New England Translators Association
 A Professional Resource for Translators and Interpreters
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Board Meetings and Monthly Meetings

NB: Both NETA board meetings and NETA monthly meetings are held virtually via Zoom.

NETA board meetings are held four times a year, generally in September, January, March, and June. Final dates, times, locations, and agendas are announced in advance via email.

Attendance Policy:
Any NETA member may attend a
board meeting as an observer. Once you've received an email with the meeting agenda, we ask that you tell the board which agenda item(s) you are interested in via email to board@netaweb.org. At the meeting, you will be invited to speak about those items. Board members may or may not discuss those items, depending on time constraints. NETA members can sit through the whole meeting, unless the board moves to proceed in a closed session.

Board meeting dates for 2024-25: September 28, January 25, March 22, and June 14 (or 21).

General meetings are usually held once a month from September through April on Saturday afternoons. The fee is $25 for nonmembers.

2024-25

September 21: 19th Annual Translation Bash - virtual, with Zoom rooms, 1:30-4:30 Log into our website, tell us your language pair, and receive a copy of this year's English source 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 English>Spanish, English>Portuguese, and English>French. If you work into another language and would like to participate on September 30, indicate that when you register. We'll keep a tally. If a given group is large enough, we will attempt to find a facilitator. Smaller groups and pairs can readily work on their own. NB: This year we will have Spanish>English and French>English reverse bash group, which will work on a passage on the same theme as that of the English source text that the majority of participants will be discussing.


October 19 (rescheduled from last January): Implicit Bias and Racism in American Health Care: Our Roles and Responsibilities as Interpreters, 2:00-4:00  This interactive workshop will engage participants in an exploration of the history of racism, stereotyping, and bias in the American health care system. We will identify strategies to uncover and reduce one's own implicit biases and consider our role as interpreters in recognizing and addressing racism and bias when we encounter it in our work. 

Our speaker, Lisa Walker, graduated from Northern Essex Community College in 1986 with an AS in Interpreting for the Deaf. She worked for several years as a staff interpreter at the New England Home for the Deaf in Danvers before going on to become a Physician Assistant (PA) and educator, working for the past 26 years teaching the next generation of PAs. As a longtime advocate of language access, Lisa has designed medical interpreting curricula, presented on a wide range of topics for interpreters and health professional, and serves on the board of Found in Translation, a nonprofit organization providing training for bilingual refugee and immigrant women as medical interpreters.


November 16: Simply Impossible? Translating Colloquialisms, Regionalisms and Slang from Romance Languages to English, 10-noon  Alison Entrain, who translated the Brazilian book City of God from Portuguese to English, one said at the International Literary Festival in Paraty: "sometimes, the translator has to choose something when it is simply impossible to find an equivalent word." Throughout this workshop, we will delve into the often "simply impossible" task of translating colloquialisms, regionalisms and slang from Romance languages to English. By examining examples from various translators and well as considered methods developed by translation experts, we will come to our own understanding of what is possible in translation when it comes to such challenges. Finally, we will look at samples of my own work translating Alicia Borinsky's My Husband's Woman (Literal Publishing, 2016).
NB: Participants are asked to bring in a handful of sentences that pose these challenges inane Romance language to work on during the workshop.

Our speaker. Natasha Hakimi Zapata, is an award-winning journalist, translator and university lecturer based in London, England. Her book, ANOTHER WORLD IS POSSIBLE: Lessons for America from Around the Globe is forthcoming from The New Press (February 2025), and her articles appear regularly The Nation, In These Times, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and elsewhere. Hakimi Zapata has been a lecturer at Boston University and the University of Massachusetts Boston, where she taught in the Translation Certificate Program for several years, including a graduate level course on Translation in Media. In 2014 she collaborated on The Transborder Immigrant Tool Book published by the University of Michigan press, and in 2016 Literal Publishing released full-length bilingual editions of her translation of Alicia Borinsky's My Husband's Woman and Liliana Lukin's Theater of Operations. She is the former foreign editor of Truthdig and has received several Southern California Journalism and National Arts & Entertainment Journalism awards, most recently in 2024 for her work as a foreign correspondent.

December 14: Annual holiday party in Woburn, MA

January 18: How to Gain a Lasting Edge with Generative AI and Get Back to Everything You Love about Being a Translator, 4:00-6:00  The proper use of Generative AI allows translators to achieve higher productivity than ever before. Learn a methodology for pushing the AI to the frontier of its capabilities, techniques for accelerating your prompts for higher efficiency, how to make the AI translate in your voice, and ways to safeguard your data and save money.

Our speaker, Steven S. Bammel, PhD, is a Korean-to-Engish techncal translator with over 20 years of experience. Having a background in Strategic Management from Hanyang University (Korea) and in Economics (from the University of Texas at Arlington (USA), Steven combines his language and translation expertise with a deep knowledge of AI workflow to develop tools and frameworks that help translators raise their productivity. As an active member of the American Translators Association (ATA), Steven still translates daily.


February 15: TBA


2023-24

September 30: 18th Annual Translation Bash - virtual, with Zoom rooms, 1:30-4:30 Log into our website, tell us your language pair, and receive a copy of this year's English source 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 English>Spanish, English>Portuguese, and English>French. If you work into another language and would like to participate on September 30, indicate that when you register. We'll keep a tally. If a given group is large enough, we will attempt to find a facilitator. Smaller groups and pairs can readily work on their own. NB: This year we will have Spanish>English and French>English reverse bash group, which will work on a passage on the same theme as that of the English source text that the majority of participants will be discussing.


October 21: Adapting Interpreting Techniques to Target Listeners in Legal Settings,
 2:00-4:00  Interpreting in legal settings is not always between two people engaged in a dialogue and not always for the record. Sometimes the exchange is between English speakers and must be relayed to a Limited English Proficient (LEP)person in the simultaneous mode; other times it may be testimony by the LEP individual for the record, to be interpreted in the consecutive mode. Attendees will learn techniques interpreters can use to adapt their renditions to each particular context, and how to determine which technique to use during interpreting encounters to maximize the source language speaker's and target language listener's optimal communication and mutual understanding.

Our speaker, Janis Palma, is an English-Spanish interpreter and translator with more than 40 years of experience. She has worked as an independent contractor for private attorneys, government agencies, state and federal courts, and worked a s a staff and supervisory interpreter for the U.S. District Court in Puerto Rico.


November 18: Advocacy 101 for Interpreters and Translators, 2:00-4:00  Based on work done for NAJIT in 2017, a panel of three participants will explain how they were able to support interpreters through advocacy and provide some steps that other interpreting and translation groups can follow to do the same.

Our panelists, Milena Calerari-Waldron, Rudy Téllez, and Helen Eby are al leaders in their field and have extensive experience advocating for interpreters in institutional, state and federal contexts with a significant record of success.

December 9: Annual holiday party in Woburn, MA

January 20: Implicit Bias and Racism in American Health Care: Our Roles and Responsibilities as Interpreters, 2:00-4:00  This interactive workshop will engage participants in an exploration of the history of racism, stereotyping, and bias in the American health care system. We will identify strategies to uncover and reduce one's own implicit biases and consider our role as interpreters in recognizing and addressing racism and bias when we encounter it in our work. 

Our speaker, Lisa Walker, graduated from Northern Essex Community College in 1986 with an AS in Interpreting for the Deaf. She worked for several years as a staff interpreter at the New England Home for the Deaf in Danvers before going on to become a Physician Assistant (PA) and educator, working for the past 26 years teaching the next generation of PAs. As a longtime advocate of language access, Lisa has designed medical interpreting curricula, presented on a wide range of topics for interpreters and health professional, and serves on the board of Found in Translation, a nonprofit organization providing training for bilingual refugee and immigrant women as medical interpreters.
                                   JANUARY MEETING RESCHEDULED FOR OCTOBER 2024


February 17: Terminology Management: From Source to Target in Four Easy Steps, 2:00-4:00  Translators rely on correct terminology. In this session, we will build on skills translators already have and use them to compile terminology readable by machines. After a brief review of the basics, we will walk through the main steps of term identification, research and documentation. Our product will be terminology in a simple format (e.g., a spreadsheet) that can be imported into, and read by computer-aided translation tools. The session will be suitable for those translating technical material in any language and domain.

Our speaker, Barbara Inge Karsch, is the owner of BIK Terminology, a terminology consultancy and training company. Since 2010, she has been providing terminology development, training and consulting for Adobe, Facebook, Intuit, Zeiss and others. She draws on her extensive experience in-house for Microsoft and JD Edwards.

Barbara completed a BA and MA in translation and interpretation and has done PhD-level research in terminology science. She is Adjunct Professor at New York University and teaches regularly at the Middlebury Institute at Monterey.

As US delegate to ISO TC37, Barbara led the recently published revision of ISO 12616:I Terminology work in support of multilingual communication--Part 1: Fundamentals of translation-oriented terminography. Barbara has dual citizenship from Germany and the United States.


March 16: Voice Movement Therapy for Interpreters, 2:00-4:00  Registered Voice Movement Therapy practitioner Mali Sastri will present an experiential workshop in the expressive arts modality Voice Movement Therapy and how it may benefit the voices of those working as interpreters. Through guided exploration, improvisatory games, and combined vocal and movement exercises, this virtual workshop aims to increase vocal flexibility, dexterity, relaxation, confidence, and trust in the power of your own authentic voice, specifically for those using--and fatiguing--their voices in their work.

Our speaker, Mali Sastri, is a registered Voice Movement Therapy practitioner based in Boston. She trained with VMT founder Paul Newham, and with Anne Brownell and Christine Isherwood in London, UK from 1999-2001. In 2011 she qualified as a professional member of the International Association for Voice Movement Therapy. Mali has worked with individuals and groups primarily in the Boston area for over 15 years. For 10 years she was part of the music education program at Tunefoolery, a Boston nonprofit for musicians in mental health recovery. Her work rides the edge between the artistic and therapeutic, with an emphasis on breath and the song-as-container. She herself is a singer, songwriter, composer, performer, and artist-practitioner--a forever student and lover of voice.


April 13: Cultural Humility: Is It Important for Interpreters? 2:00-4:00  In this workshop we will explore Cultural Humility and discuss if this process can be helpful for the practice of interpreting as well as tin the work of the interpreter within the larger context of the organizations we serve. The goal of this session is to provide a safe environment for consideration of the Cultural Humility framework. Join in on this relaxed and engaging session to learn about this concept and decide for yourself whether Cultural Humility should make it into your interpreter toolbox.

Our speaker, Esther Bonin, is ACSI's Director of Language Services. She is an international language industry expert with over 20 years of experience. She holds a degree in Translation & Interpreting Skills from Univeritat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona, Spain, and an MA in International Relations from Durham University in Durham, England. She has worked on both sides of the Atlantic as a certified translator and interpreter, a professor, and a language access consultant. Recently she has led interpretation programs for a language service company in Arlington, VA, where she was responsible for all commercial and government interpreting programs. She has also led a team of over 75 interpreters and translators for a large Massachusetts hospital system.

Esther is recognized as a thought leader in the areas of language access, D& I, and interpreter training. A conference and community interpreter herself, with experience in media, legal , healthcare and educational settings,  she has worked for commercial, government and nonprofit clients directly, and as a program manager overseeing contract execution and deliverables.


May 18: Language Access and AI  2:00-4:00  This presentation will briefly review the history of how Artificial Intelligence has developed for language access and will explain the basic workings of how AI functions in language access in general. Finally, the presentation will identify weaknesses and strengths in the current AI technology used in language access in order to allow attendees to gauge the risks of the technology with an eye to being able to explain this to potential clients who might feel AI is a "cost-saving solution" which eliminates the human being from the process.

Our speaker, Holly Silvestri, is the Senior Coordinator for Translation, Training and Curriculum for the National Center for Interpretation at the University of Arizona. She has also taught for the Translation and Interpretation Program within the Spanish and Portuguese Department, which offers a bachelor's degree in Spanish with a concentration in translation and interpreting. She has experience in the fields of translation and interpreting as well as training interpreters and is a member of the National Language Service Corps. Her working languages are Spanish, French and English. She also runs her own LSP business.


 
  

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