Online conference success – a perfect small package

 

Last week, I participated in an online conference presented by ILETA (International Legal English Trainers’ Academy) and organized by Sofia Parastatidou. Curiously, it was the best online conference I have ever attended precisely because it was organized so differently from an in-person conference. The factors that contributed to its success were the limited but highly coherent content, the small number of participants and its short but flexible schedule. In practice, the conference left the impression of having physically attended without all the logistics.

In general, online conferences, however economical and convenient they may be, suffer from issues of downtime, lack of intimacy and mental fatigue. As most online conferences have only one track and try to reach the largest potential audience, many of the lectures are irrelevant to a certain percentage of the participants. In a physical conference, this dead time is ideal for networking but online conferences do not offer such opportunities. A more serious issue is that the audience in larger remote conferences is literally a sea of faces. It is very clumsy to interact with other participants during the conference. As many cultures consider efficiency and timeliness virtues, the host keeps the schedule moving more or less on time, leaving very little time for open discussions while everybody is present. The consequence is a large quantity of intellectual material but very few connections.

In this conference, the lectures related to a narrow topic, specifically legal language, and, most importantly, complemented and supplemented each other. Each lecturer went into depth on an aspect mentioned by a previous presenter, thus creating a complete picture. For example, I spoke about the rules of Plain English in legal writing while Anna Sobota and Anna Setkowicz-Ryszka, respectively, analysed its actual implementation using statistical methods and showed how the difference between how attorneys and linguists view proper legal language. The presentations built on each other.

This online conference highlighted the strength of distance learning. It would have been completely impractical to bring together all of the participants as each of us lived in a different country. Thus, Zoom allowed all of us to participate. More importantly, given the relatively small number of persons involved, everybody could easily see each other's faces, ask questions, make comments and have their say. There was more than enough airtime for everybody. Clearly, less is more in online events.

The strangest aspect, surprisingly positive, was the lack of a firm time structure. The host ran it on Italian time, meaning she let discussions continue until they died a natural death. Thus, we had the opportunity to discuss issues raised in the presentation before going on to the next segment. The “price” was that there were only a limited number of lectures in the day-and-a-half long conference. However, the benefit is that it is far easier to retain the content. As an analogy, seeing one museum in a day is memorable while visiting three museums in a day creates a muddled picture.  Again, less was more.

In summary, the ILETA conference virtually felt like an in-person conference. It provided both content and interaction, feeling like a conversation in a cozy salon rather than a distant event. The keys were highly focused content, similarly engaged persons and flexibility. It was a perfect day, showcasing the potential of a properly organized online conference.

Selective non-genius – Differentiating the art from the person

 

Last week, I attended a lecture by the journalist Uri Misgav on the subject of the songs of Mati Caspi, an Israeli musician, singer, arranger, and producer responsible for over 1000 songs over several decades. I am familiar with his songs as are most people in Israel but was less than enthusiastic about this lecture because I find his performances unexciting at best because of his persona on stage. Specifically, he looks and acts like a dead fish. In his case, I find it difficult to ignore the person and fully appreciate his work. However, in many art forms, fans can and do ignore the person beyond the work. They are able to relate to the art form and ignore the character of the artist behind it even when the character is particularly loathsome in some ways.

Many gifted writers were unpleasant people. Dostoevsky was a virulent anti-antisemite and misanthrope in general. While those characteristics may have had a positive role in creating his literary characters, I would not have wanted to meet him (nor the other way around, I assume). Leo (not Alexei) Tolstoy, for all his literary and philosophical heights, abandoned his wife and eight children so he could consider more mystic thoughts. George Simenon, the creator of amazing Jules Maigret detective stories, told his wife in the middle of the German occupation that if she did not like him sleeping with the maid, she could go to the Germans and complain. How charming and sensitive! Many Académie française writers, notably Louis-Ferdinand Céline, were fervent Nazis and virulent antisemites. In the UK, Rudyard Kipling was an unapologetic supporter of colonialism long after its warts had begun to show. Yet, it is possible to read the books of these writers with undiminished pleasure and ignore their political views, possibly because we do not actually see the person.

Artists in other media have also shown a mean streak. Among the musicians with a spoiled reputation (at least among some people) is Roger Waters of Pink Floyd fame due to his anti-Israel and antisemitic calls and political action. In Israel, a certain famous singer is infamous for alleged aggression against women and those critics that dare raise those allegations in public. Some actors also exceed the bounds of acceptable behavior. Many French are not thrilled by Gérard Depardieu leaving France for Russia to avoid French tax, not to mention his alleged sexual offenses. In the United States, Charlton Heston may have starred in some famous movies but he was also president of the National Rifle Association, whose agenda is not exactly mainstream. Personally, I find it difficult to separate the person from the art in these cases, again possibly due to the artist's actual presence on a stage.

The saying is that the way to hell is paved with good intentions. Maybe the way to heaven is filled with sharp pebbles. Depending on the level of clash between the audience and the artist as well as the genre of art, many people can overlook the unpleasant aspects of a creator and focus on the result itself. In other cases, the leakage or linkage is too strong to ignore, significantly reducing the greatness of that artist in some way. Ultimately, each person chooses to focus narrowly on the genius or include the whole character.

Simple marketing methods for reluctant freelancers

 

Most freelancers enjoy their craft but are less enthusiastic about what they need to do to make a living from it. One of these necessary evils is marketing. As in most chores, nobody argues the necessity of doing it in theory but everybody hopes that it will get done without their intervention. The reality is that it is impossible to have a successful freelance business without some type of marketing. Here are five simple marketing techniques that involve little effort, time and personal exposure. In other words, it is possible to mark a check on this item in the to-do list without great personal investment and see some results.

1.       Let your friends and, more importantly, the service people you use know what your profession is and the type of projects you do. Your accountant, insurance agent and hairdresser/barber, to name just a few, are your best marketing partners. They are constantly meeting people and provide great referrals.

2.      Set up a website or a LinkedIn profile. The first may require a small investment of time and money but the latter is simple and free and takes minutes. Make it easy for potential customers to glean more information about you and find your contact information. Most people are not willing to make any great effort to find you. Don’t lose business by playing hard to get.

3.      Set up a business page on Facebook or other media. You can and should keep your personal life out of it. Instead, showcase your business in terms of skill and achievement. Enlist your children to help you if they are the appropriate age. It is a great bonding exercise.

4.      Sign up for any relevant list or application for selling your services or goods. Define a relevant geographical range and join. If participation involves some payment, it is often worth it for a year as they tend not to remove your name after you stop paying.

5.      Whenever possible, participate in discussions involving issues within your expertise, written or oral, whichever you are more comfortable with. You don’t have to and often should not “sell” your business. Instead, publicize your expertise by suggesting practical solutions. You are branding yourself.

None of these actions requires standing up in front of people and talking about how wonderful you are. Aside from a website, none of them involves serious costs, if any. They don’t have to be perfect in the beginning as it is simple to change the content and language. There is no need to consult a tech expert. As the advert for the Lake Wobegon’s celebrated Powder Milk Biscuits said, keeping it simple can “give shy persons the strength to get up and do what needs to be done.”

FinTech gleamings

 

Profiting from the traditional August business slowdown, I participated in a two-hour webinar presented by Silvana Debonis entitled “Securitization to Tokenization: What FinTech Translators Need to Know” under the auspices of the American Translation Association (ATA). Although I am a financial translator, I found myself completely ignorant of FinTech partially because it did not exist when I studied for my MBA several decades ago. Thus, I had the opportunity to remedy, at least partially, my ignorance. I wish to share a few of my understandings gained through this webinar with anybody that is also bewildered by this alien terminology. My take was that traditional financial concepts and processes have met Buck Rogers in the 21^st century and were not only renamed but also reshaped. I have to admit that some of the actual and potential applications do excite me.

The key concept in FinTech and the initial challenge is the term blockchain. In practice, it is an old procedure given a new nomenclature and method. To explain, in the 19^th century, if a person bought a piece of land or any tangible asset, the sale became official once an official made a ledger entry in an official book. The 21^st-century equivalent, the blockchain, represents the same process but takes advantage of digital technology. The ledger entry has now become a block, a digital record. However, today, any recognized source, a node, can simultaneously upload the block to millions of computers, a chain, making it impossible to erase and rendering that information immediately accessible to any interested party. Blockchain is a bit like title keeping on steroids.

To sell the asset, tokenization is necessary. To explain that term, imagine the world before governments stopped maintaining a “gold standard”. Before the mid-19^th century, money was a weight of precious metal, e.g., a pound, a lira, a piece of eight. During the American Civil War in the 1860’s, it was necessary to produce more money than metal reserves allowed. As a result, the U.S. government produced dollar bills, greenbacks, which theoretically could be exchanged for the equivalent of gold or silver, i.e., tokens for the actual metal. Eventually, these tokens became valuable in themselves as the US government no longer maintained a gold standard. In the stock market, stock certificates are the token for ownership of a share of a company and are as valuable as the asset the paper represents. In the 20^th century, banks and other financial institutions bunched assets and created large asset pools, e.g., mortgages and loans, which they sold to an external organization, referred to as a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV). The latter marketed these assets in a traditional way, i.e., through brokers of all types. Today, tokenization of assets is a digital block containing both a verbal prospectus for humans to understand and programming for computers to process, almost without intermediaries. It is no longer necessary to have physical tokens.

The current and potential uses of blockchain technology are quite exciting. Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies are the chicken and egg of FinTech as neither would exist without each other. However, many people will never trade in these assets. Of great potential in the future for the average person is Smart Contracts, which are digitalized conditional agreements. For example, if a person has hurricane insurance and an insurance event occurs, it is currently necessary to contact an agent, provide proof and wait for compensation. With Smart Contracts, the insurance automatically goes into effect once a recognized source, an oracle, such as the national weather service, reports the landing of a hurricane in a given area. The insurance policy holder could, in theory, receive the funds within hours of the incident. Smart Contracts eliminate human intermediaries.

Therefore, FinTech is not shark-tagging technology and far less frightening than that animal. All knowledge is useful if not always as a translator but always in the never-ending struggle to understand this world. I strongly recommend taking advantage of ATA webinars, available to both members and non-members, that provide fill that need and expand the mind. Those that attended the session came out more knowledgeable from whatever they gleamed from the webinar.

All images via Pixabay

Exotic or alien – when does a foreign word remain a stranger

 

All speakers and writers choose their words. Linguists, including authors, editors and translators, may invest more time and energy in this choice but even the most basic user seeks the best term in terms of register, connotation and impact. Essentially, the chosen word must sound right, which is a matter of accustomed sound. Words with unusual phonetic signatures sound strange. However, in terms of word choice, as there are no “pure” nations in terms of racial background, there are no pure languages in terms of roots. An exchange of words occurs anytime one culture meets another. In some cases, the words become an integral part of the language and lose their foreignness. In other cases, people use these words despite their non-local origin because there is no substitute in the original language. However. in many cases, speakers of different generations and points of view may disagree whether a given verbal immigrant has any raison d’être as there exists a highly adequate term. The processs never ends.

Some foreign words have been a part of a language for so long that they have become native. For example, in Russian, the word for beach, пляж [plajh], comes from the French plage while the term for a train station вокзал [vokzal] is derived from the English Vauxhall, the name on the first locomotive in Russia (from St. Petersburg to the Tsar’s village). This use of Western terminology does not bother the most nationalistic Russian. Likewise, an insulated American has no problem calling a nice sidewalk eatery a café, as distinguished by its poorer cousin, the coffee shop. New York brokers, Jewish or not, often consult a maven, a word derived from Yiddish and Hebrew, if they need an expert opinion. In Israel, Jews whose family came from Tunisia or Ethiopia use the words קיוסק, kiosk, and צ'ופצ'יק [chupchik], a whatchamacallit, whose origins are in distant Russia, without batting an eyelash. These words have become a basic part of the language.

Other foreign words still sound like immigrants but the language needs them. For example, a party can be fancy or posh but the French chic adds another dimension to the description. For describing a corrupt military dictatorship, there is no better word in English than junta, Spanish in sound and origin, and so succinct. In France, the left-wing parties are now considering holding les primaires, a gem taken from the Anglo-Saxon tradition of primaries and a relatively recent development in French politics. Hebrew is an active borrower of English terms to describe concepts that its limited root system struggles to cope with. For example, business people use the word אֵפֶקְטִיבִי [effectivi] [effective] to emphasize one aspect of the Hebrew word יָעִיל [yail], which encompasses both effectiveness and efficiency. Many Israelis have become quite skilled in terms of their ability לנרמל [lenormel], to normalize, the current situation. Languages must keep up with the times. Sometimes, it is easier to copy than to invent a word.

Nevertheless, foreign adoption can go too far, at least in some people’s eyes. The average American or Brit, depending on socio-economic background, may find it pretentious if a person said a pied-á-terre for a vacation home or “what do you think of my new coif” instead “How’s the haircut?”. The average French may have seemed to accept “le weekend”” and “le shopping” but French intellectuals and writers are far from happy with such terms, especially when the French terms are perfectly sufficient. As for Hebrew, many Israelis cringe when chefs say “crispy” instead of פריך [parich}. Even worse, in the ears of many lovers of the Holy language is the adoption of לקחת חלק [lakahat helek], the literal translation of the English take part, instead of the solid Hebrew word להשתתף [lehishtatef]. Many people believe that speakers should be proud of their language (regardless if so many of its words are derived from foreign roots).

The use of foreign words is a matter of both ideology and usefulness. Clearly, no language academy can determine which foreign word will go native and which will always be a stranger. However, the introduction of foreign words is one of the basic tools for intrinsic language development and occurs quite naturally. The answer to the question whether using a foreign word is chic or a faux pas is subjective by definition, as all language users, including translators, know.

A challenging conversion – the difficulties and rewards of demanding customers

 

Every provider of a service has experienced them – the customers that demand absolute perfection whether it is relevant or not. They see and find every perceived error or inconsistency and will insist on fixing the issue, however unimportant it is and how much work it would take to do it “right”. Suddenly, a simple job becomes a never-ending series of conversations and revisions. The craftsperson wants to scream and tell the client to take a flying leap but cannot. Instead, grinning and bearing it becomes the only option. A more positive method of dealing with such perfectionists is to meet their demands with the knowledge that the willingness to go the extra mile will financially pay off in the future. These customers are the best clients to have in a certain sense.

To clarify what a demanding customer is, it is important to distinguish between price and quality issues. Customers that negotiate money constantly and irrationally are not long-term assets. The energy invested in setting the cost combined with the resulting low rates do not justify the work. Moreover, they will switch to another provider in the blink of an eye as all they care about is price. By contrast, some customers are perfectionists and are only satisfied with the highest quality from themselves and others. It is not personal. The relative importance of a deviance is not relevant as only 100% is acceptable. They have no compunction about demanding correction after correction until the result meets their expectations. In the meantime, the actual time spent on the project has doubled or even tripled. Such people often get under one’s nerves.

However, in the long term, demanding customers are the best long-term asset in terms of direct work and references. Once a provider has passed the test, such a customer is not likely to switch to a less expensive provider as long as there is no change in the work level because they are not always willing to spend the effort to train a replacement. For example, every time my wife buys glasses, it involves numerous adjustments until they are perfect. She has gone to the same patient optometrist for over a decade. She is happy with her glasses but he has clearly profited from her loyalty as he patiently makes the adjustments for each pair. On a marketing level, perfectionists tend to be extreme in their opinion of service providers, i.e., someone is excellent or incompetent, with little in between. When demanding but satisfied clients recommend you, their words have authority and bring results.

Thus, when dealing with the seemingly unsatisfiable customer, it is best to take a deep breath, be patient and think long term. Getting angry does not improve your work, mood or health. Such clients demand a professional approach. When they receive it, they appreciate it. Ultimately, they become loyal customers in all the meanings of that term as well as the anchor of any business.

Pearl Buck wrote (I think) that, regarding the conversion of Asians to Christianity in the 19^th century and early 20^th century, one Japanese convert was worth three Chinese converts as the former would never revert. Likewise, winning over one demanding customer is worth three one-time clients in the long term. Hopefullly, that thought will help some freelancers gather up the patience and strength to go the extra mile.

Housing culture – home imaging

 

“Hidaka’s house wasn’t one of the mansions, but it was definitely large for a couple with no children. Though the peaked gables on the roof gave it a Japanese look, it had bay windows, an arch over the front door and window boxes hanging from the second storey that were clearly Western in design.”*

The task of a translator extends far beyond linguistic matters and necessarily involves creating images. The challenge lies in both visualizing the picture in the original text, obvious to the author, and gracefully reproducing it for the reader unfamiliar with the culture in question. An example of this task is the simple word “house”. While almost all dwellings have at least four walls, they vary in material, dimension, outside façade, inside layout and access to light and air, to name just a few factors. It is clear that the sentence “I loved my parents’ home” may elicit a universal feeling but fails to create a single picture, with each person envisioning the building differently. Often, housing styles may be fairly typical in a given country or region, creating a stereotype for those familiar with them. The actual variances may be quite significant or more subtle as I show in a few examples of “typical” homes.

Spanish houses and apartments, at least in cities, seem to emphasize social space at the expense of the more private spaces. The holiday homes on the Spanish coast have relatively large sitting areas, both outside and inside. By contrast, the kitchen is often quite small, “galley” style in polite terms, often cut off from the social space. Depending on the area, red tiles and arches are quite popular.

·    English dwellings, particularly urban ones, enjoy multiple but small sitting areas, referred to as “cozy”, often leaving me to think that the English like to keep their children’s mess and noise from strangers’ eyes and ears. Curiously enough, the entrance ways are often extremely narrow, barely wide enough for one person to pass through at a time. Based on TV programs, the English appreciate solariums and wooden beams, the symbols of luxury and character.

·    The French are a rather solid people traditionally. The houses are often made of brick or stone, especially in the countryside,  possibly with painted window shutters. Whether urban or rural, the furniture tends to be heavy in line with the style of the walls, with lots of bric-a-brac cluttering the living space. Traditional French dwellings often lack air and light, apparently to reduce the cost of heating the space. French houses are homey but a bit claustrophobic in my eyes.

American West Coast homes are as large as the land allows. The houses are constructed from wood and generally rather standard in construction, but include large rooms, meaningful garden areas, healthy air flow, natural light, central air conditioning and a garage. Ranch house style houses are designed to give the residents space and impress the neighbors. The character and age of the building are not relevant factors. The East Coast has a different tradition but I am not sufficiently familiar to comment.

·    Israeli houses are typical of the Eastern Mediterranean. People are social while the weather is hot. The kitchen and living room, often joined, take proportionally a large part of the livable space, often at the expense of the bedrooms. People seek patio space whenever possible as garden space can significantly raise the purchase price. Upper floors tend to become quite hot and are only practical with air conditioning. The Israeli unique feature is the requirement, both legal and emotional, for some kind of “safe” room, a reinforced area when (not in case) the country is bombed. Many older houses and apartments lack this feature, reducing their desirability. As for color scheme, Israel is a multicultural society, creating a wide variety of furnishing styles.

The translator of the novel cited in the first paragraph was fortunate in that the author himself provided details of the house. Likewise, Honoré de Balzac generally wrote pages about the physical description of the building and each of its rooms. However, most literary translators not only need to be familiar with the architecture but somehow transmit that image. I am quite happy to be a technical translator and not be required to achieve that goal. Yet, the thought does give another meaning to the term “in-house translator”.

* Higashino, K., 2014. Malice translated by A. Smith. London: Abascus.