Being now very often in Brussels, I couldn’t miss the conference held at the European Commission, Translating Europe Forum 2018, on November 8th and 9th (I know, this post comes with some delay, sorry!). Yet, the main reason to attend was that finally a translation conference focuses on my main area of specialization, namely Big Data. I have been translating for ages about how Big Data is disrupting different fields, but never mine.
Attending this conference was definitely worthwhile, as I am sure you would agree after watching the recordings (available below). The panel I liked the most was the first-day plenary panel on neural machine translation (NMT), whose evolution has been astonishing and with which statistical-based machine translation simply cannot keep up. The panel agreed that the quality currently offered by NMT cannot be compared to professional human translation. Yet, more has happened in the last couple of years than in decades.
My personal take is that NMT is definitely here to stay and, provided it’s up to us to choose whether or not to use it to our advantage, we should see it as an ally to boost our productivity and not as the enemy. Of course, dealing with agencies trying to oblige us to become post-editors for peanuts instead of translators for decent fees is another story.
By the way, it is estimated that proofreading requires about 30% of efforts compared to translation, while post-editing would take approx. 65% provided that the quality is decent. This information can be used as a guideline for setting our post-editing fee per word, even if ideally we should always charge per hour afterwards (as Erik Hansoon rightly pointed out in his panel, agencies would generally not accept this method since they need to quote the project before it begins, not when it’s over).
Very interesting discussions have also been focusing on GDPR and related details which I hadn’t considered before, such as complicated questions like ‘To whom does the TM provided by the agency, edited by me and paid by the client belong?’ Curiously, one of the panelist was a lawyer specializing in nothing but copyright of TMs, but I must say that that panel brought up more doubts than clarity regarding GDPR among attendees! 😉
It has also been a great occasion to meet again or for the first time in person many wonderful colleagues, such as Alexander Drechsel, Maria Pia Montoro and María Galán (in the pictures below).
Below you can have a look at the programme of each day and watch all the video recordings.
Day 1
Below follow two of the three parallel sessions and their recordings (unfortunately for newcomers to the language industry, that recording is not available) .
Day 2
Below follow all the recordings of the three parallel sessions.
The icing on the cake was that a professional draughtsman artistically summarised each panel and keynote speech. Here are some of his works of art.
Finally, you can also read the event’s thread on Twitter: #2018TEF. I hope to meet you there next year, probably in November 2019!
As service providers, it’s very common to hear potential clients say, “But I got a much cheaper quote for the same service!”, when their goal is to simply find the cheapest offer.
There are so many factors behind the price of a product or a service, but sometimes all of us forget that. We might remember it when it comes to certain products, such as a nice dress by a famous designer and made of an amazing and incredibly-soft material compared to a low-quality supermarket equivalent or maybe when it comes to buying an expensive luxury and very safe car versus the most affordable and not-so-reliable model on the market. Yet, we may forget it when we get a few quotes of different services, for example to get our house refurbished, the living room painted, our hair cut or our company’s website translated into different languages.
I always try to put myself in the shoes of the clients, both the ones that see eye to eye with me and end up working with my company, and the ones that have different priorities than mines. I myself am the second kind of client in some situations when I actually don’t care much about what I am buying, so I never point fingers, because I respect everybody’s situation and priorities. As I always say, I can’t be everybody’s service provider and not everyone is my type of client, which is perfectly fine.
Yesterday I acted as my ideal client would with my company. I asked my car dealer to change my car’s tyres and to check a possible issue with the coolant.
In this case, since I had experienced a similar problem a couple of years ago and had a mechanic fix it, my partner asked his opinion as well and spontaneously got a second quote from him. Despite the fact that this was about 50% of what the official service was going to charge me, I opted for the the latter.
Why would I do that if I got a much cheaper quote for the same service?! That’s true, but again there are so many factors behind each price. Here are some examples.xy
With the official service:
a professional secretary immediately puts me in contact with the right expert;
after having a look at the car, he sends me very quickly a link via e-mail and SMS with a formal quote and a video in which he shows to me exactly where the problem lies and goes through the details of the quote so that I know every aspect behind it. I don’t need to take their word for granted. In the quote they specify even the number of screws they are charging me;
only official parts are used and therefore they are covered by a reliable guarantee;
I know there is nobody else in the area who could be more familiar with my type of car, which translates into money well spent;
my taxi back and forth is paid by them;
I’m offered a coffee in a very nice lounge while waiting (not much);
my invoice is ready in the blink of an eye;
my car is given back to me clean and shiny (inside and outside);
should there be any problem afterwards, the company’s headquarters answer for it (I experienced it myself in the past in a case where it wasn’t directly related to the service done: they behaved superbly. Without entering into details, I can say a local mechanic neither could nor would have done the same);
if I have an issue on the road (e.g. a flat tyre or similar), I could call the official assistance instead of my insurance for free just because I am a client;
peace of mind.
With the mechanic I know:
I needed to ask a friend or relative for a ride or pay myself for a taxi back and forth;
it took long to get a quote and I often had to call several times to remind him of having a look at my car;
the quote would be sent via WhatsApp without any specific details;
I guess official parts wouldn’t be used if there are cheaper alternatives;
I had to ask several times when my car would be ready and put preassure on him or it would have taken forever;
when I got there, I had to wait pretty long without any place to sit or being offered anything to drink;
my invoice would take ages to be sent to me correctly;
my car was at least as dirty as before when I got the keys back;
if there were some issues afterwards (not directly related to the service done in that occasion), I needed to prepare my wallet again.
Yes, the official car dealer’s quote was indeed much more expensive, but the service is worth far more than the mechanic’s considering all the above.
So next time we get an expensive quote, especially if we have another one to compare it with, we shouldn’t forget what lies behind the price. A much more expensive service will surely include so much more than a low-cost one, among which reliability, professionalism, and peace of mind.
Additionally, three IAPTI workshops were offered at Universidad Europea de Valencia on Friday 28th: an English-into-Spanish medical workshop by the number one of the field in Spain, Fernando Navarro; a business-oriented workshop by one of IAPTI’s great organisers, Gary Smith; and, last but not least, a third workshop on how to prepare for a high-profile interpreting assignment by the one and only Tony Rosado.
Fernando Navarro’s workshop on medical translation
Tony Rosado’s workshop on high-profile interpreting assignments
Gary Smith’s workshop on freelance business management
Once the workshops were over, some of us had lunch at a very nice restaurant by the port. Those coming from far away could already have a taste of the Spanish life, also timewise: we started eating at 3 pm and finished by 6 pm our sobremesa (when you’re done eating but remain at the restaurant talking).
Shortly after, a cocktail dinner was waiting for us at Hotel Barceló, with one of the most exclusive views of the City of Arts and Sciences.
Saturday
If you look at Saturday and then Sunday’s IAPTI programme, you might understand why ubiquity would have come in handy at this conference. There were too many interesting talks taking place at the same time, so it was extremely hard to choose just one.
After the great opening by Gary Smith and IAPTI’s president, Aurora Humarán, the first presentation was delivered by the first keynote speaker, Emily Wilson, who re-traslated the Odyssey into English. She dived into this challenging adventure to try to be more loyal to the original and convey the possible different interpretations it offered. Curiously, media coverage mainly focused on the fact that it was a woman who now translated it, even though many female translators had already done the same into different languages before her.
Since ubiquity wasn’t unfortunately included in the lovely IAPTI welcome bag, you can only find here a summary of the talks we attended.
Tony Rosado spoke of court and healthcare interpreter ethics, where we considered, among other aspects, interesting ethical dilemmas regarding confidentiality. For example, can you reveal a piece of information you got in a previous interpreting session if the patient is in a coma and his life depends on it? Tony underlined that your goal as a healthcare interpreter is the patients’ wellbeing, but you should always get their consent first if possible. In a healthcare situation, you need to interpret everything, and warn everyone of it; they can’t tell you, “Don’t say to him that…”. Also, you should try to persuade patients to tell the truth, unlike what happens in court interpreting. In the latter, Tony explained that duty of confidentiality ends by court order; not even a priest is exempt, only the legal team (including the court interpreter) thanks to the client-attorney privilege.
After Tony, many interpreters had the pleasure to attend Sarah Cuminetti’s presentation about her interpreting experience related to books. She explained that most of the times you need to offer consecutive or whispered interpreting in such settings. Ideally, you should read the book in question, but that’s not always possible due to last-minute requests. In that case you need to prioritise and focus on the authors’ biography and main titles published (of which you should know the translation). It’s also key to try to find out their favourite writers and books since this is a common question asked by journalists. Other than these, Sarah clarified it won’t be possible to know all the writers and book titles of the world in two languages, and that there will be surely someone in the room that catches the reference, so don’t make titles up yourself!
After a delicious lunch, technology offered us the very insightful talk of Prof. David Crystal who spoke about language acceptability and change, with a great deal of humour. He explained that there are many English varieties: written and oral English; formal and informal English; in-house (for peer experts) and out-of-house (for general audience) English. Furthermore, translations can be either synchronic (as language is now) or diachronic (with history of language use over time). As translators, we might therefore face the dilemma of whether we should keep on translating concepts or terms as we used to in the past for consistency or rather based on the current needs. Prof. Crystal also underlined that it’s completely normal that language changes (e.g., ‘must’ has been substituted more and more by ‘have to’ in the last decades), and that the only ones that don’t change are dead languages.
Then, back to the interpreters’ room to listen to Beatriz Abril on interpreting for migrants and refugees, followed by Javier Castillo‘s workshop on how to improve our interpreting skills using memory palaces (e.g., picturing elements of a list somewhere in your house in a specific order to remember them more easily).
Kyle Wohlmut‘s presentation fulfilled the extremely high expectations created by his hilarious pre-IAPTI video (warning: please keep out of reach of children, watch it when you are alone, and get ready to laugh for 2:24 minutes). Among many funny aspects related to swearing, he considered different translations of Trump’s “shithole countries” and the book “The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F**k”.
Then back to the interpreters’ room again to attend another presentation by Tony Rosado, in which he tackled the very controversial topic of remote interpreting. This reality is here to stay, but we interpreters need to embrace it only under certain conditions: that we are in the same place as our booth mate, that we get paid the same as we would onsite (and not per minute, only when truly interpreting, as we unfortunately start to see). This is possible for example with Kudo, among other solutions.
Saturday ended with a Basque pinchos dinner at another exclusive location.
Sunday
The dilemma of which talk to attend wasn’t any easier on Sunday. Alessandra even considered not attending her own talk to go to someone else’s presentation, but eventually decided it wouldn’t have been very polite to do so! 😉
As always with Xosé Castro, the second day couldn’t have started better. In his very fun and comprehensive talk, Xosé hilariously shamed us a little to invite us to be more productive, offering many useful tricks and tools.
Sergio Viaggio, former UN chief interpreter, talked later about the legal and judicial interpreting settings. He also considered the pros and cons of retour, mentioning that nothing is either black or white, but it depends on the context (as always in our field).
Then Alessandra, manager of Specialized Translators, spoke about running our business with direct clients and explained how to work less, under better conditions, while making more money. The idea behind her talk is summarised on her first slide.
Alessandra also mentioned well-tested and effective strategies on how to get amazing deadlines for translations, receiving plently of documentation many days before an interpreting assignment, how to cover our backs by including clauses in quotes to be signed by the client, and so on. In general, she recommended an economic and business approach to solve common problems we have to face on a daily basis.
Since many attendees asked for the link, below you can also find the video she used to show the toxic patterns that we need to eradicate in our profession and that would never happen in other industries.
Afterwards, Sue Leschen spoke about the different documents we may need for our business: CV (she has a master CV from which she selects only the relevant sections whenever she needs to send a personalised CV to a client), contracts, quotes, estimates, business cards, among others.
Before lunch, Paolo Cappelli offered a different perspective on the issue of interpreting for refugees and migrants, focusing on the historical and economic situation of Africa.
After another very tasty lunch, Stefan Schmidt explained the Aquarius emergency and the role of professional interpreters in similar circumstances.
Another inspiring talk was offered by three Polish translators and interpreters: Katharina Wawrzon-Steward, Justyna Gutoswka, and Ewa Jasinska-Davidson. Apart from being freelancers with their own clients, they explained the history behind their common project, Business Language Boutique.
If you wonder how a terminology talk can be hilarious, ask the amazing Heidi Cazes-Sevilla, who explained how to assess one’s sources and choose the right terms when translating or preparing for an interpreting assignment.
The final presention was delivered by the keynote speaker and charming financial translator, Ralf Lemster, who spoke about new realities of the translation business, such as AI, NMT and PE. Ralf explained that technology is changing the speed of our work, but every curse comes with a blessing. He recommended exploiting the technology available to our benefit, growing our network, improving technical and business-related skills, helping others, and exploring adjacent areas.
The end… for now
These three days were truly amazing and there was no better way to celebrate together the International Translation Day on September 30th.
P.P.S. Foodies definitely have to sign up for IAPTI2019 next year (please don’t watch below if you are already hungry and if the fridge is too far away!).
Last week Specialized Translators provided a four-day Spanish-into-English simultaneous interpreting service during a technical conference on dermatology in Calpe (Alicante, Spain).
Whoever is familiar with this field is aware of its complexity: when you speak of derma products it’s not just about marketing, you have to deal with complex medical and chemical concepts, together with its terminology.
This is why time is not your best friend when the client requests the service last minute on a Thursday evening to confirm it on Friday morning and the assignment starts on Monday.
Preparation is key before each interpreting assignment
We interpreters need to study before each event. We are not born experts of all fields of human knowledge. Plus, the more technical the assignament is, the more we have to study. As simple as that. And even when you have previous experience on the same topic, each company is a different world in terms of products, active ingredients they use for them and so on.
In addition, fellow interpreters can confirm that once the assignment is over, your memory needs to get rid of all those terms you had to recall in another language in a matter of a second or less for the previous assignment. This is why unless you interpret each week about the same topic, you need to study again the material you had previously prepared for a related assignment.
It’s essential that the client understands the importance of providing plently of documentation on what speakers will talk about (mainly the PPTs that are going to be displayed). This is the best way for us interpreters to optimize our preparation before the event and ensure the best performance on the days of the conference.
How we prepared in this case
In this particular case, we couldn’t waste any time waiting for the documents since we weren’t sure if and when we would get them. This is why we spent the entire weekend preparing: we read each and every section of the client’s website, extracted all the technical terms we might need during the conference, included them in a glossary together with the equivalents in the target language, apart from studying all revelant concepts we might have to deal with. By Saturday at 3 pm, our draft glossary had already 450 terms, and that’s when we received the first PPTs from the client. By the end of the process, the glossary reached 800 terms, most of which where active ingredients and long chemical compounds, which were extremely hard to even read (sometimes even by the experts themselves, that was reassuring for us).
Of course, having 800 terms in written in your glossary is not enough. You need to memorize them so that whenever they come up in the talk, you’ll be able to immediately recall the equivalent term in the target language.
When you study hard, there is always a happy ending
Personally, even though I always get the impression that there is no way my memory can cope with so much terminology in a short amount of time while preparing, when the microphone is on on the big day, the magic simply happens: thanks to the adrenaline of the assignment combined with the long hours of preparation, I somehow manage to find the right term at the right time stored somewhere in my busy brain.[dt_divider style=”thin” /]
For more pictures of the event, you can check our Facebook page.
At Specialized Translators, we are all passionate professional translators and interpreter. We love translating and interpreting, but we also love sharing best practices and tips with students to help them the best we can during their training.
On Monday, September 24th, Alessandra was kindly invited by a fellow interpreter, Diana Soliverdi, to hold a conference on the Spanish private market. The talk was addressed to students attending the postgraduate interpreting course (Spanish + English + French/Italian) at Universidad Autónoma de Madrid.
Institutional vs. private market
Alessandra started by explaining the main differences between the private and the institutional market (mainly focusing on the Spanish booth at EU institutions).
In the institutional market, you normally work only into your mother tongue and it’s great to have as many passive and exotic languages as possible. To become an EU-accredited interpreter you need to sit for a test, to which you are invited provided that you have an interesting language combination. Generally, unless if you have an exotic language combination, you would only get to work for EU institutions if you are based in that specific city (e.g. Brussels for the EU Commision).
In the private market, instead, it’s key that you work in both directions, i.e. into your mother tongue as well as into your B language (what we call retour). At least in the Spanish private market, it’s recommendable to have fewer and more demanded working languages (e.g. even just Spanish < > English), which you truly master actively, than a long list of exotic passive languages that you have a scarce domain of (e.g. Latvian, Polish, Croatian, English > Spanish).
The pros and cons of retour
In a nutshell, the main difference between the institutional and the private market is the use of retour in the latter. Retour was born in the private market for economic reasons (since it implied needing fewer interpreters and fewer booths). Unlike what people commonly think, interpreting literature shows that retour is not the black sheep and does have positive aspects for interpreters working from their mother tongue into a foreign language: it provides a better verbal, body and cultural understanding; it’s easier whenever there are audio-related issues; it offers better mnemonic performances (you retain in simultaneous interpreting 9 words working A > B, and only 5 words when the direction is B > A); finally, since you’ll probably have fewer ways to convey a message in a foreign language compaired to your mother tongue, you waste less time choosing.
And much more!
We also talked about the importance to acquire marketing and business skills to avoid interpreting at home just for ourselves. We went through best practices on how to acquire some experience with common sense, how to find clients, how to have a positive professional relationship with them, to keep on learning and always be humble, to be a good person and booth mate to work with. And, last but not least, we laughed together about some funny anecdotes an interpreter has to deal with.
Thanks again, Diana, and to all the students for the interest and very active participation. Good luck with your training!
Imagine the following situations. A football-related press conference is about to start and foreign players will be interviewed. Would you trust a professional interpreter who hates football and couldn’t name more than five players in the world? Would you rather rely on a football fan who speaks more or less both languages but has no idea about interpreting and can just translate four words at a time?
What about an interpreter hired for the release of a new Star Wars film, who has never even watched the previous films?
If you were a doctor, would you trust a medical book translated by a professional translator who knows nothing about medicine?
The list can go on and on, but we probably have made our point already.
You don’t just need professionals, you need specialized translators and interpreters
First, knowing two languages is not enough to translate a text and interpret an event that is relevant to your business; you need a professional for it. Second, many times being a professional translator and interpreter might not be sufficient either; you need professionals that are also specialists in the field in question. This way, you can stay assured that they can truly understand the concepts, and speak the jargon of your target audience.
Specialization is our philosophy, our main differentiating factor, and something we don’t compromise on. We would rather not provide the service at all if we couldn’t keep this promise.
When I founded the company I had already embraced this philosophy long before. This is why as a freelancer I was already managing projects for my own clients thanks to a network of professional and trustworthy colleagues with different language combinations and fields of expertise. Specialized Translators was born just as a logical consequence providing this international network with a more formal structure.
There are many language service providers out there, we know. Choosing to rely on Specialized Translators will make you shine with your own clients and partners. You will show them that you care about them, and that you don’t compromise on quality either.
All this was possible thanks to the great IAPTI team, featuring president 
