Wednesday, August 10, 2011

Argentina, Holland, Russia, and Greece: Next Events

This week I am preparing presentations and topics for the next event season that is kicking off. I am particularly excited about four events:

  • The 7th Language and Technology Conference in Córdoba, Argentina, which kicks off on August 20th. I have been attending this event organized by IMTT since 2005, and it has consistently ranked among the best events in my opinion (Kirti Vashee and I also discussed it in a video conversation posted previously here). This time, the Cecis are taking a plunge and adding a Portuguese language track to the event, trying to congregate the two major Latin American markets under a single conference. A quick look at the program shows that the organizers have invested in high-caliber speakers with content that is extremely relevant to the translator community. If you are in Argentina, Brazil, Chile or Uruguay, there is still time to register and show up!
  • On September 9th, the Dutch Association of Translation Agencies is hosting their annual event called TMT - The Future is Here. This is my first time attending and speaking at the Dutch ATA, but I like their model of having one keynote and several workshops after it. Very hands on, very practical. The topics will be around tools, marketing/media, and post-editing.
  • Translation Forum Russia, September 23-25 in St. Petersburg, has just published its program with four tracks filled of high level content and great local and international speakers. Last year was my first foray into the Russian market and I find it to be vibrant and in clear expansion. The organizers were kind enough to ask me to keynote the event, but I am actually very interested in checking out some of the local business-related tracks. The event is in Russian and English and I hope that they provide me with a personal interpreter, like they did last year, so that I can enjoy the local sessions. Bert Esselink (the guy who wrote the book on localization), Luigi Muzii (who just published a book of his own), Alison Toon, Anne-Marie Colliander Lind, Doug Lawrence, Noël Muylle are the international speakers and Irina Alexeeva, Ekaterina Ryabtseva and Vladimir Fakov the local stars.
  • In November, ELIA - the association of which I am president - will be hosting its Networking Days in Athens. I am very involved with the program and I must say that, as usual, we will have a fantastic roster of speakers and unique topics of special interest for European LSPs. This time there will be a full track on Medical and Pharmaceutical translations. Among the confirmed speakers are Federico Garcea, from Microsoft MT; Mirko Plitt, from Autodesk; Artur Raczynski, from the EPO; and many others.
I will also be attending and presenting at Localization World, in Santa Clara, and Tekom, in Wiesbaden, both in October. These are much larger and customer centered events. I will be writing about them in another post.