Tuesday November 28th, 2017
13:00 - 14:10 GMT FINISHED
"Next Step: Become Tech-Savvy. Now!"
We will soon enter the "roaring 20's" and yet, Most interpreters and many translators are still technologically "illiterate." This lack of 21st-century skills is now a boomerang that could knock you off your game. You may think you will still be able to provide exceptional quality and reliance. However, if you are not "in the game" at all, there is nothing you "can" provide. You need to "get it": the transactional products and processes of translation and interpreting have changed. Already. You need to update your skills set to meet the needs for these new products and services. This session provides a cafeteria-style-menu of tools and skills-sets "needed" (not optional: REQUIRED) in the profession today. If you want to survive as a translator or interpreter who earns a living from your craft, you need to become a tech-savvy translator and interpreter, skillful in the Digital Marketplace.
Interpreters need to learn to navigate computers, iPads, iPhones, apps, and similar mobile technologies, and be fluent in Over-the-Phone, Remote-Video, and Web-based interpreting technologies; interpreters and translators have to be proficient using a whole new array of communication and digital gadgets that require new sets of skills. Translators have to train in many software solutions, shared resources, and cloud-based computing capabilities. All of us need to understand, really comprehend, the threats and opportunities posed by machine translation, and define how to meet them and beat them, individually and collectively.
There is a whole array of new tools, delivery mechanisms and venues that translators and interpreters need to learn to use, (now!), to participate in the marketplace of our Digital Age. First and foremost, we have to become "LITERATE" in technology. Yes, acquire technology literacy, right now. New modes of transinterpreting are becoming the norm (audiovisual translocalization and machine post-editing, for example). "Normal" work has already shifted from "loner" freelancers on individual desktops contracted by a few direct clients, to huge workforces servicing the many steps of a continuum managed by Language Service Providers (or corporate client's outsourcing departments); they all demand from us state-of-the-art skills in technology management, at par with our linguistic excellence and cultural knowledge.
It may be true that technology may not replace translators and interpreters. It is just true that OTHER translators and interpreters USING technology will replace the old guard. Very soon.
