The ITA 2025 Conference – a multi-perspective view of the translator/interpreter client challenge

 

Last week, the Israel Translators Association (ITA) held its 2025 conference in Tel Aviv with the theme being the customer challenge, or more specifically how find and retain customers in a changing market. The two-day event was packed with lectures, each offering a different point of view and series of suggestion on how to create and maintain a successful language provider business. The speakers ranged from experienced translators and interpreters in Israel and abroad to professional marketers. Of course, some, but far from all, of the presenters discussed the application of AI with an emphasis on using it for administrative and creative tasks. Overall, it was an enriching and enjoyable experience.

Over the two days, many experienced linguists shared their wisdom on how to seek new customers in a market in which some niches are shrinking. One important theme was the necessity for active steps to remain relevant. Hadassah Levy noted in her presentation “Marketing Your Translation Business in 10 Minutes a Day” that creating content and then automating their publication renders digital marketing much more time-efficient in the long term and creates a vital effective online presence. Helen Baker discussed a weekly time investment in business networking groups as a means of building productive business connections. Finally, Tess Whitty discussed the attaining additional skills, in her case SEO, to add value to her services and income to her business. Other relevant lectures include Chiara Vecchi on her effective reaction to reduced business volume, Miriam Blum on the importance of the ITA “Recognized Translation” and Mikhal Heffer on working with agencies. I contributed a presentation on how to prepare a professional presentation to clients and colleagues. Overall, the lectures provided a bounty of ideas.

The conference also featured presentations by professional marketers. Dotan Grably provided a strong theoretical and practical approach to the general principle of how to attract customers. He focused on two concepts and explained how to apply them in practice. Yarden Lerer went into great detail on content creation and its effect use for marketing. Both of these presenters provided great food for thought.

Of course, as in any professional conference today, AI was on the agenda. Aliza Berger showed and compared translation of a short legal title using various AI engines as well as human translation. Uriel Shuraki discussed the characteristics of several AI applications. Beyond the use of AI as a translation tool, Alfonso González Bartolessis and Dominique Bohbot related AI to business management and its benefits in increasing efficiency.  These and other lectures helped reduce the “flight or fight” reaction to AI in many of the attendees.

To those presenters whose name I failed to mention or whose content I did not do justice, I apologize and remark that both space on this post and in my brain’s memory is limited. The two days were truly packed with information and ideas, the recipe for an ideal conference. Chapeau to the organizers, who organised the event. I strongly recommend any translator or interpreter that is feeling nervous about the market to attend such events. The meeting of minds and people opens up great opportunities because it provides a multi-perspective view of what is and what can be. I am looking forward to further events on the same subject as well as the conference next year.

The 65th ATA Conference – on matter, antimatter and the translation business

 

[man on an island]

I had the pleasure of attending the American Translators Association conference in Portland, Oregon and have even recovered from the jet lag (more or less). As with all packed events, it takes some time to absorb all the impressions and information, especially when more than 1500 people attend and share their perspectives. Looking back, the conference was remarkable for the matters people discussed and no less for what they did not discuss, producing great food for thought on the future of the profession.

This large national conference featured, as always, a great variety of lectures, amazing networking opportunities and a national, if not global, view of the profession. The presentations, with a choice of 9 different topics in each time slot over 3 days, varied widely with topics ranging from approaches to technological matters and specific markets to directed advice to experienced and new translators alike. The two most striking features were the quantity of presentations for interpreters, which indicates the vivacity of this field, and the emphasis on specific markets and issues for translators. I confess that while I gave two presentations (project-based quotes and how to make a presentation), I failed to attend a lecture not because I was not interested but because the conversations in the hallways were far more tempting,  relevant and important. I had learned from my previous ATA conference 5 years ago (BC – before Corona) in Palm Springs that it is impossible to talk to each to each and every person at a conference with more than a 1000 people. Therefore, this time I strived to have longer and more impactful conversations with fewer people. This approach was less stressful and more effective in building contacts, the most important purpose of an industry conference. From these conversations, I received a feel of the spectrum of the language specialist industry, the business trends, and the hopes and fears of translators and interpreters in all fields. This conference provided much information on the state of the industry.

Of no less importance were the topics and statements I did not hear. First, nobody expressed the thought that AI was the death of the industry. As in all technological innovations, some language specialists were more enthusiastic about ChatGPT than others. However, I did not hear any extreme forecast of the imminent disappearance of AI or it replacing human translators. In the same vein, I did not hear about people wishing to leave the industry due to the changes in the market and translation technology, only the search for how to adapt to and effectively adopt them. Finally, I did not hear complaints about low rates. To clarify, people mentioned irrelevant and/or ridiculous rates proposed by certain agencies. However, the translators stated them as facts that are a part but not the whole of the industry. In short, I heard no prognosis of the impending death of the human translation industry.

Between the said and unsaid, I understand, perhaps incorrectly, that the future of the translation industry depends on adaption to the everchanging landscape of technology and markets and the providing of support to new translators to help them navigate it. AI, just as machine and neural translation, is changing the manner translation providers and buyers operate. This process began decades ago with the major difference today being the pace of the development. This rapid evolution creates a “future shock” syndrome even for younger professionals. Yet, each person has the freedom to leverage technology depending on the individual niche, willingness and skill. It is not an all or nothing matter but a much more subtle evolution. Concurrently, markets are changing. Some 20 years ago, local or national agencies dominated the industry, handling all types of texts. Today, multinational agencies rely on volume, causing freelancers to specialize and reach out directly to customers in order to achieve rates that allow them to earn a living. Moreover, customers no longer need to pay a human translator to handle a simple text for personal use as ChatGPT or even Google Translate handles them quite satisfactorily. As in many industries, translators must specialize, such as in the fields of medicine, law and marketing. Finally, while it was never easy, new translators find establishing a translation business quite complicated and confusing. The relevance of national translator organizations has thus only increased as they can and do provide vital information that allow newcomers to quickly find and establish themselves in this complex market. The road alone is more difficult than ever. The world of translation and interpreting is not disappearing but constantly evolving, required language providers to adapt accordingly.

One of the purposes of national conferences is to provide a wide-angle picture of the industry, similar to the image produced by the multiple eyes of a fly. ATA65 presented an industry in transition but healthy and vibrant not to mention ambivalent about the changes that are occurring but facing them at the same time. Attending it was an intense but rewarding experience for me personally. I strongly recommend any translator or interpreter, whether experienced or new to the profession, to attend such events and join your national or regional organization. To paraphrase John Donne, no translator must or should be an island. Each is part of a larger and inspiring industry as I rediscovered this month. Translators, interpreters and conferences do matter.

Non-native bias? (in translation)

 

[Bearded dragons*]

At any get-together of translators, one topic that surely heats up the conversation is the virtue or lack thereof of translators translating into their non-native language. In its most extreme form, one side declares that non-native speakers, regardless of their language level, are unable to express themselves in writing like native sons and daughters, who have had a lifelong education in that language. On the other hand, those excluded translators retort by claiming that this generalization is, at best, a form of unjustified elitism and, at worst, an attempt to limit competition, noting that many native speakers, even translators, are unfamiliar with the grammar rules of their own language. As usual, the truth is more complex with the full expectation that many will disagree with me.

To clarify, it is clear that interpreters, as compared to translators, can and often should be natives in the source language, not target language, since their task often involves almost instantaneous understanding of the speech of people from all levels of society and a need to understand the subtext. For example, an APTI conference in Valencia, a professional interpreter recounted how difficult and important it was to understand the testimony of uneducated women in Yugoslavia during the War Crimes Tribunal because they were talking about rape, a taboo topic. The interpreter had to understand the code language of these people while the judges could cope with less-than-perfect English. So, the arguments below do not apply to interpreters.

To help non-translators understand the problem, it is first necessary to realize that the demands of written communication are different from those of spoken communication in terms of learning process and flexibility. Formal education is not required in order to speak a language. Numerous people worldwide have studied a foreign language, even for several years and are barely able to get a sentence out while others, with no education but merely the opportunity and necessity to use the language, not only express themselves clearly but live their daily lives in that language. By contrast, people attain the ability to express ideas in a clear, acceptable manner in writing through many years of formal schooling. To one degree or another, written language is a dialect that is only taught in schools although reading and speaking contribute to its acquisition. Furthermore, speaking is an instantaneous act that does not allow for editing and thus accepts individual differences in style and even grammar. When we judge spoken language, the essential issue is whether the listener understands with accuracy a secondary factor. It is true that people may note grammar and vocabulary errors, especially teachers and translators, but these mistakes are generally forgiven. On the other hand, written language, especially English, a hodgepodge of various roots, is a polished product, like a diamond. Since writers (and translators) have the time to edit, readers expect a perfect result in terms of grammar, syntax and style. The requirements of those elements may evolve but do so quite slowly. The “accepted” manner of writing, with small variations, is de rigueur. Any writer failing to comply with those rules is harshly judged as the sharp reactions to grammatical errors in comments in social media shows.  The scope of acceptable written communication is rather limited.

For this reason, native speakers generally categorically reject translation by non-natives in their language. Unless the foreigners were educated in that language from childhood, it is stated that they simply cannot write like a native but instead write in a hybrid style combining their native and second languages. Teachers call this language interference, which can also happen to natives after sufficient years living in a foreign country. Examples include Hebrish, where commas and preposition use is rather whimsical and Russian Engish, famous for its curious use of articles.  Consequently, translations by non-natives may be accurate in terms of content but will sound “translated”, not seamless, the legendary goal of all translation. Specifially,  Ideally, a proper translation should sound like it was an original work. Clearly, the vast majority of non-natives, Samual Beckett aside, are not capable of achieving that goal. Thus, in terms of attaining seamlessness, the nativists are correct.

Yet, supply and demand create a strong niche for non-native translators. First, even in the common language combinations such as Spanish-English, excellent non-native writing may be good enough for the customer or the customer may lack sufficient knowledge to detect the errors. On a larger scale, many languages used on one country with low population suffer from a lack of non-natives that have learned the language proficiently. For example, few Americans and Brits have learned Czech or Hungarian, to name a few. Thus, law students in the Czech Republics are also trained as English translators as there are insufficient numbers of native English translators in these combinations. In addition, the translation rates in a country may be too low to attract foreign-based translators, effectively giving local, non-native translators a virtual monopoly. The Russian Federation is the most striking example where non-native, local translation is the norm due to the price structure for the most part. Thus, in practice, non-native translation is rather common and acceptable in some markets.

As in most issues, the question whether it is acceptable or not for translators to translate into their non-native language is not black or white. Ideally, translators should only translate into their native language since they have the proper ear for that language. On the other hand, market conditions create a situation requiring translation by non-native speakers. Reality is often a shade of grey.

* Caption pictures to allow the blind access. Picture via Pixabay

Premature death notice – in translation

My wife and I just attended the IAPTI (International Association of Professional Translators and Interpreters) conference in Valencia, Spain. Some 200 translators and interpreters from five continents participated. A good time was had by all. While there was no formal theme to this conference, we learned (as we already knew) that the reported imminent disappearance of human translation is mistaken. On the contrary, translators and interpreters can look forward to a long, fruitful career.

The conference began appropriately by bridging the past and present. Emily Wilson explained her new translation of Homer’s Odyssey into English in terms of elucidating the many individual perspectives embedded in the narratives of that book, which had been often ignored by previous translation. In other words, her modern translation emphasizes the diversity of viewpoints. On a similar level, Sergio Viaggio make a strong argument for interpreting from the first language into the second language in handing testimony of witnesses in international crimes against humanity hearings by emphasizing the importance of strengthening the voice of the victims, even at the expense of the ease of understanding of the justices. This need to amplify the voice of the underprivileged, a modern concern, was present in many lectures, including in regards to women’s rights, the handicapped and IAPTI African initiative. These were only a few of the lectures and topics.

As for the future of the profession, it is clear that human translators will continue to exist, albeit with adjustment to the modern world. Clearly, machine translation, whether neural translation or Google translate, will take on an increasing role in both general and standardized texts. However, whenever complete understanding is necessary, professional translators have a clear role. As several lectures explained,  one role is to transcreate, transferring the message without using the exact and inappropriate words of the original. Moreover, as Ralf Lemster explained, translators have two main paths to success: attack the mass market applying the technical time-saving tips that Xose Castro succinctly and enthusiastically provided or specialize in narrow area applying the business savvy of Allesandra Vita.

In any case, we left Valencia with hope, direction and optimism and fueled by the content of the lectures, lecturers and participants. The challenge they consciously and unconsciously posed to the translators, that is to grow, observe, adapt and improve, is a bit daunting but actually quite achievable. If we do so, translation will be alive and kicking for a long time to come.