Sonia Kampshoff

Welcome to Working with Languages, the podcast for language speakers ready to explore the range of opportunities involving languages. My name is Sonia Kampshoff. I'm a translator-turned Google Arts specialist and a lifelong language enthusiast. Join me and my guests as we explore how they embraced languages in their careers and what working with languages looks like in the age of AI. Because finding the right inspiration can help you build or shift your career.

Today's guest on Working with Languages is Dr. Natalia Tilton, whose work revolves around languages and language acquisition. On her LinkedIn profile, she writes: I dream of a world where no one is disadvantaged because of language differences or deficiencies. And you? Her PhD thesis focused on language acquisition anxiety, how it affects non-native speakers, and how to overcome it.

Now her focus is helping adult migrants and refugees learn their new country's language swiftly and efficiently, so they can integrate in their new community, find work and rebuild their lives. This is a heartwarming conversation about helping people through language learning and communication. Let's dive in.

Welcome back to the Working Rich Languages Podcast. Today my guest is Dr. Natalia Tilton. Hello, Natalia.

Dr Natalia Tilton

Hi Sonia. Thanks for having me.

Sonia Kampshoff

It's wonderful to have you here. As you know, I normally ask the qu same question to all of my guests. So what is your favorite word or phrase in a language that you speak?

Dr Natalia Tilton

I love that question. Thank you. I speak multiple languages. One of them is German. That's the language I live in and work in. And in German I have German has these beautiful words which are very difficult to translate into other languages, but they are extremely precise. With that is what I love this language for. And the words I love the most also reflect my life.

So one of them is Tapetenwechsel. Which literally means, if we translate it literally, you understand me, means change of wallpaper. That that means I love changes. So I need if you say I need Tapetenwechsel, it means I need a change of context.

And the other word is somehow similar or touches on the similar subject. The word is fernweh which is basically pain or a desire to go away, a desire to travel, a need to travel. I think in English you could almost translate it as wanderlust. But yeah, at some point of time in my life I realized I can be in one place for three weeks and then I need a Tapetenwechsel.

Sonia Kampshoff

Very interesting. It it just really sets the scene to you being very multicultural, multilingual and in a way a citizen of the world. Thank you. Yeah. So tell us a little bit more. So you speak German and you live in Germany, but where do you come from? What's your background?

Dr Natalia Tilton

I was born in in Moscow in Russia, right at the time in the year when the Soviet Union fell down. I started interpreting and translation, and I always wanted to go and see different countries and work in different countries, especially live and work in different countries because I believe that this is the best way to understand another culture, to feel humble, to learn new mentalities.

So I started interpreting and translation for my master degrees at the Moscow State University. And then there I started English as one of the UN languages, which is basically the classical way to do that. So my first la foreign language was English and the second was German. And then I loved French, so I learned French for fun. And now I'm learning a little bit of Italian. So these are my languages.

Sonia Kampshoff

Amazing. Did you also study German at university?

Dr Natalia Tilton

Yes, so after after I s I finished my master, I wanted to go to go and discover the world. So I basically applied everywhere, including China. And then I I I received a scholarship from Erasmus, Erasmus Exch Exchange Program. I got a scholarship to go to Tübingen, which is in the south of Germany.

So I went there for a year. That was my first stay in a foreign country for a longer time. And I studied there at the University of Tübingen for a year, and I absolutely fell in love with this city. It's a fairy tale city, university city, smaller. this yeah, and after that I just wanted to come back. So I went back to Moscow. I finished my master degree, I applied for another scholarship and I got another two scholarships.

One of them is from D A D, which is the Peda Pedagogical Exchange Program in Germany. This is when you you basically you go and you teach or you assist teaching your mother tongue for a year at the German school. So at that point of time, at my university I also studied Russian as a foreign language, because at our university in Moscow there were a lot of foreigners.

So half of the faculty were Chinese students or students from China and students from South Korea. So extremely interesting. And there I started. I started studying, teaching Russian to them. This is what I continued doing for this pedagogical exchange here. And when I was done with that in Erfurt, I went to Essen to the west of Germany, so the area near Disendorf and Cologne, to do my PhD in foreign language excision.

Sonia Kampshoff

Interesting. So you started with interpreting but then there's this overall love and interest for languages. What was your PhD in? What did you write your thesis about?

Dr Natalia Tilton

I was lucky enough, and thank you very much for my my doctormutter, my doctor mother, so my professor who adopted me for my for my PhD studies in Germany. I I did my PhD in foreign language anxiety, which is the anxiety or the fear that you have when you speak a foreign language. And

Basically, how I came to that topic is probably my personal experience. I was always a little bit nervous speaking a foreign language, because you always want to be good, if not perfect. You don't want to make mistakes. And it was always very interesting for me because I noticed that the more nervous I got, the worse my output in this language got. So I first I first covered this topic when I was writing my master degree.

And there I I analyze the effect of stress and anxiety on the interpreting output. So basically if you think of I don't know the UN the UN convention, interpreting booths, so if somebody is nervous and stressed, how would that influence their output in a language?

So this is what I did, my master degree. And for my PhD, I basically took this stress anxiety subject and applied it to a broader area of foreign language learning. So yeah. So so for my PhD studies, I analyzed hundreds of or I did a study with hundreds of international students studying in Germany.

Sonia Kampshoff

Very interesting.

Dr Natalia Tilton

Asking them about this anxiety that they have or whether they have it.

Sonia Kampshoff

Very interesting. And it was specifically combined with interpreting. What kind of interpreting was it? Is it more like the the interpreting you see sometimes at the European Union where they have, you know, where they're sitting in a booth and so on? Or is it more face to face interpreting or was it about all of them?

Dr Natalia Tilton

If you ask about my primary studies, how I when I when you study interpreting and translation, y at least the way they did it at the Moscow State University, you you they prepare you for UN convention in this setting. So it is very much conference interpreting. you have your monotone and then you you have two other languages. And those have to be UN languages. So for me it was English, German.

And then for sure on the side as a student, I was working as a conference interpreter, but also as just doing some side interpreting, following guests around from foreign countries and interpreting for them on spot. Also doing some translation. It's it's interesting that you ask because in my trainings now about a very different kind of interpreting idea, trainings now and community interpreting, I say I I start saying that there are hundreds different types of interpreting and translation. You would think this is all the same, but those are also very, very different kinds.

Sonia Kampshoff

And for people who are not familiar, what is community interpreting?

Dr Natalia Tilton

community interpreting is a relatively I wouldn't say it's a new subject, but it's it hasn't been studied as much. So a community interpreting is I actually find the definition, the official definition, very interesting. It is for ent it it is interpreting for the well being of community. and this is very much true.

Community interpreting is an interpreting that is provided, at least in Germany in the context that I work in, it is provided by very often migrants and refugees who speak the German language already on the level that or they have the proficiency level that allows them to interpret for others, for other migrants and refugees, in primarily in official governmental settings. So for public services. Think of interpreting at school, interpreting at kindergarten, interpreting at different other public services like job center and so yeah.

Sonia Kampshoff

Very interesting. So it's also when they go and visit a doctor, for example, or when they need some paperwork. Very interesting. And you still do that. You still you you train community interpreters, is that right?

Dr Natalia Tilton

So working on some projects of teaching the German language to refugees for their vocational training and then for for their integration in Germany. this is how I started, and already there I started giving trainings to German volunteers. So what impressed me so much during this time is that I saw hundreds, thousands of Germans, so locals going after work to refugee camps and teaching the German language to refugees.

And this impressed me a lot. And then I started giving trainings to those volunteer trainers, language trainers, because a lot of those people they didn't know how to teach a language. They were working all other jobs, normal jobs, working as an engineer, working as doctors. So

The Goethe Institute developed a concept for training to help those volunteer language trainers understand the pedagogical basics and didactical basics of teaching a foreign language, in this case the German language. And I continued doing that for a while. And then a couple of years later, the Minister of Integration started funding the so-called community interpreting pools. So pools of interpreters who primarily interpret for free. Those are primarily migrants and refugees. And that's how it started. I developed my concept and I've been doing that for the last six years. And this is absolutely my heart project. I love it. Because community interpreting is so much different from conference interpreting.

And community interpreters in Germany, they are not regarded as professional interpreters the way that conference interpreters are, because conference interpreters study for five years and maybe then do another two years of further education as juristical interpreters or medical interpreters. volunteer interpreters don't do that. They just receive maybe a week, maybe two days of basic training and then they then they work.

And only when I tried out community interpreting myself, working for some public services in Berlin, I realized it's almost I would say it's harder than conference interpreting. Because in conference interpreting there is a topic and it's very often a political topic or a social topic, or you interpret for business men and women.

In community interpreting, people come to to those conversations or to those appointments at public institutions with their problems. And they are making life changing decisions at those conversations for their children. For example, in Germany, you know there's that at the end of the fourth grade children and parents of their children have to decide which school they go to.

So children can go to general school, some children can go to gymnasium. And if they don't go to a gymnasium, it's quite complicated later to switch into gymnasium, which is then the most straightforward way to go to the university. So it's a very, very big decision for parents and their children. and those decisions are being made in those conversations with the help of interpreters, community interpreters.

So I think only when I tried it for myself I realized how much social psychological pressure it can include, what their responsibility is. Because honestly, when you're just interpreting for for businessmen, businesswomen, it's their the the conversation is about a contract, for example.

Yeah, you might you might interpret something wrong. They might lose, I don't know, a couple of thousand of Euros. But when you interpret for people making those life decisions, it's very different. You understand that a wrong interpreting can absolutely change their life.

Sonia Kampshoff

It really shines a light on community interpreters and the value that they bring overall to society and how they can enhance lives of y young children and their families really.

Dr Natalia Tilton

I do believe that without that, I don't know how the society in Germany, which is very welcoming for migrants and refugees, how they would deal with all those language differences for people who don't speak the language yet. I do wish that there was something like a f language access law in Germany, the way it exists in the US, when everybody receiving a citizen receiving public service has an access to interpreting service services for free. So I wish that existed in Germany.

The politics is some the politics is, however, in Germany different. The politics is that German is the official language and German, the German language is regarded very much as a as a prerequisite to integration on their on the job market, which is very understandable. However, it does take a couple of years for people to learn the language and to understand the language. So I am I am very grateful for to all the people that work as community interpreters. I the way I tell it in my trainings, I say that you give the voice to people in this country who yet cannot express themselves.

Sonia Kampshoff

Beautiful. And this also connects to your love of teaching a language and how people learn languages. And I know that you work in that field as well of learning development. Can you tell us more about that?

Dr Natalia Tilton

Absolutely, yes. I've been working a lot in learning and development. Primarily I've been working on different curricula for different institutions. Also for my my trainings I do create my curricula myself. I think one of the last projects which has been very interesting is a project I was working for at Babel, the language learning app.

And there my team created a curricula for integration courses in Germany. So that was a very interesting period of time, especially because it coincided with with a time when AI became stronger and stronger. So it was very interesting to see which role now AI plays in teaching a foreign language and also creating materials on a high level.

And also how it influences the working conditions and the the work at the company. Because you are much faster, you can create materials on a high level much faster. So you do not need that many content managers, for example, or also that many working hours to create those videos or audios. you just do all that with different apps.

So that was a very interesting period of time also to work at this project and living through this transition time when AI when EI changes or builds new structure for teaching a foreign language.

Sonia Kampshoff

Absolutely. So when you say you did this project aimed specifically at immigrants learning the language, was then the bubble learning language learning app, was it adapted to the goal of learning a language in order to integrate? Is there I'm not familiar I'm not so familiar with it in this respect. Do they offer sort of different goals for why people want to learn a language and then they adapt the curriculum?

Dr Natalia Tilton

Mm-hmm. Very much so. And those those goals are prescribed by the Ministry of Migration Integration. It's called BAMF in Germany. And there are specific curricula prescribed by this institution that describe the goals, the learning goals for migrants. And there is also an official exam for migrants, which for B2 level, proficiency level, after which if a person passes this exam, they can be integrated on the German working market and they can they can apply for a job.

So working on those projects and when I worked at Babel, we had these goals in mind and we had this concept in mind and also the goal of preparing people f within an extraordinary time of six months from zero to proficiency level of B2 in order in order for them to pass this exam. And I think what what is important about projects like that, or about this specific project, a lot of migrants and refugees when they come to Germany, they have to wait for a very long time, sometimes for months, up to four or five months in order to receive a spot at a physical language school where they can attend an integration course.

And I believe that projects like that, including the project that I was working at, they would allow blended learning formats so that people can start faster learning the language and not losing their motivation to learn this language. And yeah, being integrated faster in this society.

Sonia Kampshoff

Yeah, that's a very good point. When you come to a new country for whatever reason, you really want to be able to speak. You want to be able to communicate with other people, understand, you know, what is written on science around you. And being having the opportunity, having the the option of learning from the beginning is very important because it it really helps you in feeling that you're part of the new country. Whereas if you have to wait months, it's just it takes away a little bit of the desire, I think. and it makes it you know, it makes it l I think it probably makes the learning process slower altogether.

Dr Natalia Tilton

I think in general, yes, I met so many people who usually when migrants and refugees I worked with, they're extremely motivated and they want to learn and they learn extremely fast. I've seen so many life stories when refugees and refugees learned the German language, which is an extremely complicated language with so many exclusions.

They learned the the German language within two years from basically the beginner level to level B2 in order for them to study at the German university and to follow the program at the university, which is an extremely high professional level. But and I watched many people waiting for months and for sure it causes a lot of frustration because people want to start and people want to move forward, building a new life in this country.

So I do believe that digitalization in general and projects which would allow which do exist right now, they they come up more and more, projects where migrants and refugees can learn the language online, they would allow the integration become a much faster process for these people.

Sonia Kampshoff

In your experience, do immigrants who come to Germany, do they prefer to learn online or do they prefer to be in a classroom, like all an old school kind of classroom? Is it does does it make a difference to them, do you think?

Dr Natalia Tilton

It's a very difficult difficult question for me because I do train myself, I do trainings online and I do trainings on spot. And I can and I've also watched many trainers doing trainings online and they were exactly as interactive and exciting. I do believe that it depends on the methods and the methods of teaching, teaching methods of a specific trainer.

I do believe that a trainer who loves teaching a language in a very interactive way, playful way, with speaking games, they will integrate those games in any format, whether it's on spot or online. What physical presence adds, for sure, is the feeling of community. And there are a lot of lots of studies proving that very often when refugees come to this country.

They do feel isolated, they do feel themselves being in a bubble of not being able to speak the German language. They do not have that much contact to the locals. It sounds almost surreal because we are, yes, we are surrounded by the locals, but yet in the everyday life there is not that much contact. So also in my trainings, I I ask people to cross the bridge.

To reach out, to talk to people, to go to the lectures. There are many guest lectures at the university, events in German, I don't know, free yoga in park. Just go to those events and understand the language, speak to people. I remember when I did a survey for for my PhD, and I interviewed some international students.

One of them was this student from China learning the German language, and he he was very smart. He said that every day he would go to to a newspaper store where he knew that the owner of this newspaper store or the person working there, he was basically bored. He didn't have that much time, that much, that many tasks to do. And he was always very happy to talk to strangers.

Dr Natalia Tilton

So this student, every day he would go to this newspaper store to buy a newspaper or just to chat with with the employee for whom German with a local, just in order to improve his his speaking skills. I encourage students to do that. I encourage foreign language learners to do that, to listen to podcasts, but also to have those little speaking challenges every day. Like set yourself a challenge. speak to somebody on the street or invite people to a picnic in the park.

Or ask a question, somebody somebody on the pub I don't know, on on on a bus. I like I like those little speaking challenges that would because also what I could prove during my PhD studies is that if you have a foreign language anxiety, there is only a way to overcome it: speak.

Sonia Kampshoff

Yeah, absolutely. I agree. You know, when when someone is nervous then they find it even more difficult to speak in a foreign language, in a non native language. And that is, you know, sometimes it means that they speak less or nothing at all. I totally understand it having learned languages myself. And you also and y you mentioned that you also work with nurses coming to Germany. Is that right?

Dr Natalia Tilton

Create an app for international nurses coming to Germany. I don't work with them directly, although, yes, within the migrant communities I work with as interpreters, there are also many nurses for sure. But the idea came when I was working for Bobble, and I also work work for the Hueber Publishing House doing some trainings for them. And in general, there is this conscience about the fact that Germany is lacking medical personnel. So currently there are 80,000 nurses lacking in Germany, and studies show that Germany will never be able to fill in this gap with the locals. So they do they do have to invite international working force.

And there are many many nurses coming from different countries, primarily from India, Serbia, currently Ukraine. So there are there are people coming from very different countries. And once they arrive to Germany, they have to they have to first acknowledge their diploma and they have to pass a very specific exam that checks their medical language proficiency.

So when they arrive to Germany they primarily already have B2 proficiency level, which is already a very high proficiency level in a foreign language, in this case in German language. But in Germany they also have to prove since they have to work in hospitals, they have to prove that they can speak and understand and speak and inform in medical German language.

So I decided to create this application for training for this exam and just in general for training the medical language for nurses and also to prepare for this very specific exam, which hopefully would help them overcome this or make it a little bit easier, this path through all the bureaucratical steps for them to acknowledge their diploma and everything. And hopefully it would also help them to prepare themselves for the for the everyday working situation.

Sonia Kampshoff

Absolutely. Is this app already available or is it still in the making?

Dr Natalia Tilton

Not yet. the prototype is almost ready and I do expect the prototype to go online within next three weeks and then the app within y a month. Yes, very exciting moment. Also for me as a linguist, trying to understand all the technical sides of a language app and what works the best. But this is also extremely exciting because you would know it. We by now we've tried so many apps and you know exactly what works for you, but also what what doesn't really. So it's also very interesting to to see what works from for other people, how to how to provide enough speaking practice. And I do believe that AI can help us without with speaking practice. Yeah. So it's a very exciting moment for me to

Sonia Kampshoff

So exciting. I was wondering, so besides the language learning itself and for nurses having the medical German that enables them and allows them to work in Germany, does all of this learning material also integrate cultural elements about how to deal with people in a different culture and how to how to speak with people in a hospital setting?

Dr Natalia Tilton

It is yes. I am grateful to everybody with whom I could interview, preparing this application. And I've heard that very often international nurses come into Germany. They do they do speak the language already and they speak it very well. But what is missing is first the way you argue for something and also the way to express empathy in a language.

And I completely understand that. This is the highest language proficiency level you can imagine to argue for something on to prove something or to show empathy, to show care. So, yes, very much so. There there are already some modules on my on my app where a nurse has to deal with a difficult situation, for example conveying some negative news to relatives of the patient. We're also talking to pa to to a patient in a very empathetic way.

So these these modules are included in my app. I find them very, very important. Another idea I am currently playing with is the language speaking, how to adapt your language speaking with a child. And I know this from my practice of community interpreting training, it is a very different target audience. Children are a very different target audience. So it is very important also to adapt your language so that children could understand you. And I do believe that's also a very important skill for for international neurons.

Sonia Kampshoff

Absolutely. You also touched upon the ethics of AI and language learning and language acquisition. Can you tell us more about that?

Dr Natalia Tilton

yes. The ethics of interpreting is my probably my main focus in my interpreting training, because interpreters have the so called ethical codex or codex of conduct, which enumerates specific principles, ethical principles, moral principles, which can be used as as guiding principles for difficult situations in interpreting. I will give you an example. For example, you're interpreting for somebody at a job center. I don't know how would you interpret job center actually into English. That is interesting.

Sonia Kampshoff

Yeah, i in p in the UK you call it a job center. It's a place where people help you help other people find jobs.

Dr Natalia Tilton

Right, right. So for example, if if your client or person who doesn't speak German yet, if a client is interviewed at the job center and the job center employee asks a client how much he earn and the client asks a question to the interpreter, what should I say? Or a client gives an answer and then decides otherwise and says, no, I I tell you this. But please don't tell this to the employee, to the employee. Or a situation which is also very human and very comprehensive is let's say there is a conversation at a school and a mother and the school teacher explains to a mother different different types of secondary schools in Germany where the child could go.

A mother cannot decide, and the mother asks the interpreter, What would you recommend? You've lived here for so many years, what would you recommend? So there is a constant game between migrants showing a lot of trust toward the interpreters, just because interpreters come from the self, from the same cultural background, language background, just seeing somebody who speaks your language give so much trust. You trust this person. This is one of us. And that's the way that a lot of interpreters are regarded.

So as such, they people trust them a lot. And people trust them sometimes with some secrets. So they would trust an interpreter with a secret, but at the same moment say would say, please don't tell the employee that. And this is as it's a they call it a dilemma. So it's it's a difficult s situation.

A classical difficult situation in interpreting settings where you don't really know how to behave. So the codex of the code of conduct helps a lot. Those ethical principles help a lot. And one of the principles is neutrality. I do not interpret only for this migraine, I interpret for both parts. So I may not be biased. we are all biased as human beings a game or there is always this process of finding the balance between humanity and neutrality. But yes, one of the principles is neutrality, meaning that I have to interpret for everybody.

So if a client in the conversation says so, you will have to interpret that. And then see the reaction of the employee, because an employee is also a human being. And they also help a lot and try to help to find the right solution.

So this is one of the examples of ethics, the way that I work with with them, with those ethical principles in the context of interpreting. And you you also spoke about AI. I do believe that this time is a very interesting time in history when there are some products involving AI to interpret, for example, in medical settings. And I see a lot of advantages in that because if we rely on community interpreters who are not professional interpreters who have not received training in this area, in this in this sector, medical interpreting training, which is the highest level of the the highest level of interpreting.

To this regard, I do believe that AI can be a big advantage for medical interpreting settings in terms of in terms of the pre pr precision of the language, because AI would could help an interpreter interpret the words in the very right in the right way. So find the equivalence in of medical terms in another language. AI can help with that. But then it was very interesting also the studies or the study results that I've seen so far it show that AI also is can be biased.

And that was very interesting for me to see because the reason community the reason I would love to integrate AI into community interpreting is to provide language access for all the community, for communities for very, very rare I don't know, rare dialects existing in Somalia, for example, where they can't a lot very often an interpreter cannot be found ad hoc for an interpret for an interpreting setting that fast.

And if we could use AI for this setting, that would be amazing to provide language access for everybody. And basically the sitters that I've learned so far show that this bias does exist in AI as well. Just because the data is not sufficient, the inter the quality of translation will be much better, for example, for German, for German English.

But then the last studies I I read was the the the researchers compared German English and then no I think English German and then English Russian and then they could prove that the level of precision was only eighty percent in the language pair German Russian. So you could only imagine what would be the level of precision in real languages.

Sonia Kampshoff

Absolutely. So interesting.

Dr Natalia Tilton

Yeah, that's an interesting process. I do believe that yeah I will become better and better. And I do hope that that that will help us overcome the limits of community interpreting for now. I do also hope that humans will be left in the loop. And current studies show that the best results they could achieve were achieved in settings where human a human interpreter was in the loop, just because human interpreters are faster.

Sonia Kampshoff

Absolutely. You know, it's we sometimes forget that this is n not a new job type. that people have spoken different languages thousands and thousands of years ago and that they needed help in understanding each other through interpreters. That's a a beautiful reminder.

Dr Natalia Tilton

I believe we've been here for four and a half thousand years at least and we're here to stay. Yeah.

Sonia Kampshoff

Is there anything that you would like to add that I haven't asked so far?

Dr Natalia Tilton

I would just express gratitude to all the interpreters I had a chance to train and to work with and all not only interpreters but I am very grateful to community interpreters, volunt all the volunteers who do so much work to help refugees integrate in the new country and to help refugees to achieve their goals and to start their life, even when they start their life over in a new country, to start their life at the same level where they put it on pause in the countries they migrated from.

So I my wish for migrants and refugees in Germany that they basically can move forward here as fast as possible and could pick up where they stopped in the countries they had to leave for different reasons. That nurses will continue working. Nurses, educators can continue working as educators in this country. And I'm very, very grateful for the chance of working with these incredible people, volunteers, teaching teach teaching the German language to refugees, interpreting for the refugees. And I yes, I'm extremely grateful for that opportunity.

Sonia Kampshoff

What a beautifully positive message to close on. Thank you so much, Natalia. It was wonderful talking to you.

Dr Natalia Tilton

Thank you very much, Sonia, and I wish you all the best with this beautiful podcast. And thank you for having me.

Kampshoff

Talia's career follows a passion for languages and helping others. By understanding immigrants' needs and working closely with German institutions, she is creating positive change in Germany and is now expanding her skills and expertise to a new group of immigrants, nurses. She is really inspirational. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to the podcast on your favorite platform.

And if you think a friend might be interested, do share this episode or the podcast with them. You can also subscribe to my newsletter. The link is in the show notes.