ATA SLD

Slavic Languages Division (American Translators Association)

American Translators Association: The Voice of Interpreters and Translators

Tell SLD about Your Professional Development Needs!

neon question mark

Photo by Emily Morter on Unsplash

The SLD Professional Development survey is live! SLD members, please help us organize more useful professional development offerings by telling us what you want and need. The more we know about you – your background, experience, development goals, modes of learning – the more useful the division will be to you.

The survey will be available through the end of the year, closing on December 31. But don’t wait! Nobody wants to be stuck doing a survey at the last minute instead of enjoying the holidays. Completing the survey should not take more than 10 minutes of your time.

If you have any questions, comments, suggestions, or just want to vent about professional development, feel free to email your SLD administrator (that’s me!) at eugenia@sokolskayatranslations.com. We’re excited to find out more about the diverse group of people that constitute our membership and welcome all your feedback!

SLD History and Humor: SlavFile Takes You Back to the 1990s

SlavFile Header

by Nora Seligman Favorov

If you’re a history buff or interested in seeing how our profession has evolved over the past quarter century, or if you’re just messing around on the internet looking for something different to read, I would recommend some of the first issues of SlavFile recently posted to the SLD website.

Take, for example, the issue from February 1995. SlavFile was still in its infancy, and the RLD (not yet SLD) administrator Susana Greiss congratulated editor Christina Sever (sadly, no longer with us) and “Layout and DTP” editor Galina Raff (still doing layout lo these 25 years later!) for the great job they were doing. The switch to “Slavic” division was in the discussion stage, and division administrator Susana Greiss was asking readers for input. A “Calendar of 1995 Spring Activities” listed a number of in person (imagine that!) events (a “Russian Financial Terminology for Translators” event at a library in Seattle; “Breakfast at Denny’s,” also in Seattle; a couple of “accreditation examination” sittings, since the switch to certification still lay in the future). As a further reminder of how much things have changed, the list of resources for translators and interpreters consisted mostly of brick and mortar bookstores, along with “Top 1 Video (ask for Greg—Americanized name)” in Hollywood, California.

The May 1995 issue reflected the still relatively recent collapse of the Soviet Union with an interesting article profiling some of “Russia’s ‘New Translators,’” as well as strongly worded letters to the editor both pro and con the move toward a more inclusive Slavic Languages Division. And three cheers for Igor Vesler, whose engaging article “Ukrainian—An Emerging Market?” paired with his triple contribution to the Summer-Fall 2020 issue proves the man to be an asset with staying power. As Dagmar Kotlandova Koenig’s article in that issue, “Translating Czech in the United States” seems to demonstrate, the RLD had more success than the SLD has had attracting Czech participation, ironically enough. The Autumn 1995 issue contains a note “From the Editor’s Desk” in which editor Christina Sever announces her need to step down and a call for a replacement. Susana Greiss’s “From the Administrator” column in the following issue announced that the division was “fortunate to be able to recruit a new editor who, I think, will do us proud: Lydia Razran Stone.” She knew of what she spoke.

In case I haven’t yet convinced you to browse these 25-year-old issues of SlavFile, let me strengthen my case by quoting two funny stories from what might be only the second of Lydia’s “SlavFile Lite: Not by Word Count Alone” columns—in this case stories contributed by SlavFile’s then-assistant editor, Laura Esther Wolfson:

Funny Story No. 1: A young woman who wanted to perfect her Russian got a job working on an American exhibit demonstrating the wonders of capitalism to the Soviet masses. Her responsibilities included demonstrating a supermarket checkout scanner, which, in the interests of verisimilitude, was provided with props in the form of various grocery items made of plastic. The gaze of a Soviet visitor at the exhibit fell on a plastic sausage, and, leading the young woman to digress from the properties of the scanner, he asked what measures were taken in the U.S. to prolong the shelf-life of sausage. The young woman seized the somewhat phallic looking sausage, held it aloft and said, confident in her use of false cognates: “Они пользуются презервативами! [“They use condoms!”]

Funny Story No. 2: A woman who worked at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow in the seventies told me about a New Year’s party she attended in that city at the residence of a Western diplomat. At midnight, one of the guests exclaimed, ‘What a pity that some poor KGB agent has to see in the new year eavesdropping on us instead of having a good time with his friends and family!’ A few seconds passed, the phone rang, and the sound of a champagne cork popping was clearly audible at the other end of the line.

Enjoy!

Nora Seligman Favorov is Associate Editor of SlavFile and a freelance translator of Russian literature and history.

end of SlavFile reprint

SLD @ ATA61: Events This Sunday!

While the official dates of ATA61 are October 21-24, division events kick off early! Join SLD for its annual meeting on Sunday, October 18, 4:00-5:00 PM EDT. The meeting is open to all division members, even those not registered for the conference. Zoom meeting links for all the annual meetings are available on the conference website’s division page here. You can find the meeting agenda in the ATA61 Preview document under this website’s Resources tab, along with helpful links and other valuable information about the conference.

The fun doesn’t stop there! Also Sunday, at 7:00-8:00 PM EDT, conference attendees can join SLD’s networking event, the virtual counterpart to the annual SLD dinner. The link will be available through the conference platform. You can look forward to lively conversation with other SLD members in small groups (breakout rooms). Join us for a fun evening!

And if you’re not registered for the conference yet, what are you waiting for? Registration at regular rates closes this Friday, October 16.

2020 Summer-Fall SlavFile: Looking Ahead to ATA61

SlavFile Header

The latest issue of SlavFile is out! At a whopping 32 pages, this summer-fall installment of the newsletter includes something for everyone:

  • Previews of the upcoming ATA conference
    • An interview with this year’s Greiss Lecturer / Distinguished Speaker, Ellen Elias-Bursać, co-sponsored with the Literary Division
    • Abstracts for Slavic-related sessions
  • Timely resources for our new pandemic reality
    • A glossary of COVID neologisms
    • A review of another COVID glossary
    • COVID-related (and unrelated) humor
    • How to keep your skills fresh in quarantine
  • Literary translations and related articles
    • What it’s like being a newcomer to the literary field (complete with an excerpt of said newcomer’s translation!)
    • The hands-on process of translating The Cherry Orchard for teenagers
    • Poems translated from Slovenian
  • Bonus material
    • An explanatory guide to American news and political jargon

You can find the latest issue on the SlavFile page (see tabs above), along with issues going back to 1995, with new issues added to the archive just this month. Happy reading!

end of SlavFile reprint

New Webinar: Challenges in Human Rights Translation

Promotional image for human rights translation webinar

Have you ever wondered about the field of human rights translation? There is no shortage of human-rights issues in the post-Soviet space, but breaking into this specialization may feel too daunting. Fortunately, with research, you can become confident in your translations. But where should you look?

Join fellow SLD member Lucy Gunderson to learn research techniques to track down terminology in a wide range of documents available to human rights translators. Lucy will also demonstrate how to use human rights documents originally written in English to energize translations and inspire word choices.⁣ Let this webinar be your window or even stepping stone into human rights translation!
⁣
This webinar will be presented in English with Russian examples.⁣
⁣
Cost: ATA members $45, non-members $60⁣
⁣
Unable to attend live? Register now to receive a link to the on-demand recording after the live event!⁣

SLD Podcast: Episode 22 with Paula Arturo

The latest episode of the SLD podcast, Slovo, is now available! In this episode, host Maria Guzenko speaks with Paula Arturo, a lawyer-linguist and Associate Professor of Law. Paula talks about the challenges of legal translation and shares tips for translators who would like to specialize in it. In the second half of the interview, Maria and Paula discuss how language professionals can negotiate a fair contract with their clients.

Listen here, or anywhere you get your podcasts – Slovo is available on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, and Spotify. Don’t forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode!

CEU Watch: Clinical Trials and Medical Documentation: Resources and Translation Strategies for New Translators by Carmen Cross

Photo by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash

Although the COVID-19 pandemic has brought upheaval and uncertainty to our profession, it has also been an opportunity to catch up on continuing education. However, I will not be reviewing any recent webinars on weathering the crisis or pivoting to remote interpreting. Today, I’d like to turn to an unexpectedly topical video from the ProZ.com video library—a repository that features webinars previously broadcast on the website. Disclaimer: Other than being a paying member, I have no business relationship with ProZ.com.

The video I watched was Clinical Trials and Medical Documentation: Resources and Translation Strategies for New Translators presented by German- and Arabic-to-English medical translator Carmen Cross. The live session took place back in 2016, but I found the presentation relevant to anyone getting started in the field of clinical trials.

Trial Background, Standards, and Terminology

In the first section of the webinar, the instructor gave an overview of the types of documentation produced in a clinical trial. Documents that may need translation include informed consent forms, patient information sheets, and serious adverse event reports. In addition, the speaker shared what areas clinical trials focus on. Even though our first thought may be drugs, Ms. Cross pointed out that other things may also be studied, such as medical devices or diagnostic procedures. She then went over some commonly studies drugs and drug targets (molecular entities the drug binds to). Next, the webinar focused on some common types of studies, including diagnostic, epidemiological, pharmacokinetic, and pharmacodynamic, among others. Finally, we looked at the phases of a trial, examining the objectives, number of participants, and length of each phase.

The following part concerned international standards that govern clinical trials, such as the International Conference on Harmonisation’s Good Clinical Practice (ICH GCP) addendum or the World Medical Association’s (WMA) Declaration of Helsinki. Ms. Cross named a few regulatory authorities overseeing clinical trials, such as the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the US, the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency in the UK, or the Public Health Institute in Russia, and emphasized that study sponsors apply to these bodies for approval. The documents involved in the application process, for example an investigational new drug application (IND), may require translation. The presenter pointed out that the actual research gets outsourced to the contract research organizations (CROs), who are responsible for trial data, and they may be the entity that needs translation services.

Finally, the speaker drew our attention to some tricky terms in this field and shared several resources we might want to turn to in our research. To name a few, she discussed the difference between efficacy and effectiveness; clinical trial and clinical study; and subject and patient. Ms. Cross recommended PubMed, which allows you to search in a particular language, and ClinicalTrials.gov, which lets you search for the full official title of the study by its ID.

Takeaways

I appreciated that the speaker not only provided an overview of clinical trials but also pointed out what organizations may be looking for translations, what documents may require translation, and where to look for terminology. She also listed the top countries where clinical trials are conducted—Russia, Turkey, China, Brazil, India, South Korea, and Mexico. Her advice was actionable and tailored to translators.

An obvious drawback of this webinar is that it was recorded in 2016, so some of the standards and processes might have changed since. In fact, the speaker mentioned that a new clinical trial regulation (EU No 536/2014) had been adopted, supplanting an earlier European Union directive, but its implementation was going to be gradual. I would still recommend this webinar to anyone interested in clinical trials, with the caveat that the viewer will need to do their own research to find up-to-date information.

Author Bio

Maria Guzenko is an ATA-certified English<>Russian translator and a certified medical interpreter (CMI-Russian). She holds an MA in translation from Kent State University and specializes in healthcare translation. Maria is a co-founder of the SLD exam practice group and the host of the SLD podcast, now rebranded as Slovo. More information can be found on her website at https://intorussian.net.

Spring 2020: A Very Literary SlavFile

SlavFile Header

By sheer coincidence, this year’s spring issue of SlavFile turned out to be focused almost entirely on literary translation. The issue starts with Isaac Wheeler’s insightful “Hierarchy of Conflicting Demands,” in which he prioritizes seven stipulations a literary translation must meet, ranging from (No. 1) “Does it produce the same effect on the reader as the original?” to (No. 7) “Does it use the same metaphorical mechanism as the original?” He talks about various efforts to figure out what goes on “under the hood” during literary translation. The examples he draws from his own work demonstrate a keen attentiveness to what’s happening under his own. His article is followed by Part II of Steven McGrath’s excellent interview with literary translator Carol Apollonio, which centers on her experiences translating Chekhov. The issue also features a lengthy interview with Olga Bukhina, who has spent decades translating Anglophone children’s literature into Russian (and who oversees a Russian-into-English translation contest for bilingual children). Two reviews of sessions presented at ATA60 in Palm Springs are also literary: Julia LaVilla-Nossova’s review of Martha Kosir’s “On Understanding and Translating Humor: The Spirits of Heinrich Boll’s House” and my own review of Shelley Fairweather-Vega’s “Decolonizing Central Asia through Translation.” The issue concludes with Part IV of Lydia Razran Stone’s contemplation of Krylov, commenced in commemoration of last year’s 250th anniversary of his birth.

Even our administrators’ “Notes from the Administrative Underground,” which ponders the isolation that is, at times, a part of our profession and how our SLD community can help ease it (we’ve all become even more isolated since it was originally written in early March!), features Zinaida Gippius’s poem “Цепь,” evocatively translated by Maria Jacqueline Evans. We hope our readers will enjoy and learn from this superb (if we may say so ourselves) issue.

Nora Seligman Favorov

Associate Editor

end of SlavFile reprint

CEU Watch: International Keyword Research for Translators from Meridian Linguistics

Taught by Sara Maria Hasbun

Reviewed by Anna Livermore

I love CPD. My inner nerd rejoices at the prospect of starting a new course or attending a professional event. Nowadays, there are infinite opportunities to learn. So much so that it can be hard to choose from a gazillion options that come in the shape of online courses, professional conferences, live webinars, mentoring sessions, books, podcasts, blogs…

The CPD I dedicate time to usually falls into four categories: acquiring a new skill relevant to my specialization, improving my technical knowledge (CAT or DTP tools), keeping up with trends in the industry I specialize in or learning better business practices. Even so, the choice of available CPD options can be overwhelming. What helps me stay focused is going back to my marketing plan and my business goals, then choosing CPD opportunities that can help me achieve them.

One of the courses I completed recently is International Keyword Research for Translators from Meridian Linguistics. It is a short online course that provides a step by step guide for translators on working with international keywords. I intentionally use ‘working with’ instead of ‘translating’ because translation is only a small part of the overall process.

What this course is:

Exactly what it says on the tin: a guide outlining every step of creating a keyword file for a client in your target language for the target market. You will find out what needs to be discussed before you start work, what tools are available (and useful) for different stages of the project, what those stages are, why simply translating keywords from the source language does not cut it, and what your final product should look like.

Despite being short, the course packs a lot of information. The best thing about it is the way it relates the best practices for keyword research to the language industry and to the linguist’s role in that process.

What this course is not:

This is not a course that will help you optimize your own webpage, although some aspects of it can be useful. On the whole, its focus is researching keywords for clients for target regions.

It will answer a lot of questions about keywords—types of keywords, where to find them, how to choose them, and how they relate to an overall SEO strategy—but it is not a replacement for general SEO courses.

Bottom line:

I highly recommend this course: the information in it is distilled to help improve the specific skill of working with international keywords. It is designed and delivered by people who over the years have developed professional expertise in the field. I have been working with SEO and multilingual keyword research for several years now and still took away a lot from this course, which will help me deliver even more value to my clients.

Anna Livermore is an English>Russian and German>Russian translator and former marketing specialist. With a linguistics degree from the Oxford Brookes University and a Professional Diploma in marketing, she came to specialize in translating marketing materials, corporate communications, website content and various components of SEM. She is a member of the Slavic Languages Division’s Social Media team. Contact: livermore.translations@gmail.com

SLD Podcast: Episode 21 with Katarzyna Hoerner

The latest episode of the SLD podcast Slovo is now available! This time, Maria talks to ATA-certified English>Polish translator and certified medical interpreter Katarzyna “Kasia” Hoerner, who shares how she came to specialize in the medical field. Katarzyna also touches on her work as a staff translator and interpreter, the demand for Polish language services in the US, and the changes and opportunities brought about by the current health crisis.

Listen now on Soundcloud or through your favorite podcasting platform, and be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, or Spotify so you never miss an episode!

SLD Blog Categories