On September, I attended two translation events: the V Abrates International Translation and Interpreting Conference and the XXXIV Semana do Tradutor & I SIT (Translator’s Week & International Translation Symposium). I have already written a blog post about the former here, so now, after a long delay, I’ll write my impression on the latter.

The Translator’s Week is held every year by the undergraduate students of the Bacharelado em Letras com Habilitação em Tradução (BA in Letters specialized in Translation) course at UNESP São José do Rio Preto, São Paulo, Brazil (where I graduated myself) with the help of a group of professors. It’s a 5-day event, from Monday through Friday, and usually comprises the International Translation Day (September 30^th). However, this year, it was from September 22^nd through 26^th.

In its 34^th edition, it’s the oldest translation event in Brazil and one of the most traditional. Held by students to students and professionals, this year, the Translator’s Week launched its I SIT (International Translation Symposium), turning it into an international event.

According to the organizing committee, there were about 350 attendees from several parts of the country and from other countries as well. The international lecturers invited – Lynne Bowker (University of Ottawa), Jorge Díaz Cintas (University College London) and Yves A. Champollion (CEO, Wordfast LLC) – made presentations in English, Spanish and French, comprising most of the languages taught in the course (the other one is Italian). There were also Brazilian presenters, such as myself, Paula Ianelli, Dilma Machado and Nilce Maria Pereira. And finally, more than 150 paper sessions were presented throughout the week, some of them simultaneously.

In a nuthsell, on her first presentation, Lynne Bowker explained what community-based participatory research (CBPR) is: an approach to which not only researchers but also community members and service providers contribute. She talked about conducting a comparative case study of the use of machine translation and minority languague communities exploring the CBPR. On her second presentation, she talked about machine translation, translatability and user experience (UX). The latter is a hot topic in web design concerned with the subjective experience of the user in a website, therefore, having important implications for website localization. Paula Ianelli‘s topic was about game localization, its processes and practices, with examples of expressions and cultural traces. Yves Champollion explored the roles played by translators throughout history, mentioning the beginning of professional associations. He presented in French, his PowerPoint presentation was in English and there was a translation of his notes into Portuguese on another screen – I must say it was a quite intriguing experience! Jorge Díaz Cintas talked about subtitling. Dilma Machado‘s presentation aimed at preparing translation professionals for dubbing. There was also my presentation on social media, marketing and branding, but that’s a topic for another post (next week, stay tuned!).

It was such an amazing experience to attend the Week as a professional, after having attended as a student in the past, reuniting with teachers, meeting current students and sharing experiences with them, and networking with other professionals, such as Lynne Bowker, who turned out to be a fantastic person! It was also nice to meet Nilce Maria Pereira and discovering we have so much in commom: we have both graduated at UNESP São José do Rio Preto, studied at the University of Surrey (England) and like Alice in Wonderland. Talk about coincidences!

I hope I was able to give you an idea of how the event was. However,  if you have the chance, don’t miss out on the opportunity of personally attending it next year. It’s totally worth it!

For more information and to stay tuned on the upcoming events, like their Facebook page and visit their website:
Semana do Tradutor UNESP/Ibilce Facebook fan page
Semana do Tradutor e SIT website

If you are interested in learning more about the Translation undergraduate course at UNESP, please visit the course page here.