About Together 2023

Connecting the dots with Translated: From Artificial Intelligence to Human Creativity

A full two hours of talks and workshops with the Translated staff Show more...to explore the synergy between machines and human intelligence, and how localisation can contribute to creating a more accessible and inclusive world, where everyone is able to understand and be understood in their own language.

Freelance translators will be given priority and seats are limited.


Location: Translated offices, Pi6, Via Indonesia 23, 00144 Rome. Workshop followed by an Aperitivo.

Registration & welcome coffee

Welcome to Together

Keynote - Personal brand. Your professional footprint

This is about empowerment and impact. It's about how each of Show more...us can be the main character of our life. Isabelle will share her raw and honest story of finding her true purpose and becoming the person she is today.

She firmly believes our uniqueness shapes the world and makes this planet an incredible place to live in. "We are all making a difference through our contributions, even when we are unaware of it," Isabelle adds. She hopes her story will serve as a message and an inspiration that the power is within our hearts and embracing our individuality.

As we journey through life, we all leave footprints— it's time to get to know and embrace yours.

Coffee break

Negotiation - The art of a 7 year old

Negotiation is an inherent part of our lives, from our first Show more...thoughts to the largest purchases of our lives, we engage a certain set of skills to get the best deal. So why is it so hard to engage the same skills in our business and working lives? Follow the journey through life and understand the benefits, and pitfalls of negotiation.

A process to rule them all!

Probably all agencies in the world have their processes in translation. Show more... But what about freelancers? Shouldn't we also create our own translation process? And should this process be always the same, despite the agency? Same question applies to agencies: should the process be all the same for all languages? Is a fixed or a flexible process the better solution?

Lunch

The parallels between the work of an Intelligence Service translator and that of a freelance translator

The work of an intelligence service translator is not to simply Show more...sit at a desk and translate all day. The focus of the work is to do analysis. For that, several skills and knowledge are needed so the product of the analysis can be used. Also, teamwork is incredibly important. The job of a freelance translator can differ a bit, but not entirely. In this session, you will learn a little about the work of an intelligence service translator and how to use the same methods and tools to improve the quality of your work and maybe add more options to your services menu.

Freelancers and LSCs: a shared fulfilment quest

We are more than ever in a profit-driven society from which the Show more...language industry is not exempt. Higher quality requirements, constant price pressure, new technology…will everyone in our industry still be able to be successful and fulfill themselves? How can we all reconcile divergent contemporary values, like well-being, profit, professional fulfillment, growth, inclusivity. Many dots that aren’t obvious to connect in order to draw the road to success. The aim for LSCs and freelancers isn’t to confront each other, but more to work together, looking after each other's interests without forgetting the fundamental values that build the society of tomorrow.

Coffee break

Built to last: Foundations of long-lasting vendor relationships

We spend valuable time and resources building business relationships Show more...with our vendors, so how can we make sure our collaboration will last? This session will provide you with ideas, advice and examples taken from my own experience to ensure you are doing everything you can to create meaningful, long-lasting connections with your vendors.

Relaunching an LSP as a work from anywhere organisation

As many companies in the localisation space, Trusted Translations Show more...and Language Services Associates have migrated to a fully work from anywhere platform. We are currently rebooting their companies based on this new format. Today, we would like to share our experiences and what we have learned from many consultations with colleagues and experts in the remote work field as well as our own implementations. The localisation and interpretation industries are a unique place where WFA can thrive and give those companies a very specific competitive advantage for their adopters vs a traditional structure. While before it was about surviving during the pandemic, we have found that you can actually thrive in this environment, especially as an LSP (e.g., access to better talent, less time commuting, better systems, and improved processes).

Networking gathering

Mercato Centrale

Registration & welcome coffee

Welcome to Together

Keynote - Personal brand. Your professional footprint

This is about empowerment and impact. It's about how each of Show more...us can be the main character of our life. Isabelle will share her raw and honest story of finding her true purpose and becoming the person she is today.

She firmly believes our uniqueness shapes the world and makes this planet an incredible place to live in. "We are all making a difference through our contributions, even when we are unaware of it," Isabelle adds. She hopes her story will serve as a message and an inspiration that the power is within our hearts and embracing our individuality.

As we journey through life, we all leave footprints— it's time to get to know and embrace yours.

Coffee break

Not content with just existing: How to create meaningful connections in the language industry

Once upon a time... in June 2022, I started to connect virtually Show more...with every person I could meet in the industry. Every CEO, every PM, every Tech specialist, Operations Manager, Linguist...the list goes on. I'm in sales and I do operations and I'm well aware messaging is important. Just like every other person, I'm looking at the same reports, analyzing the same trends, engaging customers, creating branding and generally doing business. But here's the downside to being in the industry: It's alienating. It's exhausting. And frankly, let's face it, sometimes downright boring. It's easy to be a cog in the wheel. Day in and day out of prospecting, measuring quality, managing and explaining basic concepts to potential customers. Maybe that's just me... But, over time, your coworkers, freelancers and customers become numbers. They're just KPIs to meet. And the reality is, when your passion is no longer there, your work is no longer there. It doesn't matter how you've improved operations, what sales you've brought in, or how many freelancing gigs you get when you've stopped building, creating, and discovering. That's why I started to connect. I started small and within three weeks was meeting on average 6-8 people a week in different roles in the industry around the world. I went into each of my meetings with one very specific intention: to listen. With that in mind, I learned. I look forward to sharing with you my experiences and how anyone within the industry can replicate this and start connecting at ELIA's Together 2023 in Rome.

Translating the Law, a life journey

Once upon a time there was a young girl who had just graduated Show more...from Carlo Bo interpreting school in Milan. She loved interpreting and translating. She would take any job as long as it was language-related. She would do transcription, subtitling, hostess services and, by the age of 22, she would begin her first simultaneous and consecutive assignments. You could say she was crushing her freelancing career but it felt like something was missing. She wanted to be the speaker and not an interpreter anymore. She embarked on her life journey: an Italian and French law degree and a 5-year career as a lawyer in international law firms. But one day she realised that her passion had been there all along: translation and entrepreneurship. She started a new, freelancing career, this time one that was highly specialised in international law. In 2020, in the middle of the pandemic, she founded her first LSP with her partner, Jessica Verderio. They were also in two different countries, but somehow it worked very well. And this is where the story begins…

Lunch

The power of community translation models: the people, the processes, and the technology

The author and disability rights advocate Helen Keller once said: Show more..."Alone we can do so little, together we can do so much".

In this session, we will focus on the specific experience of Translators without Borders (TWB) - the world’s largest humanitarian translation community - with over 100,000 members working in more than 200 languages - from Amharic to Zulu.

The TWB Community brings together individuals who are united by a common passion - to help people get vital information and be heard, whatever language they speak.

From the COVID-19 pandemic to the Ukraine crisis, the TWB Community has tirelessly contributed to the translation of critical information in local languages, in situations where timelines and budgets are incredibly tight. However, community translation brings its own unique set of challenges.

With multiple contributors, how can we ensure overall translation quality is “fit for purpose”? And with so many different languages, backgrounds and cultures, how can we instill a sense of belonging and provide a fulfilling and engaging experience?

During this session, we will seek to provide answers to these questions and others, while hearing the stories of some of our community members.

Proactive literary translator

This presentation is about my journey as a literary translator Show more...of Chinese language, from being just a translator to being an active participator in the realisation of publishing projects. I will demonstrate how a translator can be more proactive in connecting the dots between the local publishing houses and authors in the country of their working language. A translator can extend their role by contacting authors, attending online events, staying updated about recent trends in the given foreign literature etc, thus serving as a bridge between the two cultures. By doing this a literary translator can become a consultant in the world of foreign literature, where the knowledge of the foreign language gives them the advantage of being at the source of information. A proactive literary translator can propose to the local publishers exciting authors that they’ve read in the original language, as the local publishers are often unfamiliar with the literatures of distant/small languages. Finally, I will talk about the literary translator in the political context, as I am experienced in both translating Chinese mainland and Taiwanese authors and collaborating with the institutions in both places. A proactive literary translator’s work can contribute in breaking the barriers and limitations of the economic and political contexts. Translation skills are indeed crucial in this process.

Coffee break

Who's at the table?

Millions of people around the world continue to experience language Show more...discrimination, oppression, stigma, or isolation. The experience of facing barriers to obtaining access to opportunities, information, and improved outcomes across systems, along with the cost of inadequate language services can be personally devastating for individuals. With roughly 25 million people in the U.S. speaking a language other than English at home, the lack of language access services has been a long-simmering problem that the coronavirus pandemic has intensified. Under normal circumstances, language access is rarely a top priority for most institutions and organisations. During the pandemic, we had learned that compassion, and inclusion are key to alleviate systems. For organisations, ensuring that as many people as possible are at the table is critical to innovate, resolve conflict, and increase the value of services provided. This talk explores how the power of inclusive design, representation, and meaningful language access can create inclusive, welcoming, and multilingual spaces where all languages are valued equally and speakers of different languages are heard and benefit from listening to and sharing with one another. During our conversation we will unpack the following concepts of multicultural outreach, plain language, transcreation, translation, inclusive design and language access strategies.

Creative translation and adaptation in the localisation of Disney stories

Do you want to know how Mini, Mickey Mouse, Cruella live in the Show more...Croatian Disney world? How do they speak, act and behave? These stories have been translated for a long time for a very demanding target audience (children). However, we have taken a different (and so-far successful) approach – assessing target population for each of the stories, examining localised cartoons, and applying expressions with which children are familiar. Nevertheless, it has also been our aim to teach children standard grammar, and introduce expressions not normally encountered in everyday speech – with the aim for each of the stories to be age-group appropriate. We would also like to present (and display) examples of creative problem-solving when it comes to nursery rhymes not found in Croatian literature (especially evident in the “Mother Goose” collection, but in other examples as well), and the issue containing the “alphabet poem” (from English into Croatian, with a leitmotiv of “Monsters Inc.”). Hopefully, the presentation will be both informative, and visually entertaining.

Networking gathering

Mercato Centrale

Welcome coffee

Together Job Fair 2023

Coffee break

Dot up!

This one is for the ambitious freelancer who wants to develop Show more...from a basic dot with a limited number of similar tasks into a powerful and multicoloured unicorn dot with more diverse tasks, more responsibility, more skills and more job security. I see more and more LSPs searching for Language Leads (or ambassadors or evangelists or guardians or whatever buzzword is in fashion at the time), but I also hear from the LSPs that it is hard to find qualified people who are willing to take on the task. This is a shame, since there is so much to gain from taking the step up from “just” being a translator or reviewer to becoming a Language Lead, so my aim is to take some of the drama out of it and describe why being a Language Lead can lead to more work, new skills and more respect that so many freelancers are craving but never feel they get from the LSPs.

Sense and sensibility in talent management

Freelance translators are a key resource for the translation Show more...agency; their contribution determines the agency's success. The relationship with freelance translators has always been a topic of discussion in the language industry, generating different approaches and tools. We want to share the approach and tools we have developed at Aglatech14, based on our experience and the win-win philosophy that has always distinguished us. This philosophy creates trust between people, generates a high level of involvement and the desire to work and achieve goals together. Underlying this philosophy there is an approach that is first and foremost oriented towards people and their talent, with the aim of enhancing them through professional growth and activities designed to enrich each other's experience (training, Survival Kit, networking events, social media community). Alongside the emotional approach, there is the objective approach, aimed at analyzing, monitoring and assuring the quality of work (technical support, continuous feedback with a scoring system, quality assessments, Intelligent Resource Matching). In every phase of the relationship, the translators are an active part of the process (and of the success 😊), they are informed and fully involved. This approach benefits all those involved in the production process: translators, revisors, project managers, quality specialists, end customers. For this approach to work fully, it must be shared at company level and applied at every stage of the relationship with translators, from selection to onboarding, from assignment and management of translation projects to quality control, scoring and feedback, up to the economic aspects of the relationship, which must be characterized by transparency and punctuality. To conclude, borrowing the title of Jane Austen's famous novel: in the relationship with translators there must be the right balance between sense and sensibility, where "sense" means the ability to act with judgement and reasoning while "sensibility" means to give way to the emotional and human part of the relationship.

Lunch

From translator to CEO: How translation technology can help you develop your career

In this session, Daniela Landucci and Rosario de Zayas Rueda Show more...will walk you through the steps Rosario has taken to become the successful business owner she is today. Rosario will share her experiences, including how she overcame her biggest challenges, and offer tips to get ahead.

Perfectionism: How to unlearn it and still be a good PM

What degree of perfectionism does good project management involve? Show more...If this question makes you hesitate, then you may be in the right place. This proposal is dedicated to those who embrace their perfectionist nature, those who struggle with it and those who deal with people who belong to either one group or the other.

Coffee break

Panel discussion - Connect the dots and stay on top

Closing remarks

Together Job Fair

Coffee break

From newbie to expert: A how-to guide to specialise in life sciences/medical translation

Medical translation has been in high demand in recent years. Show more...Public health emergencies, fast-paced innovations, changes in regulations, a greater focus on mental health, and increased initiatives for health literacy and patient engagement in clinical research – these are just some of the factors that have led to increased work volumes, tight turnarounds, new (or renewed) areas of interest, and different materials and services. Alongside this rising demand, we have also seen a greater interest from translators in specialising in the life sciences. Medical translators don’t need to have a degree in medicine or science but they do need the motivation to learn about these topics and understand their responsibility toward their clients and target audience. As a translation graduate with no health-related academic background, I will share tips on breaking the no-experience barrier in medical translation, finding relevant CPD and networking opportunities, diversifying your service portfolio, and potential future topics of interest within life sciences.

Re-defining creativity in localisation: Ways to unleash hidden potential

We would like to present a pilot project that we have been working Show more...on for some time now at Orco S.A. We combined the principles of translation theory and creative writing theory and applied them in practice to produce training workflows targeted at unlocking the creative potential of our linguistic team. So far, the results have been impressive and prove that creativity in localisation is an aptitude that can be acquired, despite the common misconception that creative translators are simply "gifted".

Lunch

Password: VM. Unlocked

Join the participant-led experience at Together 2023. Take a Show more...break from the traditional conference learning mold and join us for an unconference-like session where your voice and ideas are the real protagonists. Be the creator of the conversation, pick and vote the topics you want to discuss and network with industry experts. Whether you're a seasoned professional or just starting out, this session is your chance to shape the future of Vendor Management.

Linguistic minorities in Europe and Asia – The role of our industry in ensuring equity

Minority vs minoritized languages in Europe and China, psycholinguistic, Show more...sociolinguistic vs. political perspectives. Institutions and regulations protecting minoritized languages. How to find vendors for minoritized languages and ensure equity.

Coffee break

Panel discussion - Connect the dots and stay on top

Closing remarks