Using genuine examples from nearly 20 years of practice (anonymized and sometimes slightly altered to prevent identification of the author), this Power Point presentation takes a wry look at the work of a medical editor. It starts and ends with sometimes baffling, and sometimes frankly funny, examples of medical writing, but the middle section will take the form of a mini-workshop looking at ambiguity and the misunderstandings that may result from this. I will give the participants a little bit of background information and then ask them “How would you interpret this?”and “What do you think the author is referring to here?” It will be medical enough to justify its title but should be accessible to someone with an average knowledge of medical matters.
From the start I emphasize that I am not poking fun at the authors. They are primarily medical doctors not writers. However, they appreciate honest, structured feedback and learn very quickly from the editor’s suggestions and changes and are often the first to laugh at themselves. I gave a similar presentation at a meeting of Dutch cardiologists and they enjoyed the interactive session very much.
Daphne Lees hails from Manchester, England, and after completing nursing training arrived in the Netherlands in 1978 on a year’s contract to work as an operating theatre nurse. Within 3 weeks she met her future husband and is still here 37 years on. She rolled into translating and editing quite by accident when a vascular surgeon asked for her help with his ‘proefschrift’. One thing led to another and in 1997 armed with a diploma in translation studies she started her company ‘Meditrans’. Daphne continues to combine language activities with operating department nursing at the AMC, Amsterdam.
Posters are intended to get people’s attention. To present a short, simple message, they combine a strong image (such as a moustachioed officer pointing straight at the viewer) with a short text (“Your Country Needs You”). In principle, scientific poster sessions borrow from this tradition, aiming to present the essence of a complex idea quickly and accessibly. In practice, many posters fail, and all too few are read, a fact conference organisers now seem to recognise. To improve communication – and possibly to increase networking – many sessions now include a poster walk, in which successive scientists present their poster in a three-minute talk. But if you’re a junior scientist working in your second or third language in a setting without native-speaking inputs, how easy is it to give such a talk? You certainly won’t get the guidelines you need from a conventional poster, which is too cumbersome: wordy and poorly designed. And there’s no way you can make an overloaded scientific-sounding sentence trip off the tongue! In recent work with PhD students at Erasmus University Medical Centre, I have developed a set of style and design guidelines that seems to work surprisingly well. I will outline it briefly, providing a handout. One of my students has kindly agreed to demonstrate how she puts these guidelines into practice. Time allowing, we will also summarise the responses of PhD supervisors to this approach.
David Alexander has been living in the Netherlands for nearly 41 years, where he has worked in various commercial and academic settings as a translator, language editor and language-skills trainer. This presentation reflects 14 years of experience as teacher and co-ordinator of the course in English Biomedical Writing and Communication at Erasmus University Medical Centre, Rotterdam.
Hannah Dekker graduated from VU university in medical sciences in 2008. After graduation she worked as a resident in general surgery for 3 years. In 2011 she started studying dentistry at ACTA combined with a position as a PhD candidate for the department of oral and maxillofacial surgery and oral pathology. In 2014 she graduated from ACTA. In January 2015 she started as a resident at the department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery at the VU university medical center. She expects to finish her PhD project in 2016 and her residency in 2019.
While it doesn’t come naturally to all, it really is worthwhile: I have recently discovered that most of my work comes in from word of mouth, both from my personal and professional networks. During a recent meeting of the Eastern Special Interest Group (SIG), I discussed this with 3 other SIG members. We tried to assess the degree to which our work comes in through word of mouth and to put a name to those mouths. In other words, which categories of our professional and personal networks work best in bringing our services to our clients’ attention?
To take this a step further I will be asking SENSE freelancers to complete a short survey about how their work comes in. The results of this survey will be presented during my short conference session.
I am a British biologist and I edit scientific manuscripts and teach scientific writing. I also translate from Dutch into English and do the odd bit of writing.
I started off my career in science: back in 1990 I started a Biochemistry & Physiology degree at Sheffield University. However, during my year off before university I’d met a Dutchman and only a few months into my degree, I left Sheffield and moved to the Netherlands.
I then started a biology degree at Nijmegen University. I have been here ever since (apart from a 5-year stint in Athens, Greece, but that’s another story…) and now live in Zwolle, with my husband and 2 children.
I followed a somewhat meandering career before finding my true calling though. After completing my masters and spending 5 years in a molecular genetics lab, I realised I didn’t want to be a researcher after all and turned my hand to teaching: I taught biology at secondary schools in both Dutch and English. But after 10 years, I decided that teaching wasn’t for me either and took the plunge to give up the day job and start out as a freelance translator and editor in 2008.
Following his successful presentation for SENSE in December 2014, Freek will put forward an accessible and possibly controversial view on the current state of data privacy and data security and what this means for you and your clients. He will explain that some apps do a lot more than you think (and not necessarily to your benefit) and how you may be compromising your privacy (and possibly more) for a degree of convenience. Freek will tell the story of how the data industry and governments are using exponential technologies to find out all they can about you and influence everything you do.
Data privacy: What the data industry is learning about your life and how it is using and selling this information.
Data security: We know they are out there. What can we do?
Future developments: Exponential technologies and the software-driven world mean that we will all have to be alert to potential pitfalls.
Technologist, futurist and serial entrepreneur, Freek Wallaart is owner of Sophios Exponential Technologies, Mindcraft Engineering and iVault Data Services.
He got his master’s degree in aerospace engineering or ‘rocket science’ at Delft University then decided that space technology was progressing too slowly for him and moved into computing and software development.
Some years ago, he realised that we are entering an era where exponential growth of fast and cheap computing power drives ever faster development and convergence of disruptive technologies like artificial intelligence, networked sensors, robotics, 3D printing, synthetic biology, neuro sciences and nano materials sciences, all leading to a future where everything will be networked and programmable, where "software is eating the world" as we know it and where opportunities are virtually boundless, be it for good or bad.
His current (and past) favourite occupation is to make sense of, and contribute to, the unimaginable technology driven future that awaits us, and, in the process, hopefully, help others do the same.
That the editing of texts written by students and academic faculty is a topic of great interest to SENSE members became clear from the record number of 73 SENSE members who attended the society’s meeting in February 2014. Then, two speakers from Essex University explained the background to Essex University’s policy and guidelines on the editing of student texts and presented findings of their research on their university’s “proofreaders” (the people who do this editing). Now, this one-hour session will focus on the situation in the Netherlands. The panellists will be the SENSE members who proposed setting up SENSE’s special interest group UniSIG for editors working for clients in academia: Camilla Brokking, Jackie Senior, Curtis Barrett and Joy Burrough-Boenisch (chair). Each panellist will give a short presentation, after which there will be a discussion, with opportunity for questions and comments from the audience. Camilla, whose academic clients are primarily from Australian universities, will speak on the ethics of editing student texts. Jackie will speak from the perspective of an in-house editor in a top university department with a large group of international researchers. Curtis, who combines freelance editing for PhD candidates and faculty with teaching scientific English at several Dutch universities, will speak on university departments’ funding for editorial services. Joy, who also freelances for Dutch PhD candidates and faculty and teaches scientific English, will highlight features of SENSE’s guidelines for thesis editing.
Camilla Brokking has been editing for academic clients for 17 years, in fields including business law, humanities, civil engineering and life sciences. She has a degree in biological sciences and an MA in American Studies. The majority of her clients come from Australian universities, and include students from South-East Asia, the Middle East and Africa. She is mindful of the interplay between producing simple, clear English, retaining the author’s voice, and maintaining ethical boundaries in editing student writing. In 2013 she proposed that SENSE establish guidelines for editing student theses and helped set up the working group that developed these guidelines.
Jackie Senior is a founder and honorary member of SENSE and has served twice on its executive committee. She works as an editor and webmaster for an ambitious research department (Dept. of Genetics, University of Groningen/UMCG). Nowadays she works mostly on biomedical texts but she started as a geologist (in the oil and gas boom), worked in investment banking (during the internet bubble), and moved to the genetics group in the 1990s (human genome era). She has been editing and translating for over 40 years but, with the Dutch retirement age becoming a moveable feast, is exploring options for later
Curtis Barrett received his PhD in neuroscience in 2001. After a distinguished career as an academic researcher at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, Stanford University, and Leiden University Medical Center, Curtis changed gears and became a full-time language consultant for scientists and clinical researchers. Curtis has edited hundreds of manuscripts, dissertations, and grant proposals for academic clients. In addition, Curtis teaches academic and scientific writing and presenting to Master’s and doctoral students at universities throughout Europe, and he is regularly invited to speak at student-organised events. Curtis is the owner of English Editing Solutions and the current Programme Secretary for SENSE.
Joy Burrough-Boenisch is a founder and honorary member of SENSE, who edits for Dutch scientists and academics, specialising in environmental and earth science. She has two degrees in geography and a doctorate in applied linguistics. Her thesis was on Dutch scientific English. She also teaches academic and scientific English and trains language professionals in the Netherlands and abroad (including at the European Commission) via workshops and webinars. Her publications include chapters in the EASE Science Editors’ Handbook and in Supporting Research Writing: Roles and challenges in multilingual setting (ed. Valerie Matarese) and her book Righting English that’s gone Dutch.
English continues to be used more and more in professional life in the Netherlands. It is the language of business, the language of academia, and the international language of communication in general. An ever-increasing number of people want to use English at a high level, but they also want to be seen as real users, with their own way of saying things. SENSE members play various important roles in mediating between the writers and readers of English. Crucially, whether it be in our role as editor, translator or tutor, we are seen as gatekeepers of the language. It is our job to determine what counts as good English and what not.
But as a lingua franca, English is changing. So should we stick to our guns and ensure that every report we edit comes across as a piece of native speaker writing? Should we use the full richness of our vocabulary and syntactic repertoire when translating a website for an international readership? And should we continue to put a red line through <If the experiment would be replicated> in every PhD candidate’s first draft?
In other words, what is the best way to perform our gatekeeping role? Should we become more relaxed in that role, or is it important that we do everything we can to ensure that standards do not slip? Is there perhaps a way to continue to stress the importance of correctness and clarity while at the same time recognizing that the English used by Dutch speakers may have its own features, and that the readability of a text is more important than the wonders of the idiom?
Mike Hannay - panel leader
Alison Edwards
Susan Hunt
Tony Parr
Laura Rupp
Mike Hannay - Professor of English language and Director of Studies at the Arts Faculty of the VU University Amsterdam. He is specialized in the relationship between sentence and text: how can you organize the information in a sentence so that you improve the coherence of the text? He is particularly interested in differences between English and Dutch. Mike incorporates insights from new linguistic research into advanced training programmes in writing, translating and text editing. Over the last 15 years he has given a range of invited courses and workshops in the Benelux, Germany, Spain and Brazil, including workshops for the translation departments of the European Commission.
Alison Edwards - received her PhD at the University of Cambridge, focusing on the sociolinguistics of English in the Netherlands. She has a Master’s degree in Applied Linguistics and undergraduate degrees in both German Studies and Journalism. Alison has lived and worked as a researcher, writer, editor and translator in various countries, including Australia, Germany, the Netherlands and the UK.
Susan Hunt - Inspired by the principles of the UK-based Plain English campaign PLAIN ENGLISH, Susan set up her own translation agency in 1987 to provide English language services in the widest sense to businesses and organisations in the Netherlands whose activities are dedicated to an international audience.
Tony Parr - Tony Parr has extensive experience as translator (freelance and in-house) and as teacher of translation, principally at the National College of Translation in Maastricht. He is co-author of Handboek voor de Vertaler Nederlands-Engels and, operating under the name of Teamwork [http://www.teamwork-vertaalworkshops.nl], has been organising short courses, workshops and conferences for language professionals in the Netherlands since 1993.
Laura Rupp - Senior Lecturer in English Language and Linguistics of the VU University Amsterdam. Previously, Laura was Lecturer English Language and Linguistics in the Department of English Language and Linguistics at the University of Essex, where she also received her PhD. Current research: Language Variation and Change and Global English. She also is involved in an international research project regarding English as an international language in higher education.
For about the past four years, I have been using an adjustable-height desk and walking on a treadmill for much of my working day. In this talk, I will share my experiences and discuss the benefits of a treadmill desk, the history of the trend, practical issues, reasonable and unreasonable expectations, online information sources, and the brands and models available in the Netherlands. I now use a treadmill designed for placement under a desk, but I started out by modifying an inexpensive, general-purpose home treadmill so that I could use it under my desk; I’ll discuss the relative pros and cons of these two options. Information on benefits will be drawn from books by James Levine, MD (Mayo Clinic/Arizona State University) and other researchers: they include not only better health but also increased energy and concentration and a better, more stable mood throughout the day. The possible impact of walking on mental health will also be discussed. Material from a New Yorker article on treadmill desking by Susan Orlean (author of The Orchid Thief) and the humorous essay “Arse-bestos” by science fiction writer Neal Stephenson will be presented. I will touch on the issue of compatibility with speech recognition and other ergonomic aids and briefly compare treadmill desks with under-desk exercise bicycles, and possibly with other alternatives.
The main purpose of my presentation is to provide some insight into the knowledge and skills required for good posture and movement during the working day through raising awareness of habitual posture, movement and behaviour. I will start the session with a PowerPoint presentation during which I will tell the audience something about posture, ergonomics and movement while working at the computer. The concept of good posture will be supported by anatomical images and I will spend a few minutes giving a short explanation of the relevant anatomy of pelvis and vertebrae and muscles. I will talk about the physical risks associated with computer work, i.e. complaints of arm, neck or shoulder (CANS) and lower back pain, and provide some insight into associated psychosocial factors. This will be followed by suggestions about ways to prevent and relieve this type of disorder. I will briefly discuss the concept of ‘change management’ which involves adapting to new posture and movement strategies, and illustrate this using the ‘State of Change Model' in which the phases of adjusting to a new habit are clarified. The presentation will be concluded by a practical session during which we will practice a few simple exercises together.
In conclusion, the take home message for the audience is that in order to achieve long-term changes in behaviour it is necessary to practice active sitting and do exercises during the working day. In other words – stop sitting on the problem!
“Sitting is the new smoking”. Most of us have heard this by now, but many of us are still condemned to working at a desk, sitting in a chair. This short workshop will allow participants to do some simple yoga exercises to counteract the destructive effects of sitting, from their seats, or more accurately getting out of their seats in a “pretend” office environment. It will not require special clothing or equipment, but on the contrary is geared to an office setting where people may be wearing non-optimal clothing and have limited space and nosy colleagues. In addition, we will use objects like the chair and desk as aids.
Why yoga?
1. It involves the breath, which helps reduce/avoid stress.
2. It aids circulation to cut-off areas
3. It strengthens muscles weakened by sitting and other bad habits, and stretches tight ones.
Participants will be taken through a number of poses that help shoulders, neck, back, hips, “core” (abdomen and sides) and legs.
David McKay is the sole proprietor of Open Book Translation, a Dutch-English translation company specializing in literary works, books and articles on the arts, humanities, and social sciences, and texts for museums and the cultural sector. He is now working with the literary translator Ina Rilke on a new translation of Max Havelaar for the NYRB Classics series. His translation of the Flemish novel War and Turpentine by Stefan Hertmans will soon be published by Harvill Secker/Random House.
Leonie Porton, was born in Uithoorn, the Netherlands in 1991. In 2014 she gained a BSc from the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences (HvA). She is now working at the Medical Training Centre in Mijdrecht and at Oefentherapie Boskoop as an exercise therapist, ergonomic consultant, personal trainer, group instructor and fitness expert. Her areas of expertise include the treatment and prevention of work-related complaints and behavioral change. The therapeutic goals that she promotes include empowerment of the patient to claim ownership of their complaint and to provide insight into bad habits with the aim of preventing illness. In her spare time you will find Leonie in the gym. Although specialised in sport she is always on the look out for innovation and new challenges in her field of work. Since 2014 she has been the face of the FLITZZ project, a virtual and online exercise program for patients to prevent complications during hospitalization.
American-born Anne Hodgkinson has been a translator/editor since about 1998. She discovered the physical and mental benefits of yoga about fifteen years ago, and got a yoga teaching certificate in 2012. Somewhat high-strung by nature, she finds the physicality and social interaction of yoga teaching the perfect antidote to working alone at a desk.
Manuscript editors and translators have long relied on bespoke text collections (termed corpora) to gain insight into phrasing in different disciplines or genres. Relatively few, however, can take the time to set their corpora up as artifact-free text files for analysis with a desktop concordancer – a simple tool that makes phrasing patterns easier to interpret. Recently, several online corpora have become available on websites with built-in concordancing software. These corpora give us an easier way to enjoy the benefits of a quality-control approach known as corpus-guided editing and translating. The approach helps with various doubt-generating problems we face: language attrition (or more likely, skewed acquisition over a lifetime), differences of opinion between colleagues or between an editor and a client, and adjusting our ear when we move among different fields.
This talk and discussion will focus on two goals: 1) to understand the types of language queries corpus analysis can answer quickly, and 2) to look at some of the new online corpora available and how they can be filtered to provide more specialized guidance.
Mary Ellen Kerans is a freelance authors’ editor and translator based in Barcelona, Spain. She is active in the association Mediterranean Editors and Translators. Her background is in English language instruction, including the teaching of academic writing and English for specific purposes in the health sciences.
While it doesn’t come naturally to all, it really is worthwhile: I have recently discovered that most of my work comes in from word of mouth, both from my personal and professional networks. During a recent meeting of the Eastern Special Interest Group (SIG), I discussed this with 3 other SIG members. We tried to assess the degree to which our work comes in through word of mouth and to put a name to those mouths. In other words, which categories of our professional and personal networks work best in bringing our services to our clients’ attention?
To take this a step further I will be asking SENSE freelancers to complete a short survey about how their work comes in. The results of this survey will be presented during my short conference session.
Sally Hill is a British biologist and edits scientific manuscripts and teaches scientific writing. She also translates from Dutch into English and does the odd bit of writing.
Sally started off her career in science. After completing her masters and spending 5 years in a molecular genetics lab, she realised she didn’t want to be a researcher after all and turned her hand to teaching: she taught biology at secondary schools in both Dutch and English. But after 10 years, she decided that teaching wasn’t for her either and took the plunge to give up the day job and start out as a freelance translator and editor in 2008. She hasn't looked back since!
Finding new clients is always a challenge. Keeping existing clients is just as important. The simplest way is to keep them happy and give them what they want, without compromising your standards - or your rates. This presentation - though related specifically to the translation business – is just as applicable to other language service providers because let’s face it, a client is a client…
Running a translation business in 24 languages my company has many different types of client, each needing a different approach. ‘One size fits all’ is not an option, but it’s surprising how easy it is, with a little imagination, to ensure that your clients won’t dream of going anywhere else. Based on personal experience, an open mind and a sleeve big enough to hide a few tricks up, I will try to give some tips so that when you finally get that new client, you won’t lose them after the first assignment.
A little bit of software goes a long way and I will explain how we use a very simple system to make it so easy for the client to keep sending us work. You can even have a free version to try it out for yourself.
Nigel Saych is the owner and director of Interlex Language Services, a translation company he started 11 years ago with just one client and one language pair. Although the company has grown to an organisation using almost 100 freelance translators, he still has that original client and still spends most of his time translating, not managing offices. He has given presentations at many conferences throughout Europe, delights in being a maverick and firmly believes that creativity is more effective than entrepreneurship.
We all know that editing is more than the checking of grammar and spelling. But what, exactly, does it entail? What distinguishes the professional editor from the amateur? What principles motivate the changes that professional editors make?
Test your editing knowledge by taking the quick Elements of Editing Self-Test. Developed for beginning editors from all fields, this self-test may also give experienced editors pause for reflection: Have I been keeping up? Should I perhaps be doing some things differently?
You will be asked to jot down your reactions to just 10 items. We will then review the items to determine if you have successfully identified the core problems and related principles or not. We will briefly consider additional items to make sure that things are clear. And then you, yourself, will decide if you qualify as an amateur or professional editor.
Drawing on the work of Yagoda (How to Not Write Bad, 2013) and my own work (The Elements of English Editing, 2013), the self-test was developed to stimulate reflection, discussion, and professional development. The 10 items highlight just how many of the corrections and comments made on the writing of native but also non-native speakers of English today (or much of what editors revise for a living) concern a very small number of core writing problems. Awareness of these problems and the best ways to avoid them are part of the professional editor’s job, and raising awareness of the relevant principles is the aim of today’s presentation.
Lee Ann Weeks is a bilingual American, a long-standing member of SENSE, a former member of the SENSE Executive Committee, and an active contributor to the field of language professionals in the Netherlands. She recently co-authored The Elements of English Editing: A Guideline to Clear Writing – a handy reference book packed with practical information for the editor, translator, and writer. Drawing on her background in psychology and psycholinguistics, she edits, translates, and presents workshops on editing and clear writing. She also teaches and lectures on scientific writing using the Hourglass Template, the topic of her next book.
The work of many SENSE members is, by its nature, solitary: one person working with words. We may interact with clients before and after the bulk of job is done, but the work itself occurs in our own heads. What happens when we have to share our work in order to pass on skills and knowledge to a new generation of editors?
For the past two years we have been working together in a Mentor/Mentee capacity to ensure that the quality of editorial work in the Genetics Department of University Medical Center Groningen remains consistently high as one of us looks toward retirement and the other moves into fuller employment. This mentoring covers not only harmonization of editorial style but also sharing information about working conditions, departmental expectations, yearly cycles of work, expected future changes in the skills required to do the job, and editorial resources. In our shared talk we will demonstrate how we work together successfully as well as discussing how to improve the process.
While our positions as substantive scientific editors at the UMCG are unique, many of our experiences would be useful and applicable to all SENSE members. The jubilee conference is the perfect forum for this presentation because, after 25 years, some members may now be looking to retire or reduce their working hours. Those with freelance businesses may not have considered passing their work on to a new generation, but doing so can provide continuity to long-term clients as well as fostering a new generation of SENSE members. The future of SENSE will be ensured by the mentoring of this new generation.
Jackie Senior works as an editor and webmaster for an ambitious research department (Dept of Genetics, University of Groningen/UMCG, the Netherlands). Nowadays she works mostly on biomedical texts but she started as a geologist (in the oil and gas boom), worked in investment banking (during the internet bubble), and moved to the genetics group in the 1990s (human genome era). She has been editing and translating for more than 40 years but, with the Dutch retirement age becoming a moveable feast, is exploring options for later. She was a founder member of SENSE and served twice on its executive committee.
Kate Mc Intyre works as the assistant editor for the Department of Genetics at the University of Groningen/UMCG. Kate has a BA from Columbia University and a PhD in Earth Science from the University of California, Santa Cruz. After spending five years working as a postdoctoral researcher, she came to the Netherlands with her partner. Like many editors, Kate first started editing and translating informally at the request of friends, then went on to start a freelance business. She is also the author of one children's book, De knikkelares.
We all know that editing is more than the checking of grammar and spelling. But what, exactly, does it entail? What distinguishes the professional editor from the amateur? What principles motivate the changes that professional editors make?
Test your editing knowledge by taking the quick Elements of Editing Self-Test. Developed for beginning editors from all fields, this self-test may also give experienced editors pause for reflection: Have I been keeping up? Should I perhaps be doing some things differently?
You will be asked to jot down your reactions to just 10 items. We will then review the items to determine if you have successfully identified the core problems and related principles or not. We will briefly consider additional items to make sure that things are clear. And then you, yourself, will decide if you qualify as an amateur or professional editor.
Drawing on the work of Yagoda (How to Not Write Bad, 2013) and my own work (The Elements of English Editing, 2013), the self-test was developed to stimulate reflection, discussion, and professional development. The 10 items highlight just how many of the corrections and comments made on the writing of native but also non-native speakers of English today (or much of what editors revise for a living) concern a very small number of core writing problems. Awareness of these problems and the best ways to avoid them are part of the professional editor’s job, and raising awareness of the relevant principles is the aim of today’s presentation
When our textbook of translation, Handboek voor de vertaler Nederlands-Engels, was first published 20 years ago now, we decided that cookery books provided a neat metaphor for the difference between our own approach and the traditional textbook approach to translation. We tried to illustrate this difference with the aid of a cake-baking sketch: surrounded by a huge range of ingredients, a vast array of utensils and mouth-watering pictures of the delicious cakes that were to form our end products, we set about mixing, beating, adding, whizzing, turning, blending and folding in some of our ingredients. Without a recipe, it was bound to end in disaster. And it did. It was a huge mess. Every time.
The sketch was intended to introduce an analysis of a number of textbooks for Dutch-English translation, all of which were tantamount to cookery books without recipes. After all, most of them contained texts (i.e. ingredients) with or without model translations (i.e. cakes). Some also contained basic grammars (i.e. utensils). We used various examples to show that this approach simply did not work, the problem being that it failed to provide student translators with the tools and techniques (i.e. the recipes) they need in order to negotiate the structural differences between two languages. Our thesis was that we can simplify the process of learning how to translate by offering students clear, systematic translation strategies based on an analysis of common translation problems.
So have things changed in the meantime? Do translation textbooks still consist almost solely of great wads of text, generally taken from newspapers and magazines? Is the notion that you can learn how to translate simply by practising over and over again still the conventional wisdom? Time for an update.
Tony Parr and Marcel Lemmens are professional translators and translator trainers. Both have extensive experience as translators (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 and, operating under the name of Teamwork [http://www.teamwork-vertaalworkshops.nl], have been organising short courses, workshops and conferences for language professionals in the Netherlands since 1993.
Marcel is also an English-Dutch translator and editor of English textbooks for a leading Dutch publisher of teaching methods for secondary schools, while Tony is also a Dutch-English translator and English language editor.
Posters are intended to get people’s attention. To present a short, simple message, they combine a strong image (such as a moustachioed officer pointing straight at the viewer) with a short text (“Your Country Needs You”). In principle, scientific poster sessions borrow from this tradition, aiming to present the essence of a complex idea quickly and accessibly. In practice, many posters fail, and all too few are read, a fact conference organisers now seem to recognise. To improve communication – and possibly to increase networking – many sessions now include a poster walk, in which successive scientists present their poster in a three-minute talk. But if you’re a junior scientist working in your second or third language in a setting without native-speaking inputs, how easy is it to give such a talk? You certainly won’t get the guidelines you need from a conventional poster, which is too cumbersome: wordy and poorly designed. And there’s no way you can make an overloaded scientific-sounding sentence trip off the tongue! In recent work with PhD students at Erasmus University Medical Centre, I have developed a set of style and design guidelines that seems to work surprisingly well. I will outline it briefly, providing a handout. One of my students has kindly agreed to demonstrate how she puts these guidelines into practice. Time allowing, we will also summarise the responses of PhD supervisors to this approach.
David Alexander has been living in the Netherlands for nearly 41 years, where he has worked in various commercial and academic settings as a translator, language editor and language-skills trainer. This presentation reflects 14 years of experience as teacher and co-ordinator of the course in English Biomedical Writing and Communication at Erasmus University Medical Centre, Rotterdam.
Susan once said that Twitter would blow over. That was 5 years, 75,000 tweets and more than 3,000 followers ago. Not to mention the 20,000 people that follow her on Google Plus. It took one single tweet and Smulpaapje was born. Three years later it is a hugely successful platform with its own cookbook. How does one tweet lead to all this? During our conference you will be able to attend Susan’s talk about the power of social media. How did she use social media to make Smulpaapje the success it is today. How do you build a solid social network and how do you get it to work for you. Susan will talk you through the various social media channels and how they each can be used to your own advantage. But above all, being the social media enthusiast she is, she will inspire you to make the most out of them and will show you it’s fun to use them!
Susan Aretz is the founder of the online platform for parents with kids, www.smulpaapje.nl The website focusses on eating with kids, out and at home. On the website you’ll find restaurants that offer more than the standard kids menu. But it also has a huge recipe data base, as Susan is under the opinion that food (and taste!) education starts at home. In 2015 Susan published her first cookbook, called ‘Wat eten we vandaag?’ (What’s for dinner?) in which 16 week menus are given, to help busy parents with their day to day struggle to think of what to make for dinner.
Besides working on Smulpaapje Susan is foodblogger for Vrouw.nl and works as a community manager in Utrecht. Susan is married, lives in Leiden and has a 5-year-old daughter.
Robert, David & Barbara met through the Nederlands Kamerkoor and have sung together for about 30 years. They will tell us about their singing history and how they have used the experience they built up over the years in their other existence as translators.
The Sense of Singing has been prompted bythe BBC series 'The Choir' and an article in the Health section of the ITI website.
Singing is good for you
Members of the audience who are or have been a member of a choir will know singing is good for you. Singing technique can provide therapy and health benefits in other areas. It helps teachers and speakers with breathing, voice production, posture, stage presence, and not least stage fright. There will be a broad explanation of singing technique and its wider application, and a discussion on stage fright and ways to tackle it.
Everybody can gain a sense of achievement, even pride, from singing and it is a social activity - whilst translating is very often a solitary one. Singing also offers opportunities for networking.
Singing is not purely intellectual. Not only is active singing beneficial but listening to vocal music can also inspire and relax. By its nature, vocal music has an extra dimension when compared to instrumental. It can be magical, but the differences between professionals and amateurs in both singing and translation mean it may not always be magical...
We will explore the parallels between singing and translation. Linguistic and singing ability seem to be linked as many professional singers are good at languages, and some are also translators. We will examine the need for interpretation both in singing by interpreting text through music, and in translation by the choice of 'best' word or phrase. Both skills rely on the parallels between learning a language and learning music.
Can everyone sing?
Barring physical handicap or injury, most people can sing, but many assume they can’t – or don’t wish to! An important issue is pitch. We’ll attempt to explain how it works, and discuss perfect pitch. David may hold a simple ear test with the audience’s help.
Musical finale
The Sense of Singing will include some audience participation: a simple, well-known canon, like Frère Jacques, hopefully in several different languages at once! This should cause merriment and we will discuss how it affected the audience.Then as a reward, the Sense of Singing will be rounded off by a professional musical finale.
About the facilitators
David Barick was born in Detroit, Michigan, USA and came to the Netherlands in 1979 to pursue a career as a classical singer. He realized this ambition by appearing as a soloist with many leading orchestras and ensembles, and was a long-time member of the Netherlands Chamber Choir. While thus occupied, he began to pursue his other passion, languages, by giving private English lessons. After his retirement from performing a number of years ago, it was a logical step for him to turn these language activities into a full-time occupation. He works both as a translator and a teacher in various areas of English: academic writing, business English and conversation. He is a devoted polyglot who can converse in eight languages and is working on several others. When not occupied with language matters, you might very well find him in the kitchen making his fresh pasta, which is created entirely by hand— no pasta machines used.
Robert Coupe read Modern Languages at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was a choral scholar. He then worked for some years for Shell in London. He moved to Holland to take up a post as tenor in the Nederlands Kamerkoor, where he sang for over 30 years, combining it with many and varied solo engagements. Quite early on during this period he was approached to do translation work, and for many years was the regular translator for his employer, the NKK. Other bodies for whom he has translated include the Early Music Festival Utrecht, the Huelgas Ensemble, the Haarlem Choral Biennale and Stichting ArtZuid. Robert also provides English coaching to the Netherlands Radio Choir.
The American soprano Barbara Borden has lived and worked in the Netherlands since 1981. As well as being a member of the Nederlands Kamerkoor for over 30 years, she has also sung with numerous other vocal ensembles and has appeared regularly as a soloist in the Netherlands and elsewhere. She has contributed to over 60 CD recordings, one of which received a Grammy nomination in 2006. Since leaving the Nederlands Kamerkoor in 2013, Barbara has been exploring her talents in other areas. She plans to set up her own business offering a unique combination of personal services including pet care, translating and proofreading, professional organizing and (last but not least!) singing for special occasions.