Andrew Gillies
Andy Gillies is a freelance conference interpreter and working from French, German and Polish into English at a number of EU and European institutions as well as for private clients. Before training as an interpreter he trained and worked as a teacher of English as a foreign language. With that background interpreter training was a natural next step, followed by training of interpreter trainers and eventually writing books for student interpreters. https://andrewgillies.eu
Subjects: Language Learning
Biography
I trained in, and taught English as a foreign language in London, Cracow and Cologne in 1994-1995 before studying conference interpreting.In 1996 I started working as a freelance interpreter at the EU institutions in Luxembourg and I'm currently based in Paris, working for the European Parliament, the European Patent Office and the European Space Agency as well as for other non-institutional customers.
I began teaching conference interpreting in 1999 and since have taught at the interpreting schools at the universities of Łódź, WLS Warsaw, UJ Cracow, and UAM Poznan in Poland; FHK Cologne; ISIT and ESIT in Paris; & EMCI Lisbon and Glendon MCI in Toronto.
I have also taught further training courses for interpreters at the European Parliament; the ECJ; for the interpreters' associations AIIC, ATA and JACI as well as online. I also offer training of trainers courses.
My books came about to fill what seemed to be big gaps in the conference interpreting literature market - starting with the English translation of Rozan's 'La prise de notes...' before writing my own material.
I'm also founder and curator of the websites Interpreter Training Resources and Interpreters CPD Resources
Education
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BA Joint Honours French & German, Durham University
Diploma in Language studies (Conference Interpreting), Bath
Polish Language & Culture, Jagiellonian University, Cracow
Areas of Research / Professional Expertise
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Conference interpreting, conference interpreter training and training of trainers of conference interpreting.
Websites
Books
Articles
9 reasons not to automate glossary building
Published: Jun 02, 2023 by Interpreters Soapbox
Authors: Andrew Gillies
The recent explosion of AI into our lives has brought the perennially unfashionable issue of glossary-building back to the fore. Can AI or a computer tool create or complete glossaries for us?1 The idea of automating glossary-building has been around much longer than ChatGPT. Let me tell you why I don’t think any of them are worth the time… yet, at least.
Why interpreters need better sound than normal listeners. Bad sound explained
Published: Jul 05, 2022 by Interpreters Soapbox
Authors: Andrew Gillies
Why do interpreters say they need better sound than normal listeners? And what’s wrong with sound quality in video-conferencing? Here’s a quick guide.
5 reasons why boothmates should share a physical space
Published: Apr 07, 2022 by Interpreters Soapbox
Authors: Andrew Gillies
haring a physical space with your boothmate has numerous professional and personal advantages over working alone from home. Covid lockdowns and the rise of the Remote Simultaneous Interpreting (RSI) platform have had an extraordinary effect on the interpreting profession. One of the big changes is that conference interpreters are no longer sharing a physical space with their boothmates...
Inside Specialization – Conference Interpreting ATA podcast
Published: Sep 13, 2021 by ATA
Authors: Gillies & Demichelis
From the outside looking in, a career as a conference interpreter can often seem glamorous. Perhaps it's the travel and nights in hotels around the world. Or maybe it's the sense of being part of an exclusive community of interpreters working at high-stakes meetings. Episode 63 of The ATA Podcast is your chance to find out what it's really all about as Host Veronika Demichelis interviews conference interpreter Andrew Gillies for this installment of Inside Specialization.
Getting the most out of CPD training
Published: Sep 11, 2021 by LinkedIn
Authors: Andrew Gillies
Subjects:
Applied Linguistics
22 simple tips that will help you learn, remember and enjoy when you take training courses. Continuous Professional Development for interpreters can mean lots of different things. AIIC, for example, breaks it down into 4 types - interpreting skills; language learning; ancillary skills (relevant but not actually interpreting, like accounting or negotiating); and knowledge-based courses... These tips below apply to all of the above.
The Green Interpreter
Published: Jan 19, 2020 by AIIC.org Webzine
Authors: Andrew Gillies
Subjects:
Environment and Sustainability
A conversation about single-use plastic bottles led me to question my environmental footprint as an interpreter and look for solutions. There are plenty and they involve minimal effort!
Continued professional development is a win-win
Published: Nov 07, 2018 by AIIC.org Webzine
Authors: Andrew Gillies
The nominal benefits of continued professional development (CPD) – learning something new or honing existing skills – are just the tip of the iceberg. Regardless of whether you ‘need’ to do a course or not, CPD courses are personally and financially rewarding.
Book review: Being a Successful Interpreter: Adding Value and Delivering Exce...
Published: Aug 21, 2016 by AIIC.org Webzine
Authors: Andrew Gillies
Subjects:
Language Learning
This article is a book review of one of very few Continued Professional Development books available (or ever published) for conference interpreters (as opposed to books for students and trainers)
How to practice interpreting? Stop interpreting
Published: Nov 07, 2015 by ProZ.com
Authors: Andrew Gillies
Subjects:
Language Learning
In this short post I’d like to show why interpreting is not necessarily the best way to improve your interpreting and suggest a few ways of practising that are not interpreting. It’s natural enough to think that best way to improve your interpreting is to interpret. However, interpreting is not the ONLY way to improve your interpreting. And indeed, when practise means only interpreting it’s not even the best way to improve any more.
Interpreters, what does your email address say about you?
Published: Jul 30, 2015 by AIIC.org Webzine
Authors: Andrew Gillies
What does your email address say about you (as an interpreter)? More than perhaps you think. The image projected by many domain names may be costing you work. Having your own can be a game-changer.
News
New CPD website for conference interpreters
By: Andrew Gillies
This site is a compilation of material and links that can be of direct practical help to practising conference interpreters. It comprises content written for this site by conference interpreters, extracts from CPD literature for conference interpreters, as well as links to other websites and material there for conference interpreters.
Contributions are welcome as the site will remain work in progress.
Videos
Published: Apr 22, 2020
What is conference interpreting? Andy Gillies embarks on the search for a surprisingly elusive definition.
Published: Feb 23, 2021
How and why you might want to make notes during simultaneous (not consecutive) interpreting
Published: Sep 17, 2019
Student interpreters are often given little or no instruction as to how to best recall information in a speech. In this video we’ll see that by applying a number of simple techniques you are able to recall far more information than you might have thought possible.
Published: Sep 17, 2019
An interview about interpreter training, books and language learning
Published: Mar 29, 2019
EU Parliament : The EU still needs EN interpreters Promotional video from the EP aimed at young linguists
Published: Feb 25, 2018
Part of AIIC's (International Association of Conference Interpreters) Conversations series about the profession.
Published: Feb 17, 2017
When note-taking for consecutive interpreting is mentioned the first thing that student interpreters ask about are symbols. This film explains why we use symbols in the first place; what you might want to replaces with symbols; and how to use symbols effectively.
Published: Nov 15, 2016
“At advanced levels, where grammar has been more or less mastered, the main difference between foreign students and native speakers is that the latter have been exposed to their language for many years, over thousands and thousands of hours". (From Conference Interpreting – a Student’s Practice book, Andrew Gillies) This film aims to help bridge that gap.
Published: Oct 04, 2016
Professional development is fundamental for all interpreters – and in some countries even required! Get yourself some further training!
Published: May 18, 2016
Intonation is not a luxury. It’s a crucial part of communicating well. Getting it wrong in languages with little or no verb conjugation or noun declension (like English) can lead to being understood less well.
Published: Apr 12, 2012
A few ideas of how to use available technology to improve your conference interpreting practice.
Published: Oct 31, 2015
‘Analysis’ is often cited as one of the most important skills in consecutive interpreting but it’s one that is less often practised in isolation. In this film Andrew Gillies suggests 3 exercises aimed at practising your analysis skills.