MAGAZINE

#218 – August

Like most language workers, interpreters are weathering a squall of technological disruption. So what has changed, and what remains the same?

POSTEDITING

A

h, the interpreter — one of history’s great unsung heroes.

How many of these stalwart professionals’ names have been lost to time despite enabling some of humankind’s greatest achievements? Think of all the treaties, trade agreements, public works projects, and more that would have been impossible without language experts ensuring that all invested parties could understand and be understood by each other. If the biblical story of the Tower of Babel demonstrates how language barriers can be agents of chaos and destruction, interpreters are heralds of order, creating once-impossible lines of communication. As far as superpowers go, that strikes me as particularly impressive.

This issue of MultiLingual is focused on the essential role the interpreter still plays in modern life. That starts with our cover profile of Ewandro Magalhães, one of the industry’s best-known and respected names. But it doesn’t stop there. Another industry icon, Barry Slaughter Olsen, is here to break down the state of the profession in the face of technological disruption. We also examine a new documentary, Interpreters Wanted, which covers the effort to save the lives of interpreters in the US overseas wars. And our contributors this month cover all manner of additional professional concerns, from vicarious trauma in stressful environments to the former asylum seekers who find a new life in language work.

It’s hard to overstate the importance interpreters play in keeping the modern world spinning. So perhaps this month, we can all remember to give these unsung heroes a little overdue celebration.

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COLUMN

Forked Tongue

By Tim Brookes

Looking for an interesting new take on the classic board game Scrabble? Check out Endangered Alphabets founder Tim Brookes’ latest column for MultiLingual, where he introduces his own word game. 

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INTERPRETING

Interpreting and Technology: The Revolution at our Doorstep

By Barry Olsen

From advancements in text-to-speech technology to significant improvements in machine translation, the field of interpreting could be on the verge of a pretty big revolution. Barry Olsen takes a look at how the field is changing in his latest for MultiLingual.

Interpreters Wanted

By Cameron Rasmusson

Interpreting is a pretty hard job. Interpreting in the middle of a war zone? Now that‘s even harder. In this piece, MultiLingual editor-in-chief Cameron Rasmusson speaks to the team behind Interpreters Wanted, a film about the plight of the Afghan interpreters who aided US troops.

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An LSP’s Journey to Becoming a Vicarious Trauma-Informed Organization

By Ludmila Golovine

Interpreters often experience vicarious trauma of their own when interpreting for individuals who’ve faced extremely harsh circumstances. Learn how Ludmila Golovine and her team at MasterWord became a vicarious trauma-informed organization to support their interpreters.

The Remote Interpreter: The first textbook dedicated to remote interpreting

Supported by Cross-Cultural Communications

Curious to know more about the differences between remote interpreting and in-person interpreting? Well now there’s a whole textbook about it. Learn more about how a team of remote interpreting professionals created the first-ever textbook dedicated to remote interpreting.

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PROFILE

Ewandro Magalhães: The interpreting industry

Interview by Andrew Warner

Ewandro Magalhães is a household name in the interpreting industry. We spoke with him earlier this year to discuss his more than 30-years-long career, his philosophy on interpreting, and his thoughts on the future of the profession as technological advancements drive change.

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HOW-TO

Product Management 101 for Localizers: How to partner with product teams to bring your company global

By Linh Nguyen

The relationship between product managers and localization professionals is a close, if sometimes rocky, one. Here, Linh Nguyen explains a few practical steps for localizers to work smoothly with product managers in their organization.

SPONSORED CONTENT

Outside-in Thinking: A collaborative approach to globalization

By Genevieve D’Acquisto and Aki Hayashi

When Dell acquired the data storage vendor EMC in 2016, it brought together two giants of the IT industry. In this piece for MultiLingual, Genevieve D’Acquisto and Aki Hiyashi take a look at this extremely complex undertaking.

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ETHICS

Shifting the Balance of Power: from the Interpreter to the Deaf Consumer

By Joshua Pennise

For the first time in Joshua Pennise’s membership with the Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf and the National Association of the Deaf, the organization has announced new rules for how the Ethical Practices System will handle violations of the NAD-RID Code of Professional Conduct. Here, Pennise breaks down and analyzes the new rules.

GOVERNMENT

Interpreting with an Impact: How a remote interpreting taskforce gave a new life to asylum seekers

By Cameron Rasmusson

Some of the most important work an interpreter can perform is for refugees and asylum seekers. And in that department, Acolad has racked up substantial experience through its Remote Interpreting Task Force. Cameron Rasmusson spoke to a few folks on the task force to learn more about their work.

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COMMUNITY

Picking up the Thread: The language community’s first week on Meta’s new app

When Meta launched its very own Twitter competitor, Threads, it swept the internet by storm. MultiLingual‘s Cameron Rasmusson took a look at how folks in the language industry are using the new social media platform.

Adopting Generative AI

Everyone seems to be talking about generative AI these days. From ChatGPT to Bard to DALL-E, there are all sorts of ways to implement it in our work. MultiLingual publisher spoke to leaders in the language industry about how they’re leveraging generative AI tools in their work.

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REVIEW

An Honest Look at the Immigrant Experience and the Educators Who Shape It

Review by Mallory Wirth

In her book Understanding and Improving How K-12 Multilinguals are Taught, Maryann Hasso provides readers with a deep comprehension of the immigrant experience, as reviewer Mallory Wirth argues.

From Syntax to Semantics: Unpacking Writing with Style

Review by Renato Beninatto

Reviewer Renato Beninatto notes that Lane Greene’s Writing with Style is an excellent guidebook for anybody who works with language on a day-to-day basis.

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