, I could not even shadow. So you guys probably know what shadowing is, but it is the most basic form of simultaneous interpreting or the most basic skill you learn to do simultaneous interpreting, which is where you simply repeat after the speaker in the same language. So you are not going from one language to another, just repeating and trying to mirror the speaker's pacing and intonation. So when I started doing that, I had to either shadow something like the news in slow French, something that was deliberately slow, or I had to slow YouTube videos down to zero point seven five speed. And then I progressed to very slow speakers. And I honestly, when I was learning consecutive interpreting, [00:59:00] I'd panic if someone talked for more than about one sentence, and now I am. After studying interpreting for about three years, I'm definitely still on the path far from perfect. A lot to learn. But I did pass the exit exams for my conference interpreting masters, which included a five minute consecutive speech, and we actually practiced up to 10 minutes and did some really fast simultaneous speakers and survived.

So my message to you would be, of course, there are people who are incredibly talented at interpreting and pick it up faster. But really, for most of us, it is almost all about learning the techniques. Tons and tons of practice, learning to stay calm in a high stress environment and really committing to be that person's voice in another language. And I think that for a lot of would be interpreters, certainly for me. I think that improving and maintaining your B and C [01:00:00] languages are actually the biggest challenge. So for myself, I'm what I say is a real French B, which means I don't live in a French speaking country. I have no French contact in my daily life. So maintaining my body language is probably my biggest challenge in interpreting. And as luck would have it, I've wrote a book on that very topic and it is called Maintaining Your Second Language, and not only because Eve is my friend and colleague, but because really, you need this book again. It's called maintaining your second language. I think the title speaks for itself, and if you haven't read it, I would strongly encourage you to pick up that book because some of the text techniques that I used the most throughout my interpreting program, I learned from Eve's book. So did you want to say anything else about the book or where people can look for it? Oh, sure.

Yeah, thanks for doing that. You can get it on in [01:01:00] Kindle format and Apple Books and in hard copy. So yeah, and you can also have my website. It tells more information about this little video and stuff. So that's Boadu International dot com. But also, I wanted to say thank you, Karen, for talking about that. I love the kind of your story because even though we look 20, oh yes. Yeah, we're not. And I do like the idea. You know, I love that idea, and I want everyone to take that away from what you talked about, too. Is that even as you aren't, even though maybe we're not traditional student age, you can have these specific dreams and kind of make them happen and go back. And then even for me, looking at you when you first started the the master's and conference interpreting, I thought, You know what? I was thinking, No, no, no, no, no, just at the time. Like, it's already done. I mean that that you put your time to doing it and then you did it. And the time went by fast, you know, went by fast for me because I didn't I wasn't the one studying it. But I mean, the idea that it's totally doable. It doesn't take necessarily eight years of your life to get to if you put a plan together [01:02:00] to whatever your dreams might be listeners having.

Do a TNI or otherwise, Corinne has shown us that you can you can make that planning and get it done, that's what I think for me. I have a hard time sometimes executing stuff. So to me, it shows you shows that you can make this plan and have it and get it done. And what I meant was it's already completed and I can't believe it went by so fast. I know that's yeah, thanks for that point. Even that's correct. I talked to someone from our local translators association the other day who said to me exactly the same thing, like, I'm sure it didn't go fast when you were the one in the program. But this woman said, You know, I feel like it was not that long ago that you were thinking about applying and now you are already done and have your masters. And yes, for all of you out there who are not twenty two, I'm going to be forty nine for twenty one more days. Congratulations. And after giving up and after that, I have a big birthday coming and I was not. I don't think I was the oldest person in my program and there were many, many people who were not twenty two. So do not let [01:03:00] that stop you. Yeah, great. Ok, well, thank God for you. Yeah, thanks again to troublesome turps for inviting us to be guests on this special episode and keep up the great work.

Yeah, I don't know about you. I just love the chemistry between the two, so I hope the podcast comes back from the hiatus at some point, but we'll just keep cracking with with our next panel right here. And for that, I'd like to call on our next guests, which would be Kate Hamilton, who has been on the show before. Good evening, Kate. It's great to have you back. And I have to say this live again. Congratulations on the master of science that you got today.

Yesterday, when was it? Congratulations.

Thank you. That actually really resonates with what the ladies were just saying because I'm 52 and I started, you know, like a couple like I applied when I was 40. And yeah, you're never too old to go and study something that you're really interested in. I do my PhD now, so I'll be, you [01:04:00] know, the oldest person kind of graduating or something. But that's what I thought. But actually, you know, you're not everybody's there. It's about the learning. It's not about their age.

So if anything, I always find it really impressive when someone who is out of the, let's say, traditional college age and a little older people in life to still go back to college because it shows that you want to learn that you're still driven, that you have ambitions and that you're not just, you know, settled. I mean, it's also nice to, you know, be settled in a certain way in your life. Of course, I'm not saying that, you know, we all need some comfort. But I think it's great. Yeah, that's what I want to do as well. Just, you know, continuous learning.

Yeah, no, I think go for it. And also being a bit older, you can I think I'm better thinking great. Probably a bit more perspective, but let's you can you can look at you can look at stuff and put it in perspective, it's not all new to you.

Totally true. Yeah. But let's welcome our second guest on this panel, which would be Le Conferenced Oprah from Germany and host of the [01:05:00] two point fifty six kilometer podcast. Welcome, Mikaela.

Thank you. Very well done. Not everybody gets that. Yeah, the title of my podcast as smoothly.

Yeah, I've seen it so often these these past few days that I can now correctly remember it. But but for those of the listeners, I guess who, who don't, who haven't got any clue what that what that number means. Tell them what, what it's about.

Yeah, that is the inner size of a ESOL booth interpreting booth. It's really small. A tiny found that out when I was searching for it is tiny and I was searching for a name. And yeah, then I was like, OK, well, how big is the the booth, actually? And it's really small. So that's the workspace we're in. Lots of the time.

But you know what's funny now with with corona, we usually all get one [01:06:00] booth per person, you know, because of such

A single one or

A single one. So like a double person booth per interpreter. And there have been these rare occasions when you do get to sit with a colleague in one booth and we're both sitting there and it's like, how did this ever work? How were we ever able to fit two people in one interpreting booth and do any work here?

So I know I was just in a room actually was not a not a booth, but it was a whole room. My colleague and I had for work and we had two laptops and mikes and we didn't have enough space. It was a huge table and in the end we just put one laptop away and worked together on one because you just couldn't manage. I don't know how we ever did that.

It can feel really claustrophobic. That's that's totally true, you know? But but I mean, sort of going back to the topic of of learning, I guess, Kate, your podcast is called Language Revolution and was sort of learning curiosity. Was that what got you started [01:07:00] on on your show because you've had some quite cool guests on as well?

Yeah, I mean, I guess it's quite a selfish podcast. I ask people to come on because I'm interested in what I you know, I've got a question or an itch or something. I want to kind of scratch. And then I I think, who's the best person to answer this question? And then I ask them, and yes, I've spoken to David Crystal, who I'm obviously, you know, like all linguists, like a massive fan of his. And yeah, if you really interesting, cool people who just they've been very generous with their time, but it's it's been about like learning and my kind of journey as a sort of a linguist as has been sort of running along parallel, I guess, with the podcast. So, yeah, one of my favorite episodes was about the history of language education. So that's really interesting. And like the 16th century England and Dutch dictionaries at the time, and you know how the Italian tutors would have like a feud in London about [01:08:00] who was the best Italian tutor or who had the most recent, who'd been to the Parisian court most recently and therefore their French was superior just.

The usual things, I've never seen language people having feuds.

No, and I was like, it's just like YouTube. It's YouTube. Youtube, but sort of 15, 16 hundreds.

So, hey, guys, I want to address something here today like that, but the drama?

Yeah, I mean, it's cool to see that there's a huge variety, and I think that's that's true for your show as well. Michaela, you've covered a lot of ground as well already. And you had sort of a little bit about the business of interpreting and how to get started and what it's like in specific disciplines of interpreting, I guess. But you also talked about a few topics that are sort of more about language in general. I guess like one thing that that I think a lot of interpreters are acutely aware of these days is [01:09:00] the role of English English as a lingua franca, I guess, and a lot of delegates using English and maybe then the number of languages used in the meetings that we work at is shrinking. What was your takeaway from from sort of the the language focused episodes that you had or from this from this English one where you're a little bit afraid your job might get less interesting? Maybe. Or what would you take away from that?

Well, I as an English interpreter, I am not so afraid of English being spoken at conferences because that ensures my work. So I, I, I see the problems or I see the fear of people off interpreters working with, yeah, that's widespread languages. Or just let it be the normal European languages we had at conferences just a couple of years ago, just Italian, [01:10:00] French. These colleagues complained to me that they're at these conferences where those languages are actually needed. So I am confronted with a variety of English, actually, and I'm not only a conference interpreter where you have, yeah, a certain variety of English, but I also work as a court interpreter and I see an extremely extreme variety of English that I have sometimes trouble understanding, actually. And so this is something that I, yeah, very aware of that there's so much more English than what I learned or what I'm used to, because also conference speak as sort of, yeah, always the same kind of. But there's so much more English African accents, Asian accents, Indian English, which I really have to [01:11:00] concentrate a lot to to get the message across in the end.

Yeah, and Kate, one of the topics that we discussed on our joint episode, I think, was a little bit related to this, so it was about bilingualism and multilingualism. So as someone who's also very interested in how language develops, how would you see that is because it seems to be a little bit contradictory. There's a growing awareness, I think, for bilingualism and multilingualism. At least I like to believe that. But but on the other hand, you know, there's a big movement towards using English as a lingua franca. Or maybe that isn't a contradiction. Maybe it's just two things happening in parallel what what would you say to that?

Well, that's an interesting question, isn't it? So, I mean, English has really grown and really spread. There's billions of English speakers now, and actually it's kind of moved away from what you might call the original places where English came from, you know, the UK, the US and, you know, characters in a circle of English. And now [01:12:00] you've got like almost like no connection between sort of the outer circles of English and there and like the original, you know, the British English, for example, like if you're in an international meeting and there's a couple of British people there, it's terrible because everybody speaks in idioms and metaphors and doesn't really say anything straightforward, and it's actually quite difficult to understand like that kind of idiomatic English. I think it can be, you know, just not very plain and simple in terms of like. So the you know, from my perspective, it's the UK has a bit of a problem in that English is spoken everywhere. So when I'm teaching kids in school, it's you have to persuade them it's worth learning French because actually, you know, it's not just about whether you will go to a cafe in France and order a coffee in French. It's actually about culture and life and people and interesting stuff, and just those moments you won't have if [01:13:00] you don't speak the language because you can go pretty much anywhere in the world, can't you? And say, you know, you have a transaction on a basic level in English.

And what we're losing out on is that sort of ability to actually connect with people. And like here, you already mentioned about how interpreters and linguists were people, people we like to connect with people, don't me. And yeah, it's I think languages are really important for that. So I guess sort of my my angle on it is that I think we need to really persevere at promoting language learning, not for the sake of that sort of transactional, what's the word instrumental usage? It's not just about achieving a goal in that language, it's about, you know, making a step towards another person's culture or, well, just, you know, understanding the art or getting into the literature or the films in the original language because you get a lot more out of it. And there is a bit of a movement in Britain, like towards [01:14:00] bilingual, like it's a it's something that we talk about. It's more of a talking point. We've got twenty two percent of kids are multilingual in in school in Britain, but but generally it's not really, you know, we haven't really shifted the English hegemony. It's still, you know, it's a mindset that British people feel like they can't do languages, which I think is a bit sad.

So trying to break that down, actually, everybody's a linguist. That's what I always say from birth. We're all linguists. Even if you only speak English, you speak varieties of English, you've got dialect, dialect or differences. You know, you don't speak to your boss the same as you speak to your mum or whatever thing. Yeah, I think we need to. We need to talk about language and the connections that languages have. Yeah, I think, Kate, what you just said reminded me about English or British speakers or English speakers increasing a language barrier at international conferences, I just read a tweet [01:15:00] the other day from the climate conference. I think there was an English speaker and he made a speech and was full of cultural references and referring to English researchers and a very culturally specific. And someone was complaining like, nobody can understand this. Nobody can interpret this even because it's so specific. And I thought that was really interesting. What you just pointed out that, yeah, you can just muddy. It can it can make it more difficult content. It's just, you know, it's it's important not to be too obtuse and referring to something that only another person who saw the same program.

You don't want to keep moving the goalposts until the cows come home.

And Kate, I like what you said, but that it's difficult sometimes to can to convey to people that language is more about, you know, it's not just, oh yeah, then you can order a coffee or, you know, you can get a degree or these different things, but that it's really about that. It should be something very [01:16:00] lively. It's about life, it's about people. It has a lot of culture and history in it. And for me, for example, I speak, you know, I speak English with my husband because he's Irish and he doesn't speak a lot of German yet. He's working on it. And I sometimes try to convince the people, convey to people why. It's important to me that he also learns German. Because I'm saying, because I say, like, Well, your English is so good, why does he need to learn German? It's like, Well, but then there will always be a part of me that he cannot know because I can show him certain things in my country and everything. But there are certain things that are so embedded in the language, and it's also certain things that I only got about his culture by living in Ireland for, like almost a decade, you know? So there's so much more to language than just the pure linguistic part, which I'm also a fan of because I'm also a linguistics nerd. But you know, there is so much more to it.

Yeah, no, let you completely right, if you if your husband doesn't sort of get to a certain point with Germany, he's not going to [01:17:00] like unlock the last level is exactly the endgame. You know, and it's good to get. Yeah, it's really important. Like, how do you truly know someone if you don't like? Yeah, there's just some expressions like, you know, it's really popular now to have those untranslatable words. It's not so much. It's not so much like there isn't a direct translation. It's just that there is a cultural thing. There's like a little nugget of of something tied up in that word. And yeah, you can't you can't know it unless you understand that word. It's important.

Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah, I want you to come back to what you said about the whole sort of people thing and direct interaction with with people. And I mentioned that it's there's still a pandemic going on at the moment. So I'm kind of reluctant to to speak about the new normal. But how have things sort of shaped up for you? I mean, you probably do most of your interviews remotely. You probably [01:18:00] do a lot of work remotely as well these days. So what does it look like for you? What's what's the new reality of being an interpreter, I guess?

Well, the reality of being a podcaster and an interpreter is pretty similar currently. So there are similarities. I started out the podcast right before the pandemic and my I imagined, so I'm still starting out. I'm in my second year now. So and I imagine like traveling around with my mic, interviewing interesting people and just being on the road and something like that. And then I recorded one episode like that and then COVID came. I was like, OK, I need a new plan. And I started to record remotely and I so I had a good mic, actually, when everything started out, when everybody was searching for mikes and headphones and everything. [01:19:00] So, yeah, I worked a lot remotely. I there were times in Germany in the summertime when we could do on site work, and a lot of my clients wanted to do on site work as soon as it was possible. But then, yeah, now it's we're well, we all we're going back into a bad place right now. So this is the place I am at my home studio right now. Yeah, mostly,

But interesting to see to see these parallels between podcasting and interpreting. That's definitely something I think, yeah, all of us here can sort of confirm as well. And Kate, what what was the experience like now for you, for the GMS, the degree you got? Was it very different from from your initial degree? What's what was it like to do that in a pandemic, I guess?

Well, I guess we were quite lucky we got the first term in person wearing [01:20:00] masks and because it's a graduate degree, there was a small class, so it wasn't like too difficult to spread out and have the seminars in person. But then the whole UK lockdown last Christmas, and then we were at home from about November through to March. I think so. That was tough. I mean, I like, I'm a mum, I've got three kids and so I was doing my degree and I had to lock myself in this room where I am now and say, That's it. I'm studying for a few hours and that kind of thing. So I think, yeah, I think it was, you know it. It definitely wasn't what I was expecting when I signed up for it. You know, the idea is, I like people. I want to meet new people. And if you go somewhere like Oxford, there's going to, you know, you're bound to find people who are on the same wavelength and it would be cool to hang out in libraries and that sort of thing. But actually, probably because I was not distracted by socializing and chatting got a lot more. So, yeah, so it had it had a bonus effect.

Like unintentionally, I got a good grade. But yeah, [01:21:00] yeah, no. I think we've we've kind of worked out how to do hybrid learning now so people can sign on in, you know, like India and they can be in the seminar with us. And so at the moment, we're kind of in the room, but there's also people signing it online on the screen. So I guess that might be like some of your conferences that you're at and the tech has rapidly improved. We now have like microphones all around the room. So if you're online, you can actually hear what people at the back of the class are saying. So yeah, I would also like to add to that bonus effect I had from the pandemic because I think we all need good news sometimes, and I had a completely different plan in the beginning. But the pandemic had the effect that I had guests on my podcast I would not have had before where I would not have ever thought about inviting if I had pursued that original plan. I talked to Judy Jenner in Las Vegas. [01:22:00] I mean, I don't think I would have gotten on the plane with my mic. And so

Unless you get a really good response,

Yes, I would've been a very involved podcast. For sure. I know I can. The as episode committed

Talking about remote guests. This is the moment when I be over and I can kind of get my own back for a few months ago. So our last panel is with Maria Perez and tomorrow, Maria. I was on Maria's podcast is it remains me. Actually, it's kind of like a it reminds me of the vibe and the feeling of light of early life episodes. It's got that kind of relaxed but deep thinking podcast mid-year podcast tomorrow since I've wanted this story is classified into people.

Before we come to the next panel, I wanted to at least thank Kate and Michaela for joining us and for sharing a little bit of your experience. So let's let's not go too quickly. So thanks for joining us. And of course, check out the Language Revolution podcast, [01:23:00] and it's become often quite automated. I suppose this a lot of good stuff for you to listen to. I know actually for a fact, and there's probably lots of cool episodes coming up as well.

I was I was going to say I have just taken some quite strong decongestants, so I might be a little bit too quick, even quicker than usual. So tomorrow, would you like to introduce us a bit to your podcast message across?

So yes, I'm glad that when you said you're getting your own back for a few months ago, it wasn't something I'd done unwittingly, you said as I go over into tomorrow and Maria. But yeah, so message across similarly to what some other people have said. It's that whole scratching where you're itching. So I started with people. I knew who I'd always thought, I want to know more about how you got where you are. What's your story? A lot of them were people who taught me on the master's and rather than just walk up to them at the university and say, Tell me about your life story, I thought that would have more kudos for inviting them on the podcast to do so. And I'm really [01:24:00] glad I did, because actually, these were people who had, you know, I worked with after. After the AMA, I stayed on and worked on the Dorset project in the department. The online training materials a lot of e-learning stuff. So I'd worked quite closely with some of these people and saw them as colleagues as well as former tutors. And actually, it wasn't even until on the podcast recording asking the questions that I found out some really fascinating things about them. So message across the first series was called getting into it, and it really was about other interpreters and how they got to do what they're doing. And so it kind of had a focus towards maybe students or people who are trying to get into the industry at the time, the series that I've got in the pipeline next is more looking at other professionals, as well as some translators and interpreters, because I can't let go of that. You know that baby, but also people in other professions just to try and feed that same intellect. So curiosity that I think almost all interpreters have, which is why we do a job where [01:25:00] you can be doing completely different topics and within the same day, so hopefully that's going to be really exciting to.

And Maria, can you tell us about the background to brand the interpreter? It does sound like something you do to make sure that you know their identity and they can't get away.

Yeah, there is no hot irons, that's for sure. You know, for the podcast to be a part of it. But yeah, brand, the interpreter basically was something that I wanted to put together so that I could just like I just said, learn the stories of other language professionals and basically learn from them and particularly those that were pretty hidden away. And I wanted to see how language professionals were in all the different specializations and just having them share their stories on an audio only platform, mainly because I was pretty comfortable with audio only. So I went for the podcast and it's been [01:26:00] it's been quite a journey and I've met incredible people along the way. Jonathan included, you know, just being able to learn a little bit more about the different specializations and language professionals that are out there. It turned out just, you know, I was thinking just for the California commuters that travel for such a long period of time to work, to get to the office. And it turned out to be something global, which is amazing to say.

And it was really interesting who both of you have had this idea of really wanting to hear people's stories with a name like brandy, and it really sounds like you're getting into the business end of interpreting. Has that come out and all of your episodes, or have you had content that you didn't expect?

I think there's always when because it's not really scripted. I mean, I have a guide that I can go by with regards to back up questions in the event that it's details, right? But but I think that as the conversations come up, there's a little bit of something business related, [01:27:00] always just because most folks are freelancers out there. And so these are sort of topics that we get into that are not necessarily coming across in the education aspect. So when you're going through the training, these are things that may not necessarily be brought up, and it's one of those you learn as you go type of thing. And so we bring in the language professional that has gone through it, that is maybe made the mistakes and like gotten themselves up, dusted themselves off and is now able to share. Let's not do this part. Maybe give some suggestions to other to others in the field.

Mm-hmm. Tamano, did you find that with you, with your first quiz that you were learning from people's mistakes as much as from that achievements?

I think so. An element of that, the the interesting thing was learning about people's journeys for me and seeing that. That people often especially when for me, a lot of the people I was interviewing were people who were very much established because they were tutors [01:28:00] when I got into it. These are people who have still been through that same journey, that same process of, yeah, we all a bit like a bit like Corinne was saying, we all started somewhere and we all have our questions and our doubts. And even speaking to Katrina was one of the earlier people I interviewed who said, Yeah, it's actually later on. I thought, Well, I've been teaching for so long. Actually, I'm a good interpreter as well. Why don't I focus on my interpreting career? So, you know, some of the things we question ourselves, which way is my career going? What decisions am I? Am I going to make? It was just really encouraging to hear that and to hopefully share with others that you don't need to panic if you haven't got it all together or you're not sure quite what your next steps are. So, yeah, I don't know that people shared their worst mistakes, which maybe we should be more, more open to do that. Yeah, the whole the whole process was really eye opening.

There's a third seeds for your worst career mistake to date.

See how easy it [01:29:00] is

To get the guests for that one.

Maybe that would be. I don't know if that would be a career mistake. But this idea of sharing stories, I know not long after I graduated, there was a real push for interpreter marketing and interpreter branding and the business side of interpreting. And it's interesting that both of you have come to that topic, but come at it from a very different angle. Maria, are you comfortable that we're now going to making interpreting more human? Because I've seen some of the stories that have come up in your podcast. Was that something that you went out to do to humanize interpreting or did it just happen when you start interviewing people?

Now, I think what I really was aiming for was bringing the human the actual individual out. That's why the whole branding, you know, it's actually I think it was his name is Tucker that mentioned it when he talked about how it was that authenticity and that visibility right of being out and promoting the individual [01:30:00] behind the work, which we don't oftentimes get to see, not just ourselves within the industry, but I think just the general public who is the individual. And so now that you know, there's all this conversation about A.I. or this lack of translators in the field for X, Y and Z type of work. And it's like we're we're out there in the masses, but people don't know about us why? So my whole intention was just humanizing it in the sense of bringing the individual to the forefront as opposed to doing this behind the scenes work. And of course, their stories along with it.

And Tamara, what was it like because I can only imagine what it be like for me to interview the lecturers who lectured me, I had this strange experience about a year ago when I go into a remote studio for a job, and in the other double booth was my French, my English to French interpreting tutor. And I'm sorry, the first thing that happens, you're always going to get scared. I can only imagine what it be like to have on a podcast. [01:31:00] How quickly did you get over the Oh my goodness, I'm interviewing the people who taught me.

I think from that perspective, it was a bit easier because I'd worked in the department for a couple of years by then and I'd grown to see them as colleagues. I think I did in that transition period when that actually happened. And I think one of them actually had to tell me, It's OK, you're not my student anymore. You know, you can you can chill out. I think for me, actually, the person who I didn't know was the one that I was most not intimidated by her, but intimidated by who she was. And that was interpreting, interviewing rather Amanda Goldsworthy, because I'd come across her through her BBC interview like a few years before I approached her thinking this email isn't even going to get through to her and for her to come back and say, Oh no, I'd really love to do that. I think that's something that's really needed right now with everything that's going on. That was just a relief for me, a really special moment to be able to to interview with, interview [01:32:00] and speak to and hear from and share with my listeners, from someone who had inspired me so much. And what makes it easier for me was realizing, even with her, there wasn't a person who I interviewed who I didn't. I couldn't just yet. I get completely what you're saying. That really resonates. Yeah, I know exactly what you're talking about. I've had those kind of experiences and even listening to troubled terms, podcasts and your guests this evening listening to the whole conversations, you're like, Yeah, exactly. Yes, I get it. It just helps that whole connection that we've been talking about tonight. So that that is something that I've had as part of what's made it really special. I'm really glad that I that I did it. It's been a real wonderful experience to have that connection and see, yes, no matter who they are, we're all humans. We have things in common, especially doing the same job. So yeah.

It is lovely to see how human people are. Is there anyone in Nigeria and is there anyone on your list that you would love to interview that you think they're never going to see? Yes. [01:33:00]

I've got my eye on a couple of people after today's festival. I don't know if they'll say yes. So you might get an email from me. I've got I've got a few. I mean, I mean, especially now that I'm delving into delving into other areas as well as interpreting and translation for the next series. I think some of them might be where I'm trying to tap into my nearest and dearest and say, you know, be on my podcast. And I think some of them might say no, but I'm not going to tell you any big names I've got on the horizon just so that if they do come in, I might drop in yet. By the way, Jonathan, if you're listening, this was one of them. But yeah, there are a couple who I'll be. I'll be very impressed if I say yes.

Noam Chomsky is waiting for your email.

That would be amazing.

It probably has a huge inbox, Noam Chomsky. I wonder if he checks his own email, but

I wouldn't know what to ask.

Yeah, that's a good. That's [01:34:00] a good question, right? Sometimes people are literally so famous. I mean, you wouldn't even know what to what to start necessarily and what to ask them. Not necessarily because you're starstruck, because it's just, I don't know. They've been in so many interviews. Where to see exactly? Where do you start?

Exactly such a big.

Yeah, exactly. Great. So Tamara and Maria, thank you so much for joining us and for introducing the audience to your shows. So it sounded like tomorrow we can we can look forward to a new season coming soon ish at some point. So please, please keep us posted. Well, happy. We'll be happy to share it once it's out. And we're also looking forward to your future episodes, Maria, and we'll be curious to find out who you will be emailing and successfully then. So. Good luck with all those requests. Great. So yeah, thanks. Before we wrap up, we have now for real. We have one final voice voice message from two [01:35:00] lovely ladies that we have had on the show before, namely Veronica and Oficiales and Madalena Sanchez San Paolo. So let's just dove right in and listen to what they have prepared. Here we go.

Hi, my name is Magdalena Sanchez. I'm Paulo and I'm a freelance Spanish and certified Portuguese to English medical and life sciences translator. I'm also the owner of a small but mighty translation agency and a health and wellness copywriter. I live in sunny Southern California with my husband, our five year old daughter and our bulldog, Lucy. And I'm Veronica Solis. I am a certified English to Russian translator. I specialize in website and app localization, marketing and corporate communications, and I also teach localization at Houston Community College. I live in Texas with my husband, two kids who are five and nine. Our beagle, Maggie and our chinchilla Larry. And we love Larry. And together we host the Smart Habits for Translators podcast. We started the podcast in October 2019, [01:36:00] and we've now released over 50 episodes and we have listeners in over one hundred and ten countries. We met through the American Translators Association, and as we got to know one another better, we realized that this conversation about building better habits to help us grow our businesses, having a fulfilling home life and maintaining a healthy lifestyle was something we came back to time and again, and we figured a lot of other translators are probably interested in having these conversations, too. Yeah. So every two weeks we release a new episode covering a topic related to smart habits everything from conquering your to do list without burning out to build in your business in a way that makes sense to you.

Some weeks, it's just the two of us and other weeks we're bringing in guests to interview related to specific smart habits. What started as a way to share honest conversations between friends with the rest of the translation and interpreting community has evolved into a real passion project of ours. And we are so happy to hear when our listeners tell us that they find our podcast helpful [01:37:00] and inspiring. Yes, and our idea for the podcast stems from the topic of establishing clarity and boundaries between your work and personal life and building smart habits that will help you along the way. After all, we all want one thing, and that is to feel that our work is rewarding and supports the lifestyle we want to have. But getting there is not easy, especially for freelancers. We're familiar with these challenges, and that's why we cover them on the podcast right? And we believe in the importance of the translation and interpreting community coming together, supporting each other, collaborating and getting stronger together. So we're always happy to highlight our colleagues on the podcast and see what we can learn from them. But we also invite experts from other fields so that we can all gain new insights and ideas. We are so happy to see how many podcasts are now for translators, interpreters and other word nerds and language geeks, and we're so excited to be part of the special tribe.

All right now, let's share our funny or memorable stories related to languages. Veronica, [01:38:00] why don't you go first? Sure. So I studied English since I was five. I don't know if I mentioned I grew up in Russia, in Moscow. And so by the time I started my first job at 18 years old, I thought I was pretty fluent in English. Of course, I grew up in Soviet Russia and had never left the country or even talks to a single foreigner at the time. But I had been getting straight A's in all English classes and my teachers who also never traveled or used their English in real life interactions with other people. They kept telling me how amazing my English was. I was like a star student. So on my first day on the job, I was manning the reception desk, the Moscow office of an. International oil and gas company, and I thought to myself answering phone calls, easy peasy, this will be a breeze. And my first call was from a gentleman with a heavy Norwegian accent. And I did not understand a single thing. I think I asked him to repeat [01:39:00] several times. And the more I asked, the more mad he got at me. I was so terrified that I waited for a long time before accepting the next call.

And then the heavy French accent was even worse. I was just mortified. I could not understand any of the callers. I didn't know why. Why it's so difficult because my English is supposed to be really good and they had trouble understanding me. So everyone was upset. Thankfully, they gave me another chance in that new job and actually worked there for 18 years, just transitioning from one position to the next. But that was my first and only in-house job that lasted for a long time, and I did get better with time. My English improved. But that was a lesson I remembered forever. Be humble. You really don't know as much as you think you do. And also studying language doesn't make you fluent. It's not like it ever stops at a certain time and you're like, perfect from [01:40:00] from then on, you have to consistently work on your language. Do it all the time. Be receptive to feedback and be curious. And I have so much respect and admiration for my colleagues because I understand how much work goes into our jobs as translators and interpreters. So what about you? Oh, such a good story. And yet, yeah, your English is pretty superb, so I can't imagine you not understanding people, but I get it. Phone calls can be hard. Yeah, OK. So my story is funny, but also mortifying for being honest.

So I grew up as a heritage Spanish speaker. My father was from Spain and I went to school actually to study Spanish because I wanted to use it in my career. So not so much how to speak, but as an academic. So I wanted to be a professor of Spanish linguistics. So when I met my now husband, I was starting my master's degree in this area and he was also studying at the same time, same university but as an exchange student from Brazil. And [01:41:00] so I was very interested in Portuguese, and he offered to take time out of his schedule a few times a week to tutor me. So if you've ever studied Portuguese and it's not your first language, then you probably know how difficult the nasal sounds are for most non-native speakers. So one day he was teaching me various vocabulary words for foods, and I have a love and a knack for languages, I think. So I felt like this lesson couldn't possibly be hard, right? And of course, I was trying to impress this guy who was also trying to impress me by teaching me. But so with my language learning skills, right? Well, so we finally we got to the word bread in Portuguese. And so if you are a Portuguese speaker, you know where this is going. And so the word for bread in Portuguese is bone. And this word is not the easiest to pronounce for all non-native speakers.

And I was reading a sentence with the word bone and I forgot to make the very necessary nasal sound, so he starts laughing uncontrollably. [01:42:00] And of course, I had no idea why. And he was laughing so much that he couldn't even speak, and he turned bright red. And then he explained to me that the word pronounced without a nasal sound is basically a slang term in Brazil for a male body part. So you can imagine I nearly fell out of my chair of embarrassment, and I definitely never made that mistake again. So it obviously worked out because he married me a few years later, but I went on to study and teach Portuguese, and now it's one of my working languages as a professional translator. But like you said, wow, yeah. Talk about a humbling and mortifying experience and just thinking about it now, like I'm sweating already. So, yeah, so anyway, that's it from us. Thanks so much for inviting us to your podcast of all. We're honored to be a part of the event. Yes, thank you so much. Trouble some turps for organizing this special celebration of language related podcasts. We can't wait to listen to all the wonderful podcasts, and we hope [01:43:00] that you will check out our smart habits for translators on your favorite podcasting app or at smart habits for translators dot com.

All right, awesome. That is a mortifying story, isn't

That relate to both of those stories?

Yes. I think we've all been there to some extent.

I was,

I'm going, I just want to share mine briefly. Yeah, go ahead. Sure. You're going to have to listen to this now. Sure. I was in Guatemala with my friend. Her family is from there. And I had learned some Spanish in school, but that wasn't, you know, that like, yeah, I thought I spoke some Spanish. But yeah. Anyway, I got on pretty well and I got more confident. And then I was. We went out with her cousins, the cinema, I think, and it was really warm. And so I said to her male cousin, Estoy Caliente,

He was looking at me like, what? It's very hot in here, you know?

Yeah. [01:44:00] For those who don't speak Spanish, like, yes, please. Yeah, yeah. It means from what I understand, on the one hand, it means I'm hot. And also, I'm horny. So, yeah, and not I'm warm at all. So, oh, but a lot of emphasis as well, you know, really like who? I still get it, you know?

So, yeah, I mean,

I mean, going to the cinema will do that to you. You know,

If you do something like that, you have you have to go on to. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Right. So I think, Jonathan, I had to I had to move out to take care of the kids. But Alex and Sara, if you want to give us a favorite moment or highlight in a few moments, that will be great. And meanwhile, I will try to. Well, I don't know, do a little bit of a summary, just just a few of the nice things we've we've had as we as we're wrapping up this podcast of all. One thing that really amazed me also already when we prepared the show was the huge variety of shows and topics [01:45:00] and different perspectives we have in this space. Again, terrible word. But it's true not only for interpreting, but also for translation, of course, and localization. And, you know, language gestures and sign language is really it's really been wonderful to see the podcasting bubble sort of this little niche of podcasting grow, which was also one of the reasons why we wanted to do this in the first place. So this list sort of when we prepared, kept getting longer, which was great, hard to organize, but still wonderful. So we've heard from from the language industry first today and Florian is still with us, which is great. Thanks for sticking around. So we heard about a few recent language industry developments we we spoke about overheard over rehearsed webinars and online events and even deepfakes.

So that was great to get into. And then we moved on to language, justice and sociolinguistics, so they're still with us as well. Great. Thanks for sticking around. So we talked about [01:46:00] social justice warriors and KARENS and what have you, so that was great to do. Check out those shows as well. A great. And then we heard about what it's like to be an interpreter in podcaster in a pandemic and to do a master of science in a pandemic, which is quite a challenge. But we also learned that it can have its upsides because as a podcaster, you already have great audio equipment, which comes in handy when you have to interpret, you know, on an online platform, for example. So that's great too. Swings and roundabouts, I guess. And then we heard about, yeah, I think interpreter biographies, what it means to be an interpreter in this language industry and about the business of interpreting from Maria and Tamara, who are also still with us. Thank you. And also, I guess, about bucket list guests, if that exists and what it's like to approach. Yeah, maybe not idols, but you know, bigwigs in the industry, I guess. And just just now, lastly, we heard about how sharing, [01:47:00] you know, failures can also help us grow and be humble and move on with our lives, which was really fantastic. So Alex and Sara, I don't know if you have any any last words, I guess.

It's really hard to choose what my favorite part was. I covered a lot of ground. I love. Yeah. I loved all of the all of the videos and the audio messages that were so fun people put a lot of effort into them. You could tell to keep it, you know, still like, relatively short but interesting and fun. So that was a really, really great. But I also loved all the discussions that happened here live and that everyone, you know, had something good to say, and it felt very natural and organic. I think my favorite kind of has to be the video with the Irish sign language. On the one hand, because, you know, shout out to the Irish, I'm not Irish, but my name is very Irish great. I'm a fake Irish and I lived there for a long time and I'm a German disguised as an Irish person now and I love the accessibility [01:48:00] element as well as one of my colleagues actually announced that I wanted to mention earlier Belén. She is an expert to everything to do with accessibility. She has a PhD in that topic as well. She talks about not just captioning, but all of the accessibility stuff to do with languages all day long. So reach out to her if you want to talk about this more because she's the real expert there and I love all that stuff. I love learning more from Berlin, and I love learning more from the hosts of the Lean podcast, and I think it's such a wonderful idea to have a sign language interpreter like not even sign language interpreting what they're doing. From what I understand them. What I do in the podcast and sign language and then speaking over it right and then having the the captions or whichever way. But it's just great that they're covering all of this. So yeah, they are the winners for me, but I loved all of it. It was really hard to choose.

Everyone's a winner tonight.

I fully agree. [01:49:00] Yeah, I mean, it was a pretty, pretty fantastic smorgasbord of of language industry nuggets. But I think what I found really interesting is that everybody is coming at at sort of a relatively what seems like a relatively small field, right, like the language industry. Oh, it seems so specific. I'm doing conference interpreting. I'm doing like this very specialized like translation. I'm doing this particular one thing here, and it seems like such a small thing. But we're all coming at this industry and everybody's covering something completely different and coming from it from a completely individual perspective. And yet everything is sort of we all have something in common and we all share sort of this, this passion for connections. And I thought it was just a really. Inspiring. I don't want to sound corny, but it was just really nice to see because it's so rare to see so many people from from not from the industry because you used to have these industry events, but from so many different perspectives coming together. [01:50:00] And that was really nice. I really enjoyed that a lot. Honestly, that was really cool. Thank you, everybody for taking.

Yeah, exactly. And I think one thing that was great was also to see that we all admitted to podcasting being a little bit of a of a vanity thing to do, which is totally OK. I think because, you know, we share it with the world, and I think that's really what what counts is to to let everybody participate in the exchanges we have such as tonight. So yeah, again, thanks to everyone for joining us, thanks to all of those who join us live on YouTube for for the stream and thanks to all of those who are listening and will be listening to this episode once it's out on our podcast feed and we hope to have you back for future episodes. Do check out all the shows we've been featuring tonight. There's there's lots more. Of course, we can't have everyone on, unfortunately, but Alex will have cut his work out for him, for the show notes and all the links this time around. So do check those out. That's all on our website. There will

Be links

Apply. Exactly that's on on our website. [01:51:00] Troubled herbs dot com. We're on social media as well. Quick tip By the way, if you're on Twitter, there's a cool account which is called Etling Pods, which is run by Liza, Liza Duggar. And she sort of just retweets and shares a lot of podcasts that are on Twitter, so that's a great way to get started and find new shows to check out. Ok, that's it. Thanks, everyone, and bye bye.

Thank you so much, bye.

Hi.