Chartered Institute
of Linguists
NEWS & VOICES
Historically, and for standard use, language has been expressed as four language ‘skills’ which are, alphabetically, Listening, Reading, Speaking and Writing. More frequently, Government and universities in the UK and internationally order the four skills by the passive/receptive, active/productive pairings of Listening and Speaking, Reading and Writing....
It’s an age-old question. Well maybe not age-old actually, but it has been a question since at least 1954, when the authors of a Georgetown–IBM Machine Translation demo – with an IBM701 mainframe computer, using a rules-based system and an operator punching Romanised Russian sentences onto cards – confidently predicted that Machine Translation (MT) would be solved within the...
Some of the work done by the Institute of Fiscal Studies on the impact of undergraduate degrees on lifetime earnings makes for sobering reading for linguists. Their report from a couple of years ago, for instance, suggested that the discounted average lifetime total returns for women in arts and humanities subjects such as creative arts, languages, and philosophy were negative or near-...
Deciding to take Diploma in Public Service Interpreting (DPSI) exams was one of the most important decisions I have ever made in my life.
Back in 2014, I held a Level-3 Community Interpreting Qualification and I thought it was alright. I enjoyed working for hospitals, schools, and social services although it never really was a full-time job. I, like many newbies in the...
I’m delighted to have the opportunity to meet with a group of such distinguished linguists and managers of highly specialised language services. I am a languages graduate myself and call myself a linguist, but I am acutely aware that my skills are very amateur indeed compared to yours, despite some decades ago actually having worked and volunteered as an interpreter now and again....
On X/Twitter, we asked our followers to tell us what advice they would give to their younger selves before starting a career in translating or interpreting.
Below are some of their responses:
1. Work hard and study 2. Have a business plan 3. Make sure your skills are up to scratch...