We so often hear of something having a negative impact, yet there are many more idiomatic ways of expressing this idea.
You can often use a verb or adjective instead, which allows you to be more precise or more colourful. Another option that often works is using a verb and modifying it with an adverb.
Here are some options for you.
Verbs
Instead of has a negative impact, try some of the following. Of course, your choice will depend on context.
damage
weaken
undermine
hurt
hit
affect
cause harm to…
Add adverbs to modify the verbs, especially if you want to make them stronger. Seriously, badly, and severely are usually safe choices.
A few idioms:
to leave a mark on
to play havoc with
to take a toll on
to deal a blow to (you could add adjectives: ‘a crushing blow’, ‘a severe blow’, ‘a serious blow’)
(informal) to do a number on
Adjectives
Instead of saying X has had a negative impact on the economy, you can use adjectives.
Either replace negative with something more descriptive, or say that the effect of X has been…(insert adjective).
Using adjectives allows you to play with register and emphasis, since some adjectives are much stronger or more formal than others.
unfortunate
destructive
damaging
harmful
detrimental
(formal) deleterious
dangerous
adverse
Stronger options:
catastrophic
disastrous
devastating
crippling
dire
Synonyms
Remember, there are a few words that have a similar meaning to negative impact. As always, they may or may not be suitable for the context:
drawback
disadvantage
downside
You could also choose to use a synonym of impact, along with a different adjective. For example:
damaging ramifications
undesirable consequences
adverse effects
an unfortunate outcome
catastrophic repercussions
Exercise
Here are some headlines (hence the missing verbs) and sentences taken from the press. All of them could have used the term negative impact.
See if you can come up with a different phrase. There are many possible solutions.
Pandemic’s negative impact on mental health of women and young people is most serious.
In France, nearly half (47%) of people aged 18 to 24 said the pandemic had had a negative impact on their mental health.
Half of people aged 18-24 in the UK say the pandemic had a negative impact on their mental health.
Lockdown may have a negative impact on mental health
The negative psychological impact of coronavirus in Britain – a visual guide
Anxiety levels double and 80 per cent of people report negative impact of living with pandemic threat
Pandemic hits mental health of women and young people hardest.
In France, nearly half (47%) of people aged 18 to 24 said the pandemic had taken a toll on their mental health.
Half of people aged 18-24 in the UK say the pandemic badly affected their mental health.
Lockdown may have a number of negative consequences for mental health
The psychological toll of coronavirus in Britain – a visual guide
Anxiety levels double and 80 per cent of people report devastating effects of living with pandemic threat
Interested in more material like this to help you boost your retour? Why not join my monthly membership site, Rock your Retour, with tailor-made written materials and weekly live group classes (online)?
Sophie Llewellyn Smith, writing as The Interpreting Coach, is a coach, interpreter trainer, conference interpreter, designer of online teaching materials, and creator of Speechpool. Follow the blog to pick up tips on how to improve your interpreting skills.
Last Friday, I experimented with something new. I set up an online co-working session on Zoom, emailed my subscribers to let them know about it, and waited to see who would turn up and what they would get out of it.
It was clear from some of the questions at the start of the session that some participants were expecting a class or guided session (‘How will you organise us, by language combination, or by technique?’, or ‘Could you put me in a breakout room?’ – well, yes, but who with, and what for?).
Perhaps the co-working concept isn’t that familiar to interpreters, so I thought it would be worth exploring briefly in this post. Above all, I’d like to address another question which a colleague asked me (and, I confess, I asked myself!): what’s the point?
What is co-working?
[For the sake of avoiding ambiguity, I should perhaps explain that I’m not talking about ‘coworking’ in the sense of ‘team interpreting’, where two or more interpreters provide communication to and from the participants in a meeting.]
Co-working spaces are places where freelancers can get their work done, without feeling isolated because they’re working alone at home and without breaking the bank by renting an office full-time.
There are co-working spaces to rent by the hour or day, or you can get together with fellow professionals in a location of your choice, and work alongside each other.
Here are some of the benefits to co-working:
feeling less isolated. If you work from home, you can end up feeling as if you never talk to another human being.
better focus & fewer distractions. If you’re sitting next to someone who’s engrossed in their work, it’s harder to justify spending ages on Facebook.
networking
synergies. Sometimes another freelancer can offer you a helping hand (for example, with a technical problem that’s causing you difficulty, or a recommendation).
extra services. Some co-working spaces offer facilities such as a cafe, a relaxation area, conference rooms, and even happy hour, ‘lunch & learn’ events, and more.
So far, so reasonable. I think it’s relatively easy to understand the advantages of a physical co-working space for freelancers: cheaper than a full time rented office, possibly more conducive to focused work than the home environment (no chores, no noise, no other distractions), more convivial, etc.
However, there are two important questions here:
isn’t this much more relevant for, say, translators, who have written projects to complete, rather than interpreters? After all, when you’re busy with an assignment and interpreting at a meeting (whether in person or remotely), that obviously doesn’t fit the co-working model at all.
how does online co-working compare to co-working in a physical space?
Online co-working
Online co-working attempts to replicate the ethos of a physical co-working space.
There are many ways to organise an online co-working session: via Skype, WhatsApp, Zoom, etc.
Clearly it isn’t always possible to provide the same services and facilities as in a physical workspace, but the motivation, positive energy, and conviviality are all there. Synergies and networking are also possible, depending on how the co-working is organised.
What happens during an online co-working session
Well, that depends on the organiser and the participants.
There are several co-working platforms and apps for freelancers to choose from, and they all have their own way of doing things.
For example, https://grooveapp.io lets you join a 1 hour session, with a ‘check-in’ at the start to state what you want to work on, and a brief wrap-up at the end. On the other hand, it’s a phone app, which means you might easily be distracted by social media…
https://www.flow.club is another option that allows you to join a session with up to 8 participants. These sessions are hosted, and the host chooses a playlist of music, which you may find motivational or…distracting.
For the co-working session I ran on Friday, I chose a format with a brief ‘check-in’ in the chat box for participants to tell each other what they wanted to work on. Then I set a 50 minute timer, and everyone got on with their own work. Two people chose to go to a breakout room together. At the end, we had a quick chat and shared progress and impressions.
Does it work for interpreters?
The most interesting part of the exercise for me was finding out what each participant was working on.
One person wrote the ‘about’ section for their website, and completed the ‘simultaneous interpreting’ section.
Another participant listened back to a recording of their performance during a recent interpreting assignment – something they dislike doing, and had been putting off.
Some people were preparing meeting documents. One did some shadowing to improve French pronunciation.
I designed an exercise for members of my English retour membership site.
In short: when you’re an interpreter, there are plenty of tasks to be getting on with, other than interpreting itself: meeting prep, working on one of your languages, invoices, posting on social media, translation or other work, preparing classes if you also teach, etc. etc. Or perhaps even some of your ‘home’ admin: making appointments, filing your tax return. The list is endless!
To answer my original question, ‘does it work for interpreters?’, I would say yes, definitely. Although co-working may seem more suited to professionals like translators, copy writers, graphic designers, etc., there are plenty of tasks an interpreter can do during a co-working session.
In fact, these are often the tasks that get pushed to the bottom of the pile after finding clients, preparing for meetings, and actually interpreting. Yet some of them are critical to running your business efficiently (e.g. invoicing), and others are important for keeping your skills up to date (e.g. maintaining your languages, going to CPD events, analysing your interpreting performance). So it’s useful to have an extra motivational boost!
But is it for everyone?
Now that’s a whole other question.
Some people wouldn’t dream of going to an exercise class or the gym without a gym buddy. They’re just not motivated to go alone, and they don’t find it enjoyable.
For these people, a co-working session may be just the ticket. Some of the participants last Friday, for example, said they found it motivating seeing the faces of their colleagues hard at work (camera on). The accountability of the co-working session helped them get much more done, and gave them a sense of satisfaction.
For others, this is a completely pointless exercise. If you’re self-motivated and not prone to distraction or procrastination, you could get just as much (or perhaps more) done by yourself!
Funnily enough, I would have classed myself in this latter category, because I prefer ploughing my own furrow. However, on Friday, when I got halfway through my task and it was becoming rather boring and difficult, instead of stopping and flicking over to emails or LinkedIn, I looked around at the others working so assiduously on their projects, and decided if they could do it, so could I. So I knuckled down and finished my task, which was very satisfying.
Perhaps co-working works for me, too!
What are the options for online co-working?
Set up your own session. All you need is a like-minded group of people and a communication channel.
Co-working isn’t for everyone: it may not suit your personality.
If you do decide to join a co-working session or platform, think about how it matches your needs and the way you do things.
One of the great things about the session I set up on Friday is that we’re free, as a group, to make or change the ‘rules’. We decided that we’d check at the beginning of each session, and if anyone wanted to do some interpreting practice with a partner, I would open a breakout room for them. I’m also open to other ideas, for example if participants want to spend some of their time networking.
These free sessions are for you, and you can help shape them!
I’d love to hear your thoughts in the Comments section below. Have you tried online co-working? Did you find it useful, or was it not your cup of tea?
Here is something a bit different for you – a cloze, or gap, test.
The idea is to listen to the speech and fill in the gaps with one or more words that are grammatically correct and match the content and style of the piece.
This is a good exercise for many reasons:
it helps you with anticipation. You won’t be able to fill in every gap before hearing the following few words, but some of them can be guessed immediately because they’re part of a collocation, set phrase, or idiom, or because they make sense in context.
it helps you work on reformulation: some of the gaps have many possible solutions. How many can you think of?
it’s a good listening exercise. You need to concentrate really hard to follow the speech’s thread, so that you can fill in the blanks.
it’s a good reminder that we work at the level of ideas, not words. Imagine if you were interpreting the speech from English into your A language: you could make a good guess at the missing words; so if they were unknown words, you would still be able to follow the meaning in most cases.
Audio file – Islamic art
This is quite a challenging text. You will need to draw on your background knowledge and logic, as well as your English skills, to fill in the blanks successfully.
I won’t go through every blank, but I thought it might be useful to discuss a few of the blanks where there were several possible solutions.
depictions of the prophet Muhammad are……. in Islam: you could say forbidden, or banned, prohibited.
The prohibition of images of the prophet, no matter how …….., is widely …….. today . There are many ways to complete this sentence, especially as it is ambiguous: does the adjective following ‘no matter how’ refer to ‘images of the prophet’, or to ‘prohibition’? Depending on what you think, you could say ‘the prohibition of images of the prophet, no matter how innocuous, is widely accepted’, or ‘the prohibition of images of the prophet, no matter how harmless, is widely criticised today’, or ‘the prohibition of images of the prophet, no matter how dangerous, is widely accepted today’. You need to think carefully about what has been said so far, and your background knowledge about this issue.
there is no such …….. in the Qur’an: this could be instruction, or prohibition, ban, or edict.
Islam was the only common …..: could be religion, factor, or denominator.
ruling elites ……. Islam as a binding agent: there are several solutions, depending on meaning. You could say used or exploited; or fastened on to, latched on to; or saw, perceived.
decade of economic pain and social …..: this could be decline, problems, tensions, or fracture.
Speech transcript
Here’s the transcript of the speech. I have highlighted the missing words in bold.
Though we often hear that depictions of the prophet Muhammad are forbidden in Islam, artworks bearing his image can be found in museums in Europe and the United States. And he is in many carefully curated private collections of Islamic art, appearing from time to time in the catalogues of prestigious auction houses when these artworks change hands.
The prohibition of images of the prophet, no matter how anodyne, is widely accepted today – but, as these examples show, it is a distinctly modern edict. The religious justification for the ban is far less clear than its proponents believe: there is no such instruction in the Qur’an. There is, of course, a pre-Islamic aversion to idol worship shared by all the monotheistic religions, and over the centuries this aversion gradually wore away depictions of Muhammad in Islamic art. But this was only a prelude to the modern charge of blasphemy – which arrived only in the 20th century, after the Muslim world had fractured into nation-states.
The modern majority-Muslim nation-state is a weak and unwieldy creature. Across Africa and south Asia, colonial forces lumped together disparate tribes and languages, drew boundary lines around them, and then abruptly decamped to Europe. For many citizens of these new nations, Islam was the only common denominator. In the absence of any coherent political programme beyond the maintenance of their own power, ruling elites fastened on to Islam as a binding agent. From there it was an easy step to pick out some sacred icons, such as the image of the prophet, and to draw arbitrary theological red lines, useful for dispensing with political opponents. The story of blasphemy in contemporary Islam isn’t about doctrine. It is about decline and dictatorship.
There is a lesson in this tale for all of us: the more that a society is preoccupied with its symbols, the more insecure it has become. In the UK, the Conservative government and its court press have seized upon the veneration of national symbols as a consolation for a decade of economic pain and social fracture.
And then, of course, there is the flag, the latest icon to be invested with a sanctity that demands it be flown longer and larger. The government has decreed that after the summer the flag should fly over official buildings every day rather than 20 days a year. No longer is it just jolly bunting on special occasions. This is the endpoint of a journey that began when Nigel Farage took a small union flag and placed it in front of him at the European parliament. In all its absurdity, that moment comes closest to representing what the flag has come to symbolise today – a false but potent claim of liberation from fictional oppressive forces.
Over the past few months, Tory MPs have tried to burnish their political credentials by posturing more and more aggressively about the flag, demanding that it be compulsory in all schools (and that anyone who has concerns can be “educated” into compliance). It is an even shorter distance between that public, official intimidation and private citizens taking matters into their own hands. Earlier this year, one mayor in Cornwall received death threats for removing flags that had been put up without the council’s permission.
“You can’t eat a flag,” said John Hume, one of the architects of the Northern Ireland peace process. When Muslim countries erupt with rage over images of Muhammad, I see governments who cannot feed their people, or provide them with dignity or democratic rights, so they feed them false pride instead. The images we see on the news from Cairo or Khartoum of protests against cartoons or authors, are pictures of astroturfed anger, whipped up and bussed into town squares in government vehicles. Some of that anger seeps into corners that then become impossible to scrub. The worship of icons, whether flags or statues, may seem like a harmless performance on the part of a government that has little else to offer. But behind it lurks the threat of something much more sinister.
Here is something a bit different for you – a cloze, or gap, test.
The idea is to listen to the speech and fill in the gaps with one or more words that are grammatically correct and match the content and style of the piece.
This is a good exercise for many reasons:
it helps you with anticipation. You won’t be able to fill in every gap before hearing the following few words, but some of them can be guessed immediately because they’re part of a collocation, set phrase, or idiom, or because they make sense in context.
it helps you work on reformulation: some of the gaps have many possible solutions. How many can you think of?
it’s a good listening exercise. You need to concentrate really hard to follow the speech’s thread, so that you can fill in the blanks.
it’s a good reminder that we work at the level of ideas, not words. Imagine if you were interpreting the speech from English into your A language: you could make a good guess at the missing words; so if they were unknown words, you would still be able to follow the meaning in most cases.
I won’t go through the whole text; you can check the missing words in the transcript below if you like.
I thought it would be useful to go through just a few of the missing words, when there were several possible solutions.
the near-insurmountable …….. facing school-age girls in the world’s poorest regions: this could be challenges, but also obstacles, hurdles, difficulties, or even problems, if you couldn’t think of anything better.
Her story ……. that of millions of girls around the world: this could be mirrors, or perhaps echoes, or simply is similar to.
There is a need to ……stronger policies to ……. progress: the first gap could be devise, or develop, propose, plan, implement, push through, support. The second gap could be stimulate, boost, speed up.
Transcript of the speech
I’ve highlighted the missing words in bold.
Bright-eyed and clever, a young girl from a small village in Malawi shares her wish for a better life. From her confines, up early in the morning, cleaning and cooking, eating last, marrying young, she has little chance for school, much less a future with a career.
“Give me a chance,” she says disarmingly, “and I’ll take it from there.” The three-minute video, produced by Plan International, a UK-based global advocacy group on children, tells the story of the near-insurmountable challenges facing school-age girls in the world’s poorest regions, including many parts of sub-Saharan Africa. Her story mirrors that of millions of girls around the world whose prospects are severely limited because they cannot finish school.
According to the 2014 Millennium Development Goals Report, a United Nations annual report that tracks progress towards achieving the MDGs, some 33 million children in sub-Saharan Africa were out of school in 2012. While the situation varies from country to country and between rural and urban areas, overall 56% of the out-of-school children are girls.
There is no doubt that a concerted global push for universal education has narrowed the gender gap in primary school enrolment between 2001 and 2008, says UNESCO, the UN agency on education and culture. Over the past seven years, however, the gap appears to have remained the same, according to the report. Pervasive poverty and persistent cultural attitudes, including forced early marriages and child labour, continue to be the main obstacles to girls’ education in sub-Saharan Africa.
“Poverty lies at the heart of many of the challenges that hinder girls’ access to education. The pressures of poverty mean that parents must constantly make decisions about how to utilize extremely limited resources and how best to provide a secure future for their family,”
Poor families, mostly in rural areas, are forced to send boys to school while keeping the girls at home helping with chores in the belief that chores are sufficient lessons for girls to learn how to keep a family. Even as more girls are enrolled in primary schools, their chances of dropping out continue to be greater than boys’. Girls may be withdrawn from school by parents for reasons linked not only to costs but to unwanted pregnancy.
There is a need to devise stronger policies to revive progress. UNESCO and UNICEF are recommending that countries focus on “broad investment to strengthen and expand education systems, a sharp focus on improving the quality of education on offer and targeted interventions for the children who are the very hardest to reach.”
In a joint report, the two agencies said the priority should be to ensure that even the most vulnerable and disadvantaged girl has access to a school close to home—a school that meets her most basic needs for safety, privacy and cleanliness.
I hope you enjoyed the exercise!
Interested in more material like this to help you boost your retour? Why not join my monthly membership site, Rock your Retour, with tailor-made written materials and weekly live group classes (online)?
Sophie Llewellyn Smith, writing as The Interpreting Coach, is a coach, interpreter trainer, conference interpreter, designer of online teaching materials, and creator of Speechpool. Follow the blog to pick up tips on how to improve your interpreting skills.
You are a campaigner for a ban on plastic items such as drinks stirrers, straws, and cotton buds. You welcome the UK’s announcement that it plans to ban these items, but you believe we need to go much further and look at legislation to tackle all forms of plastic packaging.
Prepare an introduction to your speech, giving your background, the current legal situation, and any other background you think is relevant.
Choose Option 1 OR Option 2.
Option 1: time is short, and time has been wasted
Explain why it is urgent that this ban come about soon. Use several idioms and phrases to indicate the urgency of the situation, and back up your points with some facts and figures (e.g. about plastic waste in the sea).
Point out that the UK could have acted much faster in proposing legislation on this matter, and will now have to make up for lost time. See if you can come up with some reasons for the delay.
Option 2: this proposal comes just in time; the EU legislation will be too late
Explain why this proposal comes just in time – because the EU is about to legislate, but the EU legislation will be too late for Brexit-related transposition into UK law. At least if the UK legislates now, it will keep in step with EU environmental legislation.
Use several idioms and phrases related to time, and some facts and figures to back up the urgency of the situation (e.g. about plastic waste in the sea).
Conclusion
Conclude your speech with a call to action about future, broader, legislation on plastics in general.
Vocabulary assistance: how to talk about…time
Here are some tips to help you talk about time: time passing, time being short, getting things done in time, etc. etc.
The time is ripe
Here is a collection of phrases to express the idea that it’s the right time, or perhaps past time, to get something done:
It’s about time… Curiously, this can mean either that something needs to happen immediately, or that it is now happening, but should have been done sooner.
It’s about time the government provided more funding for mental health services.
It’s about time they tied the knot – they’ve been together for 17 years!
It’s high time…. This phrase is synonymous with ‘about time’ (see above), but a little more emphatic.
There’s no time like the present! The meaning of this phrase is ‘now’, ‘immediately’.
‘When would you like me to start working on the project?’ ‘There’s no time like the present!’
The time is ripe for… means the time is right, the timing is good.
The time is ripe for a remake of this classic film.
Being short of time
Let’s imagine you’re interpreting at a meeting, and the agenda is very long. The Chairman might say one or all of the following:
I’m just keeping one eye on the clock, because we have a lot to get through this morning.
Time flies! It’s already 11 o’clock, so we need to wrap up this point.
Time is marching on, and we need to move on to the next agenda item.
We’re short of time today, so we’ll have to come back to this proposal next week.
We’re a little pressed for time, I’m afraid. Perhaps we could discuss this bilaterally.
In the interests of saving time, I won’t read out the whole document.
What if there is a sense of urgency about a proposal/piece of legislation/action on the part of the authorities? Try:
Time is of the essence with this proposal: it will be discussed at the Plenary in a fortnight, so we need your written comments by Monday evening.
There’s no time to lose. We need to act immediately.
We’re in a race against time. Our competitors are ready to move on this, so we need to make our offer immediately.
The emergency services are working against the clock to reach earthquake survivors under the rubble.
It’s crunch time! Something needs to be done urgently.
Desperate times call for desperate measures.
If time has been lost for some reason (delays, illness of the project leader, documents lost in the post…), you might say:
We’re working around the clock now, to make up for lost time.
If there is no great urgency, you might say:
All in good time. We don’t want to be too hasty.
We have all the time in the world, as there’s no deadline.
Just in time
If something was done/adopted/achieved at the last possible moment, you can use the following phrases:
at the eleventh hour: The Parliament was still proposing changes to the Bill at the eleventh hour.
in the nick of time: We arrived at the airport in the nick of time; the flight was just about to start boarding.
If it’s too late, you might say:
Better late than never!
Miscellaneous
in no time means ‘very quickly’: the revised proposal was ready in no time.
to make good time refers to a journey, and means it took less time than expected. We’ve made good time, so we can afford to stop for lunch before hitting the motorway.
ahead of its time means radical, innovative (for the time): The play explored ideas about prejudice and tolerance in a way that was ahead of its time. The company was ahead of its time in its employment practices.
before my time means before I was born, or before I was old enough to understand. Margaret Thatcher and the poll tax? That was all before my time.
to buy time means to delay an event so as to improve your own position in the meantime. I bought some time by telling my supervisor I was ill. He postponed the essay deadline by two days.
to call it a day means to stop for the day, even if you haven’t finished what you’re doing. OK, we still haven’t covered Item 5 on the agenda, but it’s 6 o’clock and we’re all tired. Let’s call it a day and reconvene tomorrow morning.
in time vs on time. What’s the difference? ‘On time’ means at the pre-arranged time, e.g. The meeting began on time, at 9 o’clock. ‘In time’ means before a deadline, before something begins: he arrived in time for the beginning of the meeting. He turned up just in time for the beginning of the speech. Imagine a meeting that begins at 9 with a presentation by an invited speaker, but the speaker starts a few minutes late. You could say: I didn’t arrive on time, but I was in time for the presentation.
Last few…
To stand the test of time means to remain popular or in force for a long time.
The US Constitution has stood the test of time.
Few pop songs of the 2000s will stand the test of time.
Time will tell is an incredibly useful phrase. Will a proposal be adopted following a round the amendments? Will the public support a groundbreaking idea? Will Donald Trump be booted out? Will the UK really leave the EU? Time will tell.
I haven’t mentioned it so far, but the adjective timely can prove useful. It means ‘happening at the best possible moment’ and can be a good translation for words like ‘opportun’ in French, for example.
The protests in London at the weekend were a timely reminder that this is still a controversial issue.
The change in the exchange rate provided a timely boost to the company’s falling profits.
Your comments on the proposal are very timely. We’ll amend the text as soon as possible, since the deadline is next week.
Finally, don’t forget a week is a long time in politics.
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