Exercises to improve formal register in a B language, part 2 (vocabulary-building)

Hi! Welcome to the Complete Interpreter podcast by the Interpreting Coach.

Why 'Complete Interpreter'? Because you're not just a translation machine, you're also a person and a business owner, and I hope to help you take a 360 view of yourself and share some great tried-and-tested strategies to improve your interpreting skills, mindset, and marketing.

Before we get any further: this is episode 2 of 3 on this particular subject, so please listen to episode 1, if you haven't done so already.

In this episode, I talk about vocabulary-building to improve the formal register of your B language.

Here are some of the exercises I suggest:

• learning a short passage in your B language by heart (suggested by Andy Gillies)
• brainstorming formal versions of logical connectors (e.g. 'thus' or 'therefore' instead of 'so')
• researching and learning stock phrases for certain situations, such as the start of a conference, the beginning of a speech by a politician, etc.
• researching more formal verbs, for example in speech transcripts or mission statements
• thinking about phrasal verbs and their single-word equivalents, often derived from Latin (e.g. 'postpone' instead of 'put off')
• finding neutral and/or formal equivalents for 'good' and 'bad'
• brainstorming more formal synonyms for concepts such as go up/go down, make, do, help, change, etc.  

Let me know what you'd like me to talk about next!
 
Sophie (aka The Interpreting Coach)