Alexander Drechsel π²*stretches fingers*
Let's do some live-coverage of #2022TEF - this year's edition of the Translating Europe Forum, a conference organised by @translatores! #xl8 @translators
Not surprised, but the production value is excellent so far. DG Translation has a whole online platform for this hybrid event. It's very easy to put together a personal schedule, arrange online meetings with other participants and just see what's going on. (Curious, that Slido is necessary for polls stillβ¦) #2022TEF
After a friendly, upbeat introduction by the two moderators Aminda Leigh & Anya Sitaram, now the opening remarks from Commissioner Johannes Hahn (who is in charge of translation).
Hear, hear:
"Improving translation means improving Europe" (J. Hahn)
And off he goes - straight to the #EUbudget negotiations. I don't envy the budget commissioner π
A warm welcome to our keynote speaker: Tetyana Struk from Ukraine. She's CEO of a translation and localisation company.
Huh, I like this format: a "keynote interview" with Struk and Sitaram. Refreshing! (To be quite blunt, most keynotes fail at having the impact that they should have. In my personal experience, at least.)
It's truly astonishing how language professionals in Ukraine continue to do their work under the most appalling circumstances. Chapeau!
Struk brings up secondary (or vicarious) trauma - it's becoming a more visible topic in translation and interpreting, but deserves more attention!
Lovely to hear the shoutouts to Γscar Curros and Andrii Biesiedin for their great work. (I don't think they're on Mastodon yet.)
Struk praises the feeling of belonging and how helpful seeing yourself as part of the language community is. β₯οΈ
Technical break - time for a shoutout to my former colleagues at DG SCIC, the interpreters you can hear in the room and on the stream. You can learn more about their work here: https://ec.europa.eu/info/departments/interpretation_en #terplove #1nt
Now back with a panel discussion on how many ways there are to convey meaning between languages. Speakers: Nicolas Beckers (ARTE language service), DragoΘ Ciobanu (Professor of Computational Terminology and Machine Translation at University of Vienna), Amalie Foss (freelance translator) and Gian Maria Greco (Research Fellow), along with Aminda Leigh. Let's learn more about going beyond text-to-text.
"No freelancer should feel obliged to be a pioneer", says Amalie Foss. But "grab it when it works for you".
New (to me) acronym: SDH = subtitling for the deaf and hard-of-hearing.
Interesting to follow the discussion about enjoyment and motivation among translators π
Great first day - I'll have to sign off now. See you all tomorrow!
Jonathan Downie