After a spell of inactivity, Southern SIG met again on 24 August via Zoom to talk about books and a whole lot more. The modest turnout (we were three) did not prevent a good list of book recommendations and, as we discussed during the meeting, a good recommendation can provide a great answer to the burning question of what to read next.

Client trouble

But first we discussed the thorny issue of a new client who had not paid their bill on time. You could send a disgruntled email, using words like ‘notice of default’, ‘collection fees’ and ‘statutory interest’, but that might not be your best option, especially if you enjoyed the project and wanted to maintain a good business relationship. Sending a few friendly reminders along with a more rigorous follow-up on future invoices might be a viable alternative, provided that you receive payment for the overdue invoice soon. The matter did have one surprising incidental discovery: some collection agencies provide webinars and masterclasses as a way of self-promotion. Attending one of these courses could allow you to brush up your business skills and terminology knowledge on this particular subject.

Shoulder pain and what to do about it

Something else you want to avoid is a frozen shoulder. Although bad posture is not the only cause, slouching behind your laptop all day is not going to help either. As we learnt from first-hand experiences, this affliction may result in some excruciatingly painful visits to the physio over a long period of time. So, mind your posture when sitting at your desk and consider buying a standing desk, but be advised that you also should not remain standing for too long either. Life’s complicated, isn’t it?

Books

We discussed quite a list of book recommendations, which you will find below in no particular order. Don’t worry if nothing tickles your fancy, because we have one bonus tip up our sleeves – former US president Barack Obama publishes his summer reading list every year, which includes both fiction and non-fiction. Hopefully, we have given you enough inspiration to warrant a visit to your local bookshop!

• ‘The Seven Moons’ by Maali Almeida: a dead photographer investigates his own death in Sri Lanka in the 1980s. Winner of the 2022 Booker Prize.
• ‘Cloud Cuckoo Land’ by Anthony Doerr, who you may know from ‘All the Light We Cannot See’: three interconnecting stories from the past, present and future.
• ‘The Patron Saint of Second Chances’ by Christine Simon: feel-good, light reading about a tiny Italian village that tries to allure tourists by spreading a rumour that a famous movie star is now living there – which is obviously not the case!
• ‘The Last Chairlift’ by John Irving, who you may know from ‘The World According to Garp’: a peculiar 800-page novel on transgenders in the early 1980s. Mostly interesting for Irving fans.
• ‘Demon Copperhead’ by Barbara Kingsolver: a modern-day David Copperfield story set in the southern Appalachian Mountains of Virginia during the opioid crisis.
• ‘Doughnut Economics’ by Kate Raworth: Oxford economist Kate Raworth explains an alternative economic model that respects the limits of what Earth can take while maintaining a basic standard of living for everybody.
• ‘Black Cake’ by Charmaine Wilkerson: the tale of a nurse moving from the West Indies to England and later on to America. Many family secrets will unfold.
• ‘War Light’ by Michael Ondaatje, who you may know from ‘The English Patient’: a coming-of-age novel set in London during the Blitz.
• ‘The Casual Vacancy’ by J.K. Rowling: a page-turner about trouble in the city council.

Many SENSE members have benefitted over the years from the workshops and conferences for translators, interpreters and editors offered by Teamwork. Founded by Marcel Lemmens and Tony Parr in 1993, Teamwork has trained more than 3,500 professionals in the last 30 years. In this interview, Marcel and Tony tell us how their initial idea came to be and why the journey is now coming to an end.

It seems that you both share a love for languages – Marcel studied English at Tilburg and Nijmegen and Tony studied Dutch and French at Cambridge. Can you tell us a bit about your backgrounds and how you became professional translators?

Marcel: It was a bit of a coincidence, really. I was working as a teacher at a secondary school back in the 1980s when I realized that this was not a job that I was prepared to do for the rest of my life. I’d been in teaching for about four years and was enjoying the work when a colleague of mine – an excellent teacher – suddenly broke down from one day to the next. He never went back to teaching again. That’s when the penny dropped and I thought that I didn’t want that to happen to me. So I applied for a part-time job as a translator (‘vertaler/correspondent’ is what it said in the job vacancy) with a cigarette company in Zevenaar. I worked there for three years.

In the meantime, I graduated from the university of Nijmegen and also worked for the English publisher Collins both in Birmingham and in Doetinchem, where I lived at the time. The manager of the Collins Cobuild Dictionary had asked me to help his team of lexicographers design the grammar coding in the centre column of the first edition of the dictionary. It was one of the most thrilling jobs I have ever done. When I did a talk about my ideas on grammar coding in learners’ dictionaries at a lexicographers’ conference in Leeds, I met one of the two directors of the Translation Academy in Maastricht and he asked me if I could temporarily replace one of his lecturers who was on maternity leave. It seemed like a good idea. And that’s where I met Tony.

Tony: There was no proper study counselling at the bog-standard comprehensive school I went to in Oxford, and so – when it became clear that I didn’t have the right A-levels for doing a degree in maths – I decided to simply continue at university with the subjects I happened to be slightly better at at school: French and Latin. That was a big mistake. I dropped Latin as soon as I could, but also quickly became disenchanted with French. Studying French at Cambridge was a form of factory farming: the lectures were like a ‘megastal’ (a huge cattle shed) for students. I decided the time had come to do something different and, because my mother was a Flemish-speaking Belgian, it was Dutch I took up rather than Norwegian or Romanian.

Dutch was my saviour. It was brilliant. Just a small group of students, and lectures were ‘gezellige’ chats over coffee. I’m still in touch with the Dutch lecturer from my student days and will in fact be paying her a visit next week! However, despite having a go at modern and medieval Dutch literature, I felt rather embarrassed at the end of the course at my lack of good spoken Dutch. So I spent a summer working as a waiter in a hotel just outside Groningen and, after graduating, applied to all the Dutch universities for a job as a ‘studentassistent’ with the English department. Groningen was keen to have me, and so I spent two years there teaching drama classes to second-year students. It was great, but I didn’t really know much about English language or literature, so I thought I should move on.

I got myself a job as a translator with Vertaalbureau Bothof in Nijmegen (and just about every single English translator I have met in the Netherlands seems to have worked for Bothof at some point), where I spent three years under the tutelage of a truly brilliant translator, who taught me the tricks of the trade. I then spent a further five years working as an in-house translator for NMB Bank (now known as ING), before someone I met at a party invited me to apply for a job teaching translation in Maastricht. And that’s where I met Marcel.

How did the idea of creating Teamwork start?

Marcel: Teaching translation was great, but the vast majority of my colleagues in Maastricht had no practical experience as translators. That meant spending a lot of time translating newspaper articles, which were not only far too difficult for the students, but also totally unrepresentative. I had never been asked to translate a newspaper article when I’d been working as a translator.

Tony: Neither had I.

Marcel: And there were other things that grated. Not just the rather literary approach to translation, but the haphazard way in which texts were selected, the blindness to the type of material (often poor-quality) that real-life translators worked with, the marking system, and so on. Tony was a kindred spirit and we soon set about producing a handbook for student translators based on a totally new approach to translation techniques: ‘Handboek voor de vertaler Nederlands-Engels’.

Tony: At some point in 1993, we decided to run a translation workshop for former students of Maastricht. It was very popular – probably something to do with the fact that we offered our ‘workshoppers’ a slice of local ‘vlaai’ (from Mathieu Hermans, of course) during the coffee break.

Marcel: So we did another couple of these workshops and opened them up to all comers. To our surprise, we found that people were willing to get up in the middle of the night and travel all the way from Enschede to Maastricht to attend a translation workshop. Never had our ‘flabber’ been so ‘gasted’.

Tony: It wasn’t long before we decided to move the venue to Utrecht, which was of course far more convenient for people coming from other parts of the country. And we gradually professionalized the way we worked, bringing in subject specialists and experienced translators from all sorts of different fields.

Did you become SENSE members at that time as well?

Tony: Yes, I joined SENSE in 1995, and Marcel joined a couple of years later. I can remember doing a number of workshops for SENSE members – for example, ‘Dunglish for beginners’ and other workshops on editing. We also did a talk called ‘Cookery for translators’ during which we outlined the thinking behind what was then our new handbook. This involved dressing up as chefs and doing disgusting things with flour and eggs.

It can’t always have been easy to run a successful business for 30 years. How has this journey been for you?

Marcel: For a long time, we were more or less the only people running workshops for professional translators. Things changed in 2009, when the government decided that interpreters in particular needed to work on a more professional footing. There had been a number of scandals involving court interpreters, and these led to the enactment of the Wet beëdigde tolken en vertalers, which placed an onus on registered translators and interpreters to undertake continuing professional development (CPD) on a regular basis. The number of operators offering courses for translators and interpreters mushroomed – a lot of them have since disappeared, mind.

Tony: Although we made it our business not to offer workshops especially for people looking to amass CPD points (and many of the new courses took the form of webinars given by subject specialists rather than hands-on translation workshops), the new system did of course affect our work in that it diluted the training market. We had previously branched out from English into other languages, but over the years we found that the number of takers for other languages began to decline. This first affected less common languages such as Russian, Portuguese, Turkish and Italian, but we gradually started to find it difficult to attract enough people even for French and German.

Marcel: English has never been a problem, though. English remains the backbone of the translation market.

Tony: And then came Covid.

Marcel: We were in the process of planning our last conference when Covid hit the Netherlands. We had to shut down everything for some time. After a while, we started offering in-person courses again, but the first few of these were subject to all sorts of restrictions and it was also clear that a lot of people were not prepared to travel or to sit in a room with other people, even if they were placed a long way apart.

Tony: We also decided fairly early on that we weren’t interested in going online. The type of courses we do are aimed at participation: there’s lots of discussion and interaction. I attended a few webinars to see how they worked and a lot of them proved to be no more than talking heads on Zoom, sometimes accompanied by old-fashioned PowerPoint slides (which often stayed on the screen for minutes at a time). It was clear that online courses needed a totally different approach – and a huge investment in technology.

Marcel: So we sat it out. The conference never came to fruition, but we got back to our traditional in-person courses in 2022.

So why are you closing down?

Tony: We’re both getting on. I’ll be 68 in January and Marcel turned 67 in September. I started receiving my state pension last year, after 42 years in the translation business. It’s time to call it a day.

Marcel: We’ve seen the translation market shrink and change in recent years. It’s clear that machines are going to take over part of the bulk market. There’s still going to be a call for ‘thinking translators’ – people who can use input in one language to produce a text in another language that appeals to readers and doesn’t read like a translation.

Tony: After 30 years, we think that we’ve said all we need and want to say: it’s not about translating all the words, it’s about producing good text.

Do you have any future projects?

Tony: For me, the future is going to involve even more rowing than I’m doing at the moment, as well as lots of travel and pottering around in the garden. The main thing is being free from diary commitments. It’s great not having to work.

Marcel: I still enjoy translating and editing, but more and more of my time these days is taken up with writing. In part, that’s copywriting for clients, but I’m also doing lots of original writing. I published a book called ‘Als je BGRPT wat ik BDL’ in 2020 (full of writing tips) and have just completed a new book called ‘Een andere kijk op lezen’. It dispels a number of myths about reading and about the much-heard claim that ‘no one reads any more’. My view is that the focus should be on reading at primary school. And it doesn’t matter what children – and teenagers – read, as long as they read. Reading should be fun, not a burden.

Award-winning literary translator Susan Massotty has been an active member of SENSE ever since its founding in 1990. Susan is not only known for her 1995 translation of the Definitive Edition of Anne Frank’s ‘Diary of a Young Girl’, but also for her translation of works by Dutch authors as Kader Abdolah, Cees Nooteboom, Abdelkader Benali and Margriet de Moor. Susan won the Vondel Prize in 2007 for her translation of Abdolah’s novel ‘My Father’s Notebook’. In the following interview, she generously shares stories with us about her beginnings, her connection to Anne Frank, and her exceptional career as a literary translator.

You are originally from California’s San Francisco Bay Area, but you’ve lived in the Netherlands for many years. Can you tell us what brought you to the country and why you decided to stay? How easy or difficult was it to absorb the local culture and learn Dutch?

Love brought me to the Netherlands via a roundabout route: I met my future husband on an Israeli kibbutz. We then moved to the US, but after two years decided to give my husband’s country a try. We arrived in the Netherlands in the sweltering summer of 1976 and have lived here ever since. I took to Dutch culture instantly and threw myself into learning the language. I thank my lucky stars that there are a lot of similarities between Dutch and English, so that the learning curve wasn’t as steep as it might have been.

Were you always interested in literature and translations? How did you first ‘meet’ Anne Frank?

I started reading at the age of four and am still a book junkie. It never occurred to me when I was growing up that I would one day be a translator – and certainly not when I first read Anne Frank’s diary as a teenager. Although I arrived in the Netherlands with little work experience, I landed an editing job at the Delft University of Technology, which eventually evolved into technical translation. I wanted to translate literature but didn’t know how to go about it. A literary agent I knew fortunately steered me in the right direction and helped me get my first literary assignment. Since she was also the agent for the Anne Frank-Fonds in Basel, she suggested a few years later that I submit a sample translation of the diary to the US publisher, who was planning a new edition. I was speechless when they actually approved my sample and asked me to translate the rest of the diary.

Your translation was published in 1995. Can you tell us why a new translation was thought necessary at that time?

Owing to a shortage of paper in post-war Europe, the first 1947 Dutch edition of the diary was necessarily short. Translations into other languages, like the 1953 translation into English, were of the same length. But by 1995 the diary had become a modern classic, paper was in abundance, and publishers felt it was time to offer readers more material (and coincidentally safeguard their copyrights). In the interim the language had also become a bit dated, so the US publisher was keen to have it freshened up and to have the diary translated, for the first time, into American English. Later I worked together with Penguin Group to anglicize my translation for UK readers.

I understand that you knew the late Barbara Mooyaart-Doubleday, who first translated the diary into English and was also a member of SENSE. Can you tell us about this encounter?

I didn’t want to be influenced by earlier work, so I carefully avoided getting in touch with Barbara or reading her translation before I started on mine. But when I was finished, I thought it was only polite to contact her and let her know that a new translation was on the way. She graciously invited me to her home, and the two of us hit it off immediately. She showed me the handwritten first draft of her translation, talked about her meetings with Anne’s father and explained that she had only been able to work on the translation when her three small children were taking naps or in bed. Barbara and I met many times after that and kept in touch until her death in 2017 at the age of 97.

Anne Frank’s diary is the most famous account of life during the Holocaust and has been read by millions of people and translated into more than 70 languages. In one passage, Anne says, ‘I don’t think of all the misery, but of the beauty that still remains.’ Having to immerse yourself so deeply in the text must haven been a profound experience. How did it affect you?

The diary is such a high-profile book that having to be the voice of Anne Frank was both a privilege and a terrifying responsibility. I felt I had to get things right, for Anne’s sake as well as for her readers. This meant total commitment. Or perhaps obsession is a better word. During the six months I worked on the translation, my life went on as usual, and yet part of me seemed to be living alongside Anne in the Secret Annex.

It’s easy to understand the huge technological differences of doing translation work in 1995 versus today, but can you walk us a bit through the challenges and rewards of translating Anne Frank compared to your more recent works?

In that pre-Google era, doing research meant going to the library as well as calling on the expertise of others. I’m still amazed at how eager total strangers were to help me: the BBC who sent me the entire transcript of Eisenhower’s D-Day speech, the dentist who explained what a root-canal procedure was, the doctor who discussed the effect of valerian drops on adolescents, etc. Nowadays facts like these are a few clicks away, which has made research a lot easier, though connecting with people was a much more satisfying experience.

Similarly to what fiction editors must do, literary translators need to allow some space to transmit not only the words, but also the essence and the meaning. What would you say are the most important skills a literary translator should cultivate?

First and foremost, literary translators must be able to write well in their own language. They also need to be aware of the literary traditions and trends in both source and target languages so that they can see the work they’re translating in its proper context. My advice to aspiring literary translators is to sharpen their writing skills and to read, read, read.

May I ask what you’re currently reading? Can you recommend a few books?

I’ve reached the age at which I enjoy re-reading old favourites, though contemporary works fill my bookshelves as well. My current reads include an eclectic range: everything from thrillers (Laurie R. King’s ‘Back to the Garden’) to non-fiction (Merlin Sheldrake’s ‘Entangled Life’) and fiction (Andrey Kurkov’s ‘Grey Bees’). To anyone wanting a firsthand look at literary translation, I heartily recommend Daniel Hahn’s instructive and hilarious ‘Catching Fire: A Translation Diary’.

Our SENSE Summer Social began on 12 August in less than perfect circumstances – a heavy summer rain shower meant that our 17 attendees arrived wet and bedraggled, shaking off umbrellas and removing waterproof layers. Nevertheless, spirits were high, and everyone was excited and curious to see how the day would unfold!

It wasn’t long before our tour guides arrived, and we assembled at the beautiful Pandhof monastery garden of the Dom Church in Utrecht. A story was unveiled to us by our knowledgeable guides, a tale which spanned 2,000 years of Utrecht history. Large maps and diagrams were used to illustrate the ways in which Dom Square has changed over the centuries, and how it has always been the ‘beating heart’ of Utrecht. New buildings were constructed on the remains of old ones, leaving a rich archaeological legacy in the ground beneath. We discovered that the Romans came to Utrecht (which was known to the Romans as ‘Traiectum’) and constructed Castellum Traiectum in the first century. We learnt about the thriving Middle Ages of Utrecht, with its trade routes and connections via the Rhine River, and we were told how the Dom Tower came to be a free-standing tower due to the destructive force of the Great Storm of 1674.

Armed with this knowledge, it was time to venture into the subterranean depths! Like amateur archaeological sleuths, we were each given a ‘smart flashlight’ and then descended underground, ready to explore. The flashlight was attached to an earpiece and, when pointed in the right place, a voice in the earpiece revealed snippets of history about the inscribed pottery, brooch pieces and other historical remains that could be found hidden in the near darkness.

We were busy searching for clues when a thunderous sound filled the room and the caverns’ walls sprang to life, showing an animation of the Great Storm of 1674. The storm had been so fierce that it destroyed the nave of the cathedral that joined the tower and the church. These parts were never connected again, and are now separated by the Dom Square.

It wasn’t long before our exploration was over and it was time to climb out of the darkness, back to the land of the living. We emerged from the ground, squinting like moles in the sunlight, and were delighted to see that the rain had passed and the sky was blue.

Having worked up an appetite, lunch beckoned. As we walked to the restaurant, we were delighted to see a bronze marker below our feet, marking the ancient boundary of Castellum Traiectum. At night, a line of steam and coloured lights emanates from this boundary. Unfortunately, at 12:30 on a sunny August afternoon, we were not able to witness this spectacle.

We arrived at Ubica restaurant, where a private room awaited us along with a delicious buffet of sandwiches, salads and desserts. After being stuck in the depths for an hour, everyone was eager to catch up and have a chat, and the room was filled with noisy chatter and laughter.

During the lunch it was great to learn a bit more about the experiences of other SENSE members, to find out what people do, both in their language work and in their daily lives. For me as a new SENSE member, it was wonderful to meet new people, some of whom have been SENSE members for many years.

As SIG & Social Events Coordinator, this was the first event that I’d organized, and I was delighted that the day was a roaring success. The tour was a fascinating insight into the history of Utrecht, and the ‘smart flashlight’ turned the DOMunder experience into a fun adventure!

Freelance writer, journalist and media instructor Dara Colwell joined SENSE a few months ago. I invited her to share her interests and stories with us, and to talk about what moves her in life. Her answer was as expressive and engaging as the ones that follow in this interview.

Can you tell us a bit about yourself and where you are from?

A professional writer for 23 years, I hail originally from Los Angeles, though I’ve lived in Europe most of my adult life. (My brother has lived in Tokyo just as long, so our parents did a stellar job instilling us with wanderlust!) I earned my Master’s degree from UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism and worked for several years as an investigative reporter at Metro San Jose in the heart of Silicon Valley. I eventually became a freelance writer, writing about the environment, politics, culture and the arts in New York City, and later in Amsterdam. I currently teach professional writing and storytelling techniques at the University of Groningen. My very first job after graduating was teaching English as a second language, so teaching comes naturally to me – especially teaching what I love: writing!

What brought you to the Netherlands?

It’s cliché but true: a Dutchie wooed and brought me here. Our story would make an excellent, unpredictable screenplay and the tagline would have to include something about persevering against all odds. I came for love, and stayed for it, and the bonus was falling in love with Amsterdam, where I was lucky to have written for (the now defunct) Amsterdam Weekly – as writing about the city’s arts and entertainment scene helped me explore it. Living in the Netherlands has given me a quality of life I couldn’t have imagined while growing up in the US and I am deeply appreciative.

Do you get on with the Dutch language?

Yes, as my partner is Dutch. I have translated several books from Dutch to English, cleaning up the ‘Dunglish’ to make the text sing. The books are ‘Becoming Whole’, about birth, death, language, karma and transpersonal therapy (yet to be published); ‘The White Field’, about a life lived in Tibet 3,000 years ago (yet to be published); and ‘Free Up and Play’, originally conceived in English but later published in Dutch, about overcoming stage fright using non-violent communication (NVC).

Can you describe your current professional activities?

Besides teaching professional and feature writing, I am currently helping a client conceptualize, write and edit a book about effective leadership in today’s business world. I generally take on diverse writing and editing projects, from revising websites to writing articles about corporate wellness. Everything interests me, though the more creative, the better.

What are your hobbies? Can you recommend some books?

Cycling, cooking, making collages, gardening/permaculture, immersing myself in nature, and writing screenplays. I am a history nut and currently revamping a screenplay that takes place in the 1890s.

The books I am currently reading: Jay Heinrichs’ ‘Thank You for Arguing’, about persuasion and oratory techniques; Alain de Botton’s ‘The Art of Travel’, whose title is self-explanatory; and finally Paul Mason’s ‘Clear Bright Future: A Radical Defence of the Human Being’, which I just started, and looks at what being human means in today’s digitized world.

How did you hear about SENSE and why did you decide to join?

I have known SENSE for some time from fellow writers/editors. I decided to join to expand my network, learn more about who is involved, and hopefully, find more work. I am eager to network, meet fellow writers and editors to talk shop, and I am always open for job opportunities. I am full of stories and eager to hear yours, professionally or otherwise.

On 1 June 2023, Rachel Pierce, a US-based freelance translator and copywriter, spoke to a packed Zoom meeting of the SENSE Tech SIG about ChatGPT. While many of us have dabbled with ChatGPT, it was Rachel’s recent article for the American Translators Association (ATA), ‘5 Tedious Non-Translation Tasks ChatGPT Can Do Amazingly Well’, that prompted the invitation to her so we could learn some practical ways to take advantage of this rapidly evolving technology. In the meeting, Rachel outlined how to use ChatGPT’s capabilities for tasks that can help language professionals maximize their productivity, while also acclimatizing to the inevitable changes coming to language professions as a result of generative artificial intelligence (AI) technology.

Language professionals are the most qualified users

Rachel acknowledged from the start that it’s quite overwhelming to keep up with what is happening. This technology is spurring the introduction of new tools and integrations every week. But she emphasized that ‘As linguists, we’re uniquely qualified to assess how good the tools are, and to find unique ways to use them.’ We’re encouraged to jump in and start testing their limits. A lot of the tools we use every day like Microsoft Word have incorporated AI functionality already. Think about Microsoft Editor or the auto-complete feature. Rachel mentioned Microsoft 365’s new digital assistant, Copilot. This is a ChatGPT-powered interface that Microsoft is integrating into its Office applications this year. Translators have been using machine translation tools that incorporate AI technology for several years. Following the launch of ChatGPT, many professionals are now looking at how they can incorporate new AI tools into their language-related workflows. As Rachel says, ‘It’s coming whether we want it to or not.’

Tools that automate ChatGPT

Rachel discussed a few tools she’s been sampling that interface with ChatGPT. She mentioned Wordscope, a web-based multi-functional translator’s toolkit that uses buttons to interact with ChatGPT and send it pre-written prompts for various tasks. Gaby-T is another app built to automate ChatGPT interaction for language professionals. These are but two of many tools now available either as a plug-in within ChatGPT or as a browser app or web-based app. In short, these tools automatically generate complex prompts so we don’t have to be ‘prompt engineers’ to leverage the chatbot’s ability to process sophisticated instructions. But Rachel also suggested that it’s good to learn some prompt-writing skills, reminding us that we all learnt how to use search engines 20 years ago – ‘We’re already good Googlers, so we can learn how to talk to a chatbot.’

GPT 3.5 versus 4.0

The second half of the presentation focused on best practices, caveats and demonstrations of different tasks that applications using GPT can do. Rachel briefly mentioned some differences between the two language models currently available on the software site: GPT 3.5 is free and faster, but trained on less data so best used for simpler tasks; GPT 4.0 (subscription only) is trained on exponentially more data, so it handles complex instructions better and its responses are much more accurate.

Shortcomings

ChatGPT’s shortcomings are notable. An important one is the lack of training on data after September 2021, which limits its ability to generate responses containing more recent information. Another is its tendency to ‘hallucinate’ – to generate responses that sound true but are riddled with fabrications. For example, it is known to make up citations. Hence, a key best practice is to verify any information it reports. And because it has no privacy safeguards, it’s important to check our non-disclosure agreements before pasting anything into ChatGPT that shouldn’t be shared.

Best practices

ChatGPT performs best when given context for the instructions and also a format for the output. We must describe the purpose of the text/response desired and how long or short it should be, as well as the style or tone. And make use of the different ways to refine responses – either by providing further instructions, or using the regenerate button.

Time-saving tasks

Shortcomings aside, Rachel took us through a demonstration of how she uses ChatGPT with a dozen simple prompts. We watched ChatGPT generate its responses as she went through various scenarios that any of us might do in the course of our work, such as finding alternative/substitute words; making grammar and style decisions; comparing and contrasting at a higher level; summarizing an article, book or other text; creating and then redacting; organizing your thoughts; and clearing writer’s block.

One of the most interesting of these was summarization. Need to research a topic quickly? Rachel demonstrated how to paste in the text of an article and ask ChatGPT to summarize it into one or several key points. (Note the limits: up to 3,000 words per prompt with GPT 3.5 and 25,000 words with GPT 4.) She also used the browser with Bing plug-in to retrieve the text of two academic articles from the web for ChatGPT to summarize. The plug-in automated the retrieval, submission and summarization of all the requested articles into one command. Other big time-savers were having it organize a set of talking points for a networking event and a presentation. It also can help clear writer's block. In one example, Rachel asked it to generate captions for a dozen images of a fitness centre. It provided a list of options so she didn’t have to come up with a dozen on her own. These are a few ways ChatGPT can help writers get ‘creatively unstuck’.

Further inspiration

The results were impressive and gave many of us new ideas to experiment with. We appreciated her key takeaways for language professionals in navigating this moment:

• Clients are also overwhelmed – it’s a good time to start a conversation with them about their AI plans.
• Stay on top of how your preferred tools are incorporating AI – follow their companies, and take advantage of the free webinars that are happening.

Questions and comments were diverse, from ‘What is it doing when it regenerates?’ and ‘Why does it hallucinate?’ to whether the output generated can be detected by plagiarism checkers. One academic copy-editor asked whether it really saves time if we have to check the accuracy of everything it generates. Perhaps the best answer is the well-known adage ‘user experience may vary’, but as language professionals, it’s important to understand both the capabilities and shortcomings of the tools we use. Especially when they are changing the landscape in which we are working.

Those of you who know me were likely unsurprised when I became Chair of the SENSE Executive Committee (EC) in March 2022. I had been a member for well over ten years, attended lots of events, been a regular presenter and a SIG convener. I was also vocal at general meetings and active on the Forum. In sum, a familiar face who cared about SENSE, its members and the quality of professional English in the Netherlands.

But of course, serving on a committee has to fit in with the rest of your life. While I can just about plan EC business around my job and personal life and other volunteering commitments, I sometimes feel the frustration of not being able to do more. In an ideal world, an organization such as SENSE has someone at the helm who can lead the way, inspire others, innovate, make connections, be on top of trends in the language industry, and maintain regular contact with other SENSE volunteers. But we also need to be practical – that’s just not feasible for most people, and so – like other EC members – I do as much as I can.

Over the past year, the EC has nevertheless accomplished quite a lot. I am most proud of the fact that we are a stable team with all EC and Team Leader (TL) positions filled. It’s also good to see the EC making progress on two long-term projects that are essential to the running of SENSE but perhaps less visible to the wider membership. Firstly, the repercussions for SENSE of the WBTR legislation have required careful consideration. Discussions on this started before I joined the EC and will likely continue for several months. One major consequence is that the EC now has just five members, and this means that EC meetings have more of a focus on Society business, such as management, compliance and finances, and less on event planning for example. Outside these meetings, we get a considerable amount done online together with the leaders of the Content team, Social Media team, CPD team, SIG and Social Events team, and Website team.

The second longer-term project that is taking shape is the website – this needs a revamp but also a major update to the underlying software. Because this will be a pricy undertaking, we don’t want to make any hasty decisions, but we’re hoping to have most of the work done by the end of 2023. I’ve had contact with web support companies and web managers of other societies, for example, to get a better idea of how to approach things and support our Web Manager with this project.

What else have I been up to since becoming Chair? Well I’ve been chairing the EC meetings (held every two months), and I chaired the Annual General Meeting for members in March; I was active in finding SENSE members willing to sit on the EC or become a Team Leader; I’ve met with people from other professional societies, such as NEaT, EASE, iPED, MET, NGTV, VZV, and VViN; and I’ve helped finalize the Dutch Convenant available in our Library and commission and review an English translation of it.

I also set up a new free event for members called SENSE Orientation which we hope to hold twice a year, alternating between in person and online. Attendees can familiarize themselves with our Society and hear how to get the most out of the SENSE membership – the next session is on 2 September in Utrecht.

To summarize, the first year and a bit has gone by pretty quickly, and I’m really enjoying working together with other enthusiastic volunteers to get things done within SENSE – each in our own way of course. I’m encouraged to see that many SENSE members are once more coming along to in-person gatherings in this post-Covid era, and I hope that some will also be willing to come forward with new ideas and enthusiasm to shape the future of our Society as we adapt to changing times.

The Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP) publishes a series of guides that are free for its members and can be purchased by non-members on topics related to copy-editing and proofreading. In 2021, I took a big leap out of my comfort zone and wrote a CIEP guide on Editing Scientific and Medical Research Articles.

Overcoming imposter syndrome

I had been aware for a while that, of the many top-quality guides on editing and proofreading offered by the CIEP, none tackled the specific field of scientific and medical editing. I also knew that this was a gap I could fill, but felt pretty nervous about submitting a proposal to the Information Team because of imposter syndrome. Once I became an Advanced Professional Member of the CIEP at the end of 2020, I was fully eligible to write a guide and had no more excuses. I bit the bullet, submitted my proposal, and was both delighted and terrified when the CIEP Information Team accepted it and sent me a contract to write the guide.

Working with the CIEP

The CIEP’s Information Team were a joy to work with. They were professional and encouraging through the whole process, pointing out what needed to be improved while applauding everything I was doing right. The result was that I learnt a lot and gained much-needed self confidence. The guide went through several rounds of editing and peer review, so I was confident that the end product was sound and fit for purpose.

What to include? 

CIEP guides should offer a basic introduction to the knowledge and skills needed in a particular field. My intended audience were copy-editors who work or want to work on scientific research articles, and I knew that these people would already have a scientific style guide on their bookshelf. So what else could I offer? I decided to share my experience as both a former academic who published her own research and as an experienced scientific copy-editor who helps scientists get their papers ready for peer review. For example, I gave tips on dealing with academic clients, explaining that most scientists do not know the differences between copy-editing and proofreading and that we need to use our expertise to make sure our client gets the help they really need. I also talked about how a research paper should be structured and what typically goes wrong based on the papers I have edited over the years.

The result

The end result of one year of writing and editing was more than 50 pages explaining how to help scientists overcome common problems with writing (such as using tenses correctly, dealing with common confusables, and avoiding plagiarism) and navigate the publication process (including tips on writing pre-submission enquiries, cover letters, and rebuttal letters). The guide also includes chapters on how to edit research articles (with a detailed workflow for the beginner) and how to ensure that a research paper has a logical and coherent structure (with templates for the different sections of a research paper). Many editing colleagues have been kind enough to get in touch and tell me how helpful they found the guide.

The rewards

Writing a guide for the CIEP was a very rewarding process. If you are an Advanced Professional Member of the CIEP and have an interesting idea for a guide, I strongly encourage you to get in touch with the CIEP’s information director at information@ciep.uk.

SENSE member Michael Dallas (on the left, photographed by Sheila Gogol at Beatrixpark in Amsterdam-Zuid in 2021) has been actively contributing to the Society since he joined many years ago. His numerous and informed editing and translation suggestions posted to the Forum on our website have helped many SENSE members. But his contribution goes beyond that, as he is the compiler of a supplement to the Van Dale Dutch-English dictionary, colloquially known as the ‘Van Dallas’, available in our Library. In the following interview, Michael shares with us a bit of his history and how he began compiling his extraordinary supplement.

Can you tell us about your professional background?

I joined SENSE in 1995, shortly after I started translating and editing professionally in the social sciences and social work. I soon also developed a specialization in mental health, mainly epidemiology. All those fields had plenty of jargon that I needed to keep track of. I had previously held clerical jobs in the Universiteit van Amsterdam’s Faculty of Social Sciences, where I had gained some experience on the side working with researchers on their English publications.

I understand that you once had dual American-Dutch citizenship. What brought you to the Netherlands and what made you stay?

I decided to emigrate from the US while doing my ‘junior year abroad’ in England. I would have chosen England, Germany or Denmark as my destination, but I later made four Dutch friends in New York who persuaded me to move to Amsterdam. They met my boat at the Amsterdam Passenger Terminal and helped me learn Dutch and find housing, work and friends. From the very beginning, I planned to settle in Amsterdam for good. That was almost 50 years ago. I identify as Dutch or European, not as American. I gave up my US citizenship about ten years ago, after the Dutch banks started imposing restrictions on US citizens.

Your supplement to the Van Dale Dutch-English dictionary has more than 700 pages of original and useful Dutch terminology translated to English. Can you tell us about the genesis of this impressive list? Have you thought of publishing it?

The idea originated about 20 years ago when SENSE member Joy Burrough announced on the Forum that some of her reference books had been destroyed by a fire in her office. I pulled out my Van Dale NE (which was already falling apart) and realized how vulnerable it was. I had jotted notes down the margins of almost every page.

Although digital terminology systems already existed then, I preferred a hands-on approach. I decided to transfer all my margin notes into a Word document that could be stored externally. I had just acquired a voice recognition program, so I first dictated lists of Van Dale entries section by section, then switched to English, repeatedly said ‘move down three’, and then dictated the English translations under the Dutch words. I was surprised how smoothly that went. The original version looked much like the current one, but it had only 400 pages. I was mainly concerned with specialized jargon, but also with difficult-to-translate expressions like aansluiten op/bij.

Theoretically I could have tried to further manicure and publish the list, but that seemed like too much work and stress, so I began sharing it with colleagues. I’ve developed the habit of plucking new entries from various sources, often the SENSE Forum. Working for academics, I don’t have many rush jobs, so I have time to contemplate and note down possible translations. Many of the English terms listed are a result of ‘thinking out loud’ while translating.

You are an editor and a translator from Dutch to English who also has a Bachelor of Arts in German. Are you appreciative of multilingualism? Why?

When I obtained my BA in German in New York, I was mainly just interested in moving to Germany. In Amsterdam I earned a Bachelor's in sociology, and that was more serious. But remembering my unfulfilled ambition to live in Germany, I rented a pied-à-terre in Berlin 17 years ago, where I stay about half the time. I belong to a translators’ forum and Stammtisch. I wondered at first whether I could work in German, but in practice I’ve kept working for Dutch clients only. I no longer think I’ll ultimately settle in Berlin.

I realized the value of multilingualism when I took Latin (my first foreign language) in high school in the US. I’ve found that learning the grammar, structure and vocabulary of another language gives you tremendous insights into your native language. Since then I’ve dabbled in Spanish, French, Danish and Czech, but Dutch and German are the only foreign languages I speak fluently.

What have you found in SENSE that has made you stay a member for so long?

I’ve only held one office in SENSE, that of Membership Secretary 25 years ago, but I’ve long contributed my insights about vocabulary and rules of publication style to the Forum. In return I’ve learnt a lot from the many accomplished language professionals in SENSE, both via the Forum and at workshops and meetings. Volunteering gives me a sense of fulfilment if I believe I’m helping other people, but it also makes me more aware of what I know and do.

What do you like to do in your free time?

Nowadays I spend a good deal of my free time reading informative articles on the internet and catching up on books I’ve had on the shelves for years (e.g. I’m now reading up on Habermas). I read mostly non-fiction texts on history, society and politics. I also walk or cycle every day and travel occasionally in Europe, either alone or with friends.

When I became an editor, I believed my job would mainly be spent in the study of right and wrong. Style guides and dictionaries in one hand, red pen clutched in the other, I was ready to supply grammatical and syntactical improvements. And yet, when I moved from the US to Japan and began working with Japanese companies that were writing for western audiences, I found myself spending most of my time wading through the world of subjective edits.

When editing across cultures, it becomes so much more complex than words on a page. The once-clear rules of grammar and punctuation become blurred as you switch from one version of English to another. Voice, tone, scope, and word choice are ever shifting as you consider the cultural backgrounds of both the author and the audience. How do you decide how heavy-handed to be? How do you help the author maintain the integrity of their piece while making it digestible for a foreign audience?

Unfortunately, there is no correct answer. While we can find some guidance in published literature, it is ultimately up to international editors to help the author find a successful balance for their work. For me, I’ve found that beginning with a few small things can go a long way.

1. Begin with mechanics

Does the audience use the metric system or the imperial system? American or British spelling? Adjusting the mechanics of the piece to the viewpoint of the audience can improve readability and help the author more easily connect to the intended audience.

2. Consider general knowledge

Most authors write from the standpoint of their own society’s knowledge base. The challenge is that the general knowledge of each culture is different. For example, an author may need to specify that Sir Don Bradman was an Australian cricket player when writing for American audiences or that Russell Wilson is an American football player when addressing Australian audiences. Japanese audiences will likely understand the date range of the Edo period but not that of the Irish Civil War. Helping an author bridge these knowledge gaps is essential when editing on the international level.

3. Address the goals of the author and the audience

The goals of both the author and the audience will change from piece to piece. Understanding the goals of both parties will help us successfully navigate the editing process. Is the author intending to write a text that introduces their unique cultural outlook and challenges the reader, or are they aiming to create a narrative that blends seamlessly with the audience’s worldview? Likewise, is the audience intending to learn more about a new culture or are they looking for something closer to their comfort zone?

4. Verify inclusive language

As editors, we are constantly on the lookout to avoid non-inclusive language. However, when editing internationally, we must also understand how the definition of inclusive language changes from country to country. It’s vital that we understand our audience’s inclusivity guidelines so that we can help the author avoid any unintended offenses.

As globalization continues to pull our world closer together, it becomes increasingly important for editors to be able to edit across countries and cultures. While there aren’t always clear-cut answers for this line of editing, the more we editors are able to discuss our choices, the more we can work together to ensure we are providing authors with the best edits possible.