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This article was first published in the JLD Times and is used by permission.
IJET-14 (May 17-18, 2003)
Background
The 14th International Japanese/English Translation (IJET) Conference was held at the Burlington Hotel in Dublin, Ireland. This is an annual event organized by the Japan Association of Translators (JAT) for Japanese and English translators and interpreters working in different parts of the world. JAT is an associate member of the International Federation of Translators (FIT) and has some 500 members worldwide.
This was IJET's first time in Ireland, and the first time for the conference to be organized by an international committee rather than a contingent of on-site J/E translators. The participant list was as diverse in its population as the committee, with attendees coming from the UK, the US, Japan, Australia, Canada, France, Switzerland, Denmark, and Italy, in addition to Ireland. Although both English and Japanese were official conference languages, most sessions were conducted in English.
Content
IJET's focus is primarily to serve the interests of working translators and interpreters, so the conference program tended to be practically oriented. This year's organizing committee added two new features to the conference program. First, it made an explicit effort to invite non-translators to speak from a number of fields in which J/E translators work. Such speakers included Michael Lydon from the Irish Patents Office, Brendan Sheridan from Deloitte & Touche (speaking on the international harmonization of accounting standards), and Eamonn Fingleton, a Tokyo-based economic commentator.
Another significant feature of this year's conference was its wide range of round-table discussions. The seven discussions covered such topics as The Business of Interpreting, The Nuts and Bolts of Living Overseas While Working for Japanese Clients, and Translation Business Models. These sessions were designed to offer participants an opportunity to tap into the wide range of experience and knowledge collectively held by IJET attendees, and most attracted a large segment of the participants. Some of the discussions, such as those on Home Computing and Translation Memories, also featured professional consultants who could speak to questions raised during the course of the discussion. Based on the positive feedback from participants about these two new approaches, it is hoped that similar additions might be made to future IJETs.
An especially popular round-table discussion was devoted to Translation Memories, featuring Doug Lawrence, Trados Country Manager for the U.K. and Ireland. While the session was intended to be generic rather than language-specific, the presenter was clearly extremely knowledgeable about the product. It proved to be a lively session, reflecting a clear interest in the technology, although it became evident that TM use for J/E is not as high as for other, i.e., European, language pairs. This also seems to relate to general delays in tailoring TMs to accommodate the Japanese language. It was refreshing to hear a tool company clearly acknowledge the limited scope of TM in terms of its usefulness, i.e., to certain types of repetitive texts.
The user-unfriendly aspects of previous Trados manuals were also pointed out - but apparently these have been much improved in recent releases. It was confirmed that Trados works better from English into Japanese, than the other way around, due to segmentation challenges with Japanese text. One translator mentioned that Trados works far better than Deja Vu when working with Microsoft Word files, while another claimed WordFast is superior to Trados for Japanese/English translations. As for networked-use, MultiTerm works on the Internet, and participants were told that starting in 2004, Trados TM Server will be fully operational on the Internet to allow networked translators to share TM and to save valuable time. More translators are sure to start trying out TM as a result of this session.
The localization and technology related papers included The Role of the Translator in the Software Localization Industry Today by Brigid Corby from VistaTEC in Ireland. She covered extensive ground, explaining where the translator fits into the software localization process from an industry insider's point of view. Yuko Miyata of Satellite Station, Inc. spoke about the technical know-how for computer-related translations and covered tips for the use of translation tools. One of the issues covered was the importance of the use of style guide templates, which relates to the topic of Controlled Language.
Other technology-oriented sessions included a talk on machine translation: Development and Deployment Issues for Translators by Teruko Mitamura, a U.S.-based MT expert. The session not only attracted a sizeable audience, but those in attendance displayed an open-minded attitude towards MT. It is hard to tell how representative this may be in relation to the whole community of Japanese/English translators, but it was a good sign that translators are perhaps becoming more open to MT and interested in learning what technologists are doing. Also, Minako O'Hagan of Dublin City University gave a presentation on the future of translation entitled Into Hypertranslation: Abusive Translation or Something for the Future? It explored the implications of further developments of digital communications platforms, using a series of translation experiments conducted in computer-mediated communication environments and distributed virtual reality environments.
Although the conference program tended to be practically oriented, it still had a fair number of academic-oriented papers on technical and literary translation as well as the history of translation, including Translating Economic Texts with a Focus on Company Annual Reports by Susan Wilson, Story and Reality in James Joyce's Ulysses by Kazuhiro Doki, Interpretation and Translation in Nagasaki, 1641-1868 by Louis Michael Cullen and Discovering What Survives Translation True by Marco Sonzogni. A paper by Judy Wakabayashi on The Fictional Figure of the Translator surveyed how translators and interpreters are portrayed in fiction, and how that conflicts with reality. Akira Mizuno who is both a practitioner and an academic who set up Japanfs first academic association for interpreters discussed Media Interpreting and Its Quality Assessment.
Reflections
While participant feedback forms gave high marks to the quality of the presentations and choice of venue this year, many participants seemed to find IJET especially valuable for providing an opportunity to network with colleagues. Networking began at the Friday kick-off event at the Old Jameson Distillery, where participants enjoyed whiskey tasting followed by traditional Irish music and dancing. Networking continued throughout the day on Saturday and Sunday, both informally and during the round-table discussions. A reception held Saturday night in the Burlington Hotel's traditional pub and bar provided more chances for participants to get to know one another.
Repeatedly listed among the "best parts of IJET-14" on conference evaluations were "meeting other translators and interpreters" and "networking," as well as "the round-table discussions" and "getting to know the latest challenges/issues in the industry which are often hard to identify in the course of everyday business." IJET clearly benefits J/E translators and interpreters by providing a forum where they can mix with their counterparts from different parts of the world, and thereby be exposed to a variety of issues considered important in different locations. It also gives the many independent J/E translators and interpreters who work in isolated environments an opportunity to network and share ideas with their colleagues.
If comments from participants are any indication, then IJET-14 constitutes yet another successful chapter in the IJET tradition of informative presentations, stimulating discussions, and unbeatable networking opportunities for J/E translators and interpreters.
Copies of the IJET-14 proceedings will be available for purchase once they become available (August 2003) at www.jat.org/ijet/proceedings/index.html. IJET-15 will be held in 2004 in Kobe, Japan. Watch www.jat.org/ijet/ for details.
This report was written jointly by Minako O'Hagan and Stacey Jehlik. Minako O'Hagan is a Lecturer at Dublin City University, in Ireland. She was one of the presenters at the recent IJET-14 conference in Dublin. Stacey Jehlik is a freelance Japanese-English translator based out of Seattle, WA. She served as chairperson of the IJET-14 Organizing Committee.