Rolling on to the Columbia – the upcoming 65th American Translators Association (ATA) conference

 

[Columbia River]

In around one week, the ATA conference will open in Portland, Oregon. If you have never attended a large national translation/interpreter conference, it is a special experience involving bountiful opportunities to network, learn and expand horizons. The ATA annual conference generally attracts around two thousand people.  This year, I personally have a special interest in it not only professionally but also personally but any person that is currently a part of or considering joining the language industry can benefit.

One of the amazing riches of the conference is the overwhelming choice of lectures. During each lecture period, a participant can choose among nine different presentations. It is almost too much especially since conversations in the hallway on the way to the lecture often prevent you from getting to them. This year, I will be giving two presentations, one on project-based quotes and the other demonstrating a step-by-step approach to preparing presentations. For a full program, see here. Clearly, regardless of a person’s actual area of specialization, there are numerous lectures of interest. Notwithstanding this opportunity to gain knowledge, the most important benefit of the conference is the creation and reinforcement of the feeling of a translator community, a large one even, so often lost as we work alone in our (office) caves, isolated from others. I finished my last ATA conference in Palm Springs, before Corona struck, exhausted but inspired. If you have a chance to attend this year or in the future, it is a worthwhile investment of time and money.

On a personal basis, I lived in Oregon before I immigrated to Israel 35 years ago. I am looking forward to seeing both the friends and place I left behind. Aside from attending a reunion party of Hopa, the Balkan dance troupe in which I was a member back then, I plan to rediscover and show my wife the beauty of Oregon as I remember it: Multnomah Falls in the Columbia River Gorge, Mount Hood, the Oregon Coast, the 5^th Street Market in Eugene and any of the places I can get to. Of course, rain is forecast. The joke is that it rains twice a year in Oregon, from January to June and June to January. My wife and dealt with killer humidity in Shanghai in July; we will deal with frequent pissing from the sky in Oregon. Another, albeit unfortunate, personal benefit is that we will not have to be on constant alert for air raid warnings as is the situation right now in Israel. They do get one one’s nerves very quickly. Thus, I am looking forward to returning to Oregon even if you cannot go home again as Thomas Wolfe wrote.

Therefore, if you can attend the conference and are interested in any aspect of the translation and interpretation (including the effect of AI on the business), it is not too late to register and profit from an amazing event in all aspects. Contact me if you want to meet at the conference. As follows from the words that Woody Guthry wrote in the song about the building of a hydroelectric dam on the Columbia river, you can see the power of language turn the darkness to dawn. Roll on to the Columbia, roll on.

Micro-ambition

In a recent speech at a graduation, British comedian Tim Minchin gave the following advice: “be passionate about a pursuit of a short term goal.”  If I think about what characterizes truly extraordinary people, the intense desire to achieve a goal is an important factor. We may not understand that goal but we admire the drive and dedication.

This summer, I popped up to Portland, Oregon, a city that I left some 28 years ago to immigrate to Israel and where I had left beyond several good friends. An opportunity arose, a translation certification test, to see long, lost friends. In planning the trip, I discovered that I actually had lost a friend, to cancer some 15 years ago. It saddened and saddens me both because she died young, in her forties, a tragedy in any case, and because I had lost a kind of sister, a kindred soul, whom I was so looking forward to catching up on life and rekindling the connection.

Googling for any records, I noticed that Sarah J. Wrench, my friend, was invisible, i.e., with no records or pictures besides in regards to the book she got published. I would like to fill that gap. She was an extraordinary person in an extra-ordinary way. As Frank Sinatra would say, she did her own way. She adored opera and travelled to San Francisco once a year to catch several operas each time. She even wrote a fantasy book based on opera characters, which she got published – The Duke of Sumava (1997), an achievement in itself. She loved Balkan folk dance and danced with all her heart. Most of all, her brain was extremely sharp and imaginative, going down the roads less traveled. In the eight years I knew her, we never had a boring conversation. We shared a love of puns and dance as well as an appreciation of each other as humans. Finding a heart-mate is complicated but attainable.  Finding a soul mate is a rare phenomenon. In short, Sarah was not a conventional person but an extraordinary individual and willing to pay to the price for that.

As the speaker said, micro ambition often makes the man, in this case the woman. Sarah invested her ultimately short life into her passions, ignoring what others would think or say she should do. She lived, not merely existed. Albeit very belatedly, I say goodbye to a good friend and regret not having picked up the phone to have a chat when I could have. To paraphrase a well known expression, it is even worth doing passionately things that are not worth doing in the opinion of others.

Roamin Times

To begin, I was a classic “wandering Jew”.  My relatives from at least two generations took their legs and immigrated to a different country, not always by choice. One grandmother went from Russian to the United States while the other emigrated from Poland to France. My mother left France for the United States. I came to live in Israel.  I am fairly certain that my daughter will leave Israel to live in the United States, which she likes more than I do. So, there is a genetic factor there.  From the time I left home to go to college to the day I started my life in Karmiel, Israel, a period of more than ten years, I never lived in any city for more than three years.  A short list of these cities includes Santa Cruz, CA, Paris, France, Los Angeles, CA, Eugene Oregon, Portland, Oregon and Ashkelon, Israel.  I didn’t have to join the navy to see the world and became a bit of an expert on how to get started in a new city.

That being said, I can safely say that all cities are not created in equal in terms of ease of entrance.  The key factor is the percentage of residents not born in the place. On one extreme, there are villages and small cities that you are still considered new after three generations because, to mangle Einstein, everything is relative. On the other extreme are places like New York and Los Angeles, where the sheer number of “foreigners”, both domestic and foreign, is so large that your source of origin is merely a way to start a conversation and of little other significance. A peculiar situation is Paris. Half of the city consists of French Parisians while the other half are outsiders, both French and foreign.  I was quite lucky being half French and half “ericain” that I could enter both worlds, that of my Parisian family and that of the temporary and permanent émigré community. I felt quite at home and would still do today even if I believe Paris is an unhealthy city to live due to the stress and diesel fumes, no matter how exciting it is be there.

My way of starting anew was to do what I enjoy, Balkan folk dancing. Wherever I went, I found the local group or groups, joined them and immediately had a social circle.  I once unashamedly (at the time) crashed a wedding a few days after my arrival in Portland, merely following my new found acquaintances to the wedding even though I had never met either the bride or groom.  Nobody said anything to me, whatever that means. Between my hobby, work and studies, I was able to quickly create a social circle. Being young, male and a good dancer didn’t hurt either. I suppose newcomers join churches and synagogues for the same reason.

I have now lived in Karmiel, Israel, a small town of 50,000 people in the north, for over 27 years. I have been married twice and raised my daughter here. Since the town was founded only in the late 1964, the number of native born residents is still relatively small. Curiously enough, I have no desire to roam anymore. During the Second Lebanese War, it was bit like the line of the Star Spangled Banner here, “And the rockets in air…” I preferred  being under effective house arrest in my own house in Karmiel than being at a five start refugee at a hotel in Herzeliya further south, much to the angst of my parents. I cannot tell you what exactly changed but my sense is that everybody has a time to roam and a time to create a nest. I enjoyed my days of exploration and appreciate my days of attachment. 

National Streets

Street names are culturally specific.  Some countries treat their streets as long strips of asphalt while others give them much more historical significance.

The United States as a rule shows little imagination but some practicality in naming its streets.  The most common names are trees (oak, elm, pin, etc), numbers, and letters.  The city of Portland, Oregon in its downtown area has all of its streets going north/south (to the best of my memory) named in alphabetical order according to the first letter, i.e. words beginning of a, b, c, etc.  It makes finding addresses much simpler.  The only real bit of history in most U.S. cities is the use of presidents, but it doesn’t go much farther than the founding fathers and a few exceptional ones, specifically Washington, Madison, Adams, Lincoln, Jefferson, and Roosevelt. 

A French city map is a history lesson, especially Paris.  Anybody who is anybody in French history has a street, however small it may be, named after him or her.  There is almost always a small plaque stating a few biographical bits and pieces about the person.  The older city has medieval names whose origins are often completely lost, such as Rue de Mauvais Fils (The street of bad boys).  The distinction between ancient and modern Paris is sometimesmarked by the word “Faubourg” added  to a street name somewhere along its length, as in Rue St. Denis and Rue Faubourg St. Denis. All in all, for the interested explorer, its turns every stroll in Paris into a wonderful look into the past.

Modern Israel tends to name streets after history and nature.  No Israeli municipality is complete without a Rehov Ben Gurion, Jabotinsky, Herzl, and Trumpeldor.  I live in a neighborhood whose streets are all military campaigns (most of which the younger generation has never hear of).  Ironically, it is bordered by a street called Derech Hashalom, meaning “The Way of Peace.” Fortunately, most residential streets are given the sweet sounding names of trees, birds, and flowers, such as Alon (Oak), Dukifat (hoopoe), and Harzit (chrysanthemum).  In many cities, such as Jerusalem and Zefat, the names of various rabbis and righteous people are noted.  By contrast, in many Arab villages, there are many “anonymous” streets, which I suppose adds challenge to the postal carrier’s job.

Of course, there is a joke about the high regard that Americans have for the late Israeli Prime Minister, Menachem Begin.  Almost every freeway in the United States is named Begin freeway.