How to use Facebook as a professional tool

Posted in Events by Carol's Adventures in Translation

Spoiler: This is not a judgmental post! It is strictly aimed at our professional image based on true reality and does not reflect any personal opinion.

I always see translators using Facebook as if there were no tomorrow. I mean, they simply do not think before publishing anything publicly, to absolutely anyone who is their friend.

I like to think of Facebook like real life, but on-line. Do you wear mini-skirts and speak bad language in church? Well, although I am not the most religious person out there, I do hope you do not do that. Do you behave with your parents or treat them the same way you treat your closest friends? Do you speak to them the same way? I am positively sure you do not do that. You may drink A LOT at a wild party and even end up in hospital, but your mom or your boss will not even dream that has happened, right? So why… why, oh, why do people do not follow those same society rules on-line? Yeah, yeah, I know, the page is yours so you do whatever you want with it. Yeah, right. But then do not complain about your professional reputation being damaged because of your personal behavior on-line. You can certainly do whatever you want, but you should not share everything with absolutely all your Facebook friends. You could lose a potential client because of that. Think about it.

Just like in real life, social media also has its best practices, if you do not want people judging you by the cover (literally). Therefore, choose your profile picture carefully. Of course it would be fantastic to have it taken by a professional, but it is not essential. Choose one where your face can be easily recognizable, no sunglasses, not taken by faraway. Your profile is yours, right? So why use a picture of your cat/dog/bird/husband/wife/sister/boyfriend/girlfriend/whatever-you-like? Also, be careful with the position the picture is taken. If it is taken from above and you are wearing a low-cut blouse, it may look vulgar. (Before judging the previous sentence, please read the spoiler in the top again.)

The same holds true for pictures in general. The difference is, for pictures added in albums, as well as other general posts on your timeline, you can control who has access to them. So, bottom line is, yes, you can publish anything you feel like publishing, provided that you separate them by lists.

The chunk of my presentation was to explain how to create lists, send friends to those lists and restrict your posts using them. I already covered this step by step in a blog post, How to manage your Facebook friends like a pro, so I will not repeat it here. Read it and, should you have any doubts, do let me know.

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When sharing some article or post you found on the internet, always check the source. Make sure it is reliable and not something made up or some gossip. Also, I always read the article before sharing it, because the title can be misleading, and the content itself may contain something you do not agree with, for example. I do not like sharing texts with poorly written content either, for example, with grammar mistakes, typos and the like. The content itself may be fantastic, but the way it is written can affect your image, because whether you like it or not, you are sort of endorsing what you are sharing. So be extra careful.

Topics that involve religion, football and politics are always controversial, even in real life, right? People usually try to avoid them in conversations. Do the same on social media. Avoid or carefully restrict controversial topics. If you have a strong opinion on politics, for example, that is totally against your potential client’s strong opinion, it may affect their decision to contact you for a job or not. Unfortunately, that is the naked truth. And since we have plenty of friends on Facebook and we even end up unfollowing some of them, we may lose track of who is following us or not, and we can simply forget we are friends with that person. It happens a lot with me.

I also briefly mentioned about the difference between a profile and a page. I have a personal profile and a professional page. Both are different and serve different purposes. I usually like saying people will not be friends with your brand, but like and follow it. Besides having analytics information about your followers, you have plenty of other functionalities you do not have in a profile. For example, you can add action buttons, your working hours, a customized link, among others. In the presentation, I mentioned how I was able to add “Tradutor” (translator) right below my page name. Many people asked me how I was able to do that, so I decided to give it a special mention. However, unfortunately, they have changed it in the past weeks. Now, your username is displayed right below your name. Anyway, you can choose how you want it to be displayed, and your customized URL will be created accordingly. Well, play around with your own page on the About tab and find out everything you can add. Remember, should you have any doubts, do let me know. 😉

You can find the PowerPoint presentation of my talk on SlideShare.

22Jun2016

7th Abrates Conference: Official coverage – Part 3 (final)

Posted in Events, Miscellaneous by Carol's Adventures in Translation

Should you have not done so yet, read Part 1 and Part 2 before proceeding.

Sunday

The first presentation I watched on the second day of talks was Patricia Moura Souza’s on the Translation Office 3000, a management software for translators. Patricia acknowledged that, although the TO3000 is not user-friendly, it turns out to be a great management tool for translators after you learn how to use it. It took the speaker three months to fully understand the program and totally depend on it for managing her translation work. So we can consider she is now a strong advocate of the tool – its ambassador, if we may say. According to her, some of its benefits is that the user can create and control budgets, invoices and payments by creating groups for services provided (such as translation, interpreting, editing, etc.). Patricia even reveals its greatest secret, that is not clearly understood from the interface: the vertical menu, on the left, refers to all the clients (general data) and the horizontal menu (in the top) refers to the selected client (data by client). And its three greatest functions are: relationship with the client (contact details, pricing list, payment methods, etc.), workflow control (list of projects, specific information, delivery calendar) and financial control (invoices, payments, balance sheets, reports). Now something I particularly loved was that it has a specific tab for marketing! And you can also add other tabs. Other basic operations: you can use your CAT tool wordcount, you can customize fields, and there are all sorts and colors of filters! You can find Patricia’s PowerPoint presentation here. For more information about her experience with the software, read Como o Translation Office 3000 mudou a minha vida – parte 1 e Como o Translation Office mudou a minha vida – parte 2. You can download a 30-day free trial here. Should you love it and decide to buy the software, use this link.

Patricia Moura Souza

Next, I watched the beginning of Leonardo Milani’s talk on professional attitude, but unfortunately I had to leave early because my own presentation was next. However, I was able to grasp one important point: your productivity in terms of words per hour/day is not the same as quality. It does not indicate if you deliver a quality translation or not. And, for him, it is irritating to ask for productivity.

Leonardo Milani

As I said, up next was my presentation. I talked about how to use Facebook professionally as to positively, and not negatively, influence your professional image. However, I will write a more detailed post specifically about it in the upcoming days. Stay tuned.

Yours truly

After my presentation, I ran to João Roque Dias’, on technical drawings. I must confess I just wanted to take a peek at it, so I did not even sit down. I stood in the back of the room taking pictures and tweeting a bit about his presentation, after all, the subject was not something that interested me, since I am not a technical translator of that area. However, to my great surprise, I had to take a seat, because João is certainly a captivating speaker and managed to catch my attention. The Portuguese speaker used attendees to compare both methods of ortographic projections, European and American, with “people” projections. According to João Roque, the translator should always be attentive, because symbols, displays and controls are not always translated. And picture captions should never be translated if the picture itself is not available for reference. If they are, they must be consulted. For example, a “disk” can mean different things in technical drawings, and the picture will tell which one it refers to specifically. João gave some tips about the translation of different types of documents with images. For example, in patents, bid documents and specifications, the text to be translated is almost 100% related to one or a few images, so we should start by studying the images and check if there are inconsistencies with/from the text. In manuals, instructions and leaflets, on the other hand, the text to be translated is clarified by numerous images, so we should study them as we go along, checking for inconsistencies with/from the text. At the end of his presentation, the charismatic speaker had some exercises about his talk and those who got the answer right earned cool customized freebies. It was certainly a pleasure to meet João Roque Dias in person at the conference.

João Roque Dias with Reginaldo Francisco

Closing ceremony

To sum up the best Abrates Conference so far, we had the surprise visit of Vera Holtz, a Brazilian actress, dear friend of Liane Lazoski, current President of Abrates. Her presence was also a surprise to Liane herself, and was organized by recently-elected President, William Cassemiro, and Vice-President, Renato Beninatto. They sang a song together; it was a quite touchy moment, summing up yet another fantastic conference in great style. You can watch her surprise entry and them singing here.

Vera Holtz and Liane Lazoski

New Abrates Board

Since only one slate signed up for the elections, the “Criando Pontes” (Building Bridges) slate was officially elected on Sunday, after the closing ceremony. So here is the next Abrates Board, to take office in July 5:

William Ferreira Cassemiro – President
Renato Beninatto – Vice-President
Dayse Boechat – 1^st Treasurer
Ricardo Souza – 2^nd Treasurer
Paula Ianelli – General Secretary
Iara – Second Secretary

Supervisory Board:
Filipe Alverca
Adriana Caraccio-Morgan
Manuela Sampaio

Deputies:
Liane Lazoski
Peterso Rissatti
Ana Valéria Ivonica Silva

Platform:
Besides continuing all innovative actions of the last Boards and expanding the acknowledgement of the association, some of its proposed actions are to: expand the Mentoring Program, hold smaller events in other states of the country, offer courses at affordable prices to members, partner with universities, create departments (such as for Literary Translation and Interpreting), optimize the call service, improve the use of social media, etc. Suggestions from members will be always welcome.

Elected Board

Next conference

Although there is no defined date for the next conference yet, the venue is already set: São Paulo. According to the elected President, they will try to make it happen during the same period, early June. See you next year at #abrates17?

Read more…
João Vicente de Paulo Júnior: Mas quem foi que disse que tradutor tem que ganhar pouco? – VII Congresso da Abrates, by Juliana Tradutora
Ricardo Souza: Tradumática – VII Congresso da Abrates, by Juliana Tradutora
Sessão Sintra apresenta: mesa-redonda sobre tradução literária e direitos autorais – Ernesta Ganzo, Daniele Petruccioli, Renata Pettengill, Lenita Esteves e Petê Rissati – VII Congresso da Abrates, by Juliana Tradutora
Expressão regular: uma poderosa arma para o tradutor, by Bianca Freitas on the Pronoia Tradutória blog
Takeaways of the Abrates Conference, by Translated in Argentina
Winning clients as a freelancer: An LSP perspective, Eugenia Echave’s PowerPoint presentation
MT Options for the Individual Translator, by Kirti Vashee

And there are plenty of other links in Parts 1 and 2 as well. Enjoy!

21Jun2016

7th Abrates Conference: Official coverage – Part 2

Posted in Events, Monthly post by Carol's Adventures in Translation

This is the second part of my post about the Abrates Conference. Read the first part here.

After having such a good start, the second talk I watched on Saturday was Isabel Gorg’s, also on automated translation. The speaker conducted a survey and found out that 22% of the interviewees used some sort of MT strategy. Her presentation was mostly based on pointing out common mistakes in MT, such as spacing, capitalization, grammar, sentence structure, local standards and terminology. Being aware of their frequency makes it simple to spot and correct them. And, needless to say, source quality can also highly influence the quality of MT translations. The takeovers from her talk were: MT will not disappear, but rather get better; MT can increase productivity; we should concentrate on what MT does right, not wrong; and we should align our expectations.

Isabel Georg

The third talk I attended on Saturday was by Felipe Cichini Simões, on personal and professional budgeting for freelancers. According to Felipe, we must never spend every cent we earn, but have some savings for vacation, professional investment, variable income, etc. The speaker suggested the YNAB (You Need A Budget) method and briefly showed us how the app works. According to Felipe, in order to start a budget plan, we must forget the past and start planning from now on. Felipe also said that giving each cent a function helps us understand what we can do with our money. Acknowledging our actual expenditures (besides our fixed ones) is also important for planning our future budget. However, he also points out that budgets are not always perfect, and sometimes they may not work as planned, especially for us, freelancers, who do not have a fixed income. It can happen, and we may not lose heart. The speaker also suggested the Wave Accounting app for financial control. I will surely try any of those apps, because I myself am very bad at budgeting and planning for the future. I know, shame on me!

Felipe Cechini Simões

Next on the presentations I attended on Saturday was Adriana de Araújo Sobota’s, on how to start working with translation agencies. The large room was totally full and people loved her presentation. Adriana mentioned methods for receiving payment from overseas (PayPal, Moneybrookers, direct bank transfer, wire transfer through Payoneer and TransferWise) and how to check a potential client’s reputation (Payment Practices, Blueboard, Hall of Fame and Shame, Untrustworthy Translation Agencies). It is also important to check if they have a physical address, on-line domain, professional e-mail address, etc. When looking for translation agencies on Google, we should be careful with the search results, because they can return one-person companies/entrepreneurs, not only agencies. Adriana also mentioned the importance of professional behavior, having a good CV, knowing how to behave on-line, communication, etc. The translation market is fast, so we should make sure we do not lose a chance for nothing. All the information needed on how to find potential clients is out there: research and search for it. The speaker concluded her presentation stressing out some don’ts: do not depend on only one agency; do not pressure the potential client for the result of the test; do not ask if you can send a CV, simply send it; do not send bulk e-mails; do not complain about an agency in public (social media).

Adriana de Araújo Sobota

After lunch, I attended GALA’s presentation, “Economic Crisis at Home? The World is Yours – How to Overcome Obstacles When Selling Abroad.” You can read more details about this one here, on a post I wrote for their blog.

GALA (Globalization and Localization Association): Fabiano Cid, Lilian Alves Mouton, Eugenia Echave and Gabriela Morales

After that, I ran to a presentation I was actually part of, about the Abrates Mentoring Program. Steering Committee members William Cassemiro, Adriana Sobota, Mônica Reis and yours truly explained how the program works and what the rules are to those who wish to take part both as mentor and mentee. Our current mentors and mentees, both represented, respectively, by Filipe Alverca and Sabrina Fuzaro and present among the attendees, had a voice and spoke about the enriching experience they are having with the program. You can find more information about the program on its web page and on this blog post I wrote a while ago (both in Portuguese). Juliana Tradutora has also written a blog post about our presentation, also in Portuguese, here. Should you not understand Portuguese, here are some important points:

The program is totally free, from all parts: both Committee members and mentors are volunteers, and mentees do not have to pay to take part.
To be a mentor, the person needs to be an Abrates member and have at least five years of experience in the area.
To be a mentee, the person also needs to be an Abrates member and have a maximum of two years of experience in the area. Or be in the last year of a Translation/Interpreting course.
The program lasts two years with a minimum of two hours of mentoring per month (in person or via Skype or other method agreed upon both parts).
The program’s coordinators closely follow their assigned pairs through follow-up reports both the mentor and the mentee have to fill out separately after every meeting.
The coordinators must be aware of every decision made by their assigned pairs in order to avoid any potential issue, including change of date of the meeting.

We had a fantastic feedback from our current mentors/mentees, from potential mentors/mentees and from people who run mentoring programs in other associations all over the world, such as Canada, Argentina and Israel. They were mesmerized by our organization, quality and professionalism. The presentation was followed by our own coffee break filled with positive comments, feedback, nice conversations with people who were interested at the program and future contacts. Should you be interested in learning more about it, do not hesitate to leave a comment below or send an e-mail to mentoria@abrates.com.br.

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Steering Committee members, William Cassemiro, Adriana de Araújo Sobota, Caroline Alberoni e Mônica Reis, mentee Sabrina Fuzaro and mentor Filipe Alverca

To sum up a perfect first day, Renato Beninatto hosted a round-table about, once again, machine translation with Kirti Vashee, Ricardo Souza, Ronaldo Martins and Marcelo Fassina. Marcelo Fassina, from Lionbridge, started talking and said that usually material with low access by the general public or the end user goes through MTPE (machine translation post-editing). However, the agency must always inform the translator when they use MT. The translator’s feedback is extremely important to feed the MT and improve it, as Kirti also mentioned in this morning’s presentation. Ronaldo Martins took the floor and spoke beautifully and eloquently. I was in owe with his perfect choice of words. According to him, evolution is inevitable. Technology may close some doors, but it will certainly open other windows. Ronaldo explained the difference between accelerated, delegated and augmented technologies. The first ones are not revolutionary; they only assist, but do not replace; for example, bikes. The second ones are substitutive, but are not necessarily better than what they replace. The last ones, on the other hand, enable us to do things we were not able to do before. In spite of what people think, MT involves science. Ricardo Souza followed, representing translators. Last but not least, Kirti Vashee also gave his opinion on the subject. According to him, human translation is the driving force of technology.

Ronaldo Martins, Kirti Vashee, Renato Beninatto, Ricardo Souza and Marcelo Fassina

This was it for Saturday. Sunday talks in Part 3 (final).

Read the impressions and reviews of other attendees:

Other links can be found in Parts 1 and 3.

14Jun2016

7th Abrates Conference: Official coverage – Part 1

Posted in Events, Miscellaneous by Carol's Adventures in Translation

The 7^th International Abrates Conference was held from June 3 to 5, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, our Wonderful City – that truly lives up to its nickname. It was an amazing event, way better than expected, in my opinion, even though there were less attendees than last year, probably due to our unfortunate financial crisis. However, those who attended the event were certainly not afraid of the threat and took the bull by the horns leaving their comfort zones, dusting off, polishing their knowledge, networking and prospecting.

The conference in numbers

3 days
8 pre-conference courses
612 attendees from 6 different countries (Brazil, Portugal, Canada, US, UK and Argentina) and from all around Brazil
85 speakers from 8 different countries (Brazil, India, UK, Spain, Portugal, Italy, France and US) and from all around Brazil
More than 90 talks (more than 60 hours of amazing content)
5 CAT representatives
15 sponsors from Italy, US, Argentina, Czech Republic, South Korea, France and Brazil
5 social events

Pre-conference courses

This year, the Brazilian Association of Translators and Interpreters (Abrates) also offered pre-conference courses in association with Café com Tradução on Thursday and Friday. On Thursday, Val Ivonica gave a basic course on memoQ. On Friday, Roger Chadel gave a basic course on Wordfast Classic; Val Ivonica gave a workshop on Regex (advanced memoQ); Carolina Caires Coelho and Flávia Souto Maior, from Ponte de Letras, gave a workshop on translation of literary texts from English into Portuguese; Cláudia Mello Belhassof gave a course on Brazilian Portuguese grammar; Daniele Fonseca, on interpreting and how to make decisions in real time in the booth; Ana Iaria and Ricardo Souza, on shipping and similar documents and their translation solutions; and Rayani Immediato and Mabel Cezar, on translation for dubbing and relationship with clients. They could be purchased separately, but with a discount for conference attendants.

Also on Friday, in the afternoon, there was also the Abrates accreditation test.

Social events

Social events started on Thursday with a happy hour organized by yours truly and Abrates Board members Dayse Boechat, First Treasurer, and William Cassemiro, Second Treasurer and recently elected President, at Inverso Bar. It was a nice opportunity to say “hi” and get to finally meet some colleagues in person, talk and relax a bit. Approximately 70 people managed to meet us there, so it was really pleasant and fun.

On Friday, after the opening the ceremony, there was a toast with a buffet offered by GALA (Globalization and Localization Association). Another good opportunity to see those who arrived only on Friday.

On Saturday, there was a dinner organized by Abrates with good food, drinks, music, dancing and lots of fun. I certainly had a great time and laughed a lot.

Last but not least, on Sunday, last day of conference, Fabiano Cid organized a GALA networking get-together at Pub Escondido. Once again, we had such a great time and could relax from the hectic conference days.

Opening ceremony

The conference’s official opening was on Friday evening. Before the actual opening interview, William asked if there was any sign interpreter who could volunteer to interpret the opening. Paloma Bueno Fernandes kindly volunteered and did a wonderful job interpreting the national anthem. Everybody turned their eyes to her and her amazing interpretation, beautifully followed by someone who was standing right in front of her. It was an unforgettable moment.

Renato Beninatto then interviewed Cora Rónai. Cora is a journalist and daughter of Paulo Rónai, who was one of Abrates’ founder and also hold the position of President of the association. Paulo was born in Hungary, but moved to Brazil during the war. Besides being a translator, he was also a philologist and critic. Although Cora is not a translator herself, it was beautiful listening to her telling stories about her father, his many important friends, such as Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, with whom he exchanged lessons of Portuguese and French. Her father, as she said, was saved by translation. He was released from prison for being the only person who could translate from Hungarian into Portuguese. Some curious facts about Paulo were that he loved footnotes to explain translations and was one of the first people to have an electric typewriter. I had already heard Liane Lazoski (Abrates’ President) talk about him that same day in such a beautiful way and with such passion and admiration that inspired me to want to re-read his books.

Saturday

The first day of presentations started brilliantly with Kirti Vashee’s presentation, who talked about Corporate Utility and the General MT Technology Landscape. Kirti is a US-based independent MT consultant/expert and presented some quite interesting insights and figures on MT, for example, he said Microsoft spends US$ 500 million a year on human translation, but that accounts for only 2% of what they translate. Other companies that use MT in their translations are: Facebook, eBay, Google, Intel and Adobe. Some translation volumes are too high and cannot be met by human translators, so that’s when MT comes into play. “Good MT” allows more to be translated faster and at a lower cost. However, if there is legal viability and real importance, human translation must be used in order to avoid risks. Kirti said that in languages like Portuguese, Spanish and French, MT is getting better with time and can be a threat in case of repetitive material (Hungarian, Turkish, Korean, Hindi, Zulu and Swahili are, on the other hand, among the worst). According to a Google study (2012), Portuguese is the best MT language due to its greater and larger content.

Our current scenario demands faster turnaround times, resulting in more information, therefore, in the need for faster translations. An interesting fact Vashee pointed out was that today we have more active scientists alive than in the previous 200 years all together. It is a lot of information being produced!

What needs to be clear is that MT engines are not equal. Some are great, others are terrible. And the problem is most DIY initiatives are created by people who do not know what they are doing. We, translators, should take part and get more involved so we can change this scenario to our benefit. Human feedback can raise the raw output to previous unseen quality levels. It is worth knowing how to climb. Understanding MT output is key to determining opportunity value. Quality of the MT system can be even more important than rate per word. The best translators develop their own “effort scores” after seeing a meaningful sample of actual MT output.

Kirti Vashee suggests Lilt, an adaptive dynamically learning MT environment that personalizes its suggestions to the translators’ translation style. Although it does not support all languages yet, it does support Brazilian Portuguese.

In a nutshell, PEMT will become more common, so we have to learn to determine when it makes sense for us.

Read Part 2.

Read the impressions and reviews (most of them in Portuguese, but there are a couple in English at the end) of other attendees:

VII Congresso Internacional da Abrates: cada vez melhor, cada vez mais forte, by Ponte de Letras
Como chamar a atenção de agências, by Luciana Frias
O valor do corredor, by Carolina Walliter
Como foi o Congresso da Abrates 2016, by Thais Aux
Impressões do VII Congresso Abrates, by Sidney Barros
#abrates16 – Parte 1, by Thiago Hilger
#abrates16 – Parte 2, by Thiago Hilger
VII Congresso Internacional de Tradução e Interpretação da Abrates, by Juliana Tradutora
Ligia Sobral Fragano: A versão de filmes brasileiros – VII Congresso da Abrates, by Juliana Tradutora
Ponte de Letras: Vamos conversar sobre tradução editorial – VII Congresso da Abrates, by Juliana Tradutora
Marcelle Castro e Mylene Queiroz: Recursos online para treinamento de intérpretes – VII Congresso da Abrates, by Juliana Tradutora
Luiz Fernando Sant’Anna Alves: Diz a legenda… – VII Congresso da Abrates, by Juliana Tradutora
Como foi a palestra “Mastermind na Tradução”?, by Catia Santana on the Pronoia Tradutória blog
Impressões sobre o VII Congresso da Abrates, by Catia Santana on the El Heraldo de la Traducción blog
VII Congresso Abrates, by Kelli Semolini
Introdução às ferramentas CAT: por onde começar, PPT presentation by Jorge Rodrigues
VII Congresso Internacional da Abrates – Encerramento, video by Abrates shown during the closing ceremony
Vera Holtz e Liane Lazoski, video by Thays Mielli of the surprise made to Liane Lazoski at the closing ceremony
GALA joins forces with Brazilian Association at the 7th Abrates Conference, by yours truly on the GALA blog
The Abrates Conference in Rio: Translators focusing on MT, by Kirti Vashee
Abrates 7th International Conference, by Teresa Maria Freixinho

20May2016

Por que você deve ir ao Congresso da Abrates?

Posted in Events by Carol's Adventures in Translation

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O VII Congresso Internacional de Tradução e Interpretação da Abrates começa oficialmente daqui a exatamente duas semanas. Caso você já tenha feito sua inscrição, ótimo, nos vemos lá. Caso ainda não tenha feito, pense bem e leia este texto com carinho, pois só tenho motivos irrefutáveis para você participar. 🙂

O primeiro Congresso da Abrates do qual participei foi em Belo Horizonte, há três anos, quando ele passou a ser anual e não mais bianual. Depois disso, não perco mais nenhum. Fui ao Rio de Janeiro no ano seguinte e a São Paulo no ano passado, e vejo ele ficar cada vez maior e melhor com o passar dos anos. Se, na minha opinião, a edição do ano passado foi incrível, não consigo nem imaginar como será a deste ano.

Se você foi a uma das últimas edições sabe exatamente do que estou falando. E se pensar como eu, não perde esta edição por nada.

Mas vamos aos números da edição do ano passado:

– Participantes: quase 900.

– Palestras: mais de 70.

Você consegue ter ideia dessa proporção e do que ela significa? É impossível você não achar nenhuma palestra interessante.

Na minha opinião, estes são os benefícios de participar de um evento desse porte:

– Primeiro motivo fundamental: aprendizado. Como eu disse, é impossível não se interessar por nada, pois são várias opções no mesmo horário. Os assuntos são os mais diversos possíveis, apresentados por profissionais estabelecidos no mercado, tanto nacionais quanto internacionais. Todos têm a aprender: tanto iniciantes quanto profissionais já estabelecidos.

– Segundo motivo fundamental: networking. Pense bem: você tem 900 possibilidades de conexão. Estou falando de conexões reais, olho no olho, tomando um cafezinho, trocando uma ideia, formando parcerias. Você tem a chance de encontrar, em um só lugar, todas aquelas pessoas que você só conhece pela internet. E ainda tem a incrível chance de conhecer inúmeras outras pessoas novas, além de poder conversar com aquele palestrante ou tradutor que admira em um ambiente mais descontraído que possibilita essa abordagem.

– Terceiro motivo importante, na minha opinião: inspiração. Você sai de um evento desses extremamente inspirado, cheio de ideias, com uma vontade fantástica de trilhar caminhos novos e promissores. As baterias são recarregadas de uma forma que nenhum período de férias, seja onde for, consegue fazer, porque você volta inspirado para trabalhar e fazer acontecer.

– Último motivo, mas não menos importante: descanso. Embora você esteja aprendendo e toda a carga horária seja, de certo modo, cansativa, é uma oportunidade de sair da toca, ver pessoas conhecidas e novas, tomar um café, almoçar, passear… É a união perfeita do útil com o agradável. Melhor, impossível! Além das festinhas, é claro. Teremos um happy hour organizado por mim, pela Dayse Boechat e pelo William Cassemiro na quinta-feira (mais informações abaixo), o coquetel de abertura do próprio congresso na sexta e um jantar no sábado.

Agora vamos ao investimento, afinal de contas, é um investimento profissional. O que você realmente ganha com isso, além do já exposto acima?

– Além das 95 opções de palestras, este ano teremos cursos pré-congresso. Eles são pagos separadamente, mas os inscritos no congresso têm desconto. É a chance de você fazer cursos presenciais em diversos temas.

– Haverá duas palestras de treinamento do Studio 2015 com direito a certificado na programação normal.

– Espaço reservado para agências, nos quais os participantes poderão conversar diretamente com os recrutadores com a possibilidade de fechar parcerias.

– Presença de grandes empresas de CATs, como memoQ, MateCat, Memsource e Wordfast.

Ou seja, é um investimento que vale cada centavo. Além de ser possível parcelar o valor da inscrição, a Abrates também tem parcerias com hotéis que oferecem desconto aos participantes.

Veja a Programa preliminar do congresso (quase final).

Minha palestra, Como usar o Facebook como ferramenta de divulgação do seu trabalho, será no sábado, às 14h10. Além disso, também participarei da apresentação do Programa de Mentoria da Abrates no mesmo dia, às 15h10, com um coffee break especial da mentoria após a apresentação.

Sobre o happy hour na quinta-feira:

Local: Inverso Bar, Rua Mena Barreto, 22 – Botafogo
Horário: 18h

Caso queira se juntar a nós, basta confirmar presença aqui nos comentários ou entrar em contato diretamente comigo por e-mail ou qualquer outra rede social.

Esses são ou não são motivos irrefutáveis para você participar do congresso? Vejo você daqui a duas semanas?