Interpreters are commonly expected to provide consecutive interpreting of long segments of discourse. This intensive, language-neutral workshop offers both novice and experienced interpreters the opportunity to review and enhance the multi-tasking skills needed to competently and comfortably provide consecutive interpreting of longer segments. The workshop, presented in English, will first explore the challenges associated with the key skills needed for “long consec.” These skills include attention, active listening, source text analysis, visualization, memory and recall, integrated note-taking, public speaking, and self-monitoring.

The instructors will then support participants through guided exercises as they experiment with new strategies and apply their skills to longer segments. At the end of the workshop, participants will reflect on what they have learned and outline the steps they will take to maintain and enhance their skills and confidence. Interpreters of any language combination and any level of experience–actively wishing to revitalize their interpreting skills–are encouraged to attend.

Sight translation is an important skill for translators, as it improves their productivity and incorporates oral discourse into their translation process. It is also important for interpreters as a skill in and of itself, and as a means of enhancing their simultaneous interpreting strategies. In this three-hour, language-neutral workshop, attendees will practice sight translating English texts into other languages and take part in guided demonstrations to improve this valuable skill.

The speaker will briefly discuss sight translation theory and applications, followed by practical exercises in precursor skills such as macro-reading, chunking, and paraphrasing. The workshop will conclude with demonstrations by attendees, who will sight translate a text specific to each attendee’s language combination, followed by a discussion of different approaches to the task. By the end of this workshop, attendees will be able to identify the component skills of sight translation and the necessary steps to follow in text preparation. Intermediate and advanced translators and interpreters are encouraged to attend.

Clients frequently ask translators to translate scanned PDF documents and they also need the translation to be formatted to match the original. What do you do? Recreating a source document may seem daunting, but there are tricks to make it easier. This workshop will guide attendees through the entire process of working with PDFs and other non-editable formats from pre-translation processing through post-translation finishing. Attendees will learn how to use OCR technology, like ABBYY FineReader and Adobe Acrobat Pro, and then manually format the output in Word.

Through hands-on activities and guided discussions, attendees will be introduced to general layout theory as well as advanced formatting tricks in Word, such as the Ruler, Expanded Spacing, or tailoring the fonts and paragraph formatting. The workshop will range from the basics some attendees may already know through advanced tricks to help you become a formatting guru who really impresses your clients, without wasting time and effort. It is required that attendees bring their own laptops with Word to practice during the exercises.

Working with direct translation clients is financially and professionally rewarding, but acquiring them and keeping them happy can be challenging and time-consuming. It can be difficult to find the motivation and to create a strategy to pursue this type of customer. However, any linguist can shift to working with direct clients if they approach the process in a structured way.

The presenter will provide an overview of the skills you need, what you need to know before you get started, how to find these elusive direct clients, how to grow and nurture the relationships you have formed, and much more. Attendees do not need to have any previous experience working with direct clients, but they should already possess the basic marketing tools, including a website. This session is ideal for those who have always wanted to work with direct clients but don’t know where to start.

Technical translators with excellent technical writing skills stand out from the crowd, in the quality of their translations and in their income potential. This hands-on editing workshop for technical translators working into English will teach you how to produce clear and concise English scientific and technical texts. For translators who haven’t studied technical writing or who rarely receive detailed feedback on their translations, we will begin with some diagnostic exercises and basic principles of good technical writing. We will then move on to advanced techniques for those who already apply the principles of effective technical writing and editing to their translations.

Attendees who register by October 14 will receive several sample passages that you may edit in preparation for the workshop (optional). The presenter will also provide an extensive reference list, as well as suggestions of useful software. This workshop will include all new examples, different from those used by this speaker in previous ATA seminars and webinars.

When translating marketing materials, you’ve got to be both translator and copywriter in order to deliver compelling and persuasive content. Many translators are fine at the translation part, but fall flat when adding the copywriter’s touch. In this course, we’ll take a look at translations that don’t make the grade and see how we can improve them. They’ll be from various languages, but they’ll all have one thing in common: the English sounds stilted, awkward, or incorrect and, as a result, the copy just doesn’t do the job it was intended to do. As we work together to identify what’s wrong and how to correct it, you’ll pick up tips, strategies, and pointers for putting the zing back in your marketing translations.

This workshop is intended for advanced and intermediate Trados Studio users who fully grasp the basics of the software but are interested in learning some of its more advanced features. The instructor will guide attendees through hands-on exercises for the following features:

• Translation memory management (import, export, translation memory fields, filters, and translation memory QA)
• Quality assurance and customizing QA settings, including the use of regular expressions
• File type settings and advanced editor features, such as auto-propagation and display filter with regular expressions

Participants are encouraged to send their questions in advance to the instructor. Bringing a laptop computer with Studio (preferably version 2015) installed is strongly recommended so that you get the most out of the session.

Many candidates who fail the ATA Certification Exam are surprised and wonder how–after so many years of experience–they are still unable to pass it. This workshop will help attendees understand how the exam is graded and what are the common errors that candidates make. The presenters will show examples from real-life practice tests to demonstrate common pitfalls, and will provide tips to avoid them.

In order to develop and tailor this course, attendees will be given a sample practice test to translate and return by September 23. Practice tests received by the deadline will be reviewed in order to target the common–and not so common–errors. Errors used during this course will be kept completely anonymous.

Consecutive note-taking is an essential part of fully mastering consecutive interpreting, whether you work in conference, legal, business, medical, or other community settings. Yet many of us lack full confidence in our consecutive because we haven’t mastered note-taking and we believe the only way to do so is through long hours of tedious study and practice.

This fast-paced and highly interactive workshop adapts Rozan’s classic note-taking method for long consecutive to meet the needs of dialog interpreting required in non-conference settings. This teaching approach has been field-tested to great success for seven years with participants in conference sessions, short course trainings, and academic courses. In three hours, you will improve your note-taking and symbols development skills, and have fun doing it. Most importantly, you will walk away with straightforward and concrete strategies for continuing to improve your skills.

Workshop attendees will:

• Practice Rozan’s seven-step note-taking process.
• Learn simplified strategies for note-taking in legal, healthcare, and other settings.
• Develop strategies for developing symbols and symbol groups.
• Integrate symbols and note-taking into the dialogic flow in short consecutive interpreting.

We all know that simultaneous interpreting is a complex and challenging skill to learn. Even when we’ve mastered listening, processing, speaking, and monitoring output all at the same time, the skill we most often neglect is arguably one of the most important—our delivery. As far as those listening are concerned, what goes into their ear is all matters. You might achieve 100% accuracy but drive your listeners crazy with a monotone, choppy, hesitant, or uneven delivery.

If you are working to improve your simultaneous interpreting, be sure to join us for this practice-intensive, three-hour workshop full of practical tips and eye-opening exercises to help you improve your delivery. You will also get to practice using portable FM equipment.

You will leave this workshop knowing:

• What audiences truly value when listening to interpreting
• The finer points of microphone management
• Practical strategies to provide a smooth delivery when dealing with different types of speakers
• How to assess your own delivery and improve it

We have to hear the music before we can play it. In literary translation, hearing the voice is also the necessary first step before we are able to transpose the music. Intended for advanced literary translators working from any language into English, this workshop allows participants the opportunity to rehearse ways of hearing and transposing. Using texts prepared by participants in advance, we will look closely at what specific choices were made to preserve voice and musicality, as well as discuss general strategies that may apply across languages. We will conclude the workshop with a surprise encore requiring no advance preparation. Please come with open ears and ready to engage!

Once you have registered for this workshop, you will be contacted to provide your preferred language and special interest so that the speaker may assign you a specific literary text. It is recommended that you prepare your translation of this text and submit it by October 14. Translations received by the deadline will be reviewed by the speaker.

Are you a seasoned business owner seeking fresh ideas for getting clients? Are you new to the business and have only achieved moderate success in getting clients? Are you ready to approach the idea of getting clients from an easier perspective, one based on your strengths (aka Super Powers)? If so, this hands-on workshop is for you!

Learn how to discover your Super Powers in order to put them to use and start getting clients now. Learn what types of marketing strategies are best for you and how to keep your foot gently on the marketing gas. Part nuts and bolts, part exploration, this intimate session will leave you brimming with ideas on how to develop a marketing system that’s uniquely suited to you and your strengths. You’ll take home actionable items you can put into place right away, as well as homework to keep the discovery and momentum going.

Attendees receive a copy of Get Clients Now! by C.J. Hayden to use during this workshop and take home for continued use.

International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRSs) are now firmly established as the global “language” of financial reporting. Currently, some 130 countries across all of the world’s major economic regions (Europe, Africa, Middle East, Asia-Oceania, Americas) require or permit the use of IFRSs. The International Accounting Standards Board has issued or approved translations into more than 40 languages, and the core standards are also translated into 22 official languages of the European Union. As a body of knowledge, the IFRSs therefore represent both a significant challenge and a tremendous opportunity for translators and interpreters willing to learn about IFRS financial reporting—not just about the appropriate terminology and phrasing, but about the structure of the standards and how they are applied in practice.

This advanced, language-neutral course will:

• Provide an overview of the standards, the translations, and their application.
• Offer guidance on how to research IFRSs quickly and find the most relevant resources.
• Examine and discuss underlying financial translation principles and policies that can provide a practical framework for translating IFRS documents (reports, manuals, etc.), irrespective of the source and target languages.
• Examine and discuss typical accounting policy and notes disclosures and specific translation issues in an interactive setting.

Translators are becoming increasingly appreciated for their ability to bridge cultural mindsets and provide insight into behavior–an area for which no automated system can replace in the foreseeable future. Nowhere is this more apparent than in global digital marketing.

If you work with companies that heavily rely on search engine marketing (SEM) to drive sales, but you haven’t been asking questions like:

• What’s your strategy for web or video searches from outside your home country?
• Who manages and monitors your social media presence outside your home country?
• How are you rating the success of your marketing campaigns and your market position outside your home country?

…you are likely missing out on valuable opportunities.

The speaker will share the non-traditional requests that companies are now demanding; requests that push the boundaries of traditional translation offerings into the realm of so-called “lingua-aware” services.

In this session we will be performing live exercises that will enable you to grasp:

• the fundamentals of “on-page” and “off-page” global web marketing
• how to ask questions to weed out potential “lingua-aware” services
• the know-how and mindset required to providing these services

Those who have a real passion for marketing, strategy, research, and keeping one step ahead of their customer in their globalization efforts will especially love this session. The only requirements for you are to bring your laptop, have a Google account, be computer competent, and be prepared to do some deep thinking.

Originally developed to assist people who were unable to use a keyboard, voice-to-text technology is now fast and nimble enough that all users can dictate their text productively. Some translators report a translation rate increase of 50%-70% and they can work with reduced physical strain and fatigue. This workshop will introduce users to Dragon Naturally Speaking, the most popular voice-to-text software, and how it works in popular CAT environments. After a brief presentation, participants will divide into groups to closely observe how to train the software to recognize their voice and experience its benefits and challenges.

This workshop is for any translator interested in taking the ATA Spanish>English Certification Exam. Excerpts from several past exam passages will be reviewed in detail. Common errors in all error categories will be illustrated, and good renditions will be explained.

In order to develop and tailor this course, attendees will be given a sample practice test to translate and return by September 23. Practice tests received by the deadline will be reviewed in order to target the common—and not so common—errors. Errors used during this course will be kept completely anonymous.