NETA board meetings are held four times a year, generally in September, January, March, and June. Final dates, times, and agendas are announced in advance via email. All active NETA members are welcome to attend.

Board meeting dates for 2018-19: September 29, January 26, March 30, June 18.

General meetings are usually held once a month from September through April on Saturday afternoons.

2018-19

September 22: 13th Annual Translation Bash, 1:30-4:30 Email mcomenetz@gmail.com, tell us your language pair, and receive a copy of this year's English passage--or a French passage (if you work French>English) or Spanish passage (if you work Spanish>English). Translate that passage at your convenience before bash day, and join in as we debate the ins and outs of each sentence. We'll have facilitators in place for English>Spanish, Spanish>English, and French>English. If you work into another language and would like to participate on September 22, just write to us. We'll keep a tally and let you know about other people who sign up to work in your language pair. If a given group is large enough, we will attempt to find a facilitator. Smaller groups and pairs can readily work on their own.

October 20: Interpreting for Multilingual Justice, 2:00-4:00  At this meeting will learn about the goals and activities of the Boston Interpreters Collective (BIC), an organization dedicated to promoting a multilingual society by eliminating language barriers and building community. BIC works toward social justice by supporting community organizing through their interpretation services and popular education workshops. BIC is committed to promoting equal rights for all by addressing root causes of oppression.

There will be two speakers. Loreto Paz Ansaldo was born in Santiago, Chile and has been a member of BIC since 2016. She works as a freelancer and translator, and is currently enrolled in Boston University's Interpreter Certificate Program and UMass Boston's Spanish/English Translation Certificate Program. Loreto is a certified mathematics and Spanish teacher and has been involved in local arts programming since since high school, most recently as a member of the Leadership Council for Boston Creates.
Ester Serra Luque has been a member of BIC since 2007. She works as a court interpreter and also coordinates a community program assisting survivors of domestic violence. Prior to moving to the U.S., Ester worked as a journalist for 10 years in her native Catalonia. She is a member of the National Lawyers Guild and is involved with several other social justice groups in the Boston area.

November 17: Cognates: Friends or Foes? 2:00-4:00  As interpreters, we are familiar with working under pressure and with strict time limitations. Cognates can help us make quick conversions in our brains from one language to another, and they are great allies when learning new terminology. They even help us save face when we encounter Greek- or Latin-based medical terms that we have never heard before. However, we must remain vigilant. Not all cognates are our friends. False cognates, also known as false friends, can get us into a lot of trouble. In this session we will take a look at the general guidelines for forming cognates from English into Spanish, we will learn about the differences between total and complete cognates, and we will have fun with the most common false cognates that we encounter regularly in our profession.

Our speaker, Esther Bonin, holds a degree in Translation and Interpreting Skills from Pompeu Fabra University (Spain) and an M.A. in International Relations from Durham University (England). Esther has worked as both a translator and an interpreter in different European countries. As a translator she worked for several nonprofit organizations and agencies in Spain. She also has experience as a medical, court, and conference interpreter. A soccer enthusiast, she has worked as a television interpreter for the Barcelona soccer team channel. Esther has taught language, culture, and translation courses at Durham University in the U.K. In the United States she has taught at several colleges and universities in New England, including Hampshire College. Currently she supervises the Interpreter & Translation Services Department at Baystate Health. Esther speaks four languages, enjoys traveling, soccer, and spending time with her family.

December 15: Annual Holiday Party, in Woburn, MA

January 19: Aligning Bilingual Reference Material with Trados,  2:00-4:00  If you have a reference document available in source and target languages, aligning the documents in Trados to produce a translation memory can be a good way to make use of it. The translation memory created by the alignment can be useful for matches and various searches. This presentation will show how to align documents in Trados to produce a new TM and will provide pertinent hints and suggestions. Various related subjects, including creating, filtering and editing TMs, will be covered depending on time and interest.

Our speaker, Bruce D. Popp, is an ATA-certified translator for French and English. He is a recurrent speaker at NETA monthly meetings. He wrote up his presentation from last year on terminology drift, and that article will appear in the January-February issue of the ATA Chronicle. In his spare time, Bruce translates and studies the work of the famous French mathematician and physicist Henri Poincaré.

February 16: From Both Sides Now: Working as Both a Freelance Translator and a Translation Project Manager,  2:00-4:00  In 2018, after 28 years as a freelance translator, our speaker, Diana Rhudick, began working part-time as a project manager for a translation agency in Massachusetts. In this presentation, she will compare her experiences on both sides of the translator's desk, exploring the viewpoint from each side. Not so much a primer on how to get agency clients, this talk is more a consideration of how freelancers and agencies have differing priorities and of how keeping this in mind will make it easier to work together. Diana hopes to shed light on how one agency operates, and to talk about some of the major freelancer complaints from an alternative optic. Please bring your own experiences to share.

Diana Rhudick is the current president of NETA, as well as its cowebmaster. A graduate of the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in Monterey, California, she has 30 years of experience as a translator of French and Spanish texts and as an editor of English texts. Recently, she gave a talk on ways to improve translation from Spanish into English at the ATA Spanish Language Division conference in Miami.

March 16: Mental Health Treatment: Trauma and Implications for the Medical Interpreting Process,  2:00 - 4:00  During this workshop we will explore how trauma and related emotions manifest during the medical interpreting process, affecting not only the clinical encounter, but also the medical interpreter. We will focus on Mood Disorders and PTSD. Participants will be able to define transference (client's feelings/reactions) and countertransference (therapists' feelings/reactions and understand their impact on the medical interpreter, therapist and client alike. We will also discuss the relationship between Major Depression and Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, symptoms and diagnostic characteristics. Implications for affect regulation and the development of meaningful interpersonal connections will also be explained. Acculturation and its implications for assessment and treatment will be emphasized through the workshop.

Our speaker, Maria del Mar Farina, PhD, is an assistant professor at Westfield State University and Assistant Director of Field Education, Adjunct Professor at Smith College School for Social Work, where she completed her doctoral degree. She maintains a clinical practice in Holyoke, working primarily with the Latino community. She is also a clinical trainer and consultant specializing in the examination of race, ethnicity and culture in direct clinical practice. Her research pertains to American immigration policy, immigrant integration and white Nativist discourses. In 2016 she was appointed to the Council on Racial, Ethnic and Cultural Diversity (CRED), an advisory council and working group for the Council on Social work Education.

April 6: Form, Meaning and Use: ESL Teaching Concepts Applied to Translation and Interpretation,  2:00-4:00  The understanding of the concepts of form, meaning and use is crucial for both translation and interpretation. This is because, for example, a word or phrase in a source language might have several different translations/interpretation (forms) in a target language, and the use of any one of the particular forms can either change  a sentence's meaning (what the writer or speaker wants to communicate) entirely or, in some cases, render it meaningless. Consequently, the translator or interpreter needs to decide what forms to use in order to best communicate the writer's or speaker's intended meaning to the target audience. In this presentation, we will examine ways in which the concepts of form, meaning and use can be employed to teach English as a second language. We will then apply those concepts to translation and interpretation by looking at how, within certain guidelines, starting from meaning and assessing how languages used by the target audience can help the translator or interpreter decide on what forms a written or spoken communication should take.

Our speaker, Peter Wilner, Principal of PMW Consulting, speaks Portuguese and Spanish, is an instructor in Framingham State University's ESL program and a member of the board of directors of the Massachusetts chapter of CDLE, the Brazilian chamber of commerce. He has interpreted for various organizations, including local public health departments and chambers of commerce, and prepared Portuguese<English translations for community functions and consular events.

2017-18

September 23: 12th Annual Translation Bash, 1:30-4:30 Email mcomenetz@gmail.com, tell us your language pair, and receive a copy of this year's English passage. Translate that passage at your convenience before bash day, and join in as we debate the ins and outs of each sentence. We'll have a facilitator in place for Spanish. If you work in another language pair and would like to participate on September 23, just write to us. We'll keep a tally and let you know about other people who sign up to work with your language. If a given group is large enough, we will attempt to find a facilitator.


October 21: Translation Strategies for the Publishing Industry, 2:00-4:00  This presentation will describe the processes involved in publishing educational materials and the translator's role at each stage. We will discuss what we need from the client beforehand and then learn about the parts of a book and how to set up a project for success. Tackling acknowledgment pages, resources, quotes, glossaries, and indexes (including resorting and repaginating) requires the use of different file formats. What is a bookmap and a CIP, and where do they fit into this picture? We will also share different kinds of educational materials pertinent to K-12 programs, such as ancillaries and assessments, and consider how state standards underlie the development of those materials. Challenges can arise when working in different languages so we will suggest strategies to overcome them. Lastly, what does the translator bring to the final product? Attendees are encouraged to bring a short book to the presentation.

Our presenter, Erika Schulz, earned her MA in Spanish translation from Kent State University and holds a bachelor's degree as a scientific, technical, and literary translator and another as a teacher of English as a Second Language from Argentina. She has worked as a freelance translator since 1991 and has 15 years of teaching experience in Argentina and the US. She is currently pursuing medical interpreter certification. 

Erika worked for SDL in Boulder, CO as a full-time translator and for Victory Productions in Worcester, MA as Senior Spanish Editor, Translator, and Project Manager for clients such as Scott Foresman, Pearson, Harcourt, SBG, and OSV. In 2016 she joined the Center for Health Impact, a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting equal access to health care, where she is Manager of Translation Services, organizing multilingual projects using traditional and CAT tools in different file formats and environments. She has been an ATA member since 2002 and a NETA member since 2006.

November 18: Note-Taking Skills for Interpreters, 2:00-4:00  Expand your interpreting skills and work opportunities by enhancing your memory aids using the FAST Method, a note-taking technique created by CCCS, Inc.™ This unique tool differs from traditional shorthand by combining the use of symbols, healthcare acronyms and abbreviations. This interactive session provides interpreters with clear steps on how to develop a personal note-taking style in order to maximize your memory capacity by practicing through guided exercises. Use of this advanced skill will facilitate the flow and accuracy of the interpreting session.

Andrew Jerger, our speaker, is an experienced interpreter and teacher. Mr. Jerger spent 11 years in the Dominican Republic teaching public speaking courses in Spanish, English language classes, and Spanish reading and writing classes. He successfully completed the 54-hour Art of Medical Interpretation® course by Cross Cultural Communication Institute (CCCI) at Cross Cultural Communication Systems, Inc.™ and went on to become a language coach before joining the CCCI faculty in 2009. He has since completed both the CHI™ and the CMI interpreter certifications.

December 16: Annual Holiday Party, in Woburn, MA

January 27: Financial Record-Keeping for Translators and Interpreters--and Taxes! 2:00-4:00  Translators and interpreters often are freelancers, so sole or small business owners, and as such, must keep track of their own professional finances. Some key questions arise: How might we best handle finances when working for agencies versus for private clients? How can one take into account different contexts and different settings (for interpreters, legal, medical, community, conference)? What options exist for creating and managing invoices? And most importantly, how should freelancers deal with taxes most efficiently and accurately?

We have invited a certified public accountant, Irene Wachsler, to speak at our January monthly meeting. Her presentation will be followed by a panel discussion with four NETAns, both translators and interpreters, who will share their experiences in this regard and the financial practices they have developed over time. We are all sure to learn a great deal about this essential aspect of running our own businesses.

Thanks to Sandra Henry-Alvarez, José Carneiro, Tapani Ronni, and Montserrat Zuckerman for agreeing to serve as panelists.

February 24: (postponed for health reasons) 

March 24: Dealing with Terminology Drift, 2:00-4:00  Our speaker, Bruce Popp, started using the expression “terminology drift” to describe a phenomenon he observed when checking his own translation work and editing that of others. The term refers to the use of a different word or expression in the target text for the same word or expression in the source text. There seem to be several causes of terminology drift (or more generally, inconsistency). The main cause may be a gradually increasing awareness of the context of the notion involved that can come with repeated exposure to the word or expression. That awareness may lead to new and better choices for its rendering in the target text. As this suggests, terminology drift can be beneficial; however, if more than one translation is used for rendering a given word or phrase, the consequences have to be very carefully considered before the text is delivered to the client. Bruce will discuss how to deal with terminology drift with specific reference to certain features in Trados as well as with examples gleaned from his own work.

Bruce D. Popp is an ATA-certified translator for French into English with a BA in physics from Cornell University and a PhD in astrophysics from Harvard University. He is also a U.S. Patent and Trademark Office registered patent agent. As a professional translator, he performs premium-quality translations of scientific and technical documents, especially patent applications. As an independent scholar, he is applying his love of astrophysics, mathematics and French to understanding the work of Henri Poincaré. Bruce is the recipient of the 2017 S. Edmund Berger Prize for Excellence in Scientific and Technical Translation, which he won for his translation from French into English of Poincaré’s The Three-Body Problem and the Equations of Dynamics.

April 14: The Interpreter's Role at IEP Meetings, 2:00-4:00   Educators and parents of special needs students engage in a process leading to the development of an Individualized Education Plan (IEP), which is the underlying document guiding the school's effort to lead each individual student to reach his or her greatest potential. Our speaker, NETA member Lunie Jacques, will explain various aspects of the process involved in developing an IEP. Some key questions: What Massachusetts regulations come into play? What different types of IEP meetings exist, and what does one need to know before meetings take place? Who is present at team meetings? what terminology is involved when translating IEP documents an/or interpreting during IEP meetings? What is the interpreter's role when interacting with LEP parents and with educators? Lunie will provide tips for interpreters working in the IEP context and will suggest pertinent resources.

Lunie Jacques is a parent advocate experienced in working with administrators, parents, and students. She understands first hand how intimidating, time consuming, and complicated it can be to work with school or government officials. She draws upon her personal experience as an immigrant, an English language learner, and a parents of children with special needs to work successfully with school and government entities. Her passion is to help educators, working in conjunction with parents, to address and meet the needs of all of their constituents.

Having earned an Associate's degree from Université Roi Henri Christophe in Haiti, Lunie later trained as an interpreter with Language Connections and Harvard Pilgrim. She has interpreted for several public school systems, including the Boston Public Schools, where she has recently been conducting a series of workshops. She has also interpreted for the Department of Unemployment Assistance, the Department of Transitional Assistance, and the Worcester Recovery Center, among other entities. In April she is presenting a webinar for the Federation for Children with Special Needs.

July 21: Annual summer picnic, in Holliston, MA