Exploring collocations to improve your B language

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, use of language, and marketing.

In this episode, I talk about collocations: identifying them, exploring them, and practising using them. Collocations can make you sound more natural in the target language, and if you get them wrong, can mark you out as a non-native speaker.

I think collocations are best practised in context (so rather than trying to memorise a list, for example, try preparing a speech on a specific topic and thinking about what collocations you could use).

I tried out several tools for you:

• Visual Thesaurus of English collocations
• JustTheWord
• Collocaid
• fraze.it
• eapfoundation.com
• forbetterenglish.com
• skell.sketchengine.eu

But honestly, the two most useful tools, in my opinion, are a good old collocations dictionary, and ChatGPT.

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