In case you did not read the first part, here it is.

Still on the second day of the conference, after the panel with representatives of some associations, we had a coffee break and, after that, our second keynote speaker, Renato Beninatto, spoke about Brazil’s position in the translation world. Beninatto talked about how Brazilians sometimes complain a lot about the local situation. According to him, translation, as well as its problems, is the same everywhere, not only here. The translation market is globalized. Renato also says it is a shame that ATA has the same number of Brazilian associates as Sintra: we should give more credit to local associations. To conclude his presentation, he shows this video and says a person is able to create a new initiative by themselves and inspire others. The first follower of the initiative is the most important, because he is the one that validates the leader.

In his presentation, he referred to this article: Brazil: The Social Media Capital of the Universe.

The second day was over and, while some attendees headed to a pizza place, I headed to a sushi place, where ACME E-learning hosted a Mixer with a dozen people. It was quite a pleasant evening, and I had the chance to get to know incredible new people from different areas and met a couple I already knew from other events. João, ACME’s director, will soon publish pictures and probably some words about this successful networking event.

With João Artur Souza, from ACME E-learning.

On Sunday, the third and, sadly, last day of conference started with Renata Cassemiro’s presentation about the importance of the translator’s occupational health. Renata is physiotherapist and Pilates instructor, so she gave us some extremely important tips and orientations. According to her, some diseases take years to start showing its symptoms, therefore, we shouldn’t wait to try to find a solution. Did you know that the incorrect use of the phone is one of the biggest causes of problems? Don’t hold the phone between your ear and your shoulder. Use a headset instead. Fact: the human being is capable and prepared to walk 30 km a day. That’s why a sedentary lifestyle brings so many health problems! Some of her tips: establish pauses throughout your workday; avoid fried food and have lighter meals; therapeutic massage is advised once a week.

The second presentation of the day was by Débora Policarpo, who talked about financial planning. Débora is a business administrator specialized in wealth management and asset allocation. According to her, financial planning is the process of achieving our life’s goals through the adequate management of our finance life. There is nothing that takes more our attention than financial problems, right? We should understand the family’s budget and dynamics, as well as in which stage of life we are in. Débora said we must set our short-, medium- and long-term goals and the income we want/need to have when we retire. There is no magical formula to calculate how much we should save to achieve our goals: we need to know the time we have and the desired income.

During Débora Policarpo’s presentation.

We had a coffee break and, after that, my presentation.

After my presentation, I watched part of Carolina Walliter’s presentation on coworking. Unfortunately, I missed a great part of it, but it seemed very interesting indeed. People loved it! According to her, coworking is a network society that generates quality of life and social awareness. Sheila Gomes, who was also watching Carolina’s presentation, recommends that we at least try working in one of the coworking spaces available. I do plan on working some hours or a day in a coworking space we have in my town. As soon as I do, I’ll write a post about my experience. 😉

The last presentation of the conference was with Isabel Vidigal, who mainly talked about ProZ.com and the possibility of getting clients from it. According to her, you have nothing to lose creating a free profile on ProZ.com, but work carefully on it.

After that, we had a lunch break and, finally the last keynote speaker, Ulisses Wehby de Carvalho, from Tecla SAP, who gave a really relaxing and enjoyable speech about the life of an interpreter. We laughed a lot with his funny and incredibly embarrassing/amazing histories! According to him, mistakes happen in the booth because there is no backspace. The interpreter has to learn how to properly deal with them when they happen.

And that was it (or at least part of it, since I attended only 1/6 of the wide array of possibilities). You can find some links to posts people have already published about the conference below:

Talking in the real world, post-conference article by Robert Lange Greene on The Economist
A LBM no Congresso da Abrates, by Ligia Sobral Fragano, from Little Brown Mouse
VI Congresso da Abrates – Parte 1, by Laila Rezende Compan, from the blog Tradutor Iniciante
VI Congresso da Abrates – Parte 2, by Laila Rezende Campan, from the blog Tradutor Iniciante
VI Congresso da Abrates – Parte 3, by Laila Rezende Campan, from the blog Tradutor Iniciante
VI Congresso da Abrates – Parte 4, by Laila Rezende Campan, from the blog Tradutor Iniciante
VI Congresso da Abrates – Parte 5 (final), by Laila Rezende Campan, from the blog Tradutor Iniciante
Impressões sobre o VI Congresso Internacional da Abrates, by Sidney Barros Junior
VI Congresso Internacional da Abrates – Um sucesso muito além do esperado, by Ponte de Letras
Línguas e Tradução: Outro Encontro de Tradutores, by Anita Di Marco, from Anita Plural
VI Congresso da Abrates: uma viagem pelo mundo da localização, by Maíra Monteiro
VI Congresso Internacional da Abrates, by Marina Borges
E o VI Congresso da Abrates?, by Thiago Hilger, from the blog O Jogo da Tradução
CAT Tools na tradução literária: para quê?, by Rafa Lombardino, from eWorldNews, about Reginaldo Francisco’s presentation (in English: CAT tools in literary translation: what are they good for?)
A TradWiki e a visibilidade do tradutor, by Daniel Estill, from TradWiki
Como foi o VI Congresso da Abrates para os iniciantes, by Lorena Leandro, from the blog Ao Principiante
Pesquisa em tradução literária: seleção de fontes e entrevistas, by Rafa Lombardino, from eWorldNews, about Candice Soldatelli’s presentation (in English: Research in literary translation: selecting and interviewing sources of information)
Impresiones sobre el congreso – Abrates 2015, by Víctor Gonzales, from El Heraldo de la Traducción
Vamos fugir do tradutês?, by Rafa Lombardino, from eWorldNews, about Ponte de Letra‘s presentation (in English: Let’s avoid translationese, shall we?)
Pensando a tradução de variantes linguísticas, by Rafa Lombardino, from eWorldNews, about Solange Pinheiro Carvalho’s presentation (in English: On translating linguistic variants)
O tradutor sob os holofotes, by Rafa Lombardino, from eWorldNews, about the round table with Carolina Caires Coelho, Alyne Azuma, Alessandra Ruiz and Candice Soldatelli, moderated by Petê Rissati (in English: Translators under the spotlight)
O papel do tradutor na nova era da publicação digital, by yours truly on the blog eWorldNews, about Rafa Lombardino’s presentation (in English, translated by Rafa herself: The role of translators in the new digital publishing age)

And here are links to some presentations that presenters made available somehow and that I became aware of:

Roney Belhassof’s presentation: Usando a internet sem ter que virar nerd
Val Ivonica’s presentation: A tecnologia vai acabar com o tradutor?
Juliana Samel’s presentation: Falsos cognatos e decalques na tradução médica inglês > português
Layla Penha’s presentation: Interpretação consecutiva e além – como se já não bastassem os desafios da tarefa em si (recorded presentation, part 1 – you can also search for the other parts)
Jorge Rodrigues’ presentation: Rumos e perspectivas da carreira do tradutor profissional
Jorge Davidson’s presentation: O ABC das CATs: o que você nunca se atreveu a perguntar
Paula Ianelli’s presentation: Quatro traduções e um original
Mitsue Siqueira and Bruno Fontes’ presentation: Gerente de projetos: de onde vem, para onde vai? You can also find a video of part of the presentation on YouTube here.
Carolina Walliter’s presentation: Coworking e os tradutores na vanguarda da nova era do trabalho
Fabiano Cid’s presentation: A situação do tradutor hoje no Brasil: problemas encontrados em três anos de LQA

On a last note, it was informed in the conference that there will be a series of talks on bureaucracy and translation, Tradutor vs. Burocracia. The first one will be held in Rio de Janeiro, on October 1^st.

Besides, a workshop is also on the make with the amazing Isa Mara Lando, organized by Luciane Camargo. It will be on a Saturday in July, from 10 a.m. through 6 p.m., in São Paulo. If you are interested at attending in, please send an email to lucianecamargo@hotmail.com informing your date preference (4th, 18th or 25th).

And if you are not an Abrates member yet, it’s now or never! They are offering a 50% discount on the annual fee for those who attended the conference. But it’s only until June 30th!

If you want to check what else happened during the conference, follow the hashtag #abrates15 on Facebook and on Twitter.

And if you are interested in attending the next one, it will be held in Rio de Janeiro, date yet to be announced. I’ll certainly let you all know when we have news about it.

Last, but not least, the next post – that will most probably come this week – will be about my presentation.

Last weekend, from June 5^th through 7^th I attended (and presented at) the VI Abrates International Conference in São Paulo (Centro de Convenções Rebouças). Abrates is the Brazilian association of professional translators and interpreters and, since 2013, they hold an annual conference in different Brazilian cities. The event is the largest and most important in the area in Brazil, and possibly now the largest in Latin America. This year, we almost reached 900 participants (last year, in Rio de Janeiro, there were 450 attendees; and in 2013, in Belo Horizonte, 390).

The conference officially started with great news: PayPal partnered with Abrates and will now offer special rates for receiving payments – for Abrates members only. For receiving payments from abroad, the rate will decrease from around 7.4% to 3.49% + R$ 0.60 per transaction. Everybody – including me, of course – was ecstatic with the fantastic news! Stay tuned on how to benefit with it if you are an Abrates member. The association will publish it on their site and share on their Facebook page when they do. Besides, you can also call PayPal’s SAC to know more. Following the official opening, the first keynote speaker, Robert Lane Greene, Berlin-based business correspondent for The Economist who writes the “Johnson” column on language for The Economist online, talked about languages around the world. He starts speaking in an impressive Portuguese and admits he is part of a small group of weird North-Americans who like to learn other languages. After his introduction, he starts his presentation in English and shows us some interesting numbers related to languages on the internet. On Wikipedia, for example, translations are mainly to and from English, indicating a lack of language connections. On Twitter, a great number of users tweet in two languages, and Portuguese/English is one of the most common pairs (behind Malay and Spanish). Greene also differentiates between business suit language and underwear language: the first is the one you simply wear/use for any reason, the second is close to our heart and intimate self.

The infographic on this page was one of the images he showed. Robert also mentioned this article. He also has a book, You Are What You Speak.

With Robert Lane Greene.

After his interesting presentation, we had a cocktail party where we had to change to say hi to our fellow translators.

The actual presentations started for good the next day. The main characteristic of this conference is that we have plenty of choices to choose from: there were six different rooms with a diversity of topics being presented at the same time throughout the event. My first choice (always a difficult one, Paula Ianelli and Reginaldo Francisco, for example, were also presenting at the same time) was about technology and how we can use them to improve productivity, by Fernanda Rocha. Did you know, for example, that Windows and Mac’s calculators convert units and currencies? They also calculate periods of time. You can also add two other clocks (time zones) to your toolbar.

Time to change rooms! Off to room 5 where Rafa Lombardino talked about digital self-publication. Did you know that, in Brazil, a material becomes public domain after 70 years of the author’s death? She suggests creating a blog/site to document your book translation projects (it can also serve as a portfolio). You can find the newsletter about her presentation and the link to the Prezi presentation here.

Next one was in room 1, with João Vicente de Paulo Jr. and Giovana Boselli, who mentioned some important steps we have to follow when/before accepting a project not to have unexpected problems down the line. For example, read the allocation instructions carefully (delivery date/time, volume, subject), open the files and have a look at them, check if a big project requires partial deliveries, check if there is reference material to be followed (glossaries, style guides), payment method.

After the coffee break, I heard Monica Hruby, president of ATPI-Rio, mentioned some problems sworn translators face in Brazil and the regulation that surrounds it. An important point: translation agencies can’t be sworn translators! So be aware! I chose this presentation because I heard from a colleague last week that many sworn translators on Jucesp’s list are dead and their son/daughter are translating on behalf of the deceased translator! This is totally insane!

Back to room 1 to hear Raquel Lucas de Souza tell us about how she became an agency. Circumstances made her realize she could solve her clients’ problems not by translating, but by finding people who could do it, being a project manager. We need to fully understand ourselves in order to identify our qualities and find out our place in the market. A professional posture is essential for having good final results. At the same time, Capitain Israel Souza Junior, last year’s keynote speaker, was talking in room 4 about idiomatic expressions in war movies’ translation.

After lunch, I watched a panel with representatives of 10 associations: ATPIESP, ATP-MG, APIC, GALA, ATP-Rio, ASTRAJUR-RS, ATPP, Abrates, Sintra and ATA. The panel was very informative and useful, but I’d like to bring the attention here to the current situation of Sintra (Brazilian translators’ union). It once had only 173 paying affiliates and considered closing its doors. Nowadays, there are 233, but it is necessary 327 in order to have a financial balance. With its current budget, they can only run until October. Currently, 106 affiliates are in default, but they can only be removed from the union after 2 years not paying! The annual fee to become an affiliate is R$ 330.00. As pointed out during the panel, some people spend a fortune to attend ATA’s conference, but claim it’s too expensive to pay for the union’s fee. I’m an affiliate and I believe the union is essential for helping us defend our rights. See, for example, what they are doing, with ATP-Rio and Conati, to defend our rights regarding Simples Nacional here.

Conference attendees featuring yours truly doing what I did best: tweet. 🙂

Please find the second part of this post here.