The response to our presentation has been really positive, with many people wanting to learn more or see the slides again, so we decided to take our little 2 person roadshow online for the big wide world to see. We are now pleased to unveil a stripped down, re-recorded version of our presentation available at Slideshare.net. You can view the show within this post (below) or by following this link to Slideshare if you have problems hearing or viewing the embed.

First up was ‘EU Terminology and other EU Reference Material‘, jointly organised by the ITI office and Fiona Harris from the DGT. I attended this course yesterday afternoon at the European Commission Representation office near St. James’s Park.  On the agenda were presentations by Professor Margaret Rogers of Surrey University, a well known terminology expert, and Timothy Cooper, senior terminlogist at the DGT, and chair of the committee that oversees IATE. We discussed topics such as the importance of maintaining a terminology database, even if it means investing a little time in maintaining it. Professor Rogers argued that not only is it important to maintain a well organised terminology database, but that each entry should ideally also contain ‘metadata’ (e.g. definitions, context, register etc.) in order to be truly useful for a translator.

Most of the attendees were already very familiar with IATE, so Timothy Cooper focused on introducing some of its finer points, such as its quite powerful search and star functions. He also gave a brief history of IATE and how it was developed, in addition to the DGT’s famous style guide, and the ‘Fight the Fog’ style guide, which many attendees hadn’t seen before.

I’m now on my way, as I write, to the ITI Scotnet’s ‘Style Matters’ workshop in Perth. This event offers an opportunity for creative exploration and exchanging ideas with some of the best names in the business. It always surprises me how much I can learn just by working with colleagues on a translation – there’s not always a ‘right’ answer in translation, after all. The tutors are Chris Durban and Ros Schwartz, so we’re guaranteed a first class workshop. Next week I’m attending City University’s ‘Commercial and Corporate Law’ course, to hone my legal translation skills and general knowledge of this area of law. I think I can safely say I’ll have covered quite a few CPD bases by the time the month is out! I’ll write a couple of short posts about these events too.

If you’re a translator on LinkedIn and/or Twitter, you’ve probably noticed that a bit of a firestorm broke out earlier this week after LinkedIn put out a survey to professional translators with profiles on its site asking whether they’d be prepared to help translate their website into other languages for free (with a token amount of PIE – not the edible kind – thrown in). Within minutes, the Twittersphere was ablaze with fury and a group called ‘Translators against crowdsourcing by commercial companies’ was rapidly set up within LinkedIn itself, where members vented their increasingly angry thoughts about the very suggestion that LinkedIn would crowdsource free translation of its site from among its members. A couple of translators have already written very well-argued blog posts about it here and here.

This mini-drama has made it clearer than ever that as a professional community we are concerned about having an image problem, about being taken for a ride, about being the ‘little man’ against big business. I couldn’t agree more that offering our translation services for free is really only appropriate for a client with a very good cause but minimal budget – the latter is certainly not the case with LinkedIn – but perhaps we should now turn our considerable collective energy to showing The Big Wide World just why they would get  a better service from a professional translator paid a professional fee. It’s not enough to complain and say “pah, you obviously don’t know how great we are as professionals”, we must *demonstrate* this somehow. A professional service really is worth its weight in gold, so let’s focus on the positives and on all the great things we *can* do for the money we charge. We really showed what we can do when we unite as a professional community this week – let’s put that to good use.

After a delightful evening meal at the library of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (the main conference venue), we reconvened early the next morning for another day of presentations, chat and lots of coffee. I felt that there was a perceptible shift on the second day towards the more practical, day-to-day aspects of translation and interpreting, with the emphasis on technology, work-life balance and professional development.

The day started with yours truly – co-presenting with Sarah Dillon. We’d done a lot (and I mean A LOT – see Sarah’s write-up) of preparation and research for our presentation, and it was both terrifying and exhilarating to finally be able to share it with our professional community in this way. We basically offered a whistlestop tour of the concepts behind social media and web 2.0, the type of online tools available, and how language professionals might best use them. Sarah did a demo of some novel uses of LinkedIn and Tweetdeck which appeared to be new to many delegates.

We had a small technological hitch along the way, with our remote presentation tool throwing a wobbly halfway through. Although it had worked fine in our tests, we had foreseen this happening, so managed to remain calm and carry on thanks to  our backup plan (a PowerPoint file containing screenshots). However, I think that our key messages still came through – that these tools are not scary or difficult to use, that they allow YOU to be in control of how much information you receive, that not every one of these tools will be right for you, and that’s OK, but that the online world is changing – big time. It’s almost a case of ‘find a manageable way to keep up, or get left behind’. I think these messages were fairly well received, and Sarah and I have been really, really excited to see more ITI members venturing onto Twitter, for example.

Watch this space for more news on our presentation, as we already have plans to make a recorded version of our presentation available at Slideshare and perhaps even to publish our research, thoughts and findings as an ebook via  Lulu. The ITI Conference website will also be uploading copies of every presentation early next week – go to  www.iticonference.org.uk.

Our session was followed by a panel discussion entitled ‘Where to draw the line?’ with Nick Rosenthal, Iwan Davies, Patricia Sommer and Paul Appleyard.  A few questions had already been sent to the panel in advance, focusing on the usual suspects such as how to chase late payment. We were reminded that it is important to operate a rigorous policy when dealing with late payments – don’t take any prisoners, and operate a zero tolerance policy, but remember to remain professional and courteous in all dealings with clients.

Next up was Dr. Steve Vincent from Leeds University Business School, on the subject of work-life balance for knowledge workers. Steve challenged the phrase ‘work-life balance’, suggesting that it was more an issue of ‘work-life conflict’ – this is a description that I also personally feel is more appropriate. Siobhan Soraghan, a business coach, ran the next session, again on work-life balance. Siobhan has personal experience of ‘burn-out’, and proposed that we check in with ourselves and our working/non-work habits and rationally analyse them.  We are all busy people, we all wonder how we’ll get everything done with just 24 hours in the day, so Siobhan suggested that in order to avoid burnout, in our daily tasks we should prioritise our endless lists of things we ‘need’ to do, by asking ourselves which of them are both important and urgent. The most important asset in each of our businesses is our health, and this needs investment through ’self-sustainability’ activities. To read more about Siobhan’s work, visit: http://www.active-insight.com

A truly original and inspirational presentation came next, by Phil Goddard on ‘Finding a work-life balance crossing America’. Some readers may already know about Phil’s 3000 mile walk across the USA for charity, but for those who don’t I urge you to visit http://anenglishmaninneworleans.blogspot.com and  www.nytola.com. Impressively, Phil found that he was still able to work on translation jobs while he was away, and often found himself delivering jobs from his laptop at random hours of the day or in unusual places – this really showed us just how ‘mobile’ it is possible to be these days if you really want to be.

Reinhard Schaler, founding editor of the Journal of Specialist Translation (JosTrans), and founder and director of the  Localisation Research Centre at the University of Limerick, presented a session entitled ‘Where is translation technology going?’. Reinhard started by stating a problem: there is more material out there online than translators can translate. Some examples: 40% of Facebook users are not using English, but Facebook’s mission statement is to make their product available in ALL languages. Their way of tackling this has been to crowdsource volunteer translators from within their existing user base – collaborative translation where users can comment on and update translations in order achieve a final version. This is a controversial practice among translators, and rightly so in some cases, but I am minded to agree that it is the most effective method for a product such as Facebook – after all, none of the language used on it is highly complex, and wouldn’t its users be best placed to understand the terms in context? The fact of allowing users to update other entries, Wikipedia style, would also go some way to resolving translation errors and stumbling blocks.

I attended the translation technology parallel session run by Ana Luiz Iaria. Ana is well known to be very knowledgeable on this subject, and took us through a run-down of productivity tools, back-up, tag verifiers etc. Look out for Ana’s presentation on the ITI Conference website to see the links to the tools she introduced us to.

And so the conference drew to a close, and there were a lot of tired but happy faces in the audience. To finish up, we discussed ways that the ITI is supporting the profession, with training courses and several new initiatives in the pipeline for the coming 12 months. Despite the feeling of tiredness I could sense we were all experiencing, I could also feel the unmistakable sense of renewed enthusiasm, new ideas and new contacts we so often come away with from conferences. At their best, conferences and any indeed any gathering of freelance professionals remind us why we’re in this profession, and help spur us on to develop ourselves and our businesses. I can safely say that this was one such event.

“Arse, poo and widdle.” With this unholy trinity of coy expletives, Stephen Fry introduced us to the joys of Twitter earlier this month

By far the most disappointing report on Twitter that I’ve witnessed was on Newsnight yesterday evening. Apprarently Baroness Greenfield has piped up and said that communicating online is contributing to a rise in autism and is increasing the social isolation of children. Paxman had a couple of ‘experts’ on the show to discuss this. Watching this discussion felt a bit like watching the blind leading the blind, since nobody really seemed to have actually used Twitter or any other social media tool, despite professing to be experts on the matter. My favourite quote from one of them was “Children could be writing to people in another country who they’ve never met before”. Shock! Horror! Damnation! As someone who works at the global interface, I couldn’t quite understand why it would be such a terrible outcome for children to communicate with other children in different countries/cultures, provided that is done in a safe environment (remember internet parental controls?). My other half, equally bemused by the discussion, said to me “What about at school when we all had penpals abroad?”.

In reality, however, it’s not actually children who are using Twitter.  I’ll do my best to try to dispel that myth and others about Twitter here:

• Twitter is just for kids/teenagers/people under 25. Stats show that Facebook is still mostly used by the under 35s, but heavy users of Twitter are in fact more likely to be in the 25-45 age bracket. There is even a sizeable number of over 65s using it. I would (as have others) suggest that this is because the majority of Twitter users are on Twitter because they are mainly using it in connection with their work.
• Tweeters just send text messages to themselves to tell Twitter what they’re doing all day (I actually heard this description last week). Anyone who does that too much is pretty much an instant ‘unfollow’ for me – the most productive aspect of Twitter is that it helps people share news and information about their fields of interest or their occupation, with the occasional anecdote about their personal lives thrown in to show that they’re human.
• Twitter stops people from going out into the world and socialising in a normal way, and destroys peoples’ social skills. As with any new-fangled, revolutionary device, there is an initial ‘craze’ period, and a period where everyone scratches their head and worries that it signals the end of civilisation as we know it. I wasn’t alive at the time, so you’ll have to do your homework on this one, but sources tell me that people were worried about this when the telephone was invented too.

Twitter can help people build a ‘community’ of like-minded people, yes. This is a ‘community’ in the traditional sense of the word, nothing more sinister than that. That ‘community’ is a very valuable virtual water cooler for those of us who work freelance. I’m not sure how others working in open plan offices, for example, use Twitter. Perhaps they use it to reach out to virtual ‘colleagues’ beyond their immediate co-workers. That’s what it’s all about, folks. COMMUNICATION. BUT you still can’t beat socialising in person, and I’m pretty sure that most ‘normal’ Twitter users still do that. Perhaps even with someone they initially met on Twitter and found they had a lot in common with. There have always been reclusives,  and there always will be, with or without social media.

Feel free to share any other myth shockers you’ve come across, or even ones that you believe to be true.

One of the most exciting aspects of social media is how it democratises news and information – everybody has a chance to report what is happening where they are in real time, possibly making it more ‘authentic’. Do tools like Twitter make the reporting more ‘real’? Does the absence of the editorial agenda attached to a newspaper or TV channel make it more transparent? For example, the TV and newspaper footage of the Hudson river plane crash was great and everything, but Twitter was the one that really came into its own. Traditional media have more skills and equipment to draw on, but for practical reasons they just can’t match Twitter in terms of immediacy. This was something picked up on by The Guardian and the LA Times (check out the photo):

The major media outlets in New York responded quickly and on the whole they did a good job of reporting the news of the so-called “miracle on the Hudson”.

By contrast, news was all over microblogging website Twitter within minutes. One of the early reports came from New Yorker Janis Krum who wrote: “There’s a plane in the Hudson. I’m on the ferry going to pick up the people. Crazy.” Krum also uploaded this pic of the plane floating in the river. Krum was interviewed by MSNBC later yesterday and his pic had more than 100,000 views on TwitPic by this morning.

Yet the most immediate and compelling reports and images came from citizens. Even if you had the most rapid response system in the world, reporters were not able to teleport themselves to the scene – not to mention the fact that the on-the-ground location changed as the plane floated downstream.

If you go to Twitpic, you’ll see that the photo had 354129 views to date. Impressive.

Going back to Obama, this very same feature of social media offers the potential to bring greater transparency to politics and government. Note that within 1 minute of President Obama’s inauguration a new blog was set up on the White House website.  Go to our very own Number10.gov.uk, and look at how they’ve really pimped up their site with Flickr, YouTube and Twitter. Perhaps, in the post-inauguration euphoria, we can dare to dream that these tools will be utilised to the fullest, and that this ‘reaching out’ to the public will genuinely lead to greater transparency and public engagement in news and politics.

Looking at the website of OneHour Translation, I’m sceptical (to say the least) about their ability to turn around larger documents (projects they say they can take on include websites and presentations) within just 1 hour. To me, the best use of this type of service is for something like Twitrans, not important or lengthy documents. What do others think about this type of service?

This week, true to form, this is exactly what blogs, podcasts and newspapers have all been doing. I thought it would be nice to share with you my ten 10 list of what I’ve been reading and listening to, and learning from, in my own little office this week:

1. 2008 in photographs (these are seriously impressive)
2. An interview with Chris Durban at Speaking of Translation on how to realise your earning potential as a translator
3. On the same site, interviews with several people about how the current economic situation is affecting translators’ workloads (it’s not all bad, far from it)
4. How to say Merry Christmas around the world on Lexiophiles
5. The 5 stages of Twitter acceptance
6. Concepts of social identity in translators and speakers of multiple languages
7. Words of the Year 2008
8. One linguist’s ’syntactic pain’ over Strictly Come Dancing (for what it’s worth, the name of that program makes me want to emit a big ‘ugh’ too)
9. Health and fitness advice for Grumpy Home Workers
10. Looking back at whether I’ve played my cards right in my first year of freelancing with 9 Tips for Brand New Freelancers

I’ve found plenty of food for thought here; reasons to be pleased with my progress and things to improve on (especially, ahem, fitness) in the next 12 months, my place in my own industry of choice,  and not to mention the wider global situation in general. All that remains now is to wish the blogosphere a merry, restful and reflective festive period.

So here, finally, is my take on day 2 of The Translator as Strategic Partner Conference. This one probably will be shorter than my report on the 1st day, because my note-taking on day 2 amounted to just a few lines, partially due to being in a zombie-like stupor due to lack of sleep (trust me, after only a couple of hours sleep I am not someone you want to hang around for long) and the onset of a cold, but mostly because the second day adopted more of a ‘workshop’ style. I really liked this – I presumed it would be an uphill struggle to coax a room of over 200 sleepy delegates (who also happen to be translators – we’re not necessarily used to working in groups, nor even speaking to real people, for that matter ) brainstorm on a Sunday morning, but this actually came off pretty well. So, let’s roll out the tweets:

Day 2 of the conference and I’m sleep-starved due to too much coffee late at night and an over excited kitten. 9:10 AM Nov 23rd

I should explain this tweet. The Saturday night meal at Ciao Bella was great. OK, so they struggled a little to organise our courses, but how many restaurants could cope with a over 90 people arriving all at once? The food was fantastic, as was the wine, and the restaurant was buzzing with conversation. Naturally, the following morning (a SUNDAY, people!), when my alarm sounds at 7am I’m not thrilled about dragging my behind out of bed. Besides that, our kitten Cosmo (he’s nearly 2 years old now, but I still call him a kitten) was hyperactive as he always when his normal routine is changed, had been waking me up with a paw in my face every 30 minutes during the night.

Oh, and by the way, there is snow on the ground in London! 9:52 AM Nov 23rd

Yes, it’s true! On the plus side, it was a treat to wake up to see snow in our garden!

Now happening at the conference: Michael Benis on translation technology 9:54 AM Nov 23rd

Anyway, enough about my sleep issues and the weather, let’s move on to the conference itself. This began with a very comprehensive run-down of translation technology by Michael Benis. There was something for everyone here – if you didn’t already use translation memory/Computer Assisted Translation tools, then Michael told us what their purpose was and showed some screenshots to demonstrate how they work; he also touched on PDF conversion software such as Nuance Scansoft, Mindtouch.com, and Collanos Workspace. Most translators will know Michael for his expert reviews of translation tools, and really sit up and listen when he speaks on the subject, so delegates were scribbling away fiercely at this stage.

Gradually coaxing my tired grumpy self into ‘workshop’ frame of mind at the TSP conference. Great atmosphere here, I must say 11:31 AM Nov 23rd

As I mentioned before, I was grizzly, so the last thing I thought I needed was a group workshop. BUT this was just the ticket to get my brain juices flowing. The workshop was run by Ros Schwartz, on ’style’. We were given a piece of paper with a text in French (an editorial) and its literal translation into English. This was a very creative exercise, and we needed to engage our copywriting skills to have any hope of producing a translated text that was effective in its own right.

Very much enjoying style workshop run by Ros Schwartz – very creative and lots of different approaches to learn from 12:55 PM Nov 23rd

As a lone-worker, I hardly ever get the opportunity to bounce ideas off translator colleagues, and it’s easy to forget how beneficial it is to be able to pick the brains of others. I really did learn a lot from this about how best to approach ‘creative translation’ for marketing texts, for example. It’s hard to know how much licence the translator really has to adapt a client’s text for the target audience, but again, this is why it’s important to have an open dialogue with your client.

After a very impressive Caribbean lunch Jost Zetzsche from translators’ toolkit is up again to ’set priorities straight’… 2:27 PM Nov 23rd

Psst – wow the Caribbean lunch was good – and I was delighted to learn that it was provided by a firm round the corner from where I live – ‘Cummin’ Up‘; glad to have been able to pinpoint another spot to grab a bite for a weekday lunch! After that, Jost Zetzsche did another brief presentation on Machine Translation, called ‘Setting priorities straight: Us or the Machine?’ – a contentious issue!

Quote from jost: ‘how can we get back behind the wheel?’ 2:31 PM Nov 23rd

Jost said that we needed to acknowledge that progress is being made in Machine Translation; OK the results are usually extremely silly, but we need to bear in mind what clients need their translations for. It may be in future that some of us take on ‘post-editing’ of Machine Translated-text as part of our portfolio, but the important thing now is for us to regain some control over how this pans out. We need to be drivers of change, rather than the passengers. This was a point I believe is fundamental to the future of our profession (or any profession, come to that).

Next conference gig: fellow tweeter Nick Rosenthal on content management systems 2:50 PM Nov 23rd

Nick had been tweeting from the conference too, so it was great to be able to share this via my own tweets. I’m completely new to CMS (Content Management Systems), so I was intrigued by this session, entitled ‘TM is dead! Long live CMS!’. I think this is still a fairly specialist area for translators, but again, we need to embrace these things if we want to remain in the driving seat. A quote by Charles Kettering about change and progress, one of my favourites, springs to mind at this point.

TSP As it happens: Bill Maslen on Blogging and Twitter! Benefits of social networking….go geeks! 3:09 PM Nov 23rd

Sooo happy to hear social networking tools, wikis etc mentioned at the conference…how much of it will sink in with freelance translators? 3:23 PM Nov 23rd

This was another dynamic presentation by Bill Maslen, which, to my delight briefly touched on Twitter and social networking. The presentation was called ‘Working methods: collaboration amid constant change’. He also discussed online collaboration and new working tools at our disposal. There is so much out there for us; it seems that what frustrates many people is that the tools change all the time, but to my mind this simply reflects the vastness of the worldwide web. Having so many things available is 90% a fantastic thing (10% an overwhelming thing), and we mustn’t forget that the internet empowers us to search for, select and control which tools fit us best. If you don’t work well with a tool then don’t settle for it, go out (and when I say ‘out’ I mean ‘online’) and find another one!

Major realisation from reading the slides at this conference weekend: I need to have another eye test 3:27 PM Nov 23rd

Next is Istvan Lengyel from MemoQ, with a presentation entitled ‘Getting the most out of references’. I was excited about this, as MemoQ has made such a good impression with most translators I’ve spoken to. I think this is one to watch, and I’ll certainly be looking into it myself. Unfortunately, with my tired, myopic eyes I had trouble reading most of Istvan’s presentation, so can’t report much else (sorry Istvan!) about this one. Mental note: call my optician about getting some new spectacles. After Istvan’s presentation, we moved on to another round table discussion with the speakers. This time it mainly focussed on comparing translation technology tools (we had brave representativesfrom SDL Trados and Wordfast there – NB. watch out for new developments from Wordfast). We also discussed translation clauses in company contracts which us freelancers are asked to sign. Again, the key is discussion with clients at all stages.

Closing up the conference now over a drink. Shattered but it’s been a productive weekend 6:05 PM Nov 23rd

And so, exhausted, we head to the bar for a well-deserved drink. I learned many things from the conference, especially the value of getting out there in the real world to meet people you’ve already met ‘virtually’ via social networking (for example). My live micro-blogging allowed me to keep a record of the event for my own future reference, as well as making it possible to share it with others. Instead of making endless paper notes I’ll probably be able never find again, I now have an extensive, meaningful record that I can refer back to online whenever I want to. The tweets also made it possible for me to make my report more ‘authentic’ – usually after these events people can remember things that never actually happened and as a result the write-up of the event is not quite as accurate as it could be.

Homeward bound from tsp conference…think I will be sofa-bound for rest of the evening. Signing off the live blogging now; it’s been fun! 7:51 PM Nov 23rd

By the way, check out Creative Alchemy for a guide to networking – essential pre-conference reading!

In Obama’s victory speech he said that the unsung heroes are his campaign managers and his strategist. Just look at how they tapped into communication tools that no candidate has ever bothered with before, such as Facebook right from the early days of the campaign, to creating his very own online community at MyBarackObama, to the point where Obama’s internet following was a self-driven vehicle.

For example, Obama (or one of Obama’s assistants) was tweeting on Twitter, with no less than 119,730 followers. Everytime he was speaking at a rally, a little link would be posted to allow his followers to watch it in realtime. By engaging with new forms of media, Obama has succeeded in reaching out to a new generation of voters, showing that he is a man of the world, for the world. He realises the amazing potential of social media and is able to use it as a means of getting his message across and cultivate a grassroots following through it.

For those of us who were unable to vote, how amazing it was to live through an historic event like this and, thanks to the internet and social media, to be able to feel like you’re really part of it. No matter who you supported in the campaign, after Obama’s victory, we must all agree that the internet’s ability to unite people and allow them to share experiences and interact should not be underestimated. Just look at some of reactions of people around the world, which we are now able to see for ourselves.

This article in the pioneering Huffington Post discusses how in this election the internet has done more than supplement traditional media:

While discussing with a friend an election night viewing party he’s throwing, he announced there would be “televisions all over the place.” “That’s great,” I said, “but just make sure the WiFi is working.” Because this year, the laptop — along with the array of Internet-connected mobile devices — has replaced the television as the must-have election night device.

P.S. While we’re on the subject, the blogosphere is currently alive with Obama-inspired posts, even suggesting that as freelancers we can learn from the campaign in terms of how we present ourselves, such as this one over at Contract Worker.

My age group straddles Generation Y and Generation X, and I often find myself caught between these two rather different mindsets. On the one hand, I blog, and use Facebook fairly extensively, I use RSS feeds to manage information, and I share bookmarks. On the other hand, I’m still quite new to all this, only having had a Facebook account for just over a year, and a blog for roughly the same length of time. I’m still struggling with Twitter, not really fully understanding the term ‘micro-blogging’, not to mention what on earth Twitterific is. And all this on the day I find out that even the Beeb has a Twitterer (is that the term?) for my favourite breakfast radio programme, Radio 4’s Today programme.

Nonetheless, I think the important thing is that I’m willing to learn, and although I don’t fully understand some aspects of social media as much as I’d like to, I am totally wowed by the possibilities it offers. I want to be part of it, and like any good Generation Yer I am learning how to use these tools more or less instinctively.

The same cannot be said of Radio 4, though. Despite their impressive forward-thinking with Twitter, I was disappointed with how Radio 4 reported the Queen’s visit to Google this morning. They broadcast a ‘comedy’ piece called ‘The Queen’s Blog’, in which someone imitated the Queen emailing and accepting friends on Facebook (yeah, like, totally not the same as blogging). Listen again here and weep. I felt like this was a misguided send-up of social media (rather than of the Queen), and as always I look disapprovingly on those to dismiss it so readily.

Long live social media! Once I get my head round it that is…