Saturday, 9 June

14:50–15:50, PRESENTATION SESSIONS 1

14:50–15:20

Charles Frink, Disrupting the inheritance of poor writing habits: An alternative approach to editing and teaching writing (in the health-related sciences)

Editing/Writing

In the health-related-sciences, about 500,000 manuscripts are published each year. Unfortunately, the authors of many of these manuscripts, and many more that were rejected for publication, tend to use language to impress their peers rather than to communicate to an increasingly multidisciplinary readership. This problem has been acknowledged for decades, but journal editors continue to complain that many submissions are so poorly written that the point of the manuscript is unclear. According to Amin Bredan, scientist and journal editor, this tendency to write ‘complex, exaggerated and often pompous prose’ is transmitted by senior scientists to junior ones, leading to the inheritance of poor writing habits.

Disrupting this inheritance obviously requires attention to the linguistic aspects of clear writing, which has indeed been the emphasis of most editors and teachers of scientific writing. Despite the standard plea of journal editors for editing by a native speaker, however, the overall quality of writing in the health-related sciences remains below par.

Here I present an alternative approach that focuses first on the underlying structure of a manuscript. These are the core components of research manuscripts in the health-related sciences, such as the problem definition, hypothesis, study design, results and discussion. By presenting these components clearly – and explicitly – and linking them logically, peer reviewers can focus on the actual scientific content of a manuscript instead of struggling to find the point. This approach not only ensures that manuscripts have the ‘flow’ that journal editors want; it often makes the linguistic editing more efficient.



About the presenter

Charles FrinkCharles Frink is the owner of Frink Communications and has worked as an editor and translator for more than 30 years. He has been associated in this capacity with Wageningen UR (and its precursors) since 1992. He currently focuses on editing and teaching scientific writing in the life sciences.

Saturday, 9 June

14:50–15:50, PRESENTATION SESSIONS 1

14:50–15:50

Iris Schrijver, Translation quality (assessment): Insights from Translation Studies in the quest for the holy grail?

Translation

Translation quality is an important issue for practitioners, clients, trainers and scholars alike. It is a source of both fascination and despair, since it raises a number of thorny questions. These include: What is translation quality? Can we even define it? Is there a ‘gold standard’ or something like ‘acceptable quality’ and, if so, what are they? Can we measure translation quality and, if so, how do we assess it?

In this talk, I will report on how translation quality and translation quality assessment are approached in Translation Studies. I will start by providing a brief overview of how translation scholars have defined translation quality in the past and how it is defined currently. I will then report on the latest research on translation quality assessment by discussing various methods (e.g. error-based or analytic assessment, holistic assessment and assessment that focuses on ‘rich points’). I will reflect on the benefits and drawbacks of these methods as well as on how valid and reliable they are considered to be. Last but not least, I will present a number of tools that are currently used in academia to carry out translation quality assessments.

The aim of this talk is to update delegates on the academic debate about translation quality and its assessment. I also invite you to join me in a discussion of the most pressing questions that practitioners have regarding translation quality and translation quality assessment which merit further scientific exploration.

 


About the presenter

Iris Schrijver photoDr Iris Schrijver is a tenure track assistant professor at the Department of Translators and Interpreters at the Faculty of Letters and Philosophy of the University of Antwerp, where she teaches an introductory course in Translation Studies as well as several courses on translation from Spanish into Dutch. She holds an MA in Translation and a PhD in Translation Studies. In 2016 she was awarded the Young Scholar Prize 2016 from the European Society for Translation Studies for her doctoral dissertation entitled ‘The translator as a text producer: The effects of writing training on transediting and translation performance.’ Her main research interests are the acquisition of translation competence, cognitive translation processes and translation quality assessment.

 

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 QuekKenneth 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.

Stephen Johnston

Stephen JohnstonStephen Johnston is a professional trainer, copywriter and journalist who works with multi-national companies on projects such as websites, internal and external communication, white papers, marketing material, brochures, corporate journalism, and speechwriting ... and blogs!

Much of this work involves specifically targeting different readership groups. Stephen also upgrades previously written texts and/or provides one tone-of-voice for texts with multiple authors to increase their impact and professionalism. He also conducts workshops and training sessions to improve the quality of business writing and presenting.

Stephen is giving a pre-conference workshop entitled The impossible blog: How to write a readable blog from unreadable material.

Tony Parr

Tony ParrTony Parr (pictured) and Marcel Lemmens are professional business translators and translator trainers. Both have extensive experience as translators (both freelance and in-house) and as teachers of translation, principally at the National College of Translation in Maastricht. They are the authors of Handboek voor de Vertaler Nederlands–Engels. Operating under the name of Teamwork, they have been organising courses, workshops and conferences for language professionals in the Netherlands since 1993.

Tony and Marcel’s workshop-style conference presentation is entitled Identifying and rectifying translatorese.

Susannah Goss

Susannah GossSusannah Goss is a Scientific Editor at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin. She has the Chartered Institute of Linguists’ Diploma in Translation and a European Master’s Degree in Linguistics. Having been thrown into the LaTeX deep end a few years ago (and almost sinking), she is motivated to offer other language professionals a gentler introduction to LaTeX.

 

Susannah will be co-presenting a double conference session with Ailish Maher entitled Editing documents produced in LaTeX, for which laptops are recommended.

 

Martine Croll

Martine CrollMartine is a freelance copywriter, storyteller and communications consultant. Born in the Netherlands, but travelled the world living in Jamaica, Indonesia, Zimbabwe and the UK. Because she is a native speaker of both English and Dutch, she writes in both languages. She studied English Language and Literature at Leiden University here in the Netherlands.

Since setting up her business she’s been lucky enough to work for a vast array of people and companies. She’s written articles for magazines, blog posts, annual and strategic reports, corporate books and many, many websites.

She enjoys writing. Why? ‘Because every piece of writing challenges me to tell a new story. Writing and storytelling are crafts that can be acquired. But, perhaps more importantly, I’ve found that they are crafts that can make things happen in the real world,’ according to Martine.

Martine's main conference presentation is entitled Scribe or shrink? Improving client relationships and winning more clients the easy way - by getting into their heads! She is also presenting a TED-style conference talk entitled Making ideas happen! Using the power within to tackle the things that are scary and just ‘do it’.

Jeremy Gardner

Jeremy GardnerAfter receiving his first degree (modern languages), Jeremy Gardner taught English for 15 years at the universities of Perugia, Cagliari, Cosenza and Ancona. He then moved to Luxembourg, to work as a translator at the European Union. His tasks there include editing original English texts and working as an interpreter/auditor during official visits to the Member States, Italy, in particular. He is also a member of the EU’s inter-institutional style guide committee and played a significant role in drafting the current version.

In 2012, Jeremy published a tongue-in-cheek guide to misused words in EU publications, which attracted considerable attention in the media, both in Europe and beyond and has since written articles on other aspects of the English used at the EU institutions.

He is also involved in training activities aimed at improving the level of drafting within the EU, delivering presentations and workshops both in the EU institutions and beyond.

Jeremy is opening the conference with a plenary talk entitled EU English: Past, present and conditional.

Iris Schrijver

Iris Schrijver photoDr Iris Schrijver is a tenure track assistant professor at the Department of Translators and Interpreters at the Faculty of Letters and Philosophy of the University of Antwerp, where she teaches an introductory course in Translation Studies as well as several courses on translation from Spanish into Dutch. She holds an MA in Translation and a PhD in Translation Studies. In 2016 she was awarded the Young Scholar Prize 2016 from the European Society for Translation Studies for her doctoral dissertation entitled ‘The translator as a text producer: The effects of writing training on transediting and translation performance.’ Her main research interests are the acquisition of translation competence, cognitive translation processes and translation quality assessment.

Iris’s conference presentation is entitled Translation quality (assessment): Insights from Translation Studies in the quest for the holy grail?

Ellen Singer

Ellen SingerEllen Singer is a freelance translator with more than twenty years of experience as a full-time translator and project manager. She owns a small technical translation agency with her husband that focuses on quality. Ellen has been working with CAT tools since the 1990s. She loves challenges and knowledge and enjoys cooperating with others. A speaker of English, Spanish and Dutch, Ellen has been presenting at conferences since 2013. She has covered a wide range of topics, from technical translation to Donald Duck, from file conversion to QA, and even Why translate? She enjoys conferences and meeting other translators.

Ellen's conference presentation is entitled Linguist and laymen (Or: Fit for purpose).

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