London event, 31 May: The Joys of Being Lost in Translation

A forthcoming event for readers within reach of London:

The Joys of Being Lost in Translation

with Valeria Luiselli, Christina MacSweeney and Daniel Hahn

Thursday 31 May at 6.30pm

at Bookhaus 70, Cadogan Place London, SW1X 9AH

BCLT and Granta invite you to consider The Joys of  Being Lost in Translation.

Mexican novelist Valeria Luiselli will be discussing her outstanding debut Faces in the Crowd, with her translator Christina MacSweeney and Daniel Hahn, BCLT National Programme Director.

Admission free but rsvp at granta.com to reserve a place.

Literary translator residencies, Free Word Centre, London

Crossing Cultures: Translating Tales
Translator in residence programme at the Free Word Centre, London
September 2012 – May 2013

The Free Word Centre in London is offering two four-month residencies for practising literary translators in London, in association with the Translators Association, with support from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation.

One translator will work from Turkish, as Turkey will be the country focus for the London Book Fair in April 2013. The second translator will be working from another language that is widely spoken in the local community, i.e. the local boroughs of Islington, Hackney, City and Tower Hamlets. These include: Arabic, Bengali, Chinese, Greek, Gujarati, Punjabi, Somali, Spanish, Urdu and Vietnamese.

The role of translator in residence will be both challenging and rewarding. Therefore, FWC are looking for a professional, practising translator, with an aptitude for working in community settings and a proactive, collaborative approach that will engage a wide range of participants and audiences.
Translators will be responsible for researching ideas and developing innovative projects which will be realised with the support of Free Word, and where appropriate working with Free Word Founder Members and Associates, including The British Centre for Literary Translation, English PEN, the Reading Agency and Arvon.

Part of the programme of events should also include developing a project with the local community; this might include working with local schools, colleges, businesses or community groups.

A fee of £5000 is available for each individual residency, together with a small budget to realise projects.

Applications: Please send a CV and covering letter outlining why you want to be translator in residence at the Free Word Centre. Please include an outline of some initial ideas on how you would fulfil the project objectives and send to Siobhan [at] freewordonline.com by 11 June at 10am.

More information here.

European Commission bursaries in conference interpretation

The Directorate-General for Interpretation offers partial bursaries for eligible candidates towards the cost of MA courses in conference interpreting for the academic year 2012-13.
Deadline: 16 September 2012
See the SCIC website for more information including eligibility requirements, language combinations, etc.

DE-EN and EN-DE jobs and traineeships

EVS are advertising for German and English native speakers for posts and traineeships at their offices in Nottingham, Atlanta (GA) and several locations in Germany. Thanks to Uwe Muegge for the original tweet. A quick reminder to anyone looking for jobs with English-German and German-English that there is a jobs board on the site of the Bundesverband der Dolmetscher und Übersetzer.

Rosetta Foundation seeks volunteer translators

Tweeted by the Rosetta Foundation: Urgently seeking volunteer translators and proofreaders from ENGLISH into SERBIAN, TURKISH, PORTUGUESE, and DUTCH. Email info at therosettafoundation.org.

More information about the work of the Rosetta Foundation here.

EU 2012 Language Industry Survey

Greetings to readers from Brussels where I have the good fortune to be attending the First Forum of the Language Industry Web Platform (LIND-Web) organised by the Directorate-General for Translation of the European Commission. LIND-Web is a platform which aims to be a knowledge base for the language industry in Europe. It operates on the basis of user-contributed content from industry stakeholders.

Users can browse or upload content in any EU language on areas of the language industry including:

• translation services
• interpreting services
• subtitling and dubbing services
• software localisation and website globalisation services
• language technology tools development
• international conference organisation
• language teaching
• linguistic consultancy

LINDWeb is running a survey to track developments in the European language industry.This survey is for language service providers operating wholly or partially within the EU. This includes companies, freelancers, associations and other bodies in the field of the language industry.

Please feel free to circulate the link to the survey here.  As we've just heard from Nino Platteel, we are desperately short of statistics about the language industry in the EU, so the more information that can be gathered, the better!

(Note: I don't find the LIND-Web search page helpfully designed but if you click 'Search All' there's a list of the documents downloadable from the website.)

United Nations online volunteering scheme

Many thanks to Ann M. at the University of Portsmouth for passing on details of the United Nations Online Volunteering Scheme. This includes all kinds of pro-bono online contributions to NGO work, including translation in a wide range of language pairs (scroll down for more details).

Media Across Borders symposium, Roehampton, 9 June 2012

Readers interested in audiovisual and related forms of translation might like to know about this event taking place at Roehampton on 9 July 2012:

Media Across Borders: 

The First International Conference on the  Localisation of Film, Television and Video Games

This is the launch conference of the AHRC-funded Media Across Borders network. The programme looks extremely interesting; it brings together film and media scholars and translation scholars, and it includes round table discussion as well as conventional papers.Topics include games localisation, remakes, adaptation, social media and subtitling.

The conference fee is £15 for students and £30 for non-students.

Theo Hermans lecture, City University, London 20 June 2012

An interesting-sounding lecture for readers in the London area:

PUBLIC LECTURE

City University, London

Wednesday, 20 June 2012

6.30pm in Room A130

College Building, St John’s Street

Professor Theo Hermans

Centre for Intercultural Studies, UCL

Translation’s added value

Translations add value to the texts they represent because they communicate about these texts even as they represent them. Starting from examples which show translators voicing reservations about the works they are reproducing, I will suggest that all translation, whether dissonant or consonant or indifferent, has the translator’s value judgements inscribed in it. The model I propose views translation as reported speech, more particularly what Relevance Theory calls ‘echoic’ speech. It casts the translator’s intervention as the main communicative event, accounts for the shift in perspective characteristic of translation but leaves room for the translator’s subject position in the translated text.

Note from the organisers: 
 
The talk is followed by a reception and it would help us with organisation if you could click on http://www.city.ac.uk/events/2012/june/translations-added-value) to reserve a place and find directions.

ITI forthcoming translation events

 Three Institute of Translation and Interpreting events are coming up which may be of interest to readers:

1) JOINT ITI / EU / CIOL CLEAR WRITING SEMINAR

Thursday 5 July 2012, 10.00 to 16.00

This seminar is organised jointly by the ITI and the Chartered Institute of Linguists. It is generously supported by the European Commission Representation in the UK and will be held at its offices in Smith Square in central London.

The event is aimed at all translators who are keen to improve the clarity of their written language and will include presentations by representatives from the Plain English Commission, Clarity and the European Commission’s Directorate General for Translation, as well as a number of practical exercises.

Speakers:

Martin Cutts (Research Director at the Plain Language Commission and author of Lucid Law and the Oxford Guide to Plain English).
Daphne Perry (Clarity)
The Directorate General for Translation at the European Commission will be represented by David Monckom from the Editing Unit and Jonathan Stockwell from the Web Translation Unit.

Early-bird booking closes Tuesday 5 June 2012. Discounts for students and ITI/CIOL members.
More information and a booking form can be found at the ITI's website.

2 & 3) STARTING WORK AS A TRANSLATOR OR INTERPRETER
Two events arranged jointly by the Universities of Salford and Westminster and the ITI, with support from the National Networks for Translation and Interpreting.

University of Salford, Monday 28th May 2012, 9.30-16.30
University of Westminster, Saturday 9th June 2012, 09.30-16.30

Are you interested in working as a translator or interpreter, but unsure how to start?
This one-day seminar should answer questions for new translators / interpreters on:

• Training
• Generalist or specialist translating & different types of interpreting
• Building a portfolio of clients
• Working for translation companies
• Marketing
• Pricing

Fees:
Undergraduate students - free of charge
Postgraduate students at other universities - £20 including VAT (Salford students can attend the Salford workshop for free)
ITI/ FIT organisation members - £35 including VAT
Nonmembers - £45 including VAT
More information and booking forms can be found at the ITI's website.

DE-EN literary translation workshop and bilingual reading, Canterbury 31 May

From the Translatio email list:


You are warmly invited to an event with Doron Rabinovici at the University of Kent in Canterbury on 31 May 2012, organised by the University's CENTRE FOR MODERN EUROPEAN LITERATURE with support from the Austrian Cultural Forum and the Ingeborg Bachmann Centre for Austrian Literature.
Doron Rabinovici, writer and historian, was born in Tel Aviv in 1961 and has lived in Vienna since 1964. Published by Suhrkamp, his works examine the intricacies and heartaches of modern Jewish life. He began his career with the acclaimed collection of short stories Papirnik (1994); his most recent novel Andernorts (Elsewhere, 2009) was short-listed for the German Book Prize in 2010. It tells the story of successful Israeli academic Ethan Rosen – up for promotion, idolized by doting parents and recently swept off his feet by the woman of his dreams – who finds himself unwillingly drawn into a horrifying and seemingly insoluble clinch with a despised Austrian rival, Rudi Klausinger. No aspect of their professional or personal lives can ever remain the same.

In a translation workshop and a bi-lingual reading by the author, we will explore both of these texts, which revolve around the themes of remembrance and suffering, survival and love. Rabinovici is also a prominent public intellectual in Austria, author of insightful political essays on post-Holocaust Europe and its relationship to the Middle East - it promises to be an exciting, thought-provoking day.

3-5pm Translation Workshop (room tba):

the author will be present to talk about Papirnik and the translation of the short stories from German into English. Rabinovici combines extended wordplay with strong, elegant storylines, presenting the translator with a challenging yet rewarding task. We will discuss existing English versions and (short) excerpts from as yet untranslated stories. Texts will be available in advance, including literal translations of German passages on request. All are welcome to attend.

7pm Bi-lingual Reading (room tba):

Doron Rabinovici will read from Andernorts and a selection of other texts, followed by an open discussion with the audience.

Both events are free of charge. Those interested in attending the translation workshop should contact me (Doreen Holmes) in advance: D.C.Holmes at kent.ac.uk

UN examinations for EN translators and editors

The United Nations have announced competitive examinations for English-language translators and editors:

July 11-12, 2012
United Nations, New York, NY, USA

The Secretariat of the United Nations is pleased to announce that competitive examinations for the recruitment of English-language translators/précis-writers and editors will be held respectively on 11 and 12 July 2012.  Details regarding eligibility requirements, deadlines and application procedures can be found at:
https://careers.un.org/lbw/home.aspx?viewtype=LE.

For more information, please contact:

Examinations and Tests Section
Office of Human Resources Management
United Nations
New York, NY
ohrmlce at un.org


[As it happens I can't find any details at the web address given, which still only seems to be showing examinations up to May 2012, so I guess your best bet is to contact the email address provided. I'd welcome comments from anyone who has managed to track down the details on the website, or confirmation once the details actually become available! -Ed.]




http://www.careers.un.org/