The Linguist is a languages magazine for professional linguists, translators, interpreters, language professionals, language teachers, trainers, students and academics with articles on translation, interpreting, business, government, technology
Issue link: https://thelinguist.uberflip.com/i/1035089
@Linguist_CIOL OCTOBER/NOVEMBER The Linguist 29 OPINION & COMMENT Q Why did you choose to study languages at university? A The only subject I really enjoyed at school was Spanish. It was interactive and I was intrigued by starting something from scratch. Studying Spanish and French at the University of Roehampton gave me the opportunity to move to Madrid for my Erasmus year, and to Barcelona for an MA in Translation, Interpreting and Intercultural Studies. The most valuable opportunity has been getting to know people from different cultures. Q How did you get the job of Academic Services Manager? A I started in 2015 as Programme Administrator, and then Deputy Academic Services Manager, in the School of Education at Roehampton. My current role entails leading a team of frontline professional services staff to provide administrative support to academic staff and students. Q Describe your average day… A Juggling a full-time job with a part-time PhD means I am always on the go. I start my day early, analysing a text for my PhD research. My job starts at 8am; I lead a team of 12, so my mornings are usually spent in Hayley Dawson on balancing a full-time role as Academic Services Manager with a subtitling PhD Just the job meetings with staff to go over our priorities for the day or week. I spend a few hours answering queries for students, staff and my team, which often involves liaising with other departments such as registry and finance. At lunch, I do more text analysis in the library. My day usually ends supervising an MA student, preparing my next conference presentation or working on a project within Media Accessibility. As a research student, I am given opportunities to teach, supervise students and work on other projects within the broader area of my research. Q What are the perks of the job? A There are many professional development opportunities. The most exciting was an Erasmus+ staff mobility placement at the University of Nebrija, Madrid. I spent a week job-shadowing a similar team to mine. Q Tell us about your doctorate in Translation Studies… A I am a third-year TECHNE-funded PhD student investigating interlingual live subtitling (also known as 'respeaking') as an effective way to make TV accessible to deaf, hard-of-hearing and foreign audiences. Many think the subtitles are typed, but respeakers use speech recognition software to repeat or paraphrase what is said while enunciating punctuation and adding colours to identify speakers. Interlingual respeaking is yet to take off and I aim to propose a professional profile and much-needed training programme for this emerging field. Q What are your career plans? A I revel in languages, teaching and translation, and am interested in pursuing an academic career teaching translation, subtitling and respeaking. I would always want to work on research projects within my field and explore the impact of my work within society and industry. Congratulations first on your 'A Life with Languages' series. The articles are often very interesting and it's great to see a range of languages other than English in the pages of the magazine. It would be good to see more non- English content on the Institute's website too, which brings me to a specific suggestion. I work as a translator from French and German into English, mainly in the automotive sector. Many of my clients are based in France, where I live, and often have limited experience of buying language services. Few of them know the work and role of CIOL, and they may also be unfamiliar with British concepts such as 'Fellowship' and 'Chartered'. These are, of course, explained on the Institute's website, but only in English! Could CIOL consider providing a small amount of content on the website in other languages? This would enable our clients to understand much more readily what membership of CIOL represents and the assurance they should have in working with a member. This could be trialled in a small number of major languages and extended to other languages if it proved useful. As overseas members of the Institute, we could then include these links in our communications. I believe this may be helpful to many members of CIOL, as well as bringing a welcome touch of multilingualism to its presence on the web. Julian Parish FCIL CIOL replies: Thank you for your suggestion. We welcome feedback from members and will discuss this internally. Star letter This issue's Star Letter writer wins the new bluffing game Flummoxed, where players take it in turns to invent definitions for foreign-language words and identify the correct ones. For your chance to win, share your views via linguist.editor@ciol.org.uk. Visit oxfordgames.co.uk for details. STAR LETTER Information in more languages