Digital technologies offer interpreters a wealth of options for improving skills and performance, ranging from apps for smartphones and tablets to smartpens for hybrid simultaneous-consecutive interpreting (Sim-Consec™). This session will introduce you to these technological wonders and discuss their practical implications for interpreters and their varied working environments, such as conference, court, medical, and community settings. Whether you are barely getting started with some of these devices or have been using them for a while, you will come away with some fresh ideas on how to make the best use of these technologies.

The instructor will provide smartpens for attendees to use during practice exercises.

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.

Artificial Intelligence and Neural Networks are beginning to have a profound effect on many industries, and ours is no exception. The question isn’t whether these technologies will have a bearing on the day-to-day work of translators and interpreters, but instead how you, as a language professional, are going to react to these profound changes. This training session will give you an overview of what these technologies are and how they are already changing and will likely continue to change the industry. The instructor will provide ideas and strategies for developing the skills that will allow you to not only remain relevant but even thrive in our rapidly changing world.

Through presentations, hands-on activities, and guided discussions, you will be introduced to machine learning, AI, neural networks, Neural Machine Translation, post-editing, adaptive MT, and automated translation workflow systems. You will also learn about the skills that our industry will demand from those willing to add value to technology while also being willing to have technology augment their abilities, even those that were once thought beyond the reach of computers.

Attendees are expected to complete the prerequisite readings that will be distributed in the weeks preceding the session.

This high-powered workshop is for translators who want to make their lives easier and dare to diversify the scope of their services. Using practical examples from real-world scenarios, the instructor offers selective tips and tricks that will open new horizons and make tedious tasks easy to handle.

The topics to be discussed will include:

• Intermediate/advanced tricks for SDL Studio (complicated case studies will be made easy with magical solutions and video demos)
• File management and office processes
• Building your offline monolingual and bilingual corpora from available resources, with or without CAT tools integration
• Regex: The Future! (Practical examples and case studies)
• Enhancing predictive input layers and autosuggest mechanisms (tools, tips, and case studies)
• Audio transcription: CAT tool integration (audio transcription redefined case study)
• Subtitling: CAT tool integration (subtitling redefined case study)
• The PDF syndrome (newer approaches and advanced techniques to handling complex PDF files in relation with CAT tools).

Topics include:

• • Innovative approach to translating complex PDF files.
  • Different methods used to clean up the PDF conversion mess.
  • Effective ways to extract PDF text.
  • Mastering the review/proofreading process in PDF platform, including Commenting – stamps, sticky notes, signatures, highlights, etc.
  • Performing last minute edits prior to printing.
  • Understanding PDF printing standards, in case a client asks for a print ready PDF (including crop marks, bleed marks, etc.).
  • Disaster recovery tips for password protected files
  • “Saving-the-day” techniques with a client facing problems reading a printed PDF translation due to language support or font issues
  • Understanding redaction and maintaining privacy when sending PDF files
  • Effective ways to sign NDAs and other PDF documentation electronically
  • Effective ways to comparing PDF files and to quickly work on an updated PDF file
  • OCRing technique and making corrections on the fly where the OCR has misinterpreted words
  • Last minute addition of hyperlinks and bookmarks to a print ready PDF, without having to go back to the underlying originating file

• Productivity and automation (many examples taken from complex projects and difficult translation requests)
• Working with input models
• Advanced search of termbases
• File type handling and guidance to create your own when needed
• Enhancing your TM search experience
• Handling XML files using an advanced approach
• Introduction to custom quality assurance rules
• Disaster recovery planning: Everything a translator needs to know to be prepared against computer disasters and loss of data.

Topics include:

• • Effective ways to create a full system image that can be restored in minutes
  • Techniques for creating full and incremental data backups
  • Proactive methods for protecting your machines from sudden failures
  • How to use external media to save and restore your data
  • Building portable versions of your registered software to use them anywhere when needed
  • The benefits and the hazards of cloud-based backups

Learn the ins and outs of building a beautiful website for your translation business using WordPress. WordPress is a free and open-source platform for building websites and blogs. During this hands-on workshop, participants will be introduced to the WordPress platform. The instructor will walk them through the process of building a website step-by-step. Participants will learn how to select a theme, build pages, set up a navigation menu, add images, and include really cool features using free plugins.

The goal of the workshop is to have all participants leave with a basic, but fully functioning website in place. It is required that participants bring their own laptops, have a domain name, and have WordPress already installed. Instructions on how to create a domain name and install WordPress will be provided in advance.

This is an introductory workshop but will answer more advanced questions, if needed. No experience with WordPress or any programming or special skills are required.

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.

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 15. Practice test translations received by September 15 will be reviewed in order to target the common–and not so common–errors. Errors used during this course will be kept completely anonymous.

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

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.

Enterprises have fully embraced digital content distribution on a global scale. In turn, translators are becoming increasingly valued for their ability to provide insight into a successful search and marketing strategy because of their deep knowledge of buyer behavior in the native market. A company’s success now depends heavily on how to digitally engage those audiences.

You are missing valuable opportunities if 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?

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—not exactly translation, but an evolution of work required of in-country linguists in this digital age.

In this session, we will perform live exercises that will enable you to grasp:

• the fundamentals of “on-page” and “off-page” global web marketing strategy
• determining the right approach to search engine marketing (SEM) and social media marketing (SMM) for a target market
• how to ask questions to find additional potential “lingua-aware” services
• the know-how and mindset required to providing these services

Those who have a real passion for culture, marketing, strategy, research, and helping clients to succeed globally in this digital age will especially love this session. The only requirements for you are to bring your laptop, have a Google registered account, and be prepared to do some deep thinking about your native market.

Finding terminology resources can be tricky, particularly in specialized domains or under-resourced languages. Terminology research can get cumbersome, but it is essential to ensure consistency in our translations, minimize proofreading and quality assurance time, increase productivity, and keep clients satisfied.

In this workshop, we will analyze participants’ terminological needs in terms of language pairs, domains, and type of information needed, and offer targeted tips and tricks for doing terminology research, finding equivalents, and evaluating sources. This course will also focus on how to best manage terminological assets to have them readily available for future projects. We will explore different options, from spreadsheets to professional term bases, presenting a range of techniques for automation, leveraging, and conversion of both personal glossaries and online resources.

Participants will need to bring their own laptops to try out the suggested methods hands on.

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
• 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 Trados Studio (preferably version 2017) installed is required so that you get the most out of the session.

Become a trained negotiator! In this interactive workshop, you will learn how to turn a negotiated agreement into a solid contract. The instructor will illustrate the key elements of business negotiations, from planning a negotiation to evaluating an agreement before closing translation deals. You will discover how you can quickly measure your best alternative to a negotiated agreement and use it to your advantage.

You will learn the logic behind pricing from the client’s point of view and the roll pricing plays in a negotiation. Finally, toward the end of the workshop, you will learn tips for drafting a solid translation contract, including sample clauses. By the end of the workshop, you will have acquired several negotiation strategies and techniques and gained knowledge about contracts that will help you make more informed business decisions in the future.

This workshop will provide hands-on experience for professionally proofreading and copyediting personal writing and client texts. You will define the various stages of revision and learn how to effectively manage each in any type of project.

In advance:
You will be given a general text at least three weeks in advance of the workshop. You will be asked to send the following three different edited versions of the text to the instructor by October 6:
1) reduce the text to three paragraphs;
2) reduce the text to one paragraph; and
3) reduce the text to a single sentence.

Come prepared with:
1) Two copies, printed single-sided, of your website homepage and bio (or similar web content, such as your LinkedIn, ProZ, or your résumé)
2) Two copies, printed double spaced and single-sided, of approximately 1200 words of a personal project you are working on (translation or original writing)

Part 1: Editing
We will review and discuss the pre-workshop editing exercise as a large group and consider the overarching goals at every level of the revision process.

Part 2: Copyediting
You will get a breakdown of common copyediting concerns and suggested tools to manage variations across client, project, and specialty subject matter.

In small groups, you will create a short style guide for a specialty subject based on a sampling of texts. Individually, you will​ revise a specialized document using the style guides you create. Possible subjects include human or veterinary science, nonprofit bylaws, patent lawsuits, automotive manuals, and winery management.

Part 3: Proofreading
You will review a general checklist of common proofreading concerns and get tools to manage this step across a range of project types and timelines. In small groups, you will draft a proofreading checklist specific to your primary language pair. In pairs, you will proofread your website content, bios, and résumés.

Part 4: Comprehensive Practice
Individually and in small groups, you will revise texts for tone, style, register, consistency, and other details. Possible exercises include texts created by dictation software, machine-assisted translations, and team-translated projects.

We will spend at least 30 minutes working in pairs or small groups on your personal writing samples. If time allows, we can also revisit your website content for more comprehensive suggestions for improvement.

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 15. Practice test translations received by September 15 will be reviewed in order to target the common–and not so common–errors. Errors used during this course will be kept completely anonymous.