51st Annual Conference of the American Translators Association

In late October 2010 I was in the United States and attended the 51st Annual Conference of the American Translators Association (ATA). The conference took place in Denver, Colorado, and was the year’s largest event for translators and interpreters in the world. It included more than 180 educational sessions with numerous opportunities to learn and network.

I was invited to the conference by ATA’s Portuguese Language Division. As the PLD’s Distinguished Speaker, I presented two sessions for Portuguese translators: a 3-hour workshop on “Quality Management terminology” and a 1-hour presentation on “Translating for Non-Governmental Organisations – The market and its terminology“. Right after the invitation, I applied for ATA membership, and so I benefitted from highly interesting discussions within the association for many years.

Many presentations and discussions revolved around the topic of machine translation (MT). There were discussions about the effects of MT technology on the translating profession, but also hands-on instructions on how to work with machine translation solutions. The number of educational sessions at the conference was extraordinarily large, so that there was something for everyone regardless of language and area of specialisation. As a conference attendee I opted to attend the sessions that had something to do with my own specialities (legal and financial translation), but I also enjoyed those that dealt generally with the future of our profession and some about topics that might open up a new field of work for me.

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