At the February 2025 Monju no Chie event, Allyson Sigman spoke about “Tools to Improve the Productivity and Work of Interpreters.” She covered tools for prep, glossary creation, terminology management, document organization, sim-consec (interpreter takes notes for consecutive while and when they render the speech, they formulate the target speech from both their notes and a recording of the speaker), remote simultaneous interpreting (RSI), scheduling, and even business admin like billing.
She gave us a very comprehensive overview, going into detail on tools she personally uses while also mentioning tools other JLD interpreters listed in a pre-talk survey.
As part of her prep, Allyson uses AI engines like ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity. She asks simple questions like “What are some specific terms that are often used in _____ (name of topic)?” or “Explain ____ to me like I’m an interpreter.” If her time to prepare is limited, she focuses more on understanding the topic than the nitty gritty of terminology.
There were some unexpected discoveries. For example, many attendees still prefer paper over digital notetaking, some still prefer paper planners for scheduling, and Allyson uses a denshi jisho, which is useful when the WiFi is spotty.
At the end of her talk, she asked us if we were going to try some new tools we learned about. I thought her audio on the Zoom call was great, so I’m now considering a separate headset and mic setup instead of the headset mic I now use. And the idea of using denshi jisho intrigued me, so I went onto Amazon Japan and bought myself a fairly high-end Casio one.
I’m thrilled that the talk is in the JLD archives*. I’ll be going back to it again, probably more than once, because there’s so much information in there about tools and really, about how to become an interpreter. Thanks so much, Allyson!
*Editor’s note: JLD members get exclusive access to video recordings of past online JLD events.
Author: Shizuka Otake
Edited by: audra lincoln
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