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Ep 23. Conference Interpreting & Medical Transcription with Concha Ortiz

Episode 24

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In this episode, I sit down with Concha Ortiz, an accomplished freelance interpreter, academic, and industry expert, to discuss interpreting at high-profile international events, best practices for hiring T&I suppliers, and training for medical interpreters.

💡 Meet Concha Ortiz: 

✅ Holds a BA in Translation & Interpreting from the University of Granada 

✅ Further training at Heriot-Watt University & University of Córdoba (PhD) 

✅ Member of Spanish Conference Interpreters Association, Colegio de Doctores y Licenciados de Madrid, and Andalusian Association of Women in Audio-Visual Media

🔎 Key Topics We Cover: 

✔️ International event interpreting—working with Richard Gere & Rafa Nadal 

✔️ Training for Spanish interpreters in medical fields 

✔️ Medical transcription—its role in accurate healthcare communication 

✔️ Best practices for recruiting T&I suppliers 

✔️ Book spotlight: The Blue Manuscript by Sabiha al Khemir 

✔️ Medical interpreter training resources: AICE

Want pharma clients who value your expertise? I can help you transition to premium direct relationships – the shift that took me from £0.08/word to exclusive pharma partnerships. Drawing on 26+ years experience and Medical School training, I show you how to position as a compliance partner. Visit my website for linguistic validation and client prospecting free resources that help you command the rates you know you deserve. 

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SPEAKER_00

Hi, I'm Jason, and I sent a roadmap for passionate and ambitious freelance translators with under two years' experience and open. Turn yourself into a book-handed freelance translator, helped freelance translators to each the first 20,000 euros faster by specializing in the niche, marketing bravely to generate plans and achieving higher fees without giving up weekends and saying yes to every job. Even if your new rate has been complicated so that you finally win premium market contracts and charge your full work. If that sounds of interest to you, then this is the podcast for you. Hello, my podcast guest joining me this week is my client and business colleague, Concha Ortiz. Concha holds a BA in translation and interpreting from the University of Granada. She trained further at Harriet Watt University in Edinburgh and the University of Córdoba, where she completed a PhD. She is a member of the Spanish Conference Interpreters Association, the Colegio de Doctores y Licenciados de Madrid, and the Andalusian Association of Women in Audiovisual Media. During this episode, Contra and I discussed her career as a freelance interpreter at international events and how she scored contracts that led to interpreting for Juliet Binoche and Rafa Nadal, training for Spanish interpreters working in the field of medicine, medical transcription, and finally best practices when recruiting TNI suppliers. The book cited is the Blue Manuscript by Sabia Alcamiya. Further information on medicine training for interpreters can be found at the link mentioned. Please enjoy our wide-ranging conversation. How are you this afternoon? Thank you for your time.

SPEAKER_01

A pleasure to be here. Thank you very much. Thank you for having me. I'm very welcome.

SPEAKER_00

I'm good, thanks. I know you've had a busy afternoon interpreting, so I'll try not to keep you. I know you you're probably uh wanting a rest after after all your interpreting this afternoon. You were just telling me you've done a you've done a professional job on physics and meteorology, physics and weather. Can you talk a little bit towards that, towards your career as an interpreter?

SPEAKER_01

Well, yes, of course. I've been working as an interpreter for the past 30 years. And um I work in a number of topics and fields, and uh meteorology is one of them, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

So I should explain to uh to our listeners, Concha is a client. She's very kindly agreed to come on talking about interpreting. Hopefully, some interpreters are listening to us. Uh the tr the podcast is designed for translators, interpreters, and copywriters. So hopefully we have a smattering of interpreters. So could you talk? So presumably you you specialize in the English to Spanish combinations. You I know you do some French as well, French to Spanish. So could you talk a little about how you got started and then we'll move on to specific jobs? And I know you have some celebrity tidbits to share with us, which is going to be very good. Could you just talk about how you got started, how you presumably you studied interpreting as at university and went from that?

SPEAKER_01

Indeed, yeah. I did study interpreting at uh the university in Granada, and then I went to Edinburgh, the amazing Edinburgh. I did a postgraduate course at Harriet Watt University, which I loved. And um then I started working as one does when you're you know 21 and begin your professional career in in Spain. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Edinburgh is a beautiful city. I I applied to Harriet Watt as well, but I ended up in Bath doing my post-graduate. Not bad.

SPEAKER_01

Not bad at all. Better weather.

SPEAKER_00

Very nice, very nice. Uh so let's talk about you've just come back from the Goya. We should explain to our listeners, not in Spain, that the Goya is the Spanish equivalent of the Academy Awards, like the Oscars. And could you the BAFTAs as well? Could you talk about the Goyas? I know you you met Juliette Binoche, which must have been exciting. I'm very envious because she is one of my favorite well, the English patient is actually one of my favorite films. I read the screenplay, age 22 when uh Michael Ondacci wrote the book. So she's very I'm very envious because I I was looking at your Instagram and I've seen the photos of you together. How was that experience? Could you talk a little bit? I saw you doing liaison and cabin interpreting. What kind of challenges were there in that particular job?

SPEAKER_01

Okay, well, we do call it simultaneous interpreting or both interpreting, but it's mostly called simultaneous interpreting. We studied, we did a bit of consecutive interpreting as well as so there are different types that we did uh during the weekend, and it was great, it was um amazing. I mean, meeting her was obviously um a privilege, and um, she is an extremely talented um actress, but also um she has an in very interesting discourse on on other interesting matters in in life in general. So it was challenging. She has a very long career in in films, so I had to prepare thoroughly her filmography and all the directors and projects she's worked in. So a lot of studying and preparation before the weekend.

SPEAKER_00

And I when I met you, you had so I should say I actually met you through another client, another business colleague of mine, Arancha, who was on the who came on the show, the last interview episode, I believe, we we published. That's how I met Concha. When I met you, you told me you'd also worked for Rafa Nadal around the time where he won his first Grand Slam. Could you I'm also a tennis fan, so now I'm doubly envious because you've met Julia Pinochet and Rafa Nadal. Could you talk a little about that? Was it his foundation or he was coming to do an event before he was really famous?

SPEAKER_01

It was years and years ago. I I am actually specialized. You've just been pointed to three one of three of the fields I work a lot with. Uh one is medicine, the other one is culture, in general, cinema in particular, contemporary art as well, and the other one is indeed sports. So I met uh Rafa Nadal when he has just he had just turned 18, I think.

SPEAKER_02

Wow.

SPEAKER_01

It was in 2004. I have I had just had my my second son, and um they did the Davis Cup. The David Cup Davis Cup final was held in Seville, and I was called last minute uh with a one-month-old baby to go and work for the for the final because they had brought another interpreter, and none of the two teams, it was the US uh versus Spain, none of the two teams were happy with the interpreter they had before. So they called me overnight and they asked me to do the interpreter for the for the press conference of the final. So Rafa had just turned 18 and he was he was a teenager, just like my son is now, sort of like 18 years later. Exactly.

SPEAKER_00

That was 2004. He was born in 86. So I think his career is dwindling. We can see he's close to retirement now. Let's see what happens. He might retire after the French Open. Let's let's see what happens. But um, that's yeah, those are fantastic. Have you worked for any other actors?

SPEAKER_01

Uh well I worked for him again. I worked with him again because it was a second Davis Cup that I worked for, and I think the other one was in 2011, I think. So I saw them all again, the same, basically the same team, but a few years later. So I worked with them uh in two different occasions, and uh it was interesting, it was very interesting because he's a very nice person, a kind, calm, generous person, and a very thorough professional. So working with the top professionals and kind people, regardless of the discipline, is always easy and um fulfilling.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, he does seem to give that impression. Yeah, I've seen him play many times. I've never been as close to him as you have, but I've seen him on court because I attend matches. Uh, just before the Goya, actually, I was having a coffee with my wife on Calle Toledo. You I live in Madrid, uh, you're in Seville, and we saw the actor Luis Tortar come in for a sandwich. And I think he was just probably getting on a train to go to Seville for the awards. So that was interesting. He just came in with a baseball uh hat.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, they are normal people. They are they are amongst us, they are normal people, and most of them they are they are great professionals when they are assists, but they are normal people. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, like you and me, exactly. So let's talk about um medicine a bit more. You know I'm I'm a specialist niche medical translator. So you are a translation boutique office owner. You do work in the field of medicine as well. I mean, what I tend to do for you tends to be author's editing for journal articles that go to a journal. I normally ask you, is it a British journal or an American journal? So I get the variant right, so I can look at the author instructions and just do a bit of due diligence before I do the editing. And I've also done some medical transcription work for you. Let's just touch on that a little bit. So these are presumably pharmaceutical companies or or medics who come to you with requests outside of your interpreting, your interpreting work. And they would invariably, we've done a couple of conferences um just transcribing the English word for word, verbatim. Uh could you talk a little bit towards that that need as well, that part of the market?

SPEAKER_01

Yes, indeed. I mean, this is a little bit of a spin-off from the simultaneous interpreting business, uh, because after the pandemic some of the medical seminars and conferences are held online or with a hybrid format. And um one of them, one of the varieties that we have nowadays, is that uh they record a an English-only seminar, and then they do the transcription of the seminar, and then we do the subtitles in Spanish. So that's that's another line of work that we are now doing, and uh, instead of having live simultaneous interpreting.

SPEAKER_00

One of the valuable lessons I learned from you during a job was how to deal with non-native transcription, because I would be putting my author's editor's cap on and immediately jumping in and correcting mistakes. And you quite rightly pulled me up on that, I remember. And I learned a valuable lesson, which is even the mistakes have to be transcribed verbatim. And I think we've done non-native transcription since then, so it's not hopefully not a mistake I repeated. But if any of you are there are mixing author's editing with transcription, I can tell you from experience, you shouldn't go in and correct the mistakes. That is a big part of the transcription process, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I mean, they are completely different jobs. Yeah. And when you are copywriting a text in English, you are doing one thing, but when you are transcribing uh a speech given by a non-native English speaker, uh then you just need to do the transcription as it is. And of course, I mean uh sometimes non-native speakers don't are not 100% correct, and you know, sometimes you you you don't need to repeat the mistakes. I mean, you know, the pronunciation is not perfect, it's okay. You still write the the word as it should be written, but of course, you you know, you know, we're not supposed to to correct the transcription. We do a literal transcription of what they are saying and in a hundred percent correct translation into Spanish of what they have said, yeah. But um, you know, we can't really change or or edit them.

SPEAKER_00

You talked about subtitling. I mean, is the choice between subtitling or a voiceover? Can you talk a little bit about the pros and cons of those two? Because I've had conversations with clients who wanted everything, and I would usually guide them towards one or the other. I've done voiceovers, um, I've done subtitling as well. But could you is there a preference you have for one or the other, or do you find clients have a preference?

SPEAKER_01

I really think, I really think is very much up to the client and what they're gonna do with the product. And um, you know, if they're gonna be showing it in a big auditorium with a big screen, you're right.

SPEAKER_00

Yes, fine, thank you.

SPEAKER_01

Don't die on us. Um so if they're gonna be showing it on a big auditorium with a big screen with lots of people, uh having a voiceover may be a little bit too intrusive. It's better to have subtitles. Uh it really depends, and there are clients that need one thing or another, and um we need to help them both.

SPEAKER_00

Absolutely. Yeah, the the the voiceovers I were it was for the Spanish Association of Dermatology and Venereology, and I would be voicing the highlights of the conference, the five-minute videos. And this was quite difficult work because the speakers would invariably be in a very nice city somewhere, and they were at the end of the conference speaking quite hurriedly. I I found this material quite challenging to work on. But luckily, it wasn't, as you say, simultaneous interpreting. I had time to look at the videos and study them, and that's that's something I think. That's a completely different ball game because you're you're under pressure in the cabin, you've got just the time the speaker takes to say what they have to say to get it out. So it's a different um so I mean, do you so it it sounds like you don't do a huge amount of translation work, but you you do quite a lot of interpreting. And when when we were corresponding for this episode, I remember you sending me some some medical interpreters training, and it looked very interesting because the topics, the topics you sent me were basically a pre-clinical UK curriculum, and I thought this is fantastic. I thought there was histology, there was physiology, there was a lot of people.

SPEAKER_01

The whole thing is the whole thing from the beginning to the end, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

I think that's very important in a niche field to have uh clearly I I'm at an advantage because I I have a few years of medicine under my belt, but you do see uh people who just haven't really grasped some of the basics of anatomy, and that is absolutely crucial, I think, to get those basics down. So one of the questions I was going to ask you was about your phonetics. You you come across in English as a native speaker, and I was gonna ask you, have you lived in England? Clearly, you have in Edinburgh. Um, I've seen a lot, lot worse. Rarely have I seen a better phonetics. So could you just talk uh a little to that? Have you always had such a good phonetics in English? Or is it something that came to you when you were living in Scotland? Or because it is very, very good. I must uh compliment you.

SPEAKER_01

Well, thank you very much for your kind words. Uh well, let's start with your first part of the question. The courses for medical interpreters. And yes, indeed, um in Spain we have the Spanish Association of Conference Interpreters, AICE, AICE. And within that association, which is a professional association that brings together professional interpreters in Spain, not necessarily only medical, but of specialized in all fields and with obviously different language combinations. So we started um a couple of months ago this course in which we are providing these sort of like foundational concepts of medicine, starting from um anatomy, physiology, histology, internal medicine, and uh, we have a long list of them. We have 11 um training courses within this global program. And uh yeah, we're trying to help interpreters to be able to really understand the concepts of medicine which underlie any speech because when you're doing simultaneous interpreting, we have to make so many decisions, uh, such as remodulate or anticipate or summarize or amplify what the original speech is saying, we really need to understand what we are talking about and not just repeating like a parrot what we've heard. So we need that training, and we are offering those courses. Have a look at our website or our social media if you want to. I mean, you don't need them, but if any of your listeners need some Spanish medical interpreting training or for translators, we have some translators joining our courses, so they're very welcome to to help to join us, and we have special prices for students because of course we need to support the young ones there that are getting there.

SPEAKER_00

Yes, we'll put that link in the show notes, of course. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01

And regarding my phonetics, while I I really don't know, to tell you the truth. I really, really don't know.

SPEAKER_02

You just picked it up.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I just picked it up. I it it certainly doesn't come from my parents, both of them are very Andalusha, they don't speak a word of English, and it's just something that I've I don't know. I'm I'm a I'm a terrible musician, I can't sing to to save my life, so it doesn't come from music at all.

SPEAKER_00

That's interesting. That was the other question I was going to ask you, which you remind me. Are you a music musical person?

SPEAKER_01

I'm I'm a dancer, I do dance though, I love dancing, but it's like really, as I said, couldn't couldn't sing to save my life. I really don't know where it comes from.

SPEAKER_00

Well, doubly, doubly impressive, definitely. So are the tutors on the Spanish interpreting program doctors? Are they Spanish doctors? Are they specialists? Yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_01

They are they are not only doctors, practicing doctors, but also they are tea they are university faculty, they're members of the faculty of the at the university of uh school of medicine in Seville. So they are doctors and they are also teachers, which is a great combination because sometimes, as you very well know, you can have a really good doctor who does not express himself or herself correctly.

SPEAKER_02

Correct.

SPEAKER_01

And and you can have a good communicator, but who doesn't have the subject and the day-to-day, you know, terminology, the top of his tongue? So, yeah, both both of them.

SPEAKER_00

Both of them. That's good. Um, yeah, I'm conscious of your time. Let me just turn to a few audience poll quickfire questions. What's the best business advice you've been given, or perhaps have given to somebody else? What's the best business advice you would say you've either received or given to someone else?

SPEAKER_01

I didn't really see receive any business advice whatsoever when I started. I wish I had. So that's something that was clearly missing 30 years ago when I decided to set up my my company. So I wish I had, because I was just a graduate in translation and interpreting. So definitely, you know, miss there. And uh business advice that I would give now is to always aim for excellence and top quality, both in your suppliers and in your clients, and aim for the good clients and figure out those who are not good clients, because they will not give you not only zero profit, but also zero professional fulfillment.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, that's good advice. And we're not so we shouldn't try to sell to everyone. We should try to sell to a viable market, but not everyone is our client. I think we sometimes make the mistake of trying to sell to everyone uh when we need a very niche. The more niche you go, I find, the better, the more full fulfillment you have. So would is business something you've changed your mind about over the years? Some kind some sort of polarizing belief if there wasn't anything available 30 years ago, now presumably you have a completely different outlook on it. Something you've changed your mind about specifically over the last uh 30 years? Uh you've been in business a long time. Is there something, is there a belief that you had which people find crazy, or do you find someone else's belief crazy now? Polarizing thoughts or beliefs?

SPEAKER_01

No, I don't, I don't really. I mean, I I have evolved and changed dramatically, and um uh you know I think every single quarter is different to the previous one because the world is in constant change, and now with the exponential technologies, we are subject to change by the minute. So I'm open to change, and I have changed a lot. Um, I have had very clear red lines which I am happy to keep, such as, as I said, well, underpricing or working with non-reliable suppliers, or you know, I'm I aim for excellence and both in the supplier and in the client, and both sides of the show. So anything that is not within those red lines around me is not for me. And that's that has been like that since the very beginning and will continue to be like that forever.

SPEAKER_00

You have very firm boundaries. That's absolutely you talked about technology. I mean, I I realized before you came on you were you were on an RSI system, a remote service interpreting. Have you could you talk a little bit to that? Does that mean you don't actually physically have to be in the events to provide the service? You can be outside, plugged into the event through a system and provide your interpreting remotely. Is that something since the pandemic, or was it a thing, say 20 years ago, or is it something that's just come in the last few years?

SPEAKER_01

Good question. Well, RSI, which means remote simultaneous interpreting, is something that has been accelerated by the pandemic, um, like many other things in life. And it was there sort of like shyly. Um, it was done through Skype or you know, through other more rudimentary uh video conferencing platforms. But ever since the pandemic, everything sped up to become um more developed and more tailor-made for interpreting. So now there are a number of standard video conferencing platforms that also have embedded simultaneous interpreting um hands-on, such as Zoom or Teams or WebEx, and you can add on that uh software to a standard video conferencing platform, or there are specific platforms and software for interpreting only, such as Interprety, or some very interesting cases of Spanish simultaneous interpreting platforms such as Conveno. So this has evolved dramatically over since the since the pandemic. And we now use them on a daily basis. So we we combine our sources of work as interpreters with in-person conferences, medical conferences, and uh now remote simultaneous interpreting, especially in medicine, with uh events and webinars all over the world. Yeah, it's kind of so this is a good thing.

SPEAKER_00

You're leveraging time because you don't have to try cuts down your travel, which is good. It can be done. You know, interpreting is a historically a profession that's involved a lot of travel.

SPEAKER_01

A lot of traveling. I am I'm going back to traveling now again, so it's kind of weird going back to catching and airplane and train after a couple of years of after a couple of years off.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Do you have a use for chat GPT and other AI tools in your work? Have you forgotten?

SPEAKER_01

Well, it's funny that you mentioned that because the other day. No, the answer is no, I haven't explored that yet. That's sort of like next step for me. Right. But it's it's funny that you mention it because the other day I was doing um consecutive interpreting and shushotash interpreting at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

SPEAKER_02

Yes, yes.

SPEAKER_01

And they were they were gonna do a very interesting speech from Huawei that I was gonna translate into Spanish. Uh, but uh whilst they were doing the introduction, I was translating simultaneously in Shushot Ash into English, and the person who was actually doing this presentation in Spanish said, Well, as you can see, we have an interpreter here, a human being, not Chat Ch GTP doing the simultaneous interpretation. And I felt sort of like weird, like you know, to be compared with the with the sort of like artificial intelligence uh tool whilst I was there, you know, in person. But no, um, certainly that is chat uh GTP or GPT, I don't even get the acronym right, uh is next uh step for me.

SPEAKER_00

It's interesting. I mean, I see it as a an extension to machine translation. I I don't see it as any more of a threat as I do MT. I still think there are there is uh huge market for niche specialists such as yourself, such as myself, such as older specialists, law, legal translators, medical translators, financial translators, there are there is work for all of us, I feel. So uh any of you scared of uh AI and the machines and chat GPT, don't worry about it too much. I think uh we'll be okay for a lot of people.

SPEAKER_01

I think we should take them as tools that help us and try and use it. Our jobs will never be replaced because we are translating human language. I mean, when it's only about machines talking to each other, they can translate to each other as well. But they will be human on you know the face of earth. So as long as there are humans talking to humans, we will need humans translating humans. And when machines talk to each other, they can do what they want.

SPEAKER_00

Certainly the humor and the nuance is very difficult to interpret. I I think particularly in Japanese, I've heard that Japanese interpreters have difficulty with getting humor across. I'm sure this is not so much an issue in in the romance languages, but uh but that's uh that's another another story, perhaps. Uh is there a favorite book or tool you would recommend uh our listeners? Any any favorite book or tool or anything you're reading at the moment you can?

SPEAKER_01

Well, I read a really interesting um book uh a long time ago. And it was a book called The Blue Manuscript, and it was about an interpreter in a in an archaeological excavation in Egypt. It was actually written by by the director of the exhibition I was translating for. So she gave me the book, and um and she was a translator, training in translation herself. So I remember that book as something that um surprised me. The blue manuscript.

SPEAKER_00

The blue manuscript, okay.

SPEAKER_01

But yeah.

SPEAKER_00

We will put a reference to that in the show notes. Uh just a couple more rapid fire questions. Um if you if you have the time. If you had a billboard, a giant billboard, and you could put absolutely anything on it, any message, what's what would you say? What would you say to a massive billboard?

SPEAKER_01

Free advertising, no charge whatsoever, free.es.

SPEAKER_00

You you'd use it for for your that's a good one. That's a good one.

SPEAKER_01

So yes, yeah, no, I do I use my name as um as my personal brand. Yeah, it's it's my website and it's my personal.

SPEAKER_00

Your personal brand. That's a good one. Um when you are to recruiting translators, what kind of qualities are you looking for in beginner translators? Because it's difficult to get the experience without the job and to get the job without the experience. What that how do you how do you reconcile that vicious circle at the beginning, or do you only work with very experienced people, or do you give beginners a chance? That's a difficult one to to how do you marry the experience quality gap, I suppose.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, don't kill me for these. Don't hate me for this because I'm very much in favor of giving young people an opportunity. And um, and I'm gonna say completely the opposite in my answer. Yeah. So don't don't kill me for that. But no, if the type of work I I do for my customers and uh the type of work I I um hired for uh is only done by experienced um translators and interpreters, and they they need to prove their expertise. And if I haven't worked with them, I need to double check them with a colleague of mine who has worked with them, as it is the case when you were recommended to me. So but this is me, this is for the type of work I do, which is completely different to the work done by a big agency doing projects of millions of words a week. I do way less translation work and for interpreting, I never ever hire a beginner interpreter alone. I will start including them in my teams, but always with a very senior experienced interpreter by his or her side because our job is so delicate that we can't risk it to start with with a team made up of only junior interpreters.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, that's fair enough. Uh thank you. Any any final message, take-o message for the audience? There'll hopefully be a few newbies listening to your hanging on your every word.

SPEAKER_01

I would say that um do only the continue only doing this job is if you love it. That's always been my my motto and is what I always use in my social media. I love my job because this job is so demanding and it takes so much from your personal private life, and that you need to love it to do it. Otherwise, it's much better to do something else that is less demanding.

SPEAKER_00

Absolutely. Concho T, thank you. Thank you very much for your time. That was Concho T. Very, very experienced interpreter, pearls of wisdom from her. So until the next episode, stay on your game and keep shooting for those lofty goals. See you next time. Bye for now.

SPEAKER_01

Thank you. Bye.

SPEAKER_00

Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed today's episode, don't forget to click the little plus time on Apple Podcasts or the follow button on Spotify to make sure you get new episodes on your device every single week.