Dear friends, colleagues and fellow interpreters,

For a long time I’ve been working on something quietly in the background, and I’m finally ready to share it with you. It’s called TerpWise, an online training space for interpreters, and for the trainers and programmes that teach them.

Why I built it

Anyone who has trained as an interpreter knows the feeling: you finish a speech, you think it went reasonably well, and then you listen back and hear every omission, every hesitation, every term you didn’t quite have. Real progress happens in that moment of listening back. Yet practice is still scattered across audio files, shared folders, spreadsheets and email threads. I wanted one place where practising, listening back and getting feedback all happen together.

What you can do with TerpWise

• Practise simultaneous and consecutive. Pick a speech from the Speech Bank and interpret it. In consecutive mode the speech pauses whenever you take your turn, just like in a real booth or meeting room.
• Listen back side by side. The original speech and your interpretation sit on the same timeline, with transcripts of both, so you can click any passage and hear exactly what was said and what you said.
• Prepare like a professional. Before a speech, research the topic, collect terminology and build bilingual glossaries you can keep and reuse.
• Sharpen specific skills. Short drills target memory, numbers, shadowing, sight translation and self-repair.

For trainers, programmes and institutions

TerpWise grew out of the classroom as much as the booth. Trainers can set up a class, assign speeches or drills with due dates, and see at a glance who has started, who has handed in and who is done. Evaluating a student means opening their session, listening to the original and the interpretation together, and scoring it against clear criteria with written comments. The finished report goes straight into the student’s portfolio and can be exported as a Word document. Students can also evaluate themselves and give each other peer feedback.

Early access

TerpWise is in its final round of testing, and early access is opening soon. If you’re an interpreting student, a working interpreter, or you teach in a programme or department and would like to try it with your group, I’d love to hear from you. Your feedback at this stage will shape what TerpWise becomes.

Thank you for reading, and for all the support along the way.

Warmly,
Cihan