Starting Work as a Translator or Interpreter

by Fanny Chouc

LINCS and Career Services teamed up again to hold the annual SWATI (Starting Work as a Translator or Interpreter) event on campus, for the 6th year running, on Saturday 13th February.

The one hundred or so places were booked in no time, and despite the snowy weather, Lecture Theatre 3 filled up with students from Heriot-Watt University, as well as Napier, Edinburgh, Strathclyde and Stirling Universities.

The session started with an intervention by a staff EU translator from the Directorate General for Translation, Elizabeth Carmouche, who highlighted the languages most needed by the institutions, explained the recruitment process and shared tips and advice based on her own experience.

Her intervention was followed by another very informative talk, this time by Lila Guha, a freelance interpreter and member of AIIC (the only international association for interpreters). She explained how she started her career and gave students an interesting glimpse of the exciting life of professional conference interpreters, mentioning the various organisations, cities and unusual settings where her profession has taken her over the years.

Dr Castillo then took the floor to enlighten students on the versatility of media interpreting, flagging the range of skills needed to cope with the fascinating and sometimes unexpected situations an interpreter may encounter when working for the radio, the film industry or TV. Based on his personal experience, as well as his own research, he gave students a number of ideas as to how they may start to develop their CV to go into this side of the industry.

Following the break, Fiona Paterson presented her own very interesting professional pathway, which led her to combine a successful freelance translation career with regular contracts translating for the UN in Geneva. Her very informative talk, full of practical and useful information, highlighted the flexibility of this career path and the supportive attitude of fellow translators towards early-career colleagues.

To complement this already wide panorama on these professional pathways, Karin Bosshard took the floor to explain the importance and benefits of joining a professional network, using her own example and that of ITI (the Institute of Translation and Interpreting) to highlight a number of issues future professionals may not have considered yet, such as professional insurance, networking, clients’ perceptions, to name but a few.

The audience was then split into two, to facilitate participation in two practical sessions: firstly, an introduction to key business skills for freelancers, by Robert Mynett, from the International School of Linguists. His sessions focused on matters such as market research, marketing and professional organisation. Secondly, participants were invited to take part in a speed-networking session, during which they had a chance of a more personal and informal chat with the speakers, but also with Kim Scouller and Victoria Milton, two managers from Rubrik, a language service provider based in Edinburgh, as well as with Corinna Kromm, a freelance translator who recently and very successfully started her own freelance career.

All the keynote speakers and guests involved in the speed-networking are Heriot-Watt graduates themselves, who kindly and enthusiastically agreed to take some of their time to come and share their experience and advice with the younger generations.

It seems that participants particularly appreciated the chance to hear about each speaker’s own experience, and valued even more the opportunity of a more personal chat through the speed-networking. The event was described as “relevant”, “inspiring” and “practical”, and the range of speakers was generally welcome as it presented a very wide range of possible career paths.

We’ve taken the feed-back on board and will aim at organising an equally exciting and useful panel for next year’s SWATI. But before that, we’ll be hosting a talk on BSL careers in the media and we will welcome an EU staff interpreter who will talk about his career, from young Heriot-Watt graduate through in-house and then freelance translator to Brussels, Vienna and Strasbourg’s EU and UN booths.

Watch this space!

New CPD courses in LINCS!

We are really excited to announce two new CPD courses in LINCS. In addition to the already successful Easter and Summer Schools in Interpreting, we are now offering a 1-day training workshop on Interpreters and Translators as Entrepreneurs in March and a CAT Tools series in April.

This year’s Easter School comprises 1 week of Introduction to Interpreting and 1 week of Intensive Interpreting Practice .

Please note that the above courses only cover spoken languages. Watch this space for CPD courses on Interpreting Practice in signed languages.

But don’t stop reading yet, SLIs! The 1-day workshop on Interpreters and Translators as Entrepreneurs applies to all interpreting professionals and it is led by Sue Leschen, who is a member of numerous professional organisations including the Regulatory Board for Sign Language Interpreters and Translators (RBSLI).

Last but certainly not least, we are pleased to announce our CAT Tools Series, starting with Trados Studio 2015. The 1-day Beginners Course takes place on April 5th and the 1-day Advanced Course takes place on April 22nd.

For more information on all our spring courses, please click here. And don’t forget our Applied English and Interpreting Summer School!

Apply now for an Early Bird Discount!

 

EU study on Public Service Translation in Cross-Border Healthcare is out!

After 10 months of non-stop work, we are delighted to announce that an EU study on Public Service Translation in Cross Border Healthcare, led by Prof Claudia V. Angelelli is published. The Report, commissioned by the Directorate-General for Translation, responds to an increasing interest in the role of language provision and information access in cross-border healthcare.

Linguistic diversity permeates every thread of the European Union fabric. Cross-border healthcare is increasing among EU citizens and residents who seek care under Directive 2011/24/EU or Regulation (EC) N° 883/2004.

In a multilingual and intercultural society like the EU, patients and providers may not share a language. If patients cannot access healthcare services in a language they fully understand, equal access to safe and high-quality healthcare is not guaranteed. Through the use of both quantitative and qualitative methods, this exploratory study examines language policies as well as responses provided (or lack thereof) to linguistically diverse patients in areas of Germany, Greece, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom. The cost of language provision as well as good practices are also studied.

Results show that a variety of responses, ranging from professional translation and interpreting support to informal and unprofessional ad-hoc solutions, are used to address the language needs of patients. In the absence of formal language guidance in EU legislation, in most observed cases appropriate language services are not provided for patients who do not speak the language of the Member State in which they seek healthcare. This study has implications for policy makers, healthcare providers, educators, translators and interpreters serving the needs of linguistically and culturally diverse patients.

The full document of the study is available here

Special Issue of New Voices in Translation Studies – with Guest Editors from LINCS

by Pedro Castillo, Penny Karanasiou, Marwa Shamy and Lee Williamson

We are delighted to announce the publication of the Special Issue (number 12) of New Voices in Translation Studies.

The issue includes a selection of the best papers submitted after IPCITI 2013, organised in Heriot-Watt, and it is the result of the long standing collaboration between IPCITI and New Voices in Translation Studies.

This Special Issue of New Voices in Translation Studies results from the 9th International Postgraduate Conference in Translation and Interpreting (IPCITI), which was held at Heriot-Watt University in 2013. We, as Guest Editors of this special issue, are proud to have been involved in the editing and publication process of this journal. The 18 months between the release of the Call for Papers and the final publication have been among the most enriching experiences in our early academic careers. The papers that feature in this special issue reflect the aims of the IPCITI 2013 conference. These were twofold: on the one hand, the conference sought to promote greater participation in Translation and Interpreting (T&I) research by addressing salient issues in the field; and on the other, to foster a supportive environment in which young researchers could exchange ideas on current themes and issues in Translation and Interpreting Studies.

IPCITI 2013 was a great success, with 40 paper and poster presentations from 32 universities across 11 countries. The overall attendance included 82 delegates from universities across Europe (58), Asia (8), Africa (1), and the Americas (4). The range of papers and posters covered such diverse areas of T&I as Translation Theory, Pedagogy, Literary Translation, Interpreting (spoken and sign language) and Audiovisual Translation (AVT). The papers accepted underwent a rigorous peer-review process, and we believe that the authors present fresh perspectives on T&I, displaying both originality and methodological rigour.

We hope the readers of this special issue will appreciate the valuable contribution that these four papers make to pushing the boundaries of knowledge in Translation and Interpreting Studies, but also the opportunities that journals such as New Voices in Translation Studies offer to new researchers in allowing them to disseminate the results of their research more widely.

Happy reading!

Pedro Castillo, Penny Karanasiou, Marwa Shamy and Lee Williamson
The IPCITI Special Issue Guest Editors

2nd Year General Linguistics Poster Session: Bridging the gap between UG and PG research

by Nicola Bermingham and Sara Brennan

A 2nd Year General Linguistics Poster Session took place on 18th and 19th February in LINCS. This was the first poster session for 2nd year General Linguistics students and the results were impressive, to say the least. This was part of the students’ assessment and the topics were chosen based on their General Linguistics lectures, but the event also worked towards bridging the gap between undergraduate and postgraduate research.

The posters addressed topics from a wide variety of geographical terrains, from Scots, Gaelic, and British Sign Language here in Scotland to language policy in Germany, France, Belgium, and Portugal. The students employed a range of methodological approaches, including qualitative interviews, surveys, questionnaires, and conversation analysis of audio-visually recorded data. They were also encouraged to produce original research while showing an understanding of existing literature and key theoretical concepts.

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The event was widely publicised and both members of staff and postgraduate research students from LINCS attended. This meant that students experienced the process of a poster session at a real academic conference, since they also presented their posters to the assessors and other staff in LINCS and then fielded questions about their research.

The result? Not just nice food and networking. Many of the students expressed a keen interest in further developing their topics and pursuing more advanced sociolinguistic research.

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A selection of posters is now on display outside the interpreting labs in Henry Prais building.

Special thanks to PhD students Nicola Bermingham and Sara Brennan from LINCS for organising a most successful poster session!

Why we all need double vision

by Jonathan Downie

Why would an interpreter who was beginning to get valuable clients spend his non-working time reading research papers? Why would a translator who was learning to network start applying for conferences on Translation Studies rather than for a nice CAT tool presentation?

Those are good questions. In fact, they are questions I asked myself for a while. You see, for most translators and interpreters, the word “research” makes them think about termbanks and parallel texts rather than participant observation and statistical analysis. Research for them is all about getting the next job right and maybe, if you find the time, keeping an eye on the markets you work in.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with that kind of research. To translate and interpret well, you need to be a good researcher, or more correctly a good “information finder.” You can often get away with thinking no further than your next job.

This begins to explain why I started swapping translation work for interpreting research and writing, alongside my interpreting work. What I found myself wanting, especially on those days between jobs when I had done lots of marketing and still no clients were biting, was a longer range perspective. Surely there had to be something more than simply finding information and applying it to the current job.

Now, truth be told, I am not much of a philosopher. I have never been attracted to questions like “what are we doing when we translate?” or “how can we define equivalence?” On the other hand, I am interested in how we can learn and become more effective, how we can better understand our clients’ needs and how we can improve the status of translators and interpreters. Answering that kind of question leads very quickly to finding ways of giving practical help to translators and interpreters.

Believe it or not, I actually believe that translators and interpreters can help themselves. They already have a better understanding of the questions I posed than most researchers. If your livelihood depends on it, you had better get very good at determining what your clients want! If you want to increase your earning power, you had better get a good understanding of how you could improve.

What’s missing is what researchers call “generalizability.” Learning techniques that work for you might be pretty useless for someone else. Your clients probably communicate in a very different way than mine. What we all need then is a kind of double vision. We need to be able to focus intently on the job we are doing now while still taking an interest in wider issues.

Take the infamous debate over court and police interpreter conditions in the UK. During one government enquiry, one interpreter representative made the claim that members of their association had watched court proceedings under the new contract and had noticed that the quality had dropped massively. A good researcher would instantly want to ask what they meant by “quality” and how they could tell it had dropped. A very good researcher would want to know whether all the interpreters watching the same case found the quality to be the same.

That little piece of evidence could have been much more telling if the person concerned had been able to say something like “we assessed interpreting at 10 courts and found that, on average, interpreters under the new contract omitted 50% more information than those who were working under a different contract.” The added precision is the kind of thing that can be gained when we have the double vision I was talking about.

The truth is, if any long-term improvements are going to happen in any area of translation and interpreting, it will take a combination of hard campaigning and strong data. It will take people who are excellent at the work they are doing now and yet are far sighted enough to think about the bigger questions behind their work. Those bigger questions are why I became a researcher and an interpreter and they are we why all need double vision.

Back to School ?

by Katerina Strani

The new Academic Year has started and LINCS is full of students again. It’s good to see enthusiastic freshers, new MSc and PhD students as well as old familiar faces.

But even though undergraduate students get a break from uni during the summer, staff and postgraduate students are busier than ever. So what did we do over the summer?

  • Held the annual Edinburgh Interpreting Research Summer School (30 June – 4 July): Intensive research training for existing and future scholars in any field of interpreting. 5 days of seminars on research design and methods, lectures on current trends in conference, public service and sign-language interpreting, workshops on writing a literature review to maximising research impact, presentations by participants. Oh, and guest lectures by Barbara Moser-Mercer and Franz Pöchhacker.
  • Held the annual Applied English and Interpreting Summer Course (4-22 August): Intensive interpreting training (CPD) for professional interpreters. One week of British Culture and Society, British and Scots Law and public speaking, two weeks of intensive consecutive and simultaneous interpreting into English, including multilingual mini-conferences.
  • Ran Academic English Programmes to enable students to reach the required entry levels for English language and to prepare to study in a UK context. 450 students attended 12, 6 and 3-week courses with an overall pass rate of 98% ! These courses use Access EAP: Frameworks, co-authored by Olwyn Alexander, Academic Director of the English section and nominated for an ELTon award in 2014. The pre-sessional courses are accredited by BALEAP and were inspected for re-accreditation in August. Innovations this year include a strand of subject-specific seminars to enable Business Management students to prepare to engage with postgraduate study. There were also a series of Open Days within Academic Schools to welcome new students to the university.

We’ve also been busy with Public Engagement activities, such as:

  • BSL summer school for school kids, voted as the No.1 school experience day for kids this year! For more information, contact Gary Quinn.

Finally, we secured funding for three collaborative research projects:

1. Dr Raquel de Pedro Ricoy secured AHRC Research Innovation Grant funding under the Translating Cultures theme. The project, entitled “Translating cultures and the legislated mediation of indigenous rights in Peru”, to be conducted over 20 months (October 2014 – June 2016), has been awarded over £200,000. The aim of this project is to examine translation and interpreting processes between Spanish and indigenous languages in contexts of consultation between agents of the state, outside bodies and members of the indigenous communities against the background of escalating industrial exploitation of the natural resources lying below indigenous lands. The research team includes Professor Rosaleen Howard (Chair of Hispanic Studies, Newcastle University) and Dr Luis Andrade (Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, Lima), and will work with Peru’s Ministry of Culture and the NGO Servicios Educativos Rurales as Project Partners.

2. Professor Jemina Napier also secured AHRC Research Innovation Grant funding under the Translating Cultures theme for a project entitled “Translating the Deaf Self”. The project will be conducted over 18 months (January 2015- June 2016) and has been awarded over £198,000. Its aims are to investigate translation as constitutive of culture and as pertinent to the well being of Deaf people who sign and rely on mediated communication to be understood and participate in the majority. The deaf-hearing sign bilingual research team, co-led by Professor Napier and Professor Alys Young (Professor of Social Work Education & Research at the University of Manchester) will include deaf researcher Rosemary Oram and another deaf research assistant, and will work with Action Deafness in Leicester as Project Partner.

3. Dr Katerina Strani secured funding by the European Commission Directorate General for Justice for a project entitled “RADAR: Regulating Anti-Discrimination and Anti-Racism”. The project involves 9 partners, it will be conducted over 24 months (November 2014 – October 2016) and Heriot-Watt has been awarded over £33,000. The  aim is to provide law enforcement officials and legal professionals with the necessary tools to facilitate the identification of “racially motivated” hate communication. For this purpose, a communication-based training model will be developed for professionals at the national level and for trainers at the international level, as well as online learning resources. Finally, the project aims at producing a multilingual publication with concrete tools, recommendations and best practice examples to facilitate anti-discrimination and anti-racist actions and regulations.

So after a busy summer, it looks like we have an even busier year ahead.

Bring it on!

Inventions For Freelancers pt. 1

Part 1: Translators

With CAT tools, terminology software and corpus-building, one could think that translators had all the productivity enhancements they needed. One would be wrong! In this post, we will sketch out some of the inventions that are most needed in the sector. We take no responsibility for the outcome of anyone actually manufacturing any of these!

1)    Dayjamas

Almost every translator has had the embarrassment of answering the door to the postman while still dressed in flannel or a cotton onesie. Dayjamas would be the solution to this. Made to look exactly like day clothes, Dayjamas would give people the impression that we aren’t the kind of people who shower only once the job is off to the PM. All we would have to do know is explain to the neighbours why there was still light coming from the living room at 3am last night.

2)    Desktop Tanning Lamp

While it is absolutely not true that translators melt in contact with sunlight, long hours in front of the computer can impart that pasty look. With desktop tanning lamps, fitted snugly on top of your monitor, you could get achieve a perfect tan while chipping away at that 10,000 word job on egg packing machinery. All we would need then would be one that can tan the rest of the body through clothes.

3)    Online coffee

One of the rare reasons to leave a computer during a job is to fill up our three gallon coffee or tea mugs. This loses precious time that could easily be used in terminology work or shouting at your crashing CAT software. Online coffee would sort this out. Simply submit your favourite drink onto a website and configure your delivery as you wish. Even better, buy a cup with an integral sensor so that coffee miraculously appears at your door just as you are downing the last drop. Sure, all that might cause us to get the caffeine shakes but the extra work would be so worth it!

4)    360 degree networking headset

Going to networking events is wonderful. It does, however, mean going through the tedious process of picking clothes, ironing them, hunting down business cards and using public transport. With the 360 degree networking headset, we could go to events without leaving our rooms. Better yet, they would allow us to create avatars that look any way we wish. As far as anyone else knows, there is no reason why we don’t all look like like Brad Pitt or Angelina Jolie. Why shatter the illusion?

So, what do you think of these? What do you think we need to invent?

IPCITI 2014 Call For Papers

Author: IPCITI Organising Team

IPCITI 2014

10th Anniversary – International Postgraduate Conference in Translation and Interpreting

 

Intersect, Innovate, Interact

New Directions in Translation and Interpreting Studies

 

29-31 October 2014

 

The IPCITI Conference is the result of a long-term collaboration between Dublin City University, Heriot-Watt University, the University of Edinburgh and the University of Manchester. IPCITI is designed to provide new researchers from all areas of translation and interpreting studies with the opportunity to share their research with peers in a supportive and intellectually stimulating environment. This year’s conference will engage with existing and new perspectives and interactions within and beyond Translation and Interpreting studies that are shaping the future of the discipline.Following the success of the 9th IPCITI conference held at Heriot-Watt University, the University of Manchester is pleased to host the 10th anniversary conference which will take place from 29-31 October 2014.

 

CALL FOR PAPERS AND POSTERS

 

We particularly welcome abstracts which address (but need not be limited to) the following topics:

 

Intersect

 

In line with Maria Tymoczko’s theorisation of translation as a ‘cluster concept’, it can be argued that Translation and Interpreting Studies is a discipline formed at the intersections, namely through its interplay with other subject areas. We are interested in the ever-evolving dialogical relationship between T&I Studies and:

 

  • Intercultural Studies
  • Sociology and Politics
  • Media and Visual Studies
  • Science and Technology
  • Gender and Sexuality Studies

 

 

Innovate

 

With the explosion of social media since the inception of the IPCITI enterprise, it is vital to examine how new media and new technologies influence both how we interpret and translate on a practical level, and how we think about interpreting and translation on a conceptual level. We would like to consider how the discipline engages with:

 

  • New media and technologies
  • New theoretical frameworks
  • New methodological approaches
  • New challenges

 

 

 

Interact

 

Increasingly globalised, technology-driven societies are witnessing the emergence of new modes of translating and interpreting and, in parallel with this, an enlarged conception of who we consider as being translators and interpreters. Understanding the ways in which existing and emerging communities of translators and interpreters interact with one another (as well as with those who theorise on their activities) is crucial for the future of T&I studies. At the conference we would like to discuss the different modes of interaction between:

 

 

 

•Professional translators/ interpreters and volunteers (including activists, fansubbers, etc.)

•Academics and translators/interpreters

•The translator/interpreter and the ‘self’ (i.e. the growing acknowledgment of the role that the translator’s/interpreter’s own subjectivity plays in these forms of interlingual and intercultural mediation)

 

 

INVITED CONFERENCE SPEAKERS

 

 

Keynote Speakers           Prof. Barbara Moser-Mercer (Université de Genève)

 

Dr. Sue-Ann Harding (Hamad Bin Khalifa University)

 

 

Workshop Leaders          Dr. Rebecca Tipton (University of Manchester)

 

Dr. Gabriela Saldanha (University of Birmingham)

 

 

ABSTRACT SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

 

 

IPCITI 2014 welcomes abstracts for paper and poster presentations:

 

  • Papers are allotted 20-minute slots to be followed by 10 minutes of discussion (total 30 minutes each presenter).
  • Poster presenters will be required to explain their research in a more informal setting to small groups during our dedicated poster session.

 

 

Both paper and poster abstracts should be submitted in English and should not exceed 300 words.

 

Abstracts should include:

 

  • The presenter’s name
  • The presenter’s affiliation
  • The presenter’s academic status and current year of study
  • Title for the paper/poster to be presented
  • Three keywords that best encapsulate the content of the paper/poster to be presented
  • An indication of the theoretical framework and/or research methodology employed or to be employed
  • A brief summary of outcomes or pursued outcomes

 

 

Please submit your abstract to: abstracts.ipciti2014@gmail.com

 

 

KEY DATES

 

Abstract submission deadline: Wednesday 30 April 2014

 

Notification of acceptance: Friday 4 July 2014

 

Registration deadline: Friday 26 September 2014

 

Information and Contact Details

Enquiries concerning the conference should be directed to: info.ipciti2014@gmail.com

Information on the University of Manchester: www.manchester.ac.uk

General information on Manchester can be found at: www.visitmanchester.com

Further information concerning accommodation and directions to the conference venue will be available shortly at: www.ipciti.org.uk

 

How Open is Research?

Back in May last year, I wrote the following words in a column in the ITI Bulletin, “Researchers could discover a way to double efficiency, win new clients and increase translators’ status but, unless those at the sharp end of the profession take an interest, none of this would ever filter down to practice.” Since then, I have had the privilege of taking part in print, online and face-to-face discussions over that very point but the facts have not changed much at all.

As Mike Gulliver points out, the problem goes far deeper than telling people what is out there. Academic publishing, imbalances in power, and even promotion requirements all tip the balance away from people outside of academia being able to have meaningful access to research.

The problem goes much deeper than even that. One of the things that has surprised me the most when writing for language professionals about research is how much work it takes to rewrite, rethink and even resell existing research to make it “accessible”. Taking the abstract of a paper and throwing it onto a professional forum just isn’t enough. In fact, it might even be counter-productive.

If researchers are really committed to opening up research to wider communities, we need to spend a lot of time examining how those communities speak, what values their members hold and what the key debates are. This taps into the fascinating discussion that took place on LifeinLINCS on Deaf-Hearing involvement in research. One of the main points to come out of that was that, for as long as the system is implicitly biased away from Deaf involvement, the onus is on the Hearing academics to open the doors.

Doubtless, much the same argument could be made for translation and interpreting. True, the number of professional translators and interpreters involved in research is far, far higher than the number of Deaf people. Still, it would be naïve to think that, since language professionals can read the language a piece of reading is written in, they can automatically engage with it.

Quite simply, they can’t! For a typical professional to get access to research on, say, ethics, they would most likely have to learn the academic terminology (for things they do every day!), figure out how to get meaningful results from google scholar, subscribe to a journal, hunt down authors, decode mountains of academese and then understand how methods and results affect each other. It’s little wonder that results take so long to filter down, if they do at all!

Academia isn’t exactly outsider-friendly. Of course, co-operative projects like this one, this one and this one will certainly help. When academics and professionals work together, there is added impetus for outcomes to be accessible and open to engagement.

In these days of impact statements and (horror!) required public engagement, co-operation is a good start but more profound shifts might be necessary. Might it be possible, in the near future, for journal articles to be written in language that is academically rigourous and yet still accessible to the wider public? Might there be a case for articles in professional journals, public fora, and even good blogs to count as research publications? Could academics in Translation Studies be brave enough to use the work of language professionals as the starting point of their research?

The issues around research engagement will not go away and resolving them will involve much more than just writing the odd article or doing a workshop. In fact, it seems that research in Translation and Interpreting might need to undergo a massive shift if long-term engagement is to be accomplished.  So where do we go from here?