TILM Newsletter Graduate School of Translation, Interpretation, and Language Education Summer 2015
INSIDE ATISA Conference...... ………2 A Letter from the Dean……...2 Chinese Students at International Interpreting Competitions....3 Jeff Wood Retires ........ ………4 Hello Winnie! ............... ………4 Faculty Publications……...4 & 6 TILM Career News…………..5 Alumni Events……………….5 Spanish Community Interpreting Certificate Program ……..6 Community Interpreting as a Profession ..................... ………6 TLM Changes/Innovations….7 2015 Monterey Forum……….8 MIIS Olympic Tradition……..8 Interpret America……………9 UN and MIIS Pride…………..9 Faculty and Alumni Interpret at GLACIER Conference………9
MIIS TO HOST THE ATISA CONFERENCE IN 2016 MIIS is please to announce that the Eighth Biennial Conference of the American Translation & Interpreting Studies Association will be held here in Monterey on March 31-April 2, 2016. The keynote speaker will be Kirsten Malmkjaer of the University of Leicester, and the topic of the conference will be “Translation and Interpreting and/as Globalization: Redrawing the Boundaries of TIS”. Please check the conference website for more information!
A LETTER FROM THE DEAN Dear TILM Alumni, We wanted to have a better way of keeping in touch with you throughout the years and thought that an annual newsletter might be a way to do that. We plan to put out the newsletter each Fall and hope that the short stories within will give you a sense of what's happening in the Translation, Interpretation and Localization Management programs at MIIS. One thing that you'll note is that we’ve changed the “T&I” acronym to “TILM” to incorporate our popular Localization Management program. In fact, the program will soon be celebrating its tenth year and has been increasing in size yearly. In fact, we’ve recently added an LM Specialization to the T&I degrees, so that students from CI, T and T&I have the opportunity to benefit from the valuable training provided in this field (see page 7 for more information on the program). The programs are all going strong and many of your favorite faculty are still here. From time to time, you'll see mentions of them as they pop up in the stories included here, but always feel free to reach out and say hi. You can find all of their profiles on the MIIS website: www.miis.edu/faculty. We're holding our annual MIIS TILM Alumni reunion at the American Translation Association (ATA) conference in Miami in November and hope that you can come to join us there. For information, stop by our booth. And if you don’t plan to be in Miami, be sure to look for us as we travel the world and host smaller alumni events in a city near you. Hope all is well with you and hope to see you soon!
Best wishes, Dr. Renee Jourdenais, Dean
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CHINESE T & I STUDENTS SHINE AT INTERNATIONAL INTERPRETING COMPETITIONS Over the last few years, several Chinese T&I students have made us really proud by bringing home trophies from two major international interpreting competitions in England and China. ChungKuan John Chen (MACI ’14) won first prize at the 2013 Televic Chinese-English Simultaneous Interpreting Competition MIIS students with Professor Chen at the 2nd Telvic Simultaneous held at Newcastle Interpreting Competition in Newcastle, England in April, 2014. University in England in September 2013. This first competition of its kind featured a series of keynote speeches in a simulated conference with English and Mandarin Chinese as the working languages. A total of 21 contestants from nine Translation & Interpretation programs in the U.K., Taiwan, and the U.S. participated in the competition, and John made it through a series of contests with unmatched skill and professionalism. Mr. Nöel Muylle, honorary director general of the European Commission and convener of the competition called John “a pearl of the game.” Professor Wallace Chen (MATI ’95) was invited to serve on the panel of judges at the competition. He says John’s performance in the competition drew attention to the “superb training we offer at the Monterey Institute,” adding that this was a “day of pride for the Chinese Translation and Interpretation program, GSTILE, and the Monterey Institute.” In April 2014, a team of 2nd year Chinese T&I students, also led by Prof. Chen, have once again individually placed at the 2nd Televic Simultaneous Interpreting Competition in Newcastle. Suwen Feng (MACI ’14) and Yanbo Wang (MACI ’14) received 1st and 3rd places respectively. Jennifer Zhang (MACI ’14) also made it into the final round and received 5th place. Second-year interpreter Liu Chang took fifth place at the 5th Cross-Strait Consecutive Interpreting Competition, which was held on October 19th, 2014 at Xiamen University in Xiamen, Fujian Province, China. Ms. Liu was in competition with 25 talented student interpreters from the major Chinese translation and interpreting programs at universities in Mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, the U.S., and the U.K. There were three categories of consecutive interpreting covered: gist, conference, and dialogue.
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JEFF WOOD RETIRES
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or 30 years Jeff has had immense Impact on the lives of countless students and alumni through his solid guidance and counseling. This ncludes several of his coworkers and half the faculty now teaching in the TILM programs. “I still vividly remember them as students,” says Jeff. He stays in touch with many of his former advisees and has been an incredible resource over the past three decades for alumni information and employer connections. Jeff was honored at his retirement ceremony with the designation of Staff Emeritus. There is only one other holding this title from MIIS and no question that Jeff deserved the honor. A member of the Institute’s Legacy Society, Jeff intends to stay connected to the Institute and says he might now finally have time to attend more events: “The interactions with people are what makes this place,” he says, and we could not agree more. We wish him well in this new phase in his life!
PROFESSOR MIKKELSON AND DEAN JOURDENAIS PUBLISHED IN MARCH The newly published Routledge Handbook of Interpreting was edited by MIIS Professor Holly Mikkelson, and GSTILE Dean Renée Jourdenais. The Handbook also includes articles from MIIS professors Chuanyun Bao, Wallace Chen, Jean Turner, and other MIIS alumni and former faculty!
HELLO WINNIE HEH! While we knew it would be difficult to fill Jeff’s shoes, when we learned that one of our illustrious alumna was interested in the position, we were thrilled. In August, we welcomed Winnie Heh, former VP for Global Operations at LanguageLine, as the new T&I Career Advisor. "It is an honor to return to MIIS. My Translation and Interpretation education gave me the professional skills and knowledge that I sought to pursue and much more. I learned two things in my career in the last 25 years. One, my T&I training gave me the highly transferrable listening, analytical and communication skills that made me a successful leader. Two, the $40-billion worldwide language industry is poised for significant diversification and growth. I am excited to help grow my future colleagues by sharing what I have learned in the language industry. Please contact me at wheh@miis.edu if you are interested in bringing work opportunities to our students in our next job fair on February 19th, 2016 in Monterey. Stay well and keep in touch.”
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TILM CAREER SERVICES
With the founding of Center for Advising and Career Services (CACS) in 2009, career services hit a new high for MIIS. T&I Career Advisor, Jeff Wood moved his office to the third floor of McCone and joined his colleagues from the other programs in offering a suite of opportunities designed to enhance the Institute’s career service offerings for current students and alumni. During the Fall semester, CACS advisors offer 8-week Career Management classes for new students, consisting of workshops on resume writing, cover letters, interviewing, networking and internship/job research. The course is capped with a networking event where students have the opportunity to practice their skills with prospective employers. All students also now have accounts in Zócalo (the Institute’s career data system), where they can upload their resumes for employers’ hiring and internship needs. Each Spring, we continue to host the annual TILM Career Fair, where we attract representatives and literature from 54 organizations looking for full-time/part-time jobs, internships and freelance contract work. The 2015 Fair, led to 30 internships and 20 full-time employment offers from the 50 represented employers. If you or your employer would like to be represented at this year’s February Career Fair, please contact us! For the past two years, Jeff organized a Spring Break DC trip where TILM students and alumni visited the US Dept. of State Office of Language Services, the World Bank, the IMF, and the OAS. We thank our alumni who were integral in setting up these visits and who gave career presentations for the group at our Middlebury site in DC at the corner of 14th and K Streets. At least three internships came out of the visits. As of June 1 (just two weeks after graduation!), we were pleased to see that almost three-quarters of our graduating students had already located a job, set up their freelance business, or were continuing their education. Please note that career services of offered by CACS are available for free to alumni as well. Contact Winnie Heh for more information!
RECENT & UPCOMING ALUMNI GATHERINGS
Tokyo, Japan in February 2015
Taipei, Taiwan in May 2015
Beijing, China in July 2015
Santander, Spain in July 2015
Korean alumni met in Monterey, September 2015
MIIS held an alumni reunion on Oct 2 & 3 in Monterey. The weekend’s events included a traditional MIIS Happy Hour, Breakfast with the Deans, program lunches, talks by faculty, walks along the Peninsula, and a dinner at Asilomar… to name just a few of the activities that brought together alumni from across the Institute and throughout the years.
Upcoming: We’ll be hosting our annual alumni get-together on Thursday, November 7th at the ATA Conference in Miami. Please be sure to stop by the booth to get more information about the event! We’ll also hope to see you in Taiwan in March or in Seoul this summer! 5
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PROFESSOR YE PUBLISHED THIS SUMMER Professor Ye serves as a chief editor for Translation Notes and Commentaries, a practical book series on Chinese translation, published by Tsinghua University Press, one of the most distinguished university publishers in China. All the authors in the book series have rich experience in Chinese translation practice, including nationally well-known translation professors and senior translators at the United Nations. Both Professor Ye and Professor Wallace Chen have contributed to the series. Professor Ye’s book will be published in August, 2015.
SPANISH COMMUNITY INTERPRETING GRADUATE CERTIFICATE This Spanish-English professional certificate is designed as a hybrid, low-residency, ten-month program for those wishing to gain experience in the fields of legal, medical and community interpreting. Training begins with online modules in October, and culminates in a seven-week on-site summer module in Monterey. Ideal candidates have a BA, strong bilingual and bicultural skills, and are interested in using their language and cultural background as community interpreters in legal, medical, social service and educational environments. This certificate program offers participants a solid foundation in written translation, sight translation, consecutive dialogue interpreting and simultaneous interpreting. Participants build professional and linguistic knowledge needed for the fields of legal, medical, social service and educational interpreting and will be prepared to take certification exams in the relevant sectors. See our website for more details.
COMMUNITY INTERPRETING AS A PROFESSION The introductory course for the Certificate program, Community Interpreting as a Profession, is now being offered as a stand-alone course. Taught by Professor Holly Mikkelson, the course is fully online and available to interpreters of any language pairing (the course is taught in English). It is available during the Fall Semester—see the website for more details!
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LOCALIZATION MANAGEMENT SPECIALIZATION Due to increasing demand in the field, many students of Translation and Interpretation are interested in learning more about Localization Management. To meet this need, MIIS is now offering a 14-unit specialization in Localization Management that can be added onto the Translation, Translation and Interpretation, and Conference Interpretation degrees. We believe this added specialization option will make our graduates even more competitive in the industry than they already are! To find out more about the specialization, please visit the website.
ALUMNI NEWS We love to hear about what you’re up to! Please send updates, photos, articles, or publications to gstile@miis.edu.
NOTES ABOUT TLM CHANGES & INNOVATIONS FROM MAX TROYER
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s we approach the Translation and Localization Management (TLM) program’s ten-year anniversary in 2016, we’d like to update you on recent changes. At the beginning of the Spring 2015 semester, we welcomed Adam Wooten (MAT Spanish 2004, MBA 2005), who is teaching Intro to Computer-Assisted Translation, Advanced Computer-Assisted Translation, and Translation Management Systems. Adam will be teaching a new TLM elective this spring called Social Localization & Translation Outsourcing. We are very lucky to have Adam on board, as he brings valuable professional experience to the program. Max Troyer (MAT French 2005), the current Program Coordinator, continues teaching Localization Project Management, Software & Games Localization, and Multilingual Desktop Publishing. This spring Localization Project Portfolio will be rebranded as Localization Practicum to reflect how this course has evolved over the years and to harmonize with the translation and interpretation practicums. In the interest of rounding out our curriculum, three new electives were recently added. Advanced Business Applications exposes students to the advanced functionality of Microsoft Office. For a few years, students have been asking for a programming course, and now they have it: Intro to Computer Programming w/Python, an elective that proved so popular we had to add a second section! And finally, Jon Ritzdorf (MAT Chinese 2001), who has been teaching the short-term CAT and Website Localization courses for some years, created the elective Localization Sales & Solutions Development, which is proving to be quite popular. And finally, this fall we welcomed Lee Desser as the TLM Career Advisor. Lee previously served as an advisor at UC Berkeley. Lee will help TLM students ready themselves for the job market, assist them in polishing their resume and interviewing skills, and offering a Career Management course.
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MIIS OLYMPIC TRADITION TO CONTINUE Our involvement with the Olympic Games began with the Los Angeles Olympic Games in 1984. At the time, Professor Bill Weber, then Dean of the Graduate Division of Translation and Interpretation, had arranged an academic internship for 32 T&I students, thus making MIIS an “Official Supplier of Translation and Interpretation Services.” Students provided services in written translation of documents and simultaneous interpretation in English and French at the Main Press Center. Ever since, Professor Weber has been involved with the Olympic language services and was chief interpreter at 14 of the last Summer and Winter Games. Although Professor Weber has decided to retire from the Olympic scene after next year’s Games in Rio de Janeiro, after serving the Olympic Family for thirty two years, the MIIS tradition shall continue with Alexander Ponomarev (MACI 1997), who has been chosen as chief-interpreter for the Rio Games. As has been the case in the past 34 years, many MIIS graduates will be on what has become known as the “Olympic Dream Team” of interpreters. We also expect to involve a large group of MIIS students to serve as language volunteers with limited interpreting duties in Rio as well. Another MIIS graduate, Maureen Sweeney (IPA 1994) has also been involved as a key consultant for the International Olympic Committee with the local Organizing Committees, ever since the Atlanta Games in 1996. She continues to consult in the fields of language services, including language volunteers, as well as venue protocol. The latter includes all venue medal ceremonies, VIP seating and lounges, as well as checking on all participating nations’ flags and national anthems.
2015 MONTEREY FORUM Launched in 2007, the Monterey Forum provides a venue to discuss new trends in translator, interpreter and localizer (TIL) education. This bi-annual conference brings professionals, educators, and students to Monterey, CA. The fourth Monterey Forum took place March 28-29, 2015. The theme this year was Educating Translators, Interpreters and Localizers in an Evolving World. It focused on innovation in curriculum and syllabus design implemented in the physical or virtual classroom by educators around the world to address these new trends and challenges. Over 80 participants from around the world came to share their ideas and experiences. Our CI students provided interpretation throughout the conference and impressed the many participants with their skills and professionalism.
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INTERPRETAMERICA
Co-founded by MIIS alumni Barry Olsen and Katherine Allen, to raise the profile of interpreters across various sectors, InterpretAmerica held its 5th Summit in Monterey on June 1214th.
UN and MIIS Pride At the St. Petersburg, Russia, meeting of the UN MoU Universities, MIIS was singled out several times among its international peers for its ability to train interpreters successfully in all of the UN languages. The only other university with similar success is the University of Geneva. Prof Max Troyer and his GLOBE team of localization students were also publically praised for their project management skills as they led teams from the UN MoU Universities in the translation of the UN website’s Outreach pages.
Faculty and Alumni Interpret at the GLACIER Conference Prof. Christiane Abel, Prof. Laura Burian, Prof. Barry Olsen and several alumni were interpreters for the GLACIER Conference in Anchorage, Alaska, with Secretary Kerry and President Obama among the speakers. The Conference on Global Leadership in the Arctic: Cooperation, Innovation, Engagement and Resilience, or GLACIER, highlighted international and domestic priorities in the Arctic. The Department of State hosted GLACIER in Anchorage, Alaska on August 31st. From left to right: Cricia Lee (CI 2008), Prof. Laura Burian, CĂŠline Colvin (CI 2007 and adjunct in TIFR last year), Prof. Christiane Abel, Prof. Barry Olsen.
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