REVIEW OF "Ceci n'est pas un livre de mémoires: Entretiens avec Christopher Thiéry"

Por Hugo Pooley

Earlier this year a book of interviews in French with him, conducted by Anne-Marie Widlund (former head of French booth at the European Parliament and author of a biography of Danica Seleskovitch), was published on Amazon. The original intention was to provide a record of his life and times for his three children, but its scope soon transcended the personal sphere and gives a fascinating account of the interpreting scene, viewed from Paris, from 1949 to 1998. The book also allows the reader to get to know the man, his personality, views, insights, tastes and experiences more closely than many of us who know him did before.

CT was born of a French father and Irish mother in England in 1927. The book follows him through his childhood near Oxford and his youth in London and Paris, all of which might seem relatively unremarkable, though of course this was when the foundations were laid for his renowned bilingualism. Circumstances were such that he was scarcely over twenty years of age when, after he had completed the first years of a degree in medicine, interpreting became central to his life.

The book is highly evocative on the early conditions in the profession. It also includes thirty or so curious photos from the biographical archive. The reader learns that in the 1950s freelance interpreters in Paris often worked long days in consecutive, alone, and sometimes then had to write up the minutes of the meeting in the evening! It was clearly an exhilarating life, with an abundance of work in the nascent international institutions there (OEEC...) as well as on the private market; at this time one could drive from one end of the city to the other in twenty minutes or so, and park without any problem! When offered his first assignment, CT deemed the rate to be most satisfactory for a week's work; but it was per day! (This level of earnings) "m'a permis très jeune d'avoir de jolies voitures de sport, à l'âge où justement on en profite le plus."

CT has always attached the greatest importance to professional secrecy in our profession, and it understandably became one of the cornerstones of AIIC. Confidentiality is also the explanation for the title of his book: great care has naturally been taken to eschew any information on the contents of his work interpreting with heads of state and government meeting with five successive presidents of the French republic, so any reader foolish enough to expect juicy revelations will be disappointed. This is a fine line to walk, and moderately tantalising for the reader who comes upon such teasing allusions as those on pp. 267-9, 284-5.

Those of us fortunate enough to have been taught by Christopher at ESIT many years ago now may remember him as a somewhat aloof presence: he did not give away much of a personal nature in the unforgettable Salle 7. Even so, he occasionally showed a penchant for quoting absurd poetry, and was in the minority of teachers generous enough actually to demonstrate simultaneous and consecutive interpreting in class for his students. This formality is, I suggest, as it should be; in fact ESIT was - still is - an extremely tough school, and the pass-rate low.

These published interviews abound in passages where this reserved, almost severe personality is shown to be in marked contrast with the man in more private settings: this of course makes him much more sympathique! His Irish ancestry belongs, for me, in this category, as do the childhood love for toy trains, thinking that Jacques was equivalent to Jack, his enthusiasm for cars, knowledge of mechanics, camping on roadsides & Mediterranean beaches, fondness for snorkelling, the splendid Mediterranean sailing stories... The mask of reserve even slips sufficiently at times for the reader to perceive that CT's own politics are distinctly liberal: there is unconcealed joy at Mitterand's election, support for causes such as pedestrians' rights and the plight of AIDS patients; and, in retirement, volunteer work in the field of human rights... Also tantalising references to a taste for writing plays and poems.

Hopefully your reviewer may be allowed a more personal reference in closing. Very shortly after passing the ESIT diploma (which threw wide open the doors to a highly satisfying career) he enquired of CT in his office what the breakdown of his grades per exam was. In an initial attempt at obfuscation, CT told me, "Monsieur Poulet, ne cherchez pas à comprendre." I don't know if he did it on purpose, but as it dawned on me later, this was an amusingly ironic last word from the birthplace of the famed "théorie du sens"!

You may see and hear Christopher Thiéry talking here about "ESIT, les années Dauphine"

The Year in AI, Wrapped

By Michelle Hof

As 2024 draws to a close, a lot of “best of” lists are being shared: top 100 books of the year, 10 best movies to watch with family over the holidays, top 5 artists on your Spotify feed, and so on.

Here are some of the lessons I have learned this year as a member of the Science Hub AI workstream about artificial intelligence as it applies to our community of professionals. These are largely inspired by what I saw at the event “The Impact of AI on Interpreting” organized by AIIC Switzerland in Geneva earlier this autumn. Here we go:

1) AI is drawing our attention like never before – while it may have felt a niche topic only a few years ago, AI is now on all interpreters’ minds. The AIIC Switzerland event showed this, with over 100 attendees making the trip to Geneva, some from outside Europe. This interest is also reflected in the number of followers that the AI workstream’s LinkedIn page has gained in the few months since it was launched (over 516 at last count).

2) The AI landscape is constantly shifting – Developments in AI are being rolled out almost daily, it seems, with groundbreaking new capabilities being announced in quick succession. AIIC Switzerland’s event coincided with the rollout of the updated large language model OpenAI o1, but since then there have been even more eye-popping AI-powered tools unveiled, like OpenAI’s recent announcement of its new Sora video generator, or Google’s AI agent-focused Gemini 2.0, with its “everything app” prototype Project Astra. With so much going on, it can feel hard to stay on top of things.

3) Interpreters’ views on AI are increasingly nuanced – The good news is, as a community we interpreters seemed to have moved on from what I’ll call “freak out” mode into a more productive space, where we are asking informed questions and examining how we can engage with technological developments. This was clearly seen at the AIIC Switzerland event, where both speakers and attendees showed a more sophisticated understanding of AI and were not afraid to tackle the tough questions about what AI means for us as a profession and what we need to know going forward.

4) We can benefit from existing expertise on AI – Speaking of what we need to know about AI, in Geneva we heard from a broad range of speakers, each offering a different answer to that question. It was clear that AIIC Switzerland wanted not only to hear from interpreting colleagues in the know, but also to engage with tech experts from outside our community. Panelists included experts in everything from computer-assisted interpreting tools and cognitive load to digital law, media design and ethics.

5) More interpreters are using AI-powered tools than you might think – In one talk, Paris-based AIIC member and interpreter trainer Andrew Gillies showed us who is already embracing AI-powered tools. Over a series of slides, Gillies shared the results of a snap survey he sent out to colleagues (the full write-up with all the figures can be found here). While Gillies’ convenience sample of 400 or so respondents, mainly based in Europe, may not be fully representative of our global industry, the numbers still paint a vivid picture: as many as 80% of respondents working on the private market reported using some form of AI in their work, whether for translation (80%), glossary creation (45%), term extraction (35%), document preparation (30%) or transcription (20%). The numbers are somewhat lower for colleagues in the institutional market, where just over half reported using these tools in their work. Gillies pointed out that use varied widely depending on the type of tool in question (e.g. DeepL use was reported by 80% of respondents, automated boothmates by only 8%). But I think most of us in Geneva were amazed to see just how many interpreters are already incorporating these tools into our work in some way.

6) A host of AI-powered tools are already available for interpreters to use – In Geneva we also heard from Prof. Dr. Anja Rütten of the TH Köln, a self-professed techie and a fellow member of AIIC’s AI workstream, about a number of the tools that we can tap into to improve our workflow. On one of her slides, she listed over two dozen different AI tools for speech recognition, live prompting, multi-source searching, abstracting and more. Rütten runs a blog where she reviews and explains a lot of these applications, so I will spare you the details here, but her presentation left us all with the clear impression that whatever needs doing, there seems to be an AI tool trying to help you do it.

7) Some of the interpreters using AI do not consider confidentiality – Of those interpreters who do not use AI tools, it is thought that one barrier to use may be concerns about confidentiality (as Gillies showed us, many institutions have rules in place limiting AI use for this reason). Of those interpreters who do use AI, not all take steps to ensure confidentiality for their clients’ material. Here, some colleagues reported that they did this by only using materials in the public domain (60%), while others said they addressed confidentiality concerns by taking out subscriptions (50%), asking their clients for permission to use AI tools (15%), and/or using tools with ISO security certificates (15%). However, about 10% of AI users reported that they did not take any steps at all to ensure confidentiality. In a profession such as ours, that figure should be zero.

8) It is not only confidentiality that we need to be thinking of – As we learned from invited guest Yaniv Benhamou, Professor of Digital Law, Copyright and Information Law at the University of Geneva, there are at least three different interfaces where AI and intellectual property (IP) meet in our work, and we need to understand the nuances of each. In addition to the issues thrown up when confidential documents are fed into AI-powered tools, there is also the threat of copyrighted works being used to train AI models – which we might face, for instance, if interpreters’ interpretations and voices were to be scraped from the internet to train AI-powered speech translation tools. Also, there is the question of privacy violations when user data is fed into AI models. These three concerns – confidentiality, copyright and data protection – were addressed at the very interesting PriMS event on IP rights held on 28 September. AIIC would do well to become better informed about them, and the AI workstream is working with Prof. Benhamou’s team to gain a better understanding of the legal landscape surrounding AI and how it affects us.

9) We all want to learn more about AI – Back to those AI-powered tools, then. Rütten rightly stated that the next step has to be about fostering AI literacy. Her school, the TH Köln, is currently building a CAI tool campus intended to do just that. As an interpreter trainer myself, I agree wholeheartedly that interpreting schools urgently need to incorporate tech training, and specifically AI-related topics, into their curricula. But it’s not just students we need to be thinking about – practitioners are also calling for more training to help them understand what is at stake. I predict that 2025 will be the year that we all learn something new about AI and the role it can play in our work.

10) Interpreters must lead the debate around AI use in our profession – Rounding off this top 10 is my conviction that interpreters cannot afford to just stand by and observe developments. This proactive stance is what governs the AI workstream’s approach: our aim is to ensure that AIIC members have what they need to understand the world of AI, to guide our clients in decisions about its use, and to leverage its benefits for our own work. Equally importantly, we aim to ensure that AIIC’s voice is heard in the forums where decisions about technology are taken.

So that is my year in AI, wrapped! I imagine that 2025 will bring us even more exciting news about artificial intelligence – and AIIC’s AI workstream will be there to help you make sense of it.

This article has also been posted here.

Power up your vocabulary and writing with ChatGPT

By Josh Goldsmith

8 ways to power up your vocabulary with ChatGPT

Ever struggle to put your finger on the perfect word?

Looking for synonyms or idioms to weave into your translation or interpretation?

In this article, I’ll explore eight different ways to research definitions, synonyms, and collocations and power up your vocabulary for your next assignment using ChatGPT.

Chatbots: A revolution for artificial intelligence

Artificial Intelligence has been improving for decades – look no further than the famous cases of AI beating world-renowned chess and Jeopardy champions.

AI also underpins sentence completion and paraphrasing tools as well as speech recognition tools for interpreters. (See my articles on The best multilingual AI-powered writing and editing tools and speech recognition with Cymo Note to learn more.)

But for the general public, the real AI revolution came with chatbots like ChatGPT, which are easy to use and respond flawlessly in dozens of languages.

These tools are built on massive datasets; ChatGPT’s large language model (LLM) boasts a staggering 570+ gigabytes of text collected from the internet in multiple languages. They harness sophisticated linguistic tools called transformers to break down how words are used and analyze huge chunks of text, rather than individual words or phrases. (See this Financial Times article for an excellent explanation of how transformers work.)

As a result, chatbots like ChatGPT can understand intricate language structures, offer synonyms and definitions, and rewrite texts in specific styles – a powerhouse for enhancing your vocabulary and writing.

Developed by OpenAI, ChatGPT offers both free and paid plans. The free tier grants you access to the GPT-3.5 model, while the $20/month paid option unlocks plugins and GPT-4.0’s more sophisticated language processing models.

All the examples in this article work with the free version of ChatGPT, although you may get better results with ChatGPT-4.

Define words

Come across an unfamiliar word? Ask ChatGPT to define it in any language.

Just type your question into the chat box at the bottom of the page, hit Enter, and ChatGPT will give you a definition.

ChatGPT provides different answers depending on how you phrase the question, and will also respond to the same question with slight variations every time. To see an alternative response, just hit “Regenerate.” You can also ask ChatGPT to simplify, shorten, lengthen or rephrase its answer.

Sample prompts:
What does [word] mean?
What does [word] mean in [language]?
Define [word].
Define [word] in simple English.

Remember: Always do a “sanity check.” ChatGPT may offer plausible-sounding answers that aren’t 100% accurate. For example, I asked it to define a “porte blindée à trois points,” and it translated this as a “three-point security door.” A quick internet search for “three locks” and “security door” revealed that this is more frequently called a “triple-locking security door.”

Understand how words are used in specific contexts

Meaning often depends on context.

To understand a specific meaning, try asking ChatGPT:
What does [word] mean in [context]?
What does [word] mean? Can you explain the meaning in different contexts?

You can also use the “Act as” hack to get ChatGPT to respond in a specific voice. Ask it to respond as a “highly educated [topic] expert” for more complex responses or a “language tutor” for easy-to-understand explanations.

Sample prompts:
Act as a highly-educated [topic] expert. What does [word] mean?
Act as a language tutor. I’m going to give you new words I’m learning to increase my vocabulary. For each new word, I’ll give you context. You have to write the meaning of the word, provide three examples of how to use the word and explain the meaning in the given context.
[Word]
[Sample sentence] (Source: The PyCoach)

Understand regional uses

Want to understand how a word is used in a regional variation, like American English, Brazilian Portuguese, or Colombian Spanish. Just ask: What does [word] mean in [language variant]?

You can also ask ChatGPT to list vocabulary that differs across language variants:
Can you give me a list of [topic]-related vocabulary that is different in [language variant 1] and [language variant 2]?

Use ChatGPT as a reverse dictionary

Unsure of a word? Describe it and ask ChatGPT what it’s called.

If you don’t immediately get the answer you’re looking for, ask follow-up questions to narrow down the results. ChatGPT works iteratively, which means it looks back at the earlier parts of your conversation to provide answers. (No need to type the same context or prompt over and over!)

Research collocations

Nailing down the perfect expression when translating or writing can be tricky. And using the same phrases over and over while interpreting can bore your listeners.

Good news: ChatGPT excels at finding collocations, and can provide examples of how these phrases are used.

Try prompts like:
What are [5] verbs used before the word [word]?
What are [5] adjectives used with [word]? Provide examples.

Find synonyms

ChatGPT is also a powerful multilingual thesaurus.

Although you can ask for synonyms for a specific word, you’ll likely get better results by providing the context.

Try prompts like:
What are 10 synonyms for [word]?
What are 10 synonyms for [word] in the context of [context]?
I don’t like the word “[word]” in this sentence. Can you give me some synonyms, please?
[Sentence with the word you'd like to replace.]

Narrow down synonyms with metaphors

Even better, ChatGPT can offer synonyms that play on specific metaphors or idioms. Want to bring in sport metaphors for your next football translation or electricity metaphors when interpreting for a tech company? Just ask ChatGPT.

Sample prompts:
What are 10 synonyms for [word] that incorporate [topic] metaphors?
I don’t like the word “[word]” in this sentence. Please give me some synonyms with [topic] metaphors.
[Sentence with the word you’d like to replace.]

Get a translation for a specific context

In addition to providing definitions based on context, ChatGPT can provide context-based translations.

Our colleague Steve Bammel came up with this handy prompt to do just that:
Here is context for a word or phrase I am trying to translate: [ENTIRE SOURCE SEGMENT/PARAGRAPH THAT INCLUDES THE WORD OR PHRASE]
Given this context, give me several [SOURCE LANGUAGE] sentences using the word [WORD]. At the end of each sentence, put the best translation of ONLY that word in [TARGET LANGUAGE] in brackets.

My number one rule: Use ChatGPT for inspiration

As we’ve seen, ChatGPT’s huge linguistic dataset allows it to provide high-quality definitions, synonyms, and collocations that can boost your vocabulary.

But no matter how convincingly it writes, ChatGPT is just a machine.

Use ChatGPT as a starting point or a source of inspiration, but always review the output. Otherwise, your writing may sound just like everybody else’s. 😉

So here's my latest approach to this question, and it's another Japanese word, kaizen, which I originally learned in a WCM context. I came across it again last summer in a non-work-related context, when I started to teach myself to swim better using online material rather than finding a personal trainer to yell at me to swim harder. The idea of kaizen swimming in the Total Immersion method is to focus on improving one small aspect at a time, starting with the easy pickings. I now think of my approach to interpreting overall as kaizen: every week I will try to focus on improving one important thing at a time. With so much variety and stress in our work lives, it's easy to end up running around in headless chicken mode trying to do everything, whether or not others can tell this is what is happening. I hope to use the kaizen approach to counter that tendency.

News: The Good, the Bad and the Fake

We all know that knowledge of the subject, context and "general knowledge" are of utmost importance to our work as interpreters.

In his last post, Fernando González wrote about the differences between low context and high-context languages, and the additional difficulties posed by the latter. So, inevitably, as interpreters, we spend a lot of our time gathering information: apart from preparing specifically for our next job, we are unfortunately forced to keep abreast with what is going on in the world.

Why is there such a flood of bad news? Apparently, bad news sells much better than good news; years ago I read an article which stated "...peoples' interest in news is much more intense when there is a perceived threat to their way of life. They care much less about what happens around them when they enjoy relative peace and/or relative prosperity."

People like reading bad news and, with positive articles being few and far between, I end up wondering whether the world actually is such a terrible place. This supposedly is the effect of precisely reading so many bad news stories. According to Steven Pinker, cognitive psychologist and linguist, "Whether or not the world really is getting worse, the nature of news will interact with the nature of cognition to make us think that it is." So the more negative inputs we receive from the world around us, the greater our feeling of gloom.

Nowadays, news is produced at breakneck speed, and comes from all kinds of sources: traditional media, social media, in fact any person in the world with access to a device can take on the role of a reporter. With an estimated 2.5 billion smart phones users for 2019, there are 2.5 billion ways of seeing and interpreting the world. News no longer spreads top-down, but rather reaches us from all angles, from friends and not-really-friends via Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, just to name a few. We are swept away by a complete information whirlwind.

On top of the overwhelming flow of news, now we find that it may involve real, objective news, but also very subjective interpretations or even deliberately fake news or simply hoaxes.

It can be very hard to separate the wheat from the chaff.

How can we read all the news we need to read without being engulfed by a lack of faith in the human race? The key is to take a step back. Do not take things at face value, double check, there are many tools out there to help you, and above all, trust your common sense.