August 2014

ITI SCOTNET NEWSLETTER

Photo

: M

oya

n B

renn

(Flick

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com

)

Isabel Hurtado de Mendoza MITI Tel: 07762 300068 ITI Scottish Network Newsletter Editor Email: editor@itiscotland.org.uk

Summer afternoons

It’s a Sunday today, and a summer

afternoon too. I could be out and about,

but I’m reading extremely interesting

event reports and articles submitted by

ScotNet members instead. And it’s a joy to

share with you all this knowledge and

passion for our profession.

While I work on this issue, I wonder about

summer time. How does it affect freelance

translators and interpreters? Do my

colleagues have more or less work

between June and September? Do they

take a long-awaited break, or do they

prefer to be there for their usual clients,

and even get new ones because their

regular translators are on holidays?

What about CPD? I have made good use of

the month of July and delved a bit further

into my specialisms, with three webinars

on literary translation, a webinar on

subtitling and a 20-hour intensive course

on dubbing. There’s plenty on offer for

traditionally slower months — whenever

those are for you!

Still, if you prefer to relax in the summer

and leave your working and training for

September, I’m sure you’ll find plenty of

inspiration in this issue. Just remember to

keep us in the loop!

Isabel ♦

“Summer afternoon—summer afternoon;

to me those have always been the two

most beautiful words in the English

language.”

~ Henry James

Inside this issue

Dates for your diary 2

There's more to CAT tools than love and hate 2

Atwood in Translationland 7

‘Terps north and south of the border unite 10

BP14: International conference for freelance

translators and interpreters 11

Hyped up on Swedish coffee 15

Continuous professional development survey –

The results 18

But how do they do it? 20

Emotional Intelligence 22

Recognising your own “wall” — another

approach to staying productive 23

Your committee under the spotlight 25

Member news 27

ScotNet grants 29

Looking forward to the next issue… 29

Your committee at a glance 30

ITI ScotNet Newsletter Page 2

Dates for your diary

ITI ScotNet Autumn Workshop ‘Link In, Tweet

Up, Branch Out!’, a joint event with Tweet Up

Alba: 18th October, from 9.30am Radisson Blu

Hotel, 301 Argyle Street, Glasgow. Anne

Diamantidis will speak on how to effectively

promote your public image on social media.

See the recently issued call notice for full

details and registration form.

The Scottish Society of the Chartered Institute

of Linguists (CIoL): 20th September, 2 pm,

Queen’s Hotel, Perth. ‘Teaching English as a

Foreign Language’ with speaker Alison Thomas,

an experienced TEFL teacher who currently

teaches at the University of Edinburgh. For

further information, please visit:

www.iol.org.uk/membership/soc_scottish.asp

or email: Anne Withers amwithers@msn.com.

Setting Up as a Freelance Translator ITI Online

Course: September-November 2014. Over

more than 20 hours of webinars and individual

sessions, you will learn how to develop a

freelance translation business and gain an

understanding of how the translation market

operates. For more information visit

www.iti.org.uk/professional-development-

events/iti-online-courses and read a report

from a SUFT Spring 2014 student on page 23.

ITI Conference ‘Renew, Rejuvenate, Regenerate

— Translating and interpreting in an evolving

world’: 23-25th April 2015. Two full days of

presentations, keynote speeches, panels and

fringe events, a pre-conference day of

masterclasses (23 April), and a conference

dinner. You can already find some preliminary

information and preregister here: http://iti-

conference.org.uk.

Translation Slam: 26th October at 5.30pm

(venue TBC). Scottish PEN are doing a series of

Translation Slams to promote the work of

translators and the value of books in

translation. The next event is part of the

Dundee Literary Festival

(www.dundee.ac.uk/literarydundee): Chiew-

Siah Tei, the Chinese-Malayan author of The

Hut of Little Leaping Fishes and The Mouse-

Deer Kingdom, will be providing a piece for

translation from Chinese into English. With the

participation of Esther Tyldesley who translated

the works of Xinran. For more information,

contact Rosemary Burnett at

www.scottishpen.org.

Language Show Live: 17-19th October, Olympia

(London). Sample the latest language products,

experience different cultures and discover a

wealth of opportunities to enrich your language

skills. Register to get your free tickets:

www.languageshowlive.co.uk/Content/Visit-

Language-Show-Live%20%20

For more events, remember to visit www.iti.org.uk, where you

will find the International Calendar of Events (ICE), or our

own website www.itiscotland.org.uk/diary.

ITI ScotNet Newsletter Page 3

There's more to CAT tools than love and hate

Our network's spring event was bound to be controversial. Professor Philipp Koehn, Chair

of Machine Translation at the University of Edinburgh was going to talk about an old foe

of many translators — computer-aided translation. Did he cause havoc? Read Renate

FitzRoy’s report to find out.

On March 22nd, a good crowd of ScotNetters

and their guests gathered at Heriot-Watt

University to listen to one of the most

renowned researchers in statistical machine

translation (SMT), Prof. Philipp Koehn. Philipp

is the original author of the Moses SMT

engine, which forms the basis for so many of

the current commercial machine translation

services. SMT works by analysing the

statistical probability of a (machine-

generated) translation for a given source

text. Right now, he is working on

CASMACAT, one of two large EU-supported

projects on integrating SMT with tools for

professional translators (the other being

MATECAT) and a whole host of other related

and unrelated networks. With their huge

computing capacities and vast corpora of

texts in 110 languages, Professor Koehn and

his team are on the cutting edge of machine

translation. They are not part of the

linguistics department, but of mathematics

and computer science.

Having been a student in the early 1970s, I

am perhaps well placed to put this project

and its significance in a historical

perspective. In “my day” linguistics was all

the rage and Chomsky’s seminal publications

on generative grammar were hotly debated

— the idea that all languages shared a deep

universal grammar structure underlying the

very different grammatical surface structures

— something hard-wired into the human

brain. And would it be possible to replicate

that on computers? Linguists learned to

program computers and began to adapt

grammar and semantic rules. It became quite

complex and involved — all those never-

ending tree structures of sentences. And yet

the question remained: Would a machine ever

be able to tell the difference between “out of

sight, out of mind” and “invisible idiot” — the

standing joke of the day?

When I went back to University in the late

1990s, things had moved on considerably.

Rather like pre-Copernican astronomy, the

attempt to develop rule-based machine

translation systems had come to a dead end.

The rules were unable to cope with the

complexities of the translation process. An

approach using the statistical laws of

probability, however, had been very

successful in the very limited field of

meteorology — Canadian weather forecasts

relied on a very usable machine translation

system between French and English.

While this was happening, software

developers were also looking at human

translation and thought that enormous

productivity gains could be made —

especially in technical translation — if text

that was once translated could be inserted

automatically. This would also help

consistency of terminology — CAT tools were

born.

ITI ScotNet Newsletter Page 4

We are now seeing the confluence of CAT

tools and SMT development. Machine

translation results are at our fingertips

without us having painstakingly built our own

terminology databases. Philipp began his talk

with a picture of the Rosetta Stone to

demonstrate that to the machine, the

hieroglyphs were one set of data, the Greek

letters a distinct other. By assigning a known

Greek word to a certain hieroglyphic symbol,

it was possible to decipher the Rosetta Stone,

and this is essentially the way machine

translation works. A Chinese text might be

reproduced by a machine translation system

as follows:

No, it is not your fault if you cannot make

much sense out of this string of words. At

this level of development, the system cannot

produce a recognisable grammatical

structure. It did much better with a French

text, where the structure is closer to English,

but still, to make sense, the example would

need quite a bit of human post-editing.

Basically, what machine translation is trying

to achieve is this:

Or, in words, taking a source text, analysing

it to produce an “Interlingua” version, from

which the machine generates the

corresponding target text. Interlingua

represents the “translating medium/agent”,

i.e. the machine translation process.

Research into SMT has considered this

problem according to the classical linguistic

divisions of lexical, syntactic and semantic

transfer. Professor Koehn introduced these

concepts by way of the problems the

machine may encounter at each of the

various levels:

Lexical: How does the machine distinguish

between the meanings of “bank” and

“interest” in the following two sentences?

- He deposited money in a bank account with

a high interest rate.

- Sitting on the bank of the Mississippi, a

passing ship piqued his interest.

Easy — it’s context! Feed the machine with

enough material, and the surrounding

context will help it decide what is meant. The

amount of material is no problem in this age

of the Internet, so to optimise results, it

helps to restrict the search to a well-defined

context.

Syntactic: The source text always comes in as

a string of words. Rendering the string “as is”

using a lexical approach would result in

ITI ScotNet Newsletter Page 5

examples like the translation from Chinese

above. So the machine needs some

algorithms that tell it the function of the

various “bits of string” — i.e. what represents

a subject, predicate/verb and object in a

sentence. It needs to consider the syntax.

Through this analysis, the string can be

replaced by a more “meaningful” tree, which

then helps to generate a corresponding tree

in the target language. Welcome back,

Chomsky! In a digital system like machine

translation, each binary decision takes time,

and the more complex a syntactic system,

the more choices must be made. Here is a

six-step example on how the system would

analyse, translate and re-order a relatively

simple German sentence:

In the case of English to German, English

syntax is pretty straightforward, whereas

German allows for a lot of variation.

However, if English structural rules are

imposed on the German syntactic tree, the

German output is still understandable. I

wonder what happens if the source language

is an agglutinative language like Turkish,

where some syllables in nouns and verbs

would have to be represented by words in

English?

Semantic: The research into semantic

transfer in SMT is still in its infancy.

Professor Koehn’s examples largely

resembled those from lexicography — one

word in the source language may be

translated in three different ways in the

target language, or idiomatic expressions

may be used that bear no resemblance at all.

The former problem may be resolved by big

data — e.g. how to translate the German

word “Sicherheit” into English — while the

latter would need human input. The rules for

machine translation may include the use of

equivalent syntactic structures and research

is looking at the development of Abstract

Meaning Representation (AMR) in the form of

algorithms. Right now and for the

foreseeable future, restricting the domain

(domain adaptation) of the text that goes

into the machine translation engine remains

the key recipe for success in terms of the

engine’s output.

Learning from data: On all three levels, Big

Data is vital for generating collocations and

fluency. The main corpora used for Professor

Koehn’s project come from the European

Parliament. These are high-quality texts,

with translations by well-qualified human

translators.

Recently, however, the European Parliament’s

translation service has no longer been able to

provide an entire corpus of all EU languages,

due to budget restrictions which have seen

translations produced only on demand. This

is quite a setback for researchers. We can see

from other online projects working with

corpora that quality is often quite an issue.

Other texts that are used for machine

translation trials include news texts, as they

are generally in the public domain and have

ITI ScotNet Newsletter Page 6

no issues concerning intellectual or

commercial property rights. Every year,

machine translation researchers pit their

systems against human translations (work is

commissioned from an agency) to measure

their success. Regular progress has been

recorded.

Working on machine translation is certainly

an intellectual challenge, and it is easy to see

that academics want to find out what can be

done. What is in it for big organisations (EU,

UN)? Mainly, they hope to speed up and

automate the translation process in order to

make more text available more quickly. This

is also why this project does not focus on a

few main languages, but is doing the

groundwork on 110 languages. What is in it

for the individual user? There are different

levels for different users: a user who just

wants to know the gist of something may be

tolerant of some errors — e.g. Google

Translate for websites. Another user might

want to communicate with somebody who

speaks a different language, in a situation

where any ambiguities can be sorted by

simply asking questions. Translations for

publication require higher quality and are the

domain of human translators. Researchers

hope that machine translation will also

facilitate human translation. What does this

development mean for individual translators?

We have already seen machine translation

plugins that work at lexical and possibly

syntactic levels in our CAT tools — these are

certainly handy, and the more context-

controlled these are, the more helpful they

can be. Increasingly, SMT research is going in

the direction of integrating with human input

and corrections in real time, so that the

machine can learn as the human translator

corrects it. Try it yourself with the

CASMACAT and MATECAT demos (these

provide an interactive front-end interface to

MOSES, Professor Koehn’s SMT system). But

beware — they won’t be the fastest of tools

running on a typical translator’s PC!

What is a bit unsettling for us translators is

the use of machine translation to produce

text. That is where the syntactic level comes

in. Having “productivity” in mind, big

organisations may want to save time —

putting a French text into the system to

produce an English translation. The English

version is then translated (hopefully by

humans) into other languages. The English,

however, largely follows French sentence

structures and is no longer an English

idiomatic text. Translators who work from

the English text must first restructure it to

get style and emphasis right before they can

even begin to translate. This is already

happening, and it’s annoying and frustrating

for trained translators who, after all, want to

get the meaning and tone of a text across. It

may well take longer than having the text

manually translated into English first.

What’s next? Well, in addition to interactive

or real-time human input/correction, the

next big thing is integrating with speech. As

statistical processes, both SMT and speech

recognition rely on maths, and the two

branches are converging. See the EU-BRIDGE

project for an example. ♦

CASMACAT: www.casmacat.eu

MATECAT: www.matecat.com

Moses: www.statmt.org/moses

SMT research: www.statmt.org

SMT Group at University of Edinburgh (Philipp’s

team): www.statmt.org/ued EU-BRIDGE: www.eu-bridge.eu

ITI ScotNet Newsletter Page 7

Photo

: Besh

ef

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m)

Atwood in Translationland

Back on the 18th of February, ScotNet member Robert Arnott couldn’t help biting the

apple of temptation. Being an amateur author and translator, he had to attend the Sebald

Lecture at the British Library, London, courtesy of the British Centre for Literary

Translation and the University of East Anglia.

Last November, when I learned that Margaret

Atwood, doyenne of speculative fiction, was

going to give a talk at the British Library

about her own work in translation, I couldn’t

resist the temptation to book myself a couple

of days in London. In writing my own

speculative novel (don’t worry — I’ll let you

know if it ever gets published!) I’ve

sometimes wondered how well some

passages or invented names might transfer

to French or Russian, for instance, and what

the etiquette is for communicating with

translators. I was intrigued to hear from one

of the world’s great writers about what

happens when otherworldly neologisms and

translation come together.

In front of a capacity audience of around

250, the British Library’s Kristian Jensen

introduced the 25th anniversary lecture

honouring WG Sebald, writer and founder of

the BCLT in 1989. The event was

enthusiastically facilitated by award-winning

author Naomi Alderman, who certainly

pleased the translator-heavy audience with

such opening thoughts as “We don’t think

enough about what important writers

translators are”. She recounted that she was

once involved in a workshop where 14

English to Italian translators tackled some

passages from her work in analytical detail —

she likened the experience to having 14

experts prosciutto-slicing her brain.

Robert couldn’t resist the temptation to hear

Margaret Atwood talk about translation.

Alderman then introduced Margaret

Atwood’s “wide-travelling mind”, and the

Canadian author embarked on her gently

paced, thought-provoking, informative and

highly entertaining talk. She promised to take

a “peripatetic, serendipitous, diversionary

and odd” approach. It was, and in the most

delightful way.

Atwood started off by mentioning the letters

of the late WG Sebald to his translators and,

evoking some common ground with Sebald,

she spoke about the period of her own life

spent in Norfolk, in the 1980s. Much hilarity

was provided by her descriptions of the

locals’ tales about the haunted old cottages

of the area, featuring such spectral

characters as a “headless woman — although

she was kept in the kitchen, as headless

women often are”.

ITI ScotNet Newsletter Page 8

Margaret Atwood’s early life was spent in

Québec, but in a remote, indeed cut-off,

location, without the immersion of living in a

French-speaking community. She regrets not

benefiting from today’s language labs — or

indeed modern teaching. When she visited

France, she was stymied when wanting to ask

for, say, a cup of coffee or accommodation

with a bathroom — “neither of these having

been mentioned by Racine”.

Atwood told the story of a fellow North

American settling in a small French town,

puzzled as to why it was so difficult to find

the health food store that must surely be

around somewhere. Asking for “le magasin

de nourriture de santé” only provoked the

shaking of heads. Trying to explain further,

the foreigner asked where she could find a

shop selling “nourriture sans préservatifs”.

Homing in on literary translation at last,

Atwood declared that “Choices that bedevil

the writer bedevil the translator 10 times

over”. With relief, she added, “At least I don’t

have to translate my own freaking books”,

and she admitted, “I am sometimes [the

author corrected this to ‘always’] a nightmare

for my translators”. With all those puns and

neologisms, who could argue?

Now we were getting into the nitty-gritty of

word choice, both in the writing and in the

translation: we simply have to get it right, as

“books are language, and nothing else”.

Photo: University of East Anglia website

The questions familiar to all of us as

translators, especially literary translators,

were soon covered. What is wanted? Plenty of

colourful foreign phrases, or a cultural

translation so complete that people reading

the original and the translation wouldn’t

know which is which? And the old chestnut of

deciding whether to explain something in the

body of text, or using footnotes or a

glossary. As Margaret Atwood recognises,

“such questions keep translators awake at

night”. Indeed, the author is convinced that

some of her books are a little longer in the

translated version precisely because of the

unavoidable need for extra explanation

compared with the original. There will be

instances where the translator has no choice

but to render an essential source word with a

double meaning by using two words or

phrases instead of just one.

We all know that translators are alert to fine

detail, and the audience was delighted to

hear how our fellow professionals often

highlight errors in the original text that

might be overlooked by the professional

editor or proofreader. “Nobody is going to be

reading your text more minutely than a

translator.” It’s not just linguistic points that

get picked up — one translator was intrigued

to note that a lift boy in a story was

“Choices that bedevil the writer bedevil the translator 10 times

over."

ITI ScotNet Newsletter Page 9

apparently the same person as the important

ministerial adviser. Was this high-ranking

official working in the hotel undercover to

spy on people? What an extraordinary plot

development! No, the author had to admit —

the use of the same name was simply an

error.

For the translator, plot-driven works are

generally easier to work with but, with the

fantastical, inventive words of Margaret

Atwood to contend with, extensive queries

from translators are inevitable. Atwood spoke

about the large volume of letters she would

receive from her translators — and now of

course emails. The questions might be on

what the precise relationship of an uncle or

an in-law is, there being different words in

some languages. There is the culture-

specific: “What is granola?” Or even, “Is this

sentence funny?”

Communication comes in from translators in

some places, but not others. Atwood’s

experience is that texts simply get changed

in certain countries, and she has to rely on

whatever feedback she can get. Perhaps not

surprisingly, Franco’s regime would not allow

the publication of The Handmaid’s Tale in

Spanish, so its first publication in that

language was South American. The novel is

published in Iran, the author said in response

to a question — but don’t expect to find it as

a set text in every US school…

What about Atwood’s poetry? Yes, it has been

widely translated too, although, inevitably,

the result tends to be either good poems that

are not good translations, or accurate

translations that “didn’t hack it as poems”.

Atwood nevertheless believes that achieving

both is possible.

Margaret Atwood had praise for

simultaneous interpreters too, and wondered

just how much they improved international

relations, changing the dialogue from rude

into diplomatic when necessary.

If there is one fundamental thought from this

lecture to close with, it is to remember how

writing from scratch is a way of capturing,

indeed translating, experience, place, objects

and people with our choice of words — “All

writing is an act of translation”.

PS — I did spot Eyvor Fogarty leaving the

auditorium, and I was pleased to read her

column reviewing the event in the May-June

2014 issue of ITI Bulletin. As Eyvor

mentioned in her article, the whole lecture is

available on YouTube, at

www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4_K3EkPHr4 —

I can promise you an entertaining and

affirming hour and a half. ♦

Writing from scratch is a way of capturing, indeed translating, experience, place, objects and

people with our choice of words – “All writing is an act of

translation”.

ITI ScotNet Newsletter Page 10

‘Terps north and south of the border unite

It’s a time of trouble for interpreters nationwide, and the National Register of Public

Service Interpreters felt like they needed to raise their profile. When they came up to

Scotland in March, with a clear agenda in mind, Anne Withers was there to listen.

For those of you familiar with interpreting,

and public service interpreting in particular,

the NRPSI does not need an introduction. For

others, a brief outline might be helpful. The

NRPSI was, from its conception until April

2011, administered by the Chartered

Institute of Linguists as a register of

professionally qualified and experienced

interpreters in the field of public services —

police, courts, health, social services, etc.

Now an independent, not-for-profit

organisation, NRPSI Ltd continues to maintain

this register and to promote standards in the

profession.

Despite its name, the NRPSI does not have a

significant presence in Scotland and it was

with a view to raising its profile that the

Chairman of the Board of Directors, Ted

Sangster, and the CEO, Stephen Bishop, came

to Edinburgh at the beginning of March for a

series of meetings with Heriot-Watt

University, interpreters from the register,

members of professional bodies and

agencies providing interpreting services.

As well as wishing to increase awareness of

the register, Ted and Stephen were anxious

to find out how the NRPSI can be made more

relevant and more supportive to those

working as public service interpreters in

Scotland. Like their counterparts south of the

border, PSIs here have found themselves

increasingly disillusioned by the way their

professional standing has been undermined

following the awarding of a Scottish

government contract for the provision of

interpreting services in the criminal justice

sector to a single agency. When the same

situation arose in England and Wales, it led to

many highly qualified interpreters refusing to

work for lower rates of pay and some high

profile instances of unqualified interpreters

being used resulting in court cases

subsequently being postponed or even

collapsing (see the House of Commons

Justice Committee Report from February

2013

www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm2012

13/cmselect/cmjust/645/645.pdf and the

government’s response

www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/u

ploads/attachment_data/file/192487/jsc-

report-interpreting.pdf).

NRPSI Ltd, the Chartered Institute of

Linguists, the Institute of Translation and

Interpreting and other interested bodies have

been working together to campaign for the

provision of properly funded, professional

interpreting services in the justice sector

under the banner Professional Interpreters

for Justice (PI4J). For the most recent

document outlining the approach to

improving the provision of interpreting

services in the Scottish criminal justice

system, see www.copfs.gov.uk/

images/Documents/Equality_Diversity/Skills

%20for%20Justice%20report.pdf. SITA

(Scottish Interpreters and Translators

ITI ScotNet Newsletter Page 11

Association), a body set up to campaign as

PI4J has done in England and Wales, has been

working to reverse the undermining of

professional interpreters in the public service

sector in Scotland and the situation here has

improved with the government contract for

court work now awarded to a different

agency.

There are likely to be follow-up meetings

and visits involving representatives of NRPSI

Ltd here in Scotland with some collaboration

on continuing professional development for

interpreters also mooted. For more

information about the organisation, see its

website at www.nrpsi.co.uk. ♦

BP14: International conference for freelance translators and

interpreters

As you all know, ScotNetters like travelling far afield to attend CPD events. Corinne

Durand and Alison Hughes are among the most avid travellers as regular readers will

know. Back in early May, they went to Budapest for what turned out to be two hectic days.

Alison reports.

What attracted me to BP14? Apart from the

fabulous city it was being held in, the

conference promised varied topics and

interesting speakers and the organisation

looked impressive. I would also have the

chance to meet many translators I engage

with on social media.

BP doesn’t actually stand for Budapest but for

business and practice and, over the two days,

I picked up one consistent message: good

translators and — even more importantly —

good writers, will survive and be very much

in demand.

Machine translation, as we know, is here to

stay and will become increasingly

sophisticated. There will be a split, with MT

handling bulk texts, social media content and

even (perhaps) repetitive technical content.

Marta Stelmaszak summarised it very nicely

in her session The Powerful Freelancer:

Knowledge workers will be in demand.

Knowledge workers (and this very much

applies to translators) are paid for what they

do with their brains and not what they do

with their fingers.

We should aim to be experts in our field:

Experience

Xpertise

Passion

Excellence

Recognition

Transferability

To do this we must think like an expert, feel

like an expert, act like an expert, master the

topic and create our niche. Most importantly

we need to position ourselves like an expert

and change our mindset. We need to get

better at selling our services. If we are

worried about sending our brochure to

prospective clients, we should turn the

concept around and decide we would be

ITI ScotNet Newsletter Page 12

failing the clients who could benefit from our

services if we didn’t send them the brochure.

In terms of writing skills, in her talk Writers

Worth Paying For, Rose Newell began by

asking us what we call ourselves: writer,

translator, wordsmith… Different attendees

liked different concepts for different reasons,

but I particularly liked the term ‘commercial

writer’, which avoids the negative

connotations associated with the term writer

(struggling artist, nowadays everybody is

writing a book…).

Following on from Martha’s point that

knowledge workers will survive in the

increasingly competitive translation market,

Rose drew a distinction between accurate

translations and effective translations. She

suggested we need to

hone our writing skills

and sell:

• entry to new markets

• new ideas

• new strategies

• cultural knowledge

• results

• the client an image of

where they want to be.

This fits nicely with Marta’s idea of becoming

an expert in our field. But why should we do

this? Can we not just continue to operate as

translators? Surely there will always be

agencies we can work for?

Of course you can, but the market is

changing. Ralf Lemster opened day 2 of the

conference with a session on specialisation

with this very message. There is a gap

opening up between the huge

agencies/companies and boutique

agencies/freelancers, and he was quick to

point out it’s a global trend. It’s not just

happening to us “poor translators”.

He used the example of a taxi app that has

been developed in Germany. The app is

being widely marketed. With the onset of this

technology taxi drivers were forced to sign

up to continue to operate. Then the

goalposts were moved and they were being

asked to pay a higher commission to the app

owner and finding themselves working for

less and less money. Alongside this, one

enterprising taxi driver bought himself a new

cab and started offering premium services.

He takes older people right up to their door

with their shopping and delivers for

businesses (sending text messages to

confirm the delivery has been made). He has

remained in business without having to pay

commission to the app

owner.

Ralf then handed over to

a panel of translators

who each spoke a little

about their specialisms:

Percy Balemans: fashion

Valeria Aliperta: legal and fashion

Ralf Lemster: financial

Tess Whitty: IT

Konstantin Kisin: legal, financial and video

games

The discussion was then opened up for

questions.

The general consensus was that you should

be an expert in your field, or at least know a

lot about it, before you market yourself as a

specialist translator. Percy mentioned she

started out working in a field in which she

The general consensus was that you

should be an expert in your field, or at

least know a lot about it, before you

market yourself as a specialist translator.

ITI ScotNet Newsletter Page 13

wasn’t an expert but about which she knew a

lot. She continued to learn and the turning

point was when she felt comfortable

attending an industry event and exchanging

with other professionals on their level and

using their language.

How do you choose a specialism?

Unsurprisingly the consensus was that you

choose something you love but make sure

there’s a market for it. Our own Corinne

Durand suggested it could be more profitable

to choose something you’re good at. Ralf

suggested specialists in niche markets

should market themselves slightly broader to

attract customers to their website. He himself

is a specialist in the language of the financial

markets, but markets himself as a financial

translator and passes on any work he can’t

handle to other financial translators. When

marketing your services, don’t talk about

yourself but what you do. Build networks

with colleagues, clients and potential clients.

This leads nicely to the topic of forming

small cooperatives with other translators.

Tanya Quintieri gave us a concrete example

of how this is done in her talk The Lone

Freelancer no more: network with fellow

freelancers to create “teams on demand” and

market your cooperation at a professional

level. The key to success is obviously

working with people you trust, on a give-

and-take basis, and using intelligent

workflows and internet tools. But the key is

to market your cooperation:

- set up a website or landing page

- produce business cards for the

cooperation

- if possible share a workspace

- transparency.

From a legal perspective it’s best to create a

company with a legal agreement. In her case,

for each project 10% of earnings go to the

company and the remainder to the

translator(s) working on the project. The

translators earn different rates and know

what the others earn (transparency).

In the afternoon of 3rd May, Nigel Saych told

us about his “family” of translators and the

tool he had developed to manage the

workflow in his two-part Team up for

Success workshop. In his case, a condition of

the collaboration is that all translators

involved are paid the same hourly rate. With

97 translators and counting, it’s the only

manageable solution and a condition of the

collaboration. The tool (Word Team —

www.wordteam.eu) is available for use by

other groups (free of charge for groups of up

to 5 translators and 5 clients and then for a

monthly fee). The idea is that a team of

translators can work together without

employing somebody to do the PM’s job.

Groups are normally set up by a small

number of translators and the founder

translators become admins. There must be a

main admin who liaises with the client but

this function can be assigned to any one

admin at any time. The idea is that the group

decides its own terms and conditions and

modus operandi and the tool provides the

means to put it into practice. Indeed, the

“terms and conditions” are mandatory and

clients must accept them (tick box) before

confirming a job. One question both Tanya

and Nigel struggled a little to answer was:

How are you different to an agency? The

conclusion drawn was that it is very much a

collaboration with more transparency and

less of a “them and us” approach.

ITI ScotNet Newsletter Page 14

In this changing world where the “middle

man” is disappearing, collaboration might

just be the way forward. And to collaborate, a

group will need tools. Inevitably these will

need to be cloud-based and Anne-Charlotte

Perrigaud’s session entitled IT security, big

data and cloud computing explained just

what that meant. We’re all familiar with

Dropbox, Facebook and many other cloud

applications. To explain the cloud-based

concept, Anne-Charlotte used the

buying/renting a house analogy. If we buy

software packages we’re stuck with them but

if we rent (cloud computing) we can stop

using them when we no long need them or

only pay for the ones we need when we need

them. And of course access from anywhere is

also a plus.

With advances in technology, compatibility is

no longer an issue (think xml for CAT tools)

but of course security is paramount. She

drew a distinction between SaaS — software

as a service (CAT tools, TM tools, etc.) — and

infrastructure as a service (cloud storage).

Many agencies have adopted automated

systems and the downside is that all your

assets (TMs etc.) belong to them. If you are

working with direct clients you need your

own cloud. Unfortunately I had to leave

before the security part to attend another

session but I did catch one essential tip. If

you are storing data on the cloud, you must

never use a free application.

Regrettably I missed Tess Whitty talking

about websites for freelance translators and

Inga Michaeli’s session about translating

guidebooks, but I did have the pleasure of

listening to Anne Diamantidis on SEO, which

I’ll not go into because she’s coming to talk

to ScotNet in the autumn. Believe me, she’s a

great speaker and you’re in for a treat.

There were so many sessions I didn’t attend

(and some I attended that weren’t worth

reporting on) but the messages I took home

from BP14 are:

- be an expert and act like an expert

- learn what the client wants and learn how

to sell in your target market

- hone your writing skills

- don’t moan, do something.

And last, but not least, we enjoyed a wide

range of social activities including a walking

tour of Budapest, a dinner cruise on the

Danube, a farewell dinner at a spectacular

venue and a city bus tour. There were 150

attendees from all over the world with a large

contingent from the Eastern European

countries. Contacts were made, business

cards exchanged and friendships forged. It

was truly an unforgettable event. ♦

ScotNetters Alison and Corinne relaxing after the

conference [Photo: Corinne Durand]

ITI ScotNet Newsletter Page 15

Hyped up on Swedish coffee

On these pages, we usually recommend ScotNetters to venture abroad for CPD events,

but we might refrain from doing so in the future. On 9-11th May, Marion Greenway

attended the Swedish Association of Professional Translators (SFÖ) Conference in

Jönköping, Sweden. She learned, networked and had fun; but she was also at risk of heart

failure!

The title of the SFÖ Conference 2014 was

Pride and Enterprisingness and the theme

was pride in our profession and raising its

profile in industry. It was held in Kulturhuset

Spira, built by Jönköping County Council and

opened in 2011 as a new municipal space for

theatre, music and dance. It is an impressive

building with flowing lines and plenty of

light. The conference began on the Friday

with a welcome speech from the Mayor of

Jönköping, who gave us a very enthusiastic

summary of the history of the town and its

matchstick-making and weapon-producing

industries, complete with PowerPoint

presentation.

Kulturhuset Spira [Photo: Marion Greenway]

This was followed by a coffee break with

Swedish coffee and fika (Swedish cake). In my

absence, I had forgotten how strong the

coffee is there. It was served on arrival, at the

morning coffee break, after lunch and at the

afternoon coffee break and again after

dinner. After drinking four cups the first day,

I was totally wired and remembered I was not

used to it. So on Saturday I cut down to three

cups and had only two on Sunday. It was very

hard to resist as it is so good.

During the frequent coffee breaks there were

ample networking opportunities. I met other

ScanNet members, Rob Williams and Janine

Roberts, who were very friendly and helpful. I

also met an ex-colleague and friend from

when I worked in Germany, as well as a

project manager who works for STP Nordic,

an agency in Southampton that I work for,

and another couple of clients.

A wide range of workshops was available

with three options for every time slot. On

Friday afternoon I attended “Sluta jobba!”

(Stop work!) by Micael Dahlén, Professor of

Economics at Stockholm School of

Economics, also known as the rock star

professor. Dahlén has been ranked number

10 in the world among researchers in his

field of consumer behaviour, creativity and

marketing, as well as being an author and

internationally acclaimed speaker. He spoke

ITI ScotNet Newsletter Page 16

engagingly about life, happiness, love, career

and why it is a bad idea to work. He was

inspirational in a crazy sort of way.

On the Friday night, there was a buffet and

storytelling event in Jönköping County

Museum for our entertainment. Before dinner

we had the chance to look at the exhibits and

were offered an alcohol-free welcome drink;

the other Brits and I were obviously

wondering where the booze was. We soon

discovered we were allowed one glass of

wine with dinner and after that we had to

pay, not surprisingly considering the cost of

alcohol in Sweden. We were fed lovely

Scandinavian food: salmon with chilli cream

and potato gratin, followed by forest fruit

panacotta. The after-dinner entertainment

consisted of tales and sagas from Småland,

told by the excellent storyteller and founder

of The Museum of Legends in Ljungby and

the Ljungby Storytelling Festival, Per

Gustavsson. Dressed as the legendary

storyteller, Mickel i Långhult, he told folk

tales from Småland of poor farmers,

enterprising crofter boys, clever princesses,

bewitched children, masterful thieves and

rogues.

After an early morning coffee, I was ready for

more. Saturday began with “Manage your

own affairs” by Ian Hinchliffe, who had been

a university lecturer in England and Wales

and teacher at a private school in Norway

before joining IKEA in 1984 as corporate

language manager. Most excitingly, he is also

the co-author of Swedish: A Comprehensive

Grammar. He spoke very eloquently in

Swedish from his 30 years of experience

about how to make a professional impression

with your customers as a freelancer and

small business owner.

My next choice was “Develop your strengths

at work and in life” by life coach Charlotte

Hågård. Charlotte has written several popular

books on career development, she is a

speaker, entrepreneur and inspirational

coach. She is often interviewed in Swedish

media as an expert on career and leadership

questions and has worked as a columnist for

the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter.

Charlotte talked about how to find your

strengths and how to strengthen your

personal brand through increased insight.

Her main message was that we all have

talent; we just have to find it.

Hovrattstorget [Photo: Marion Greenway]

After an excellent lunch which was paid for

by Jönköping County Council, the afternoon

workshops began with “Linguistic self-

confidence — is it necessary?” with Ann

Cederberg from The Language Council of

Sweden. She spoke about Swedish language

Life coach Charlotte Hågård talked about how to find your

strengths. Her main message was that we all have talent; we just

have to find it.

ITI ScotNet Newsletter Page 17

policy and how it can affect the individual, as

well as the Council’s work to promote the

use of Swedish in Sweden to make it a

national, practical, everyday language for all

inhabitants. I also managed to sneak into the

second half of SDL’s Studio 2014 seminar —

a presentation of the new features, tips,

tricks etc.

After another pleasant coffee break, it was

time to nip back to the hotel to get ready for

the Saturday evening entertainment, which

was a banquet and live music in the Elite

Stora Hotellet, a beautiful old hotel with

lovely ceilings. Unfortunately I had a dizzy

spell and had to go for a lie down so I missed

the dinner and music (the theme was the

history of the juke box with 60s music and

dancing). Apparently the three-course meal

was tasty but a bit skimpy. Back in my room I

watched Eurovision but only made it through

the first half hour or so before I decided I’d

reached my pain threshold and had to switch

it off.

On the Sunday morning, Cecilia Enbäck, from

Translator Scandinavia, and Anders Uddfors,

CEO of Semantix, gave a talk on the role of

translation companies in promoting

translation as a profession. They answered

questions and spoke about the issues that

are pertinent to the industry from their point

of view. They mentioned price pressure and

cheap rates from India and China etc. at the

expense of quality. According to a survey,

their customers said that quality is the most

important factor for them, followed by

deadline and last of all price. These findings

were received with some scepticism by the

freelancers present.

This was followed by “Structure and

package!” by Elisabet Sannas, a management

consultant who works with business

development for small and medium-sized

businesses. She works mainly with sales,

marketing and customer relations and spoke

about how to find, package, market and get

paid for all small services. The final seminar

of the day was “Anatomy for translators” with

Sture Axelsson, who gave us practical advice

on choosing medical terminology according

to the target audience and naming body

parts in Swedish, English and Latin.

The conference concluded with a closing

speech by the Convenor of SFÖ, Ingrid

Olsson, and another lovely lunch in

Kulturhuset Spira. I spent the rest of the

afternoon doing a bit of last-minute

shopping to get a couple of novels and some

Scandinavian food from the supermarket,

including flat bread, coffee, cheese and

Maribou chocolate. All in all, it was well

worth it, I had great fun, met lots of people,

spoke lots of Swedish and reacquainted

myself with one of my favourite countries.

Next year the SFÖ conference is being held in

Eskilstuna from 8-10 May and I would

heartily recommend it to any Scandinavian

linguists. Now I have a dilemma as I also

want to go to the ITI conference in

Newcastle… ♦

Ostra Storgatan [Photo: Marion Greenway]

ITI ScotNet Newsletter Page 18

Continuous professional development survey – The results

You might remember that Barbara Canton recently conducted a survey about continuous

professional development undertaken by translators in Scotland. Having had a good

response from ScotNetters, she kindly agreed to share the results of her study with us.

Readers of this newsletter will have received

my email via the ScotNet mailing list looking

for participants for my online survey about

continuous professional development

undertaken by translators in Scotland. In

addition to ITI ScotNetters, the request to

participate also went out to the mailing list of

attendees of the regular Proz.com powwow

meet-ups in Edinburgh to ensure a balanced

input from translators who are members of a

professional body and those who are not. I

would like to use this opportunity to thank

everyone who took the time to answer the

survey. I had 39 responses in total. The data

has now been analysed and has revealed

some expected and some rather unexpected

results.

Members of professional bodies undertake

more CPD than non-members

I was impressed by the amount of CPD many

translators undertake to brush up existing

skills or learn new ones. When asked about

the number of days they spent on CPD over

the past 12 months, almost 40% reported

that they had dedicated more than five days

to training. 13% had not undertaken any CPD

in this period at all, with the rest of

respondents being spread out between these

two responses.

Before I conducted the survey, I had expected

to find that members of a professional body

tend to undertake more CPD than translators

with no membership, but I was surprised by

just how big the difference was. While 60% of

the non-members reported not having

undertaken any CPD, the figure was under 7%

for members. Membership categories,

however, did not play a significant role.

Less predictable was the finding that female

translators are much more conscientious in

developing their knowledge and skills than

male translators. According to their

responses, about 44% of the latter did not

develop their professional expertise during

the last year. It also came as a surprise to me

that part-time translators on average spend

more time on CPD than full-time translators.

None of the part-timers dedicated less than

two days to continuous training, and 60%

even reported having spent more than five

days on CPD.

ITI ScotNet Newsletter Page 19

At a first glance, it would seem that the rate

of translators not undertaking any CPD is

slightly higher the more experienced a

translator is. Some translators with many

years of experience commented that they

found it very difficult to find training suitable

for their high level of expertise, which would

explain this finding. However, given the few

responses in this category, more data would

be required to validate this hypothesis.

Out of the skills enhanced in CPD, subject

knowledge was most popular followed by

language and business skills.

Face-to-face events very popular

Given the vast variety of languages and

specialist fields translators work in, it comes

as no surprise that tailor-made informal CPD

such as reading a specialist publication is

very common. 67% of all respondents said

they had undertaken this form of CPD in the

past 12 months. Webinars proved equally

popular. More than 70% of all translators

asked attended a webinar (either live or on

demand) in the last year. But in-person

events did not trail much. 63% of the

respondents stated that they had attended an

in-person seminar and 30% had been to an

in-person conference. In view of the fact that

most in-person events tend to be centred

around Edinburgh, I find this finding quite

remarkable, all the more so as a postcode

comparison revealed no significant

relationship between the remoteness of a

translator’s location and their preference to

participate in online or in-person events. The

popularity of in-person seminars and

conferences is consistent with the finding

that 66% of all translators participating in the

survey stated networking with colleagues as

one of their reasons to undertake CPD.

ScotNetters will also not be surprised to hear

that the ITI was by far the most popular

organiser of CPD events with 64% of the

respondents participating in an event

organised by them.

Overall, the intrinsic motivation to develop

new skills and knowledge seems to be much

stronger than formal requirements. Thus,

62% of translators responded that they felt

they needed additional skills to do their job

well, and 75% said that they wanted to learn

something new out of interest. Only 13%

reported that CPD was a requirement for

their membership in a professional body,

while 25% were keen to demonstrate their

professionalism to their clients. It became

ITI ScotNet Newsletter Page 20

Photo

: danis

abella (

Flick

r.co

m)

obvious from some of the respondents’

comments that they view continuous training

as an essential part of their job.

More than 70% of all translators asked attended

a webinar in the last year

To sum up, the survey has confirmed some

assumptions such as the relationship

between membership in a professional body

and the amount of continuous professional

development a translator undertakes, but has

also produced some unexpected findings.

When interpreting the data, it has to be taken

into account, though, that there is always a

risk of bias as those translators most

dedicated to and interested in CPD were

more likely to take the time to answer the

survey. The largely quantitative data

gathered in this survey also has its

limitations when it comes to explaining the

findings. Other more qualitative research

methods would need to be employed, for

example, to explain why women outdo men

in terms of the time they spend on CPD.

If you have any questions about the survey or

would like to get more information about the

results, please write to

barbara.canton@gmx.de. ♦

But how do they do it?

Successful translators have to start somewhere. Read on to learn

about what the ITI Setting Up as a Freelance Translator course

meant for ITI Spanish Network member Cynthia Gandeborn.

Life before the course

I decided that I wanted to work in the

translation industry four years ago, while

participating on a leadership project in Italy. I

had joined an international group of

representatives from different charities,

NGOs and think-tank organisations. The

nationalities involved were Polish, French and

Macedonian, and I, Peruvian-born,

represented the UK. English was the

language of communication; however, on this

specific day the only members of the host

organisation who could attend did not speak

any English. No one

else in the group

spoke Italian, but

as a Spanish

speaker, due to the

similarities of the

languages and

because they spoke

very slowly, I

managed to understand most of what they

were saying. Without giving it a second

thought I interpreted in both directions and

we were able to communicate! The incident

Cynthia Gandeborn of

Ryhall Translation &

Language Services (www.ryhall-tls.com)

ITI ScotNet Newsletter Page 21

went unnoticed, I think, because we just got

on with the rest of the schedule and

successfully completed two weeks of

training. But not for me, I realised that I

wanted to learn and train to work as a

translator — I definitely wanted to build

communication bridges.

This is why I spent the next few years of my

life studying for an MA in Translation, while

still holding on to my part-time job. I

obtained my degree after two years of hard

work and little sleep, and thought that I was

ready to face the translation industry. I had

my degree, but did not know what to do

next; I did not know how to tackle the egg-

or-chicken dilemma of getting translation

experience to support

applications to acquire

translation experience.

Does this sound

familiar?

The course

The ITI SUFT course was

just what I needed: an

eye-opening, informative, highly practical

and useful course for new graduates and

entrants to the profession, through which the

ITI offered a new graduate like me much-

needed coaching and advice. It was delivered

by eight experienced and successful

translators, who were exceptionally

supportive and highly approachable, and who

shared their experiences and offered

individual advice and tips to all participants.

Each one of them delivered a live

presentation, in the form of a webinar, which

was followed one or two days later by an

online discussion. It was an intensive and

demanding course, as each presentation

included at least one time-limited activity

generally due before its corresponding

discussion — in order, of course, to benefit

from timely feedback. The course offered me

guidance in recognising my unique selling

points. It provided me with advice on making

the most of the experience gained through

pro bono work and offered me great tips for

producing a translator-specific CV and cover

letter to showcase my abilities. I gained an

insight into communicating with clients and

much-needed advice on social media dos

and don’ts; and among other things, we

discussed specialisation and the value of

networking. To conclude, each individual unit

equipped me for the final task, which was to

put together my own business plan.

Life after the course

I learnt to take a good

look at myself to

acknowledge my key

strengths, the very

same strengths that I

had ignored when

comparing myself to

experienced, successful and younger

translators. I came to value the experience I

had gained through my previous career, a

fair share of knowledge and understanding

that I could bring into the field of translation

as a starting point for potential

specialisation. I was now ready to take a step

forward; and I took that step. Thus, with my

family’s support and armed with my business

plan, I am now a full-time freelance

translator working in the areas of literature

and general communications, human rights

and social policy, and, in the near future,

telecoms, the environment and technology as

well. ♦

The ITI SUFT course was just what I needed: an eye-opening,

informative, highly practical and useful course for new graduates and entrants to the profession.

ITI ScotNet Newsletter Page 22

Emotional Intelligence

It’s the section you’ve been waiting for — another instalment in the series on thriving as

a freelancer and avoiding “the wall” by Karen Tkaczyk and Laura Ball. Shall we start off

with Karen?

When a project manager emails and calls you

four times in fifteen minutes at 5pm on a

Friday, do you recognise their stress and

respond graciously? Or are you indignant?

When you have too much work this week, do

you find a way to say no to customers that

brings them back the next time they have a

suitable project? Do you come across as dry

or dismissive in your emails, and less

approachable than a peer who the client

contacts instead next week? Do you

recognise when stress at home is affecting

your work or vice versa? Do you see the

difference between how you responded to

the email from Ms Jones and to the one from

Mr Brown based solely on how you were

feeling that day? If so, will you control it next

week?

These examples show the need to recognise

and understand emotions in yourself and

others. We can all work to improve this in our

lives. My impression is that when we

understand our emotions better we are much

less likely to hit a wall. I also think that

understanding how we react and interact

helps our performance at work (and

elsewhere, but I’ll limit this short piece to the

T&I context).

Emotional intelligence analyses each

individual in four ways: two look at how we

function internally, and two look at how we

interact with others. Here they are.

We need to be self-aware (have the ability to

perceive aspects of our personality,

behaviour, emotions, motivations, and

thought processes) before we will be able to

apply the concepts to other people. It is hard

to be objective about ourselves, so if you

have never used psychometric tests on

personality type (e.g. Myers Briggs) or team-

working preferences (e.g. Belbin) that is a

good place to start looking at yourself. If that

is unappealing, how about writing down

portions of your life story every day?

Analysing experiences can help show why

you behave the way you do in certain

contexts. Once we understand ourselves, we

can move onto self-management. The aim

would be unconscious action but to work on

ourselves we usually have to take conscious

action to change behaviour and recognise a

potential mistake as it is happening. Then we

can adjust our behaviour accordingly. Social

awareness is about understanding the

dynamics between individuals and in groups.

Areas you might consider would be

compassion and conflict, and how

comfortable you are socially. The final

ITI ScotNet Newsletter Page 23

quadrant, one to work on once you have

some grasp of the first three, is Relationship

Management. Once you have that one down

you might maintain good relationships,

communicate clearly, inspire and influence

others, work well in a team, and manage

conflict. People who have all that mastered

would handle the examples I began with

calmly and constructively.

The concepts I discuss here are based on

material by Travis Bradberry and Jean

Greaves, and are widely available in books,

quizzes, courses and other “self-help”

materials by them and other authors. For

instance, you could take a look at

www.talentsmart.com. Googling the concept

will provide a huge number of resources on

the topic.

So one freelancer succeeds and another fails.

One translator hits a wall routinely, leading

to low (or slow) patches. Another has a

struggling practice. Yet another appears to

thrive, gaining new clients year on year and

speaking out on how much they love the

industry. Looking at experience or habits or

knowledge or intellectual capacity rarely

explains all the differences. Analysing

emotional intelligence can often be helpful to

fill that gap. How do you feel today? ♦

Recognising your own “wall” — another approach to staying

productive

And here is Laura’s take!

Following on from the previous article, I'm

fairly sure that, regardless of your individual

level of emotional intelligence, you will

probably still be familiar with the pattern of

going through cycles of enthusiasm followed

by general fed-upness, periods of energy

followed by fatigue, and times of

productiveness followed by stress. It can

however be difficult, if not impossible, to

predict when and how these cycles will occur.

This is made harder by the fact that our work

is not constant or predictable and may itself

come in irregular bursts that don’t coincide

with the times that we naturally feel

motivated. Equally, it isn’t just work that

affects how we feel — the emotional aspects

of life, from relationships, looking after

children and stress with bills to what you ate

yesterday, how well you slept last night and

forgetting to buy milk and running out will all

affect your resilience and ability to work

effectively.

As mental blocks can’t therefore be predicted

based on the work you receive, and as the

other aspects of life are also unpredictable,

rather than maintaining an organised

schedule and being disciplined, another

approach to avoiding the “wall” is to learn to

listen to your “inner voice”, or intuition. A key

factor to gaining emotional intelligence is to

learn how to catch that spontaneous reaction

to something and then acknowledge it.

Rather like an early-warning system, you can

pick up on little “clues” that you are

approaching the “wall”. These clues will be

different for everybody, so it might be

helpful to practice noticing your responses.

One way of doing this is to keep a “response

diary” — whenever you get an email, send off

a piece of work or find yourself struggling

ITI ScotNet Newsletter Page 24

Photo

: Je

s (F

lick

r.co

m)

with a hard word, note down one or two

words that describe your feelings at that

particular moment. As you become more

self-aware through doing this, you may well

find that certain feelings are more recurrent

than others or that certain feelings are

associated with certain thoughts. Once you

understand your responses more thoroughly,

you will be able to act more effectively to

stop negative feelings building up and, in

fact, building a wall for you to hit.

As hinted, however, listening to your

intuition isn’t quite enough — you also need

to acknowledge how you feel. Regardless of

what you think “should or shouldn’t” be

happening, it can help enormously to let go

and simply accept that however you feel is

fine. Whether you are managing 4,000 words

a day with no stress, or struggling to finish

1,000 — that’s fine. Before even beginning to

work out why you may feel a particular way,

it is important to notice your feelings and

simply accept them with no judgement —

struggling doesn’t mean that you’re a bad

translator, or that you’re losing your grip; it

simply means you are struggling — no more

and no less. Conversely, flying through your

work doesn’t mean you are an excellent

translator and getting everything right — it

merely means you are currently doing well. It

may sound like a simple truism to say “just

be”, but recognising and accepting your

feelings, and then behaving towards yourself

in way that acknowledges them can actually

have quite a profound and positive effect on

your attitudes towards work, yourself and

other people.

In a way, it’s rather like looking after a child

— if your child is tired and grizzly, you put

them to bed, even if it is an hour earlier than

usual. In fact, analytical psychology works

Another approach to avoiding the “wall” is to

learn to listen to your “inner voice”, or intuition.

with the idea of one’s “inner child”, which is

understood to be the “childlike, usually

hidden part of a person’s personality that is

characterised by playfulness, spontaneity and

creativity, usually accompanied by anger,

hurt and fear attributable to childhood

experiences”1. We never quite lose the

imprint of our childhood as we grow up, so

learning to recognise how your “inner child”

is feeling, and then caring for that “child”,

may help you to avoid that wall, or at least

prevent you from hitting it at top speed.

Working out the best way of caring for your

“inner child” is not always easy, but just as

children learn by experimenting, you too can

be open-minded and try out different

activities each time you notice you are

flagging2. You are an individual, with your

own idiosyncrasies, so there really is no rule

as to what you could do; whatever you feel

might be really *nice* right now is worth a

try. Every time that you start feeling

overwhelmed by it all is another time to try

out something new to take care of yourself.

So what do you feel like doing next? ♦

1 Merriam-Webster: www.merriam-

webster.com/dictionary/inner%20child

2 See also:

kerrybrook.ca/resources_articles_books_counselling/inner-

child

ITI ScotNet Newsletter Page 25

Your committee under the spotlight

This time, it’s Marian Dougan’s turn to be interviewed in her

capacity as ScotNet’s Deputy Webmaster. With my unfinished-

sentences interview, I tried to find out if she had any skeletons

in her cupboard, but she let me see a lot more than that!

As a child, I used

to love… Night-

time: reading in

bed. Daytime:

meeting my Dad

at the corner when he came home at

lunchtime with comics and a Milky Way for

us. He’d always give us a “swing” too.

I fell in love with languages… When I

discovered etymology at university, and all of

the borrowings that go on between

languages. The language I truly love is

English, for its variety and melting-pot of

influences and for all of the cultural

references that everyday speech contains

(without our realising it). In her novel “Moon

Tiger”, author Penelope Lively expresses this

much more eloquently than I ever could:

“Language tethers us to the world; without it

we spin like atoms. […] We open our mouths

and out flow ancestries whose origin we do

not even know. We are walking lexicons. In a

simple sentence of idle chatter we preserve

Latin, Anglo-Saxon, Norse; we carry a

museum inside our heads, each day we

commemorate peoples of whom we have

never heard. More than that, we speak

volumes — our language is the language of

everything we have not read. Shakespeare

and the Authorised Version surface in

supermarkets, on buses, chatter on radio and

television. I find this miraculous. I never

cease to wonder at it. That words are more

durable than anything, that they blow with

the wind, hibernate and reawaken, shelter

parasitic on the most unlikely hosts, survive

and survive and survive.”

If I had to choose two cities in the world… I

can’t narrow it down to two so, in

alphabetical order:

Boston: Great beaches nearby, wonderful fish

and seafood, and a great martini.

Lisbon: Great beaches nearby, wonderful fish

and seafood, and a great caipirinha.

London: Great just about everything.

My life changed when… Oh, that’s a hard

one. There have been several milestones in

my life: getting my degree results (better

than I expected, and a great boost to my

self-esteem/confidence), moving to Italy

(which I hated!), meeting the man who’s now

my husband, having my children. They’re the

main events.

I sometimes dream… of setting off and

travelling the world and spending a few

weeks/months in any place I particularly

liked. With my laptop, as I’d still want to

work. And my huz Vito — I’d let him come

along too.

For me social media is... fantastic! Twitter in

particular: it’s brought me friendship and a

sense of community (people I’ve met on

Twitter and then in real life, and some that I

only know on Twitter but feel a bond of

friendship with). I’ve also had Twitter-friends

ITI ScotNet Newsletter Page 26

refer work to me. And it’s great for keeping

up with news and events, in the translation

world and the world at large.

My favourite word… Again, I’m being greedy.

There are 4:

almond (for the sound of it. I also love the

taste, especially salted almonds);

glamour (for its sound and its meaning,

which encompasses scholarship and occult

learning (it’s related to “grammar”),

enchantment, magical beauty, female

fascination and alluring charm);

gloaming (partly for its sound, but mainly for

its meaning — see the photo below).

I seem to have a fondness for “soft” words

with various combinations of “a”, “l”, “g” and

“m”.

My 4th favourite is: ginandtonicwithlime.

My biggest contribution to the world… On a

personal level, I think my two kids are great

people (most of the time) so I’d say they’re

my contribution. On a “giving something

back” level, I campaign for language learning,

and give talks in schools to encourage pupils

to continue their language studies. I’ve also

provided internships and work experience for

about 10 school pupils, students and

graduates (we work at our kitchen table, as I

don’t have an office any more).

I love it when a client… thanks me when I

send them their translation (it’s amazing how

few of them do). Pays on time or even before

time. Recognises and acknowledges the

added value that a good translator provides

(such as noticing mistakes in the source text

and pointing them out).

The satisfaction of a job well done…

1. Reading the text before delivering it to the

client and thinking “Wow! That actually reads

quite well!”

2. Receiving a compliment for my translation

from another translator who’s outsourced

work to me. I’m always on tenterhooks

submitting work to another translator — no-

one else will judge it the way they do.

I’m quite good at… Communicating. City life.

I’m horrible at… Domestic things. Country

life.

In my handbag… Too much. Emergency

supplies: paracetamol, plasters, Germolene,

sun-protection stick, salt, tissues, hay-fever

tablets. Plus the basics: phone, notebook,

pen, house & car keys, purse, make-up bag,

a book, an umbrella. Sometimes my laptop.

Suitcase, more than handbag!

My house… I love it. It’s one of a block of 4

flats, each with a tiny garden, built around

1900. Lovely high ceilings, large windows,

elaborate cornicing. Needs a lot of work and

de-cluttering but I still feel good every time I

come home.

The one thing about my family… We’re

bilingual (Italian & English) and a mixture of

Scottish-Irish and southern Italian. Yikes! ♦

‘Gloaming’ [Photo: Marian Dougan]

ITI ScotNet Newsletter Page 27

Member news

With the introduction of the new ITI membership structure recently, quite a few people

have recently moved category within ITI. If this applies to you, please remember to notify

the Membership Secretary of any changes to your ITI membership status since you joined

the network. In particular, let the MemSec know when you upgrade to MITI, as your

details will then be made available to Joe Public online.

New members:

Yueshi Gu: Originally from Beijing, I have

lived in Edinburgh for 12 years. My BA from

Beijing Language and Culture University is in

Teaching Chinese as a Second Language, and

I gained an MSc in Translating and

Conference Interpreting from Heriot-Watt

University in 2007. I also have a DPSI in

Scottish Law. Although I worked full-time at

Collins Dictionaries (HarperCollins

Publishers) as a lexicographer, editor and

project manager for six years, I have always

been keen to hone my craft as a translator

and interpreter. Currently a PSI practitioner in

all three criteria (legal, medical and local

government), I am also a conference

interpreter. My translation clients include

New Oriental Education and Technology

Group, China Central Television, Beijing 2008

Olympic Games, the International Labour

Organization, Wood Mackenzie, Martin Currie

Investment Management and the City of

Edinburgh Council. I recently became a

member of the Society of Authors.

Dominique A. Mason: MA in Applied

Languages and Translation (French and

German) from Heriot-Watt University,

Edinburgh 2012 and MSc in Applied

Linguistics from The University of Edinburgh

2013. A personal and intercultural approach

to providing translation services to

international development organisations has

given me an excellent reputation with clients.

I am well known for my friendly, fast and

professional touch. Born and raised in

Edinburgh, Scotland, my native language is

English. French and German are my studied

tongues. I have lived in Grenoble, France and

Innsbruck, Austria. I also have some useful

Spanish. Work to date has covered a variety

of sectors, including marketing and business,

humanitarian project support, education,

journalism, library services and literary

translation. I currently work in the library at

the French Institute in Edinburgh. The ITI

Scottish Network should be a lively

networking opportunity and I look forward to

forging new associations and friendships.

Inga Sempel: I’m an Italian mother tongue

translator, interpreter, writer and

screenwriter based in Glasgow. Given my

education background in humanities and law,

my main fields of expertise are the arts,

entertainment, law (international law,

criminal law and human rights), social

sciences, web contents and tourism. Along

with many Italian and English private clients

for whom I translate screenplays, websites,

press releases and legal documents, I also

collaborate with major online magazines

such as Global Voices Online and Asymptote,

and charities like Translators4children. In

2011 I founded my own independent film-

making company Storm and Light Pictures,

ITI ScotNet Newsletter Page 28

where I hold the position of writer and

screenwriter (The Crow’s Legacy, award-

winning Poor Unfortunate Souls, The Melted

Heart, The Starmaker, A Fabulous

Nightmare). My latest work as a writer, the

novel The Parrot Man (L’uomo pappagallo), is

due to be completed in 2014.

Jenni Syrjala: I am originally from a small

town in the archipelago of southwestern

Finland, and I studied English and French

translation and interpreting at the nearby

University of Turku for 5 years. During my

studies I also did an Erasmus exchange for

one term at Middlesex University in London,

and spent 6 months living in Edinburgh “just

for fun”. A year before graduation I also

worked as an intern in a Finnish translation

agency, mainly translating EU-related texts.

After graduating in the spring of 2013 I

started freelancing full time, and decided to

use my newfound freedom to return to my

beloved Edinburgh for the summer — two

weeks during which I decided to make the

move permanent. Having grown up in a

bilingual family and a bilingual town, I am a

native speaker of both Finnish and Swedish,

and because of the high demand for that

language combination, I have found myself

working mainly with those two languages,

but also occasionally with English. So far, I

haven’t come up with anything that I would

like to specialise in, but hopefully it will come

to me one day!

Andrea Wieler Goodbrand: I am from

Switzerland and have lived in Scotland for a

few years now. Firstly, in Edinburgh to

complete my MSc in Translation and

Conference Interpreting, and in 2011 I

moved to Glasgow. I did a BA in MFL and

Literature at the University of Bologna in

Italy. I currently work in different roles: I

teach German as a Foreign Language at the

Goethe-Institut and at the University of

Glasgow. Furthermore, I work in projects

encouraging young learners to study German

and improve their chances on the job market.

I am also a freelance translator and

interpreter working from English and Italian

into German and I specialise in marketing

translation and medical interpreting.

Others:

Congratulations to Katrin Frahm and

Audrey Langlassé, who have both recently

become MITIs. Well done! ♦

So who needs a translator anyway?

Contributed by Margret Powell-Joss. Please send your

own So who needs a translator anyway? photos to

editor@itiscotland.org.uk

ITI ScotNet Newsletter Page 29

ScotNet grants

The ITI Scottish Network offers 2 levels of

grants to members as a contribution towards

the costs of attending ITI events:

1) Grants of up to £30 are available for

attending Scottish Network meetings.

2) ScotNetters may also apply for grants of

up to £70 for attending national ITI events.

How to apply for a grant

Contact our treasurer (currently Norma Tait)

at treasurer@itiscotland.org.uk before

registering for the meeting. Subject to

availability and meeting the eligibility criteria,

she will approve the grant and notify you.

In due course, forward her a copy of the

receipt for the event or transport expenses

and provide her with your bank details. She

will then pay the respective amount into your

account.

General conditions: Maximum one grant per

person per subscription year. You must be a

member of ITI, so Friends of the Network are

not eligible. Also members living in the

central belt are not eligible to receive grants

for network meetings in Edinburgh/Glasgow.

All recipients must be willing to contribute a

report on the event they attended to the ITI

ScotNet Newsletter.

The level of grants is reviewed every year at

ScotNet’s AGM. Under the current budget, 10

grants of £30 and 10 of £70 are available

each year. From time to time the committee

may also decide to offer additional grants to

enable ScotNetters to attend particular

events, such as they did for the 2013 ITI

Conference. ♦

Looking forward to the next issue…

It's really amazing how many things ScotNetters have done in the past few months. Thanks for

keeping us posted! And, guess what, some of your colleagues are already volunteering pieces for

the next issue of this bulletin. Can you believe it? If you also feel like contributing a piece, please

don’t hesitate to drop me a line (editor@itiscotland.org.uk). ♦

ITI ScotNet Newsletter Page 30

Your committee at a glance

Convenor

Pierre Fuentes

0131 4557499

convenor@itiscotland.org.uk

Treasurer

Norma Tait

0131 5521330

treasurer@itiscotland.org.uk

Newsletter Editor

Isabel Hurtado de Mendoza

07762 300068

editor@itiscotland.org.uk

Membership Secretary

Ute Penny

01368 864879

membership@itiscotland.org.uk

Deputy MemSec

Nathalie Chalmers

01888 562998

membership@itiscotland.org.uk

Events Coordinator (East)

Angelika Muir-Hartmann

0131 3334654

muirhartmann@aol.com

Events Coordinator (West)

Ann Drummond

0141 2219379

ann@drummond9593.freeserve.co.uk

Webmaster

Iwan Davies

01738 630202

webmaster@itiscotland.org.uk

Deputy Webmaster

Marian Dougan

0141 9420919

md@dnalanguage.com