{"id":709,"date":"2021-06-13T20:28:01","date_gmt":"2021-06-13T20:28:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ata-divisions.org\/CLD\/?p=709"},"modified":"2021-06-13T20:28:01","modified_gmt":"2021-06-13T20:28:01","slug":"not-lost-but-found-in-translation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ata-divisions.org\/CLD\/not-lost-but-found-in-translation\/","title":{"rendered":"Not Lost but Found in Translation"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Jonathan Rechtman \u2022 Source: Yifeng<\/em> 2018 Winter Issue<\/p>\n

Reflections on Joining the CLD Family at the American Translation Association<\/em><\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/strong><\/p>\n

Living in Two Worlds<\/strong><\/p>\n

Translating between two languages is like living in two worlds. We travel back and forth across the text, from source to target, target to source. We shuttle across the linguistic gap, in the hopes of transcending it, in search of the text’s true identity.<\/p>\n

That sense of \u201cliving in two worlds struck me powerfully this past week as I attended the American Translators Association (ATA) Annual Conference for the first time.<\/p>\n

I am an American, but I live in China. I came back to America to attend this conference, but it was the time with my colleagues and new friends at the Chinese Language Division (CLD) that made me feel most \u201cat home.\u201d<\/p>\n

The conference is over now, and I am writing this from 30,000 feet above the ocean, shuttling back across the great Pacific gap to my other world. Is China my source or my target? I’m not sure I know anymore. But I want to share with you, if I may, a bit about my experience attending the ATA Conference and joining the CLD family, because I think it, too \u2014 just like translation itself \u2014 is a search for identity.<\/p>\n

Finding My Home\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

It would be a bit disingenuous, to say the least, to claim that this was my first time at a conference. As a practicing Chinese-English conference interpreter, I have in the past found myself haunting the booths and ballrooms of almost 200 conferences a year,\u00a0surrounded by passionate professionals from every sector imaginable:\u00a0environmentalists at a climate conference, bankers at a finance summit, diplomats at the U.N. But never before have I been surrounded by so many of my people, the translators, the interpreters, all those professionals for whom language is not just a tool of communication but rather our raison d’\u00eatre: we work with languages for a living, and we live to work with\u00a0languages.<\/p>\n

So it was that when I first entered the ballroom where the ATA Welcome Celebration was being held, I was immediately overwhelmed by a rush of familiarity: \u201cThese are my people!\u201d I exclaimed, \u201cThey live for what I live for!\u201d<\/p>\n

But alongside this familiarity, there was a parallel sense of the exotic. Here were over a thousand people from all over the world, speaking excitedly in different tongues. Picking my way through the ballroom floor was like navigating a beautiful but incomprehensible maze of bodies and languages; a veritable Babel in the basement of a Hilton.<\/p>\n

It was exciting to explore this new world, intimate and alien, and so for the first, while I flitted about from here to there, this section to that, relishing in the lushness and diversity of foreign styles and sounds. But at a conference \u2014 like in life \u2014 one ultimately seeks a place of belonging, and a place of self and the aimless wanderings of youth evolve into a more purposeful journey. So it was that I set out to find within that grand bazaar my own tribe \u2014 and a journey it was. I stopped by the Translation Company Division table, but it didn’t feel right. I was wooed for a while by the Interpreters Division table, but still, some mysterious force drew me away \u2014 drew me further, farther, deep into the heart of the\u00a0ballroom, until all of sudden I had arrived.<\/p>\n

I knew it instantly, instinctively. There was no one word that was said, no formal\u00a0introduction made. It was the background chatter, the snippets, and pleasantries \u2014\u00a0xinghui! jiuyang! haojiubujian!\u201d \u2014 the elegant parade of Mandarin syllables rising and falling in their crisp tonal dance. All of the faces around me were smiling. The hands that I shook were warm. The banner above the table read \u201cChinese Language Division.\u201d<\/p>\n

At last, I was home.<\/p>\n

A Division United<\/strong><\/p>\n

From chatting excitedly at the Welcome Celebration to our division dinner a few blocks away, I was struck on that very first night by the openness, warmth, and inclusiveness of the community.<\/p>\n

It’s a diverse group both in terms of demographics (gender, age, location-base) and in terms of professional tracks (translators and interpreters; students and experienced professionals; business operators, freelancers, and in-house staff).<\/p>\n

Despite all these differences, though, I felt the division came together in a true spirit of unity and appreciation. Division Administrator Pency Tsai went out of her way to make sure that everyone in attendance felt welcomed and included, and after a round of warm self-introductions over dinner, it felt like we were all old friends, even though I’d only known everyone for a few hours.<\/p>\n

This feeling of camaraderie would extend throughout the conference period. Amidst all the learning and networking to be done, some of the best memories of the conference were of just running into CLD colleagues in the hallways, or going to get coffee in between sessions, or just hanging out and having fun together in the evenings. Close to two dozen of us took over a big table at the Wordfast party, for example, and ate and drank and laughed while the party buzzed around us (plus we got to try a very interesting virtual reality tour provided by the party’s charity partner, Nothing But Nets).<\/p>\n

Content is King\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Merry fraternizing aside, of course, the conference was chock-full of powerful and\u00a0instructive content, and CLD was no exception.<\/p>\n

The Chinese Language Division Annual Meeting took place during lunchtime on Friday, with Pency Tsai and Tianlu Redmon sharing important updates on the progress our division has made in membership, outreach, engagement in social media \u2014 as well as an introduction to our new division website! There is still a lot of room for CLD to increase its representation and influence in the ATA as a whole, but we’re still very proud of the great work that has been done so far and thank all of the administrators for their tremendous contributions.<\/p>\n

Almost directly after the division meeting came a quick cascade of Chinese programming, with two CLD sessions following in quick succession: Ran Zhao and Jessie Lu shared their many years of experience and insight in Lessons Learned from Grading ATA Practice Tests, followed by an in-depth skills-building session by Evelyn Garland titled Tighten It Up: How to Tame a Loose Text. All of these sessions displayed a level of depth, commitment, and professionalism that our division \u2014 and especially the speakers themselves \u2014deserve to be very proud of!<\/p>\n

True Solidarity<\/strong><\/p>\n

For the first three nights of the conference I had been sheepishly (shamelessly, you might say) promoting my own session, a dryly titled introduction to finance (Private Equity or Price-to-Earnings? Finance and Ambiguity in Conference Interpreting) which had been granted the immensely unenviable time slot of 8:30 am on a Saturday morning three-and-a-half days into the conference \u2014 typically not a time one would naturally associate with high levels of attendee engagement. I arrived at the venue early Saturday morning genuinely afraid (and half expecting) that literally no one would show up \u2014 that I would spend the next hour showing Powerpoint slides to myself in an empty room.<\/p>\n

But my fears turned out to be no match for the incredible enthusiasm and support given to me by all the eager participants in this terrific community, and in particular from all my new friends in the Chinese Language Division, who attended the session in tremendous force — some of whom even woke up before sunrise and travelled from significant distances on the outskirts of D.C. to show their solidarity and support.<\/p>\n

From the bottom of my heart, I thank all of you!<\/p>\n

The Times In Between\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

The ATA conference is over now, but the magic persists.<\/p>\n

However hard we try, something is always lost in translation \u2014 but a good translator can transcend that loss, comforting and compensating the reader with fresh perspective.<\/p>\n

The same, I think, is true with community. An annual conference takes place, by definition, only once a year \u2014 we cannot be together every day, and something is lost in the absence. But just as a good translation transcends that loss, so too does a good community grow closer and stronger in the times in between our meetings. We come together once a year to be energized, but even in the times apart we are a family \u2014 a family of many different cities and of many different backgrounds, but united always in our passion for these languages and the value we unlock in them.<\/p>\n

It was an honor spending this conference with you all, and I look forward to transcending this time in between and seeing you all again at ATA’59 next year!<\/p>\n

\n

\"\"Jonathan Rechtman is a Chinese-English conference interpreter and co-founder of Cadence Translate. Based in China for over a decade, he has interpreted for multiple presidents and prime ministers, Fortune 500 CEOs, Hollywood stars, Nobel Prize winners, and a princess.<\/em><\/p>\n

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