ITI Conference 2011

Archive for the ‘Programme’ Category

Summer Mouallem is Subject Leader and Senior Lecturer in Arabic and Interpreting and Translation at the University of Central Lancashire. Summer works not only as a lecturer but as a freelance interpreter, translator, trainer and consultant. Summer is a member of the CIoL and NRPSI. She holds an MA in Translation and Interpreting from Salford University, and two DPSIs (Law and Health) in addition to a Diploma in Translation. Her specialisms are legal and medical as well as politics. Before entering a career in interpreting and translation, Summer trained as a Clinical Pharmacist and worked as a senior Pharmacist in Medical Information in Ireland and the UK.

Summer is fully bilingual (English and Arabic); she studied and lived in Syria, Ireland and the UK.  Her research interest is on Taboo and interpreting in which she hopes to obtain a PhD degree. Summer was invited by Damascus University’s Higher Institute of Interpreting and Translation where she gave a talk on note-taking.  Summer is currently in the final stages of compiling a glossary on legal terms for DPSI students (Arabic-English) which she hopes to publish by the end of the year. Other interests include culture and its significance to interpreting, translation and language acquisition. Summer has given many talks on cultural issues related to the Middle East.

SDL, the company behind the ever popular SDL Trados Studio translation environment tool, has taken two slots in our software presentation room at the conference. They will use these sessions to tell delegates about the “Single Document Translation Process” and to answer delegates’ questions.

The slots reserved for SDL are:

• Saturday, 1400-1500
• Sunday, 1030-1130

Spaces at the presentation will be available on a first-come, first-served basis, but don’t worry if you don’t get in – SDL  is also exhibiting at the conference and the SDL Trados guys will be more than happy to take you through the software on their stand.

Information about SDL

www.translationzone.com

Sarah Griffin-Mason is a Translator, Editor and Educator. She is vice-chair of the ITI Education and Training Committee and knowledge update coordinator for the Mediterranean Editors and Translators (MET) association.
Outside of her translation and editing hours, Sarah tutors at the University of Portsmouth, teaches primary MFL and coordinates a pilot mentoring scheme for new translators within the ITI Spanish Network.
She is committed to CPD which she views as vital in the specialisation, diversification and prosperity of the professional translator.
See her website for more information: www.griffin-mason.com

Photo credit: Jane Ostler

Nicholas Ostler is an author of books on language history: Empires of the Word – a language history of the world (2005), Ad Infinitum – a biography of Latin (2007), and most recently The Last Lingua Franca – English until the return of Babel. He is also Chairman of the charity, Foundation for Endangered Languages, a post he has held for the last fifteen years.

Nicholas grew up in Kent, where he attended Tonbridge School. He graduated with firsts in Classics and then Philosophy and Economics at Balliol College, Oxford, before taking a Ph.D. in Linguistics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His thesis, supervised by Paul Kiparsky, was A Theory of Noun Case and Verb Diathesis, applied to Classical Sanskrit.

After teaching English and Linguistics in Japanese universities (Toyama, Kanazawa, Meiji Gakuin) for three years, he returned to the UK. There he worked as a software and management consultant during the 1980s, founding his own consulting company Linguacubun in 1991. His focus was on knowledge-based systems, and speech and language technologies, and he co-ordinated and monitored various projects in this field on behalf of the UK’s Department of Trade and Industry, and the European Union’s directorate for Information Technology. He was the UK government’s monitor of the EU joint project in machine translation, EUROTRA, for its last four years, and later also served on the advisory board of the British National Corpus project.

In 1995 he founded the charity, Foundation for Endangered Languages (www.ogmios.org), which has since held fourteen conferences all over the world, and given away approximately £50,000 in grants. For ten years he edited its newsletter Ogmios, named for the Celtic god of eloquence. This year’s conference (in September 2011) will be held in Quito, Ecuador.

He has been a research fellow at the universities of Lancaster, Bath and (currently) London (at the School of Oriental and African Studies). He is writing descriptive grammars of the extinct language Chibcha, and its descendant U’wa, both spoken in Colombia, South America.

He lives in Bath with his wife Jane Dunn, the literary biographer, two whippets and four cats. His children (a daughter and five steps) are long grown up and gone. You can contact him at nicholas@ostler.net.

ITI is offering current or immediate past MA/MSc students the opportunity to present a poster session at the Institute’s 25^th anniversary conference in Birmingham, 7-8 May 2011.

The poster session may be based on work you have done in connection with your translation and/or interpreting course, dissertation or project or on an aspect of translation and/or interpreting work that particularly interests you.

The aim of the poster sessions is to enable practising translators and interpreters to learn about ongoing research and study as part of MA/MSc courses and to give grant recipients an opportunity to meet and network with practising and established translators and interpreters.

The conference is being held at the NEC Galleries, Birmingham, which offers good road, rail and air connections.

If you would like to present your poster, please send an e-mail to education@iti.org.uk with:

Your name, university, and university department

Year of study

Title of your poster session and a short outline of the content (max 300 words)

Your daytime telephone number, email and postal address

Final date for submissions: 15 February 2011

We will select a maximum of four dissertations. We would like to include both translation and interpreting topics.

If you are selected to take part, you will be required to:

• produce and set up a poster display illustrating your research (for tips, Google ‘poster session’ or see http://writing.colostate.edu/guides/speaking/poster/ )
• be available to discuss it with conference participants
• give an 8-minute presentation in a conference session organised for this purpose
• write a short article for ITI Bulletin.

You will receive £100 towards your travel, materials and expenses, and free registration for the conference day when you are presenting.

The platform presentation is scheduled for the pre-lunch session on Sunday, 8 May 2010.

More information on the 2011 Conference is available at:

http://www.iti-conference.org.uk/conference-2011/

ITI Education & Training Committee

Andy Walker has been working as a freelance translator and interpreter since 1997 and is also Senior Lecturer in Translation Technology at Roehampton University.

Being able to find and check (often obscure) terminology and locate background information on the Internet is an essential skill for a translator. Google, Yahoo and other search engines have a number of features to allow searchers to define their searches in order to achieve better results and thereby speed up the process of translating. This may involve broadening the search to capture a wider range of information or narrowing it down to eliminate as much non-relevant material as possible.

This presentation will explore some of the less-used features of the major search engines to demonstrate some inventive ways to find translation- and language-related information on the Internet. We will be looking, for example, at how to search for something within a specific website or how to search the KudoZ glossaries on simultaneously for a particular term.

Note-taking: an evaluation of skills transfer between conference interpreting and public service interpreting

There is a wealth of research and several well-known publications on note-taking for conference interpreting.  Research in this field is almost as old as the discipline itself and the area of consecutive interpreting in the conference arena is extensively covered. As far as research or publications on note-taking for public service interpreters is concerned, however, there is very little available. Existing conference interpreter documentation does not, in its current form, deal with the topic areas relevant to public service interpreting or the techniques which may be applicable to public service interpreter note-taking.

Kirsty Heimerl-Moggan’s research analyses the underlying ideas and systems used in note-taking for conference interpreting and their applicability, once adapted, to public service interpreter needs. She will be reporting on her studies into adapted public service interpreter note-taking and considering student performance pre- and post the adapted-note-taking study. Her research focuses on public service interpreting students, conference interpreting students and those combining both careers paths.

Kirsty will be drawing on her observations and analysis of her conference and public service interpreting students over the last 12 years.

Kirsty Heimerl-Moggan is a Senior Lecturer and Course Leader in Conference Interpreting at the University of Central Lancashire and a Public Service Interpreter Trainer for Interp-Right Training Consultancy Ltd. She combines her lecturing and teaching with her work as a high-level freelance conference interpreter and public service interpreter. She is the co-author of the publication Note-taking for Public Service Interpreters.

Jérôme Devaux is a Senior Tutor at the University of Salford and a Public Service Interpreter Trainer for Interp-Right Training Consultancy Ltd. He has worked as an interpreter at the highest level in both the conference and the public service fields, whilst continuing to teach aspiring interpreters in both areas. He is about to publish a book on interpreting exercises compiled with his co-presenter.

Kirsty and Jerome’s workshop follows on from the presentation on note-taking and will be a fun interactive session for anyone who would like to find out more about this useful skill or would like to improve their existing knowledge.

An essential skill for any interpreter is the retention of information. A great deal of emphasis in interpreter training is placed on memory skills enhancement and such skills are deemed the most appropriate in the interpretation of short interventions. Note-taking, however, can be a very useful additional skill especially when interventions are longer, require retention of specific details or are difficult to follow.

Although every interpreter’s note-taking is very individual, there are some underlying notions which help any interpreter develop their individual set of notes.

During this session the presenters will give an introduction to these skills and participants will then have the opportunity to start developing their own set of symbols on specific topics on the basis of the information provided.

This session will look at the various difficulties encountered when legislation crops up in non-legal and legal contexts. Questions might include 1) how do I translate legislation that has not been translated before; 2) how do I deal with legislation that has been translated before, but I disagree with the translation; and 3) how do I deal with a source text that makes reference to a specific aspect of legislation (a nuance or ambiguity) that is not present in the target language version of that legislation? The session will be led by Richard Delaney.

Richard is fully bilingual, having grown up and being educated in both Germany and England. Following a BA from Edinburgh University and a Diploma in Law from BPP Law School, London, he was called to the Bar of England and Wales at Lincoln’s Inn.

After a year working in the German offices of the English Law Firm Travers Smith, he started working as a legal translator, and qualified as a Business Translator at the Berlin Chamber of Industry and Commerce (IHK Wirtschaftsübersetzer), and is a full member of the German professional translators’ association, the BDÜ http://www.bdue.de/. He also studied for and obtained a Diploma in Arbitration from University College Dublin, and is a full member of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators http://www.ciarb.org/.

Alongside his translation work, he worked as a freelance advocate and appeared in County Courts across England and Wales, predominantly in London and the East Anglia area, and also qualified as a mediator.

Since 2008 he has been involved in organising and teaching an MA in Legal Translation at City University, London http://www.city.ac.uk/translation/staff/richard-delaney.html.

As an experienced translator and lecturer, and with his legal background, his first and foremost aim is to ensure the absolute accuracy of any given translation, while aiming to also provide an idiomatic rendering where possible.

Publications and conferences:

• A translator’s liability; published in the ITI Bulletin, May-June 2009
• Specialising in legal translation – City University’s MA in Legal Translation as a case study; paper given at the conference “Interpreting the Future” in Berlin, 11 -13 September 2009, published in Tagungsband – Übersetzen in die Zukunft, edited by W. Baur, S. Kalina, F. Mayer, J. Witzel, Berlin, 2009, ISBN 9783938430248
• The Translator’s Copyright; paper given at the The Translator as Writer- 2009 Portsmouth Translation Conference, 7 November 2009, published in The Changing Face of Translation, Proceedings of the ninth annual Portsmouth Translation Conference held on 7 November 2009, edited by by Ian Kemble, Portsmouth, 2010, ISBN9781861376169
• Legal Translation in Theory & Practice; Fifth Conference on Legal Translation, Court Interpreting and Comparative Legi-Linguistics. Not yet published

Memberships:

Bundesverband der Dolmetscher und Übersetzer e.V.

The Bar of England and Wales

Lincoln’s Inn

The Chartered Institute of Arbitrators (MCIArb)

The Chartered Institute of Linguists (MCIL)

Council member of the ITI

Terence Oliver (65) grew up and went to school in southeast England. After gaining a joint BA in German and Geology from Keele University in 1967, he spent a short spell in teaching and two years as a COBOL programmer. He has lived and worked in Germany since 1971, when he joined Unilever Germany as a staff translator, later becoming head of the Translation Department. Since 1984 he has worked as a freelance technical translator (German–English), covering a wide range of business and technical content with an increasing focus on the law and technology of environmental issues. A member of BDÜ since 1980 and of ADÜ Nord since its founding in 1997, he served as chairman of the latter from 2001 to 2005. He was a member of the German mirror committee for European Standard EN 15038 and a delegate to ISO Technical Committee TC37/SC2, working group WG6 on translating and interpreting. He was elected to the Steering Committee of FIT Europe (Regional Centre Europe) in 2002 and was its secretary from 2005 to 2008. He no longer holds any honorary offices, and is now focusing – with little success to date – on his latest project of “phasing himself out”. He is presenting a session entitled Translators are Human.

Translators are human

This is both their greatest strength and their greatest weakness.

What implications does this realisation have, or should it have, for the way we approach our work? How can we counteract our human failings and exploit our human advantages to the full? This is not just a matter of: “We make mistakes, translation memory perpetuates them”. It extends far beyond core translating skills to include communication with clients, agencies, colleagues and others, the need for continuous upgrading in the sense of life-long learning, problems with organising and mobilising knowledge, and many other fields. It can even affect our attitude to our profession and its status: Do we hide behind our computers, phones and e-mail, or do we take a proactive stance in our dealings with the outside world?

Taking a fresh and wide-ranging look at what makes human translators their own worst enemy, this talk seeks to provide practical and pragmatic solutions to a number of familiar everyday problems by raising awareness of how the problems arise in the first place. This session is presented by Terry Oliver.

In the world of professional translation getting an MA is something akin to getting a first driving license – you may know the theory but you are not yet a proficient practitioner.

Sarah Griffin-Mason, Vice-Chair of the ITI Education and Training Committee will provide a low-down on some of the available post-MA translator training that can help you gain the competitive edge and compete professionally in a burgeoning market-place.

This session will discuss many types of valuable training available to language providers from sources including on-line translator forums, commercial providers, the ITI and other professional associations. The aim is to provide you with:

• an overview of the types of training available
• suggestions for complementary skills for portfolio working – teaching, revising, editing, writing
• suggestions on how to improve your writing, productivity and list of contacts.

There will be a short discussion session aimed mainly at freelancers seeking guidance in uncharted waters.

Emotional Intelligence is generally defined as a set of competencies demonstrating the ability one has to recognize his or her behaviours, moods, and impulses, and to manage them best according to the situation at hand.

Typically, “emotional intelligence” is considered to involve emotional empathy, attention to -and discrimination of- one’s emotions; accurate recognition of others’ moods; response with appropriate emotions and behaviours in various life situations, especially to stress and difficult situations; and possession of good social skills and communication skills.

Arguably, competent translators and interpreters also need to possess these skills in order to mediate effectively between cultures, to understand a client’s needs and expectations, and to communicate someone’s message in a successful way. Being able to recognize what other people feel, and finding ways to handle and transfer these perspectives seems absolutely necessary for successful translation and interpreting performances in today’s globalized and competitive market.

So what place should be given to emotional intelligence in the translator’s/interpreter’s workplace, if any? And how can translator and interpreter professionals learn to behave in more emotionally intelligent ways in this competitive and increasingly technological industry, where face to face interactions are becoming a thing of the past?

This session will be interactive, enabling delegates to participate in the discussion and share experiences.  It is presented by Séverine Hubscher-Davidson.

Séverine Hubscher-Davidson is lecturer in Translation Studies at Aston University, England, where she teaches translation and interpreting theory and practice. She has received her Ph.D. from the University of Bath and her research interests include translators’ personalities, the translation process and translation pedagogy. She has organised short courses for professional translators and interpreters, including UK government linguists, and has published in a number of TS journals. She is also a practicing translator.

Séverine is presenting a session entitled Emotional Intelligence in the Translator/Interpreter Workplace.

With Yvonne Fowler, Aston University, Birmingham UK

Using video conferencing technology to process bail applications directly from prison is now an everyday occurrence: and for defendants in the UK it is mandatory. Another initiative, the Virtual Court Pilot Project, will almost certainly mean that, in the very near future, most defendants will be “offered the opportunity” to “attend” a court hearing immediately after charge and be sentenced whilst still at the Police Station.

References to interpreters are completely absent from the promotional literature. One government document states that “a Virtual Court Hearing is just like any other first hearing that takes place at a magistrates’ court” and “the timeliness of the process and the resource savings offered by the technology improve the efficiency of the criminal justice system in working together to put on effective first hearings – without any loss of quality”.

So is it really true to say that video conferenced court hearings are just like any other or that there is no loss of quality? Those promoting the use of video conferencing technology in court have failed to take account of the fact that a large number of defendants coming before the courts have ways of communicating which differ from the norm, for example, sign language users and non-English speakers. Few, if any, researchers have looked at the differences between face-to-face interpreted court hearings and video conferenced ones.

Building upon a pilot study, and making use of Bhatia’s Move Structure to provide a micro-analysis of the linguistic styles of a typical prison video link hearing, I use a combination of audio recordings, ethnographic observation and interviews to show that this technology alters communication in ways which are not immediately apparent, even to the interpreter. There are also differences in procedure and other factors requiring adjustment by the interpreter and the court if non-English speaking defendants are not to be disadvantaged.

In the very near future, more and more court hearings (perhaps including trials) will be heard through video link. Interpreters must be equipped to cope with the demand that the technology places upon them. What is at stake is nothing less than justice for  limited-English speaking defendants.

This workshop is designed for aspiring and practising court interpreters. It will use anonymised transcripts of real hearings to demonstrate the differences between working with defendants face to face and remotely and will attempt to raise the awareness of participants of such issues as the role of the interpreter in the video link court, the need for assertiveness in setting out the parameters of the interpreter’s professional duty, the power relationships in the courtroom and how these affect the interpreter, and, last but not least, the interpreting techniques that are required for dealing with the new technology.

Using the Internet as a place of work, Ana Iaria

The life of the professional translator has changed so much in the last few years that it would be almost unrecognizable for a translator who would wake up from a coma. Gone are the days of working alone at home or at the back of the garden, hunched over a typewriter or a word processor. The Internet is here to stay and be part of our lives. We now work and live on the Internet.

This presentation aims to show how it is possible to work from anywhere in the world, either using a portable or a desktop computer and how to make the most of what the Internet has to offer – as well as the Web 2.0, a concept that is slowly inching its way in our lives. It will be based on my own personal experience of spending months abroad visiting family or attending courses and conferences and how the online tools allow me, or anyone else for that matter, be anywhere in the world without losing touch with their clients – just paying attention to time zones.

Tools that make this a reality will be presented, together with the latest releases in terms of software and hardware for translators on the go. As technology advances, we have to be able to adapt if we want to stay in contact with increasingly demanding requirements to be a translator.

Ana Iaria is presenting a session on the mobile office

Ana Luiza Iaria (MSc, MITI, CL (Translator), ATA member) is a former lawyer who practiced Law for many years in Brazil before starting out as a translator.

As well as a Law degree, she also holds a first degree in Languages and an MSc in Translation and Translation Technology; and teaches several subjects, including Publishing Skills, at the MSc in Translation at Imperial College London as a Visiting Lecturer.

Apart from presenting papers on legal translation at international conferences, she also presents workshops on tools and productivity for translators. Law is her main area of interest, but she is also a geek at heart.

At the ITI Conference 2011, Ana will be presenting a session entitled “My portable office“.

Madeleine Lenker is presenting a session about localisation

Madeleine studied at Cologne University of Applied Sciences in Germany and is an accredited English-German translator. She graduated with a Masters degree in Terminology and Language Engineering from the same university and has worked in the localisation and translation industry. Madeleine is currently studying for a Ph.D. at Localisation Research Centre (University of Limerick/Ireland).

She is presenting a session on localisation.

This workshop will be led by Madeleine Lenker of the LRC at University of Limerick, Ireland

Localisation concerns the translation of digital content, software and their appropriate presentation to end users in different locales. Localisation is important because having software, a website or other content in several languages, and meeting several sets of cultural expectations is an important international marketing advantage. In the non-commercial sector, where information equality is deemed important, localisation also enables information access for less well off locales. These requirements have led to demands for increased localisation activities and acts as a prompt to study how the localisation process can be optimised. To do this, a standardised localisation process first needs to be made explicit. Hence, new approaches need to be found to cope with this increasing volume while maintaining and improving quality.

Sophisticated TEnTs (Translation Environment Tools) offer for example a complete translation workflow online. This kind of technology allows several people to work on the same project simultaneously. Data is also stored online and cannot get lost in a local computer crash. However, it should be noted that while these tools to create workflows exist, standard, state-of-the-art workflows do not seem to exist and consequently, companies are left to their own devices to recreate best practices in this regard.

Considering the cultural differences that can arise when the localisation effort is distributed globally (differences between headquarters and local offices and the different languages) this seemingly important factor could become even more critical, exacerbating the need for such a workflow. Steps such as those required to build trust and communication, in such contexts may be required.

Rosner (MultiLingual, 2009, pp.26–27) surveyed practitioners to find out which was more important: people, technology or processes within localisation. The results indicated that the people and processes are the most important factors. Interestingly, none of the respondents thought that technology was the most important factor. Thus, participants said if you have the right people and the right process in place, even bad technology will not stop you from achieving the goal. This is interesting given the investment in tools and technology in this area and the lack of standardisation with respect to a state-of-the-art localisation process/workflow that explicitly incorporates, and thus organises, people within that process.

It is important to combine people, technology and processes to answer nowadays and future localisation needs. The first step is to define the process (for instance what to localise, resources and budget). This leads to the project enactment/kick off. This, in turn, leads to a decision on how to proceed: either using an ERP tool (for accounting, invoicing, project management) or using a translation management system (TMS). If an ERP tool is used, it will provide a more holistic solution giving, for example, better monitoring of the depreciation and appreciation of company assets. If the ERP solution is chosen then a connection should be made to TEnTs to process and speed up the localisation further which will also lead to a faster time to market for the end product. The defined process ends with the delivery and the invoicing of the localised content. The overall process is monitored in case of faults, delays or cancellations.

Another element entitled ‘Personnel monitoring and feedback’ is added. Personnel are a key issue and their involvement should be present throughout the whole workflow. Feedback refers to both communicating the feedback and subsequent training.

Having a good process, the technology to execute it and the right people in place allows to cope with increasing volume while maintaining and improving quality.

Isabel is presenting a session with Betti Moser on coping with typical problems faced by freelance translators

Isabel Hurtado de Mendoza (MITI, MA DPSI, BA Hons) is a freelance translator working from English into Spanish and specialising in art, tourism, media and marketing. She is the Newsletter Editor of the Scottish Network and has experience giving presentations in the fields of translation and language teaching.

Isabel is co-presenting with Betti Moser in a session entitled “No translator is an island“.

Betti Moser is co-presenting with Isabel Hurtado de Mendoza

Betti Moser has been a freelance translator since 2003, translating from German into English and specialising in marketing & advertising copy.

She was Co-Chair of the ITI London Regional Group from 2004 until the end of 2009 and currently coordinates the ITI Construction & Environment Network.

Betti is co-presenting with Isabel Hurtado de Mendoza in a session entitled “No translator is an island“.

Workshop led by Isabel Hurtado de Mendoza and Betti Moser.

We often hear that translation is a solitary profession, and that translators sometimes spend all their working hours alone in their office with no face-to-face interaction with their clients. However, this does not mean that a freelance translator is an island. Quite the opposite: whether we work for agencies, direct clients or a combination of the two, there are always a number of people we have to deal with, from project managers or client contacts to colleagues, proofreaders and accountants.

These human interactions that reach beyond the horizon of our own office can also cause problems at some point, and it can be difficult to know how to deal with these on our own. Sharing our approaches to responding to such situations with other colleagues will enable us to be better prepared for them.

In this workshop, we will present participants with some real-life scenarios that we will discuss, with the aim of giving delegates a better idea of how to conduct ourselves in tricky business situations.

Examples of scenarios to be discussed could include:

• Dealing with large projects that are shared with other translators
• Taking criticism gracefully
• Client insists on using terminology you know is wrong
• Recognising dubious job offers or scams
• Client cancels the job midway
• Situation changes after negotiating rates and deadlines
• Being asked to do test translations
• Realising that you underestimated how long a job would take
• Negotiating rates

At ITI’s millennium conference, Janet Fraser and Michael Gold presented the findings of a major survey of freelance translators, looking at such aspects of their professional life as the number of clients they had, the terms of business they used, how they managed their client-base, and their reasons for working freelance, as well as the benefits and disadvantages of working for themselves and their perceptions of their career. The research, which we also wrote up in two well-cited academic journal articles, showed that translators make particularly successful ‘portfolio workers’ for a variety of reasons, including a specialist skills profile, a flexible working regime and strong professional networks. In particular, while translators do not always choose freelancing as their preferred career option, the vast majority come to appreciate the value of such arrangements over the security of an in-house position.

The fast-moving world of professional translation has undergone many changes since 2000, not least against the backdrop of rampant globalisation, recession and the double-edged sword of technological advances. Pauline Uyterwijk has reported for the Bulletin on translators’ confidence in their workflow and income during the credit crunch, but we feel it is time to revisit some of the broader issues our survey respondents and interviewees identified 10 years ago and to illustrate in particular how translators sustain a successful career in straitened economic times.

Over the next six months, we therefore plan a further questionnaire survey and hope to re-interview as many of the original interviewees as we can to update the snapshot we took of the profession at the dawn of the 21st century. In particular, we want to explore how the recession has affected their business, what strategies they have adopted to survive the downturn, and how they have expanded their professional horizons in terms of parallel activities, subject specialisms, language range, client-base, software tools or market niche. The research will also consider the impact of such developments as Chartered Linguist status.

Our paper will present the broad findings of our research and, we hope, be of interest both to established practitioners looking to expand their professional horizons and to newcomers to the profession seeking guidance on carving out a successful and rewarding career.

You can participate in the survey at http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/JLXH8LQ.

Karen M. Tkaczyk is speaking about Technical Writing

Karen M. Tkaczyk, PhD, CT is originally from Scotland and now lives in Nevada, USA.

She works as a highly-specialised French and Spanish into English freelance technical translator. Karen holds an MChem in Chemistry with French (University of Manchester), a Diploma in French and a PhD in Organic Chemistry (University of Cambridge). She worked in the pharmaceutical industry in France and Ireland, then after relocating in 1999, in medical devices and cosmetics in the US. Since 2005 she has been technical translator and editor.

Karen is president of the Nevada Interpreters and Translators Association, and administrator of the American Translators Association’s Science and Technology Division. She frequently speaks on her fields of expertise at T&I PD events.

She is giving a workshop on technical writing.

Janet Fraser recently left the University of Westminster to build a freelance translation, editing and examining portfolio. She chairs ITI’s Fellowship Committee and is a member of its Admissions and Professional Standards Committees. Michael Gold is Senior Lecturer in European Business and Employee Relations at Royal Holloway, University of London, and a Member of the Chartered Institute of Linguists.

Jonathan Downie is speaking about his experiences in the media spotlight

Jonathan Downie is an interpreter, translator and interpreting researcher based in Central Scotland. His business, Integrity Languages, supplies translation and interpreting to Christian organisations, translation and interpreting agencies and private clients. He is also a part-time PhD student at Heriot-Watt University studying the effect of interpreting modes on audience recall and response. He has served on the ITI Council since May 2010 as the member chosen by associates.

At the conference he will be talking about his experiences in the media spotlight, in a session entitled Maw, ah’m oan the telly!

Maw, Ah’m Oan The Telly! Lessons from a Week in the Public Eye, by Jonathan Downie.

Despite their vital work in industry, commerce, politics and the legal system, the work of translators and interpreters is rarely the focus of media attention and when it is, it is often for all the wrong reasons. February 2010 saw an exception to this general rule. Following a widely publicised recruitment process, Today Translations appointed their first Glaswegian interpreter and decided to celebrate the occasion by calling in an experienced journalist and PR expert to try to attract a little bit of media attention.

Noone could have predicted just how many media outlets would become intrigued enough to push for their little piece of the action. From a saunter around a bingo hall in the East End of Glasgow, the story would lead to a spot on prime time television on ITV and even an interview with Canada’s leading radio station.

This presentation will take the audience through the sheer craziness of that week. While live TV and plush studios might seem a world away from the everyday realities of our working lives, I intend to show that the lessons learned in that week are applicable to life after the fifteen minutes of fame are over.

Our prospective clients have the same key question as journalists: “what is so different about you?” Before anyone will actually hire us, they want to know why we are any different to the thousands of other professionals who work in our languages and in our fields of expertise.

Those who have easy answers to this question then need to deal with the issue of how to present themselves. With the pressure to write SEO perfect websites, blog like a genius and tweet like a celebrity, translators and interpreters can often find themselves confused about what clients actually want to see.

Even once this problem is resolved, the story is not finished as many professionals can find themselves dealing with the issue of criticism. Not everyone was pleased that Glaswegian seemed to need interpreters and even more seemed annoyed that this was deemed newsworthy. For people seeing a measure of success in any field, dealing with critics will always be a key skill to learn.

This presentation will therefore offer light relief and thought-provoking questions that will be helpful for both new translators and those who are more experienced in the profession. Both groups will be encouraged to seek out their own unique selling point, present it in a way that is natural to them and deal positively with criticism from both clients and other professionals.

Percy Balemans is talking about transcreation

Percy graduated in 1989 from the Opleiding Tolk-Vertaler (School of Translation and Interpreting) in Maastricht, the Netherlands.

After having worked with a translation agency as an in-house translator for a couple of years, she switched to the IT business, where she worked as a technical writer and copywriter, information designer, web editor and trainer.

Translation, however, has always been her real passion and in 2007 she set up her own business as a full-time freelance translator, specialising in advertising and marketing material (transcreation), human rights, journalism, travel and tourism, art and fashion.

She is a member of the Netherlands Society of Interpreters and Translators (NGTV) and an Associate of the Institute of Translation & Interpreting (ITI).

Visit her website for more information: www.pb-translations.com

Transcreation

Workshop led by Percy Balemans

We have all heard of advertising campaigns gone wrong because they were not adapted for the target audience: slogans which, when translated, turned out to mean something completely different and seriously damaged the product’s or brand’s reputation. To avoid these mistakes, advertising copy should be transcreated rather than translated, to make sure it is specifically written for the target audience.

This workshop provides some background on how transcreation works and offers participants a chance to give it a try themselves.

Content

Introduction:

• What is transcreation?
• What types of texts are transcreated?
• What are the typical target audiences?
• Which skills does a good transcreator need to have?
• Which clients offer transcreation jobs?
• Which source material does the transcreator need?
• What are the typical deliverables?
• How do you go about creating a transcreation?
• Examples of transcreation jobs

Exercise:

During the exercise, participants will work in groups to translate a slogan into their target language. Slogans will be available in the following source languages: English, Dutch, German and French.

Learning objectives

How does transcreation differ from “regular” translation: how does it work, which skills are required and what do you have to keep in mind when accepting a transcreation job.

Workshop schedule

Introduction: approx. 15 minutes

Exercise: approx. 15 minutes

Discuss exercise results: approx. 15 minutes

Speaker

This workshop will be led by Percy Balemans, a Dutch translator who says she “chose to become a translator because I enjoy being creative with language and juggling with words in order to convey the same message in a different language and against a different cultural background.”

Percy’s biography is located here, but in the you can also find out all about her on her own website, www.pb-translations.com