Saturday, 9 June
14:20–14:35, SOCIETY NEWS
Kenneth Quek, Introducing NEaT
General
This presentation will introduce NEaT, Nordic Editors and Translators. NEaT is a professional association for language professionals working in English for the Nordic region. It is currently active mainly in Finland but is seeking to increase its regional reach. NEaT is a sister organization of MET, Mediterranean Editors and Translators.
This will be a 15-minute talk about who we are and what we do, what we offer our members and how we are seeking to develop the professional standards and standing of our field. It will not only be of interest to language professionals from the Nordic region but also further afield, as we offer instructional materials and webinars that are accessible to those outside the region as well.
Apart from these offerings, we also seek to form partnerships with like-minded individuals and organizations. We believe that our professional field is truly transnational and that we can learn and benefit from colleagues all over the world.
This is particularly important in view of the many challenges facing language professionals today, including a general lack of understanding of and appreciation for the field and the threats and opportunities posed by machine translation and editing. As a body, we need to develop ways to maintain our relevance and viability, and NEaT seeks to be in the forefront of this development.
With this in mind, we hope to reach out to a broader community at the SENSE conference and help to build a strong international network that will be an advocate for its members and the field as a whole.
About the presenter
Kenneth Quek is a Singaporean who resides in Helsinki. He is fully bilingual in English and Mandarin Chinese and works both as a freelance academic revisor for the University of Helsinki Language Centre and as a freelance editor and copywriter in the corporate sector. He has previous experience in private teaching, translation and journalism.
Kenneth will also be giving a conference presentation entitled Chinglish as she is writ: On the uses and abuses of English by native Chinese speakers.