Improving our knowledge, enhancing our skills in the New Year.
January 18, 2016 § 4 Comments
Dear Colleagues:
Many professional responsibilities and obligations come with a new year. As interpreters and translators we must strive to deliver a better service than the year before, and the best way to achieve it is through practice and study. We need to improve our personal libraries, increase our professional resources, and find a way to learn something new and brush up on our ethics, while getting the continuing education credits needed to keep our certifications, patents or licenses.
This is the time of the year when we plan some of the major events that will happen during the year; the time to block some dates on our professional appointment books to be able to attend professional conferences. Those of you who have read the blog for a long time know that every year I share with you those professional conferences that I consider “a must” due to their content, the reputation of the organizations behind them, and the networking benefits derived from attending the event. This year is no exception.
As always, I start my conference “grocery list” by writing down the characteristics that I consider essential for my professional development. This way I make sure that I will not end up at a conference that will take my money and give me little, or nothing, in exchange.
The right conference needs to offer useful and practical presentations geared to different segments of professional interpreters and translators according to their years of practice. There is nothing more confusing to a new interpreter or translator than finding themselves in the middle of a big conference where nothing in the program appeals to them. There have to be workshops and presentations that speak to the new blood, and help them become good and sound interpreters and translators who will enjoy their professional lives. By the same token, we must have workshops that appeal to the experienced professional. There are hundreds of colleagues who stay away from professional conferences because all they see in the program is very basic. They want advanced skills workshops, advanced level presentations, interesting innovative topics on interpreting, translating and languages, instead of the same old seminars that focus on the newcomers and completely ignore the already-established interpreter and translator. Finally, a good conference has to offer presentations and workshops on technology, the business of interpreting and translation from the perspective of the professional individual, instead of the corporate view that so often permeates the conferences in the United States and so many other countries, and it must include panels and forums on how we should proactively take action, and reactively defend, from the constant attacks by some of the other players in our field: agencies, government entities, direct clients, misguided interpreters and translators, and so on.
To me, it is not a good option to attend a conference, which will cost me money, to hear the same basic stuff directed to the new interpreters and translators. We need conferences that offer advanced-level content for interpreters and translators, forums and presentations that deal with sophisticated ethical and legal situations that we face in our professions. At the same time, the new colleagues need to be exposed to these topics on a beginner-level format, and they need to learn of the difficult ethical and legal situations they will eventually face as part of their professional practice.
I do not think that a good conference should include presentations by multilingual agencies or government speakers who, under the color of “good practices to get more business”, use these professional forums, with the organizing professional association’s blessing (because money talks), to indoctrinate new colleagues, and also veterans of feeble mind, on the right way to become a “yes man” or “yes woman” and do everything needed to please the agency or government entity in order to keep the contract or the assignment, even when this means precarious working conditions, rock-bottom fees, and humiliating practices that step by step chip away the pride and professional will of the “linguist” (as they often call them) and turn him into little more than a serf with no will of his own. I want to make clear that I am all for hosting representatives of government offices and honest agencies who share information as to their policy and operations, but no promotion or indoctrination. There are honest businesses and government officers who are willing to follow this more suitable approach. We are all professionals, and we know that there are plenty of conferences organized by these entities, and we can attend them if we want to get that type of “insight” without having to waste presentation time during our own events listening to these detrimental forces.
I do not see the value of attending interpreter and translator associations’ conferences sponsored by those entities who are trying to convince us that we are an “industry” instead of a profession; because an industry has laborers, not professionals, and the latter demand a higher pay. There is no need to spend your hard-earned money on conferences devoted to convince you that machines should translate and humans proofread, that interpreting services must be delivered by video using underpaid interpreters, and that if you dare to speak up against this nonsense, it means that you are opposed to the future of the profession. I want to attend a conference where we can openly debate these modern tendencies of our professions, where we can plan how we will negotiate as equals with the owners of these technologies, and hold a dialogue with the scientists behind these new technologies, without a discredited multinational agency’s president as moderator of a panel, or a bunch of agency representatives giving us their company’s talking points again and again without answering any hard questions.
I want to be part of a conference where experienced interpreters and translators develop professional bonds and friendships with the newcomers to the professions, without having to compete against the recruiters who, disguised as compassionate veteran colleagues or experts, try to get the new interpreters and translators to drink the Kool-Aid that will make them believe that we are an industry, that modern translators proof-read machine translations, and good interpreters do VRI for a ridiculous low fee because they now “have more time to do other things since they do not need to travel like before”.
I want to go to a conference where I will have a good time and enjoy the company of my peers without having to look over my shoulder because the “industry recruiters” are constantly coming around spreading their nets to catch the new guy and the weak veteran.
Unfortunately, there will be no IAPTI international conference this year. Because this organization delivers all of the points on my wish list, I always have to recommend it at the top of my “must-attend” conferences. IAPTI cares so much for its members that after listening to them, it decided to move their annual conference from the fall to a different time of the year. Logistically, it was impossible to hold an international conference just a few months after the very successful event in Bordeaux this past September. The good news is that not everything is lost. Even though the international conference will have to wait until 2017, there will be several “IAPTINGS” all over the world throughout the year. This are smaller, shorter regional high quality events that give us the opportunity to put in practice everything mentioned above. Stay alert and look for these events; there might be one near you during 2016.
For my Spanish speaker colleagues, I truly recommend the VI Translation and Interpretation Latin American Congress (VI Congreso Latinoamericano de Traducción e Interpretación) to be held in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on April 21-24, 2016. Because of its impressive list of presenters and speakers, and from the wide variety of topics to be discussed, this congress represents a unique opportunity for all our colleagues to learn and network in a professional environment with magnificent Buenos Aires as the backdrop. I hope to see you there.
For all my judiciary interpreters and legal translators, I recommend the NAJIT 2016 Annual Conference in San Antonio, Texas on May 13-15, 2016. Although this year’s program has not been published yet, NAJIT is the largest judicial interpreter and translator organization in the United States, and perhaps in the world, and it constantly schedules topics of interest to the legal community; this is a great opportunity to network and give this event, and its current Board, a try. I will personally attend the conference for the reasons I just mentioned, and because I have reason to believe that the organization is moving on the right direction towards the professional individual interpreter and translator and their rights.
During the fall of 2016 I will be attending the 20th. Anniversary of the OMT Translation and Interpretation International Congress San Jerónimo (XX Congreso Internacional de Traducción e Interpretación San Jerónimo 2016) in Guadalajara, Mexico on November 26-27. This is a great event every year. It is held at the same time that the FIL International Book Fair at the Expo Guadalajara, and it brings together top-notch interpreters and translators, as well as celebrities of the world of linguistics and literature from all over. This year the congress turns 20 and for what I have heard, it promises to be the best ever! Join us in Guadalajara this November and live this unique experience.
Although these are the conferences I suggest, keep your eyes open as there may be some local conferences that you should attend in your part of the world. I will probably end up attending quite a few more during 2016. I would also invite you to look for smaller events that may be happening near you; events like Lenguando, and other workshops and seminars somewhere in Europe, Asia and the Americas.
Finally, I invite you to share with the rest of us the main reasons that motivate you to attend a conference as well as those things that turn you off.
The Professional Interpreter 
I really enjoyed the IAPTI conference in Bordeaux last year. Too bad it’s not happening this year, but I understand that logistically it would be very difficult if it is moved to a different month. That is one reason why I will be at the BP16 Conference in April of this year and I hope to see some IAPTIers there.
I wonder:
1. To what month has it been moved for 2017?
2. Are there already suggested locations for 2017?
One topic you are guaranteed not to find at conferences is labor issues i.e. working conditions and pay. The taboo against even hinting at discussing the degradation of the profession (not just the race to the bottom but lowering that bottom even more) at the hands of the hiring entities is ironclad.
Instead you see a type of Stockholm Syndrome where language professionals year after year dutifully plunk down their arduously scraped together earnings scraped together under precisely those deplorable working conditions and exploitative pay to sit down to offerings like The Next Best Thing in Trados Studio or Tips for Better Formatting in Microsoft Word.
But then again you have the option between Zumba from 6:00am – 7:00am or Stretch, Breathe, & Move, 6:30am – 7:15am.
NAJIT suddenly growing a pair? I don’t recommend holding your breath.
This is the best article on the needs of the translator as a professional that I have read in a long time. I became a translator out of frustration due to the horrible rendering of the Spanish translations in labels, signs (such as at Lowe’s) and instructions manuals. I showed some of those as examples to my students when I worked as a translation professor. The sign at the entrance of Lowe’s tells me that I need to be concerned for the safety of the industrial vehicles (“For their safety and yours…”). Like if I am going to run one over. This seems to be a Google translation. It is really sad that many agencies and companies hire people to translate only because they are bilingual. That is the equivalent of me asking someone to be my cardiologist just because he has a heart. Many of those so called translators have never taken a class or seminar even on the basic principles of translation. Sometimes I wish companies could be fined for using unprepared translators just to save money, especially when it comes to critical technical or medical information that could jeopardize the safety of the operators and the lives of the patients. If plumbers and electricians need to have a license, the translators need one too. Until then, we will be treated as disposable.
Tony! As always, wonderfully put. Lola