The Linguist

34 The Linguist Vol/59 No/6 2020 thelinguist.uberflip.com INSTITUTE MATTERS Meet our members JO DURNING CONSIDERS A VERY VARIED CAREER – AND WHY IT'S NEVER TOO LATE TO GAIN A NEW SPECIALISATION Tell us a bit about your career… At university, I took French as a subsidiary subject, and I later had opportunities to improve my French during a career in the UK civil service. Explaining UK social policy to the French at a time when Margaret Thatcher was the Prime Minister was a challenge! I later spent five years as a public policy consultant. After that work dried up in 2010, I decided to take the Diploma in Translation (DipTrans). I now work as a translator, specialising in business, legal translation and social science. In what one situation have you been most pleased to be a CIOL member? I teach the DipTrans preparation course at the University of Westminster and I got the job through networking at Members' Day. I love teaching translation. I am constantly challenged by the students and learn from them. It's a really good form of CPD. I was initially attracted to CIOL by the opportunities for CPD and the need to build a professional network. What aspects of your current work do you find most challenging? In many ways the challenges are similar to those in my earlier career: getting to grips quickly with new material, learning new vocabulary, working to tight deadlines. Recently I have edited several articles for social science journals written in English by native French speakers. They are expressing complex concepts so it's an intellectual challenge, and my insight not just into the French language but also French ways of thinking really enables me to help. What I love most is that my work is all about words, and getting them exactly right. If you could talk to your teenage self, what advice would you give? It would be something about the relationship between language and ways of thinking, and the value of different approaches. I remember a French opposite number in Paris saying to me, "You Brits are always so pragmatic!" It wasn't a compliment, and I realised that the (equally stereotyped) French approach – starting from an intellectual framework and principles – can sometimes be a better way to address a difficult issue. What are your plans for the future? A key message I took from the CIOL Conference in March was the importance of specialisation. During the eerie quiet of lockdown, I decided to act on that message so I have just started a course in International Business Law and hope to get an LLM degree in 2022. I will be nearly 70 by the time I graduate. I hope it will reinforce my position at the top end of the profession for at least a decade to come! Catherine Boyle Catherine Boyle is Professor of Latin American Cultural Studies and Director of the Centre for Language Acts and Worldmaking at King's College London. She is Principal Investigator of the Out of the Wings project looking at Spanish and Spanish American Theatres in Translation. Her research interests include Spanish American literary, cultural and theatre studies; translation and cultural transmission; and gender studies. See p.14 Oliver Lawrence Oliver Lawrence FCIL CL turns Italian marketing texts and copywriting briefs into incisive English, specialising in tourism, leisure and luxury. A mentor and ITI Assessor, he created the online course 'Clear Writing, Clear Benefits' for eCPD/CIOL. His interests include poetry, cake and gin, although not necessarily in that order. www.incisiveenglish.pro; Twitter @oliverlawrence1. See p.22 Sue Leschen A member of Council, Sue Leschen FCIL CL is a lawyer-linguist; the Director of Avocate (www.avocate.co.uk), a niche- market legal and commercial French interpreting and translation company; and an independent business mentor and trainer of language professionals. She also mentors CIOL DPSI English Law candidates, as well as teaching legal English to language professionals and lawyers. She can be contacted at se.leschen@ntlworld.com. See p.10 Paul Seedhouse Paul Seedhouse is Professor of Educational and Applied Linguistics and Director of ilab:learn at Newcastle University. Working with colleagues Phil Heslop and Ahmed Kharrufa, in Computing Science over 10 years, he has had three grants to build kitchens which use digital technology to teach users languages and cuisines simultaneously. The French Digital Kitchen project won the European Language Label Prize in 2012. See p.20 CONTRIBUTORS

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