Translator/Interpreter
Training and Pedagogy

T/P-1 (F, 1:30-2:15pm) - ALL
Community Interpretation in Rural Communities: Working with an Emergent Latino Population
Katharine Allen, community interpreter and translator, and co-founder, P&P Translations, Swall Meadows, California; and Lorena C. Weber, community interpreter and Latino community outreach advocate, June Lake, California

This workshop will present a decade's worth of experience working with a new Latino immigrant community in a rural California county, examining community interpretation issues from the agency and immigrant perspective. Agencies must confront linguistic and cultural challenges inherent to providing services to a non-English-speaking population, often with a poor understanding of interpretation and translation issues. Local immigrants, the majority undocumented, face navigating through a foreign social service system with no community-based Latino organizations to assist them. The community interpreter is the primary liaison between these two groups and must acquire a wide variety of skills to effectively serve both.

(F, 2:15-3:00pm) - ALL
Doing the "Write" Stuff: A Translator's First Duty
María-Luisa Arias-Moreno, coordinator of the Translation Section, Department of Modern Languages, University of Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico

Everybody agrees that a translator must be, above all, a good writer, capable of identifying different text types and of reproducing them in the target language. Therefore, writing courses must be an integral part of a translator's professional training. This session will discuss what should be taught, and how, in a writing course for a translators' training program, both in their native and in the foreign language.

T/P-2 (F, 3:30-5:00pm) - ALL
"A Distinctly Absurd Proposal"*—How Experienced Translators Really Work
Betty Howell, president, Betty Howell Translations Inc., Montreal, Quebec, Canada; William Skinner, independent translator and interpreter, Washington DC; and Karen Williams, freelance German to English technical translator, Denver, Colorado

What are the methods that real translators really use? Why is there such a large gap between the techniques taught in many university translation courses and the day-to-day habits of successful working translators? Does it matter what language you are working from? The members of this panel, who have combined experience of more than 50 years in gainful translation, discuss their methods and how they developed them. The academic response (see Proceedings of previous conferences) will be examined, and challenges and questions from the audience will be welcomed.

(* Quote from "The Trials of the Sample Translation." Maureen T. Krause (Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology), in Proceedings of the 35^th Annual Conference, 1994, p. 78.)

T/P-3 (S, 10:00-10:45am) - ALL
Sound and Translation: A Multimedia Approach to Increase Accuracy, Efficiency, and Quality
Madeline Newman Ríos, ATA-accredited Spanish>English freelance translator, Claremont, California

This presentation explores the effect of phonetic elements (voice stress and word duration) on sentence structures and the psychological focus of an expression. Often, these factors can be instinctively noted, but are hard to analytically pinpoint. Therefore, it is a good idea to incorporate tape recordings, text-to-speech programs, and live read-back into our translation methodology. The presentation will demonstrate and evaluate these methods, and explore how they fit into an overall strategy of strengthening instincts, increasing analytical skills, and enriching terminology knowledge.

(S, 10:45-11:30am) - ALL
Mentoring Translation Interns—Recipe for Professional Success
Barbara Inge Karsch, German terminologist team, J.D. Edwards, Denver, Colorado; and Barbara Maria Verble, German team technical translator, J.D. Edwards, Denver, Colorado

This presentation will focus on the importance of mentoring for junior translators during their transition from school to the professional world. For the past five years, the translation department at J.D. Edwards has successfully conducted an internship program. Over the years mentoring has become an integral part of the internship program. This presentation will demonstrate how to integrate junior translators successfully into the work environment by selecting, training, and assigning mentors. It will define the role of the mentor in the context of the internship program and provide guidelines for training.

T/P-4 (S, 10:00-11:30am) - ALL
Teachers' Forum
Gertrud Graubart Champe, ATA director, chair, ATA Training Committee, and director, Translation Laboratory, University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa

T/P-5 (S, 1:30-2:15pm) - ALL
Does Translator Training Evaluation Meet the Needs of Industry Quality Assessment?
Fanny Arango-Keeth, assistant professor of Spanish (translation), Department of Modern and Classical Language Studies, Kent State University, Kent, Ohio; and Geoffrey S. Koby, assistant professor of German (translation), Department of Modern and Classical Language Studies, Kent State University, Kent, Ohio

In Training the Translator, Paul Kußmaul describes two types of evaluation protocols used in translation: product-oriented error analysis and translation quality assessment. The first is inherent in the academic training of translators and the second corresponds to the type of evaluation standards used by professionals in the translation industry. In this presentation, the speakers will identify the evaluation protocols used in the academic training of translators and compare and contrast them with the standards of ranslation quality assessment and assurance used in professional practice of the discipline. They will present information they have collected and cross-referenced regarding: 1) the evaluation procedures and instruments used by scholars in representative translation programs in the US, and 2) evaluation standards used in industry.

T/P-6 (S, 1:30-2:15pm) - ALL
Translation and Technology: Bridging the Gap Between the University and a Real Job
Edwin Gentzler, director of the Translation Center and associate professor of comparative literature, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Massachusetts

The skills required of translators have changed dramatically. What once was primarily a linguistic activity has evolved into a complex practice requiring both advanced language and computer skills. While universities supply linguistic training, they often fall short on the technology part. Based on a new course at the Translation Center at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, this presentation covers a range of new technologies, including multilingual word processing, desktop publishing, Internet codes, e-mail, translation dictionaries, and Internet discussion groups, designed to help the translators better transition to the new needs of the marketplace.

(S, 2:15-3:00pm) - ALL
Brain-compatible Teaching, Brain-compatible Learning?
Bjorn Austraat, senior manager, globalization solutions group, eTranslate, San Francisco, California

The field of meta-cognition (learning about the learning process itself) has produced a variety of interesting approaches to make learning and teaching more efficient. This presentation will focus on some of the basic mechanisms that are common to all learning processes regardless of individual learning styles. The presenter will discuss how environmental parameters, group dynamics, neuro-linguistic programming elements, and other factors can help create a brain-compatible learning environment that increases subjective participant satisfaction and boosts objectively measurable learner success.

T/P-7 (S, 3:30-5:00pm) - ALL
From Crawling to Walking: Translator Training Online
Milena Savova, director, Center for Foreign Languages and Translation, New York University School of Continuing and Professional Studies, New York, New York; and Lorena Terando, translation studies coordinator, Center for Foreign Languages and Translation, New York University School of Continuing and Professional Studies, New York, New York

The spread of online education generates both enthusiasm and anxiety. Both faculty and students know they are embarking upon a new experience and yet they don't know what to expect. The presenters will share their experience with online education acquired in the course of over three years of developing an online translation studies program at New York University. Is every Internet user ready to teach/learn online? What do faculty and students need to know in advance? What do administrators need to do to prepare the soil for a "good harvest?" Online pedagogy is still in its infancy. It falls on faculty and administrators to develop it as they go along. The presenters will discuss curriculum, assignments, homework, "in- and out-of-class" communication, chat rooms, and other attributes of this type of instruction. Slides from courses will serve as illustrations.

T/P-8 (S, 3:30-5:00pm) - ALL
Collaborative Translation Projects: Pedagogical Approaches to Teaching Translation
Enrica J. Ardemagni, associate professor of Spanish and director, Certificate in Translation Studies, Department of Foreign Language and Cultures, School of Liberal Arts, Indiana University Purdue University, Indianapolis, Indiana

In my computers in translation course, students learn how to plan for large projects by working on a simulated translation project. Working in teams of three, students must decide on a supervisor who will oversee the project and how many translators will be needed for researching terminology or subject matter, editing, proofreading, and other tasks. After students have completed the project, we share the estimates, contracts, and invoices and discuss the differences in these amounts among the various teams. From this, students learn to recognize what information about a project is needed in order to make a bid. Also, in sharing the phases of the project, the teams learn what aspects of the translation they have left out, and what information they should have asked for to arrive at a quality translation with an acceptable bid. This exercise gives students a real sense of what it would be like to be involved in a team project at a translation company.