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Episode 17: State of the FLD November 2020
Cathy-Eitel: Bonjour ! Bienvenue chez l’éditeur. This is Cathy-Eitel Nzume, host of the Continuing Education Series, a podcast we produce as a benefit for members of the French Language Division of the American Translators Association and those interested in becoming members. This series tries to offer educational content about the craft of French-to-English and English-to-French translation, interpretation, and about our division.
For today’s episode, it is my pleasure to welcome Andie Ho, our newly installed administrator, for our State of the FLD Session. Some of you may be familiar with Andie, as she previously served as FLD Assistant Administrator.
Andie Ho: Hi, Cathy-Eitel. Hello FLD listeners. It’s nice to be on the podcast again. Thank you for the wonderful welcome. I am honored to be the FLD’s new administrator. I’ll be working together with our new assistant administrator, Beth Smith, who many of you already know from being around, and, working together, we’ll attempt to fill the giant shoes that Jen Mercer left behind for us.
Cathy-Eitel: Congratulations, again, Andie! Could you tell us a little bit about you, and what can we expect from the FLD for the upcoming year?
Andie Ho: Well, even though we just had the Annual Conference, we are already working next year’s conference, looking for a distinguished speaker for the FLD. We have to complete the paperwork pretty soon, in January, I believe, so it’s really important that we start looking for somebody now, so if anybody has ideas or suggestions for our distinguished speaker, please let us know. In other news, we hope to kick off the certification exam study group sometime next year since it looks like the ATA exams are going to resume soon. Our current plan is for people to do practice translations at home, and then pair up with a partner and give each other feedback. We will be starting a new round each month, with a new package to translate each month and a new partner to work with, so people can jump on the train any time and join the group, and the practice exams will be available in both language directions, English to French and French to English.
Cathy-Eitel: Thank you, Andie. Now let’s dive into another important topic. So, the 2020 ATA Annual Conference. The Conference was certainly different this year. It went virtual! Nevertheless, I personally think it was a success. Thanks to the organizers, everything went so smoothly, and attendees were still able to learn, network, and have fun. Could you share your thoughts on the 2020 ATA Conference?
Andie Ho: I thought the conference was a wild success, given everything that had to happen to pivot into an online event, turn it suddenly into an online event. I know lots of people were worried that there wouldn’t be opportunities to socialize and network with other people, but the organizers did a fantastic job of making sure we still had opportunities for that. The speakers did a great job, and I definitely want to congratulate the FLD speakers that represented us and made us proud of them. The conference organizers, I know, are actively seeking feedback right now on the conference because, apparently, they expect to have a hybrid version of the conference next year. So, if any of you who attended have opinions, either positive or negative, please email the ATA board, the officers, and let them know what you think.
Cathy-Eitel: Oh, wow. I didn’t know that. A hybrid version will be awesome, but do you have any recommendations for the next conference? What about advice for fellow translators and interpreters as to how to proceed now that the conference is over?
Andie Ho: Well, whether the conference is in-person or online, what you want to do afterwards is make sure you follow up, follow through with the things that you learned in the sessions and follow up with the people you met. Make time to try out the new software you heard about. Check out the new resource you heard about. Reach out and stay in touch with the people that you met. You can do like I have done, which is set yourself a reminder each week or every so often to email the people that you met, say, three months from now, see how they’re doing, or you can work together to brainstorm new business ideas that you came up with at the conference. These are all really important things, because the conference works best if you do something with the information that you got out of it, otherwise, you know, you’re not really getting the full benefit.
Cathy-Eitel: Okay, well, last time we spoke, Covid-19 was sort of at its peak. We are not out of the woods yet, and it’s difficult to meet in person; therefore, I think it is important to find a way to connect virtually. Andie, please, would you remind our fellow FLD members of the various ways to stay in touch or find out about FLD events?
Andie Ho: Oh, wow. FLD has more ways than ever to stay in touch. We are on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, and have been for a long time, of course. Also, we still have the website. We have a newsletter and email discussion list, and, of course, this podcast, and we are now on Discord, which is another kind of messaging forum where people can chat. You should have, if you are an FLD member, you should have received an email recently, just last week I believe, detailing all of these different ways to stay in touch, with links, you can find us. And, new and improved, we’ve also started doing monthly Zoom meetups so that people can talk about their challengers or just enjoy each other’s company since we can’t see each other in person right now, but make sure you subscribe to at least one of the communications channels I mentioned so that you hear about the monthly Zoom meetings and get the announcements. We only post the actual link in the closed forum, for instance, listserv or the Facebook group, and that’s to make sure that our meetings don’t get hacked. Unfortunately, that is a thing that happens in this world, but, also, [laughter], yeah. You can also always just reach out to us to get the link. The main thing is that you need to subscribe to at least one method of communication, just so you get the announcements, the dates and times for the monthly Zoom meetups.
Cathy-Eitel: Thank you so much, Andie, for all the reminders. Now, your continuing education series is fantastic episodes about legal translations, sustainable development, genealogy, and even a translation slam. And for the future episodes, we are accepting suggestions from all members and nonmembers who would like to share their knowledge with the division and other colleagues. No public speaking experience necessary. If you are interested, please email us at divisionfld [at] atanet [dot] org. We’re interested in all topics and subjects. Speaking of topics, we have one English-to-French topic about poorly written source content and need a guest speaker. If you’re interested in discussing terrible source content, or anything else, please get in touch.
Andie Ho: Yeah, and I’d like to add to that that the FLD is run by volunteers, so anyone can step up and contribute at any time no matter in how small a way, otherwise, Cathy-Eitel, you and I have to do everything by ourselves.
Cathy-Eitel: Well, Andie, thank you so much for joining me today. Have a great Thanksgiving.
Andie Ho: Thank you Cathy-Eitel. Thank you for having me.
Cathy-Eitel: Thank you. Bye-bye.
Cathy-Eitel Nzume is a certified French to English and English to French Court Interpreter, translator, Department of State Certified Linguist and legal professional. She specializes in legal and conference interpreting as well as legal and financial translation. You can find her on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/cathyeitelnzume/ or on Twitter at @CathyENzume.
Andie Ho is a certified French to English translator specializing in the food industry. She earned her M.A. in translation from Kent State University and is now based in the Houston area. She currently serves as the ATA’s French Language Division administrator. You can follow her on Twitter at @JHawkTranslator or email her at andie [at] andiehotranslations [dot] com.
Transcribed by Joan Wallace. She has been a full-time freelance translator for nearly 30 years. She holds ATA certification from French to English and Spanish to English, and also translates from Thai to English. She works primarily in medical and pharmaceutical translation, although she occasionally wanders further afield, including an ongoing collaboration with a historian involving
French-English translation of 19th-century handwritten documents. She is based in Madison, Wisconsin. You can connect with her on LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/joanwallace.