Transatlantic Relations in the New Decade

Hello again...

I wanted to post something about a very interesting speech that I was able to attend last Friday (12 November). I attended a discussion with the German Ambassador to the US, Dr. Klaus Scharioth (here is a link with a brief synopsis:  http://www.ceuce.com/features/diplomacy.html, and a picture of him in the White House).


His topic was simply "Transatlantic Relations in the New Decade", and in it he basically outlined the 10 most important issues in German-American relations.  It was mostly appealing to my "inner political scientist", but he did touch on one very important language issue toward the end.  This was the issue of language and immigration, something that we also face here in America.  It has been a hot topic in Germany lately, with Chancellor Merkel recently commenting that "multiculturalism has failed in Germany".  She was basically referring to the fact that the German government's policy of integrating Turkish (and other) immigrants has not been successful.  Their new policy is going to be to provide up to 600 (yes, 600) hours of language training to non-German speaking immigrants.  That way, they will have a much easier time assimilating into German society - particularly the German job market.  Not a bad idea, no matter what continent you are on, if you ask me.

Dr. Scharioth had actually studied in Idaho many years ago, so he shared some good stories about travelling through the American West as well - it was a very entertaining hour and a half.

Next on the agenda:  I am going to be in LA visiting clients the week after Thanksgiving, so it's about time to prepare for that.  Hope to see a lot of clients and old friends between Santa Monica, Century City, South Bay, and Orange County.

Best,
Geoff

Wrapping up the ATA Conference #51

Well the ATA Conference has come and gone - what a great event.

On Friday morning, I did end up choosing "The End of Translation as we know it:  Were the Luddites Right?".  The speaker was Jost Zetzsche.  He was referring to the "Luddites", who went around England and destroyed the looms that took their jobs.  Are translators losing their jobs to machines?  The question is an extremely hot topic in our industry.  There are certain new technologies that are capable of replacing certain translation situations, this is true.  And for a company like ours, it is important to keep an eye on these tools and use them when appropriate.  However, with  all the tools that I've seen, I have yet to find anything that has close to the capabilities of my native-speaking human team.  The great thing is that tools, such as Trados or Wordfast, can be helpful to my translators in providing more consistent translations - faster.  An interesting point he brought up is that there is - and has been since the 1950's - the "5 year rule".  Since the first machine translation of 12 Russian sentences in the 1950's, people have been saying that "in 5 years, there will no longer be a need for human translation".  Well, let's be honest, we're making some serious progress right now... but we're not there yet.

Lunch was with two great Spanish translators that I have been working with for a while now, Marta and Cecilia.  Cecilia made it all the way from Córdoba, Argentina for the conference - I hope she enjoyed Colorado!

My afternoon session on Friday was on social media for translators with Marsela A. Jenney.  I may have even gotten a few tips for this blog (thanks Marsela!)  Some of it was a review for me but there were some very good tips mixed in as well.  Apparently I should "write with passion in an authentic voice"... we'll see how it goes! :)

I spent the rest of the conference networking and catching up on work.  I even got to direct someone to a day trip in the Rockies in German, and I met many of the "locals" - other members of the Colorado Translator Association.

The ATA conference was well worth it this year - I'm REALLY looking forward to the annual conference next year in Boston.

Best,
Geoff