METM25 panel

Bringing people in from the cold: 20 years of METMs

Mary Ellen Kerans, Barcelona, Spain; Alan Lounds, Barcelona, Spain; Kim Eddy, Tenerife, Spain; Hayley Smith, Codroipo, Italy; Helen Oclee-Brown, Staplehurst, UK

Skills have always been at the heart of METMs. The very purpose of METM05, the first METM, was to fill the training gap among language professionals in Catalonia. Then, as now, what united attendees was a belief in peer-learning to improve the quality of their work for the communities they serve.

In 2025, the challenges METM attendees face and the clients they work for may have diversified, but the need for good-quality, expert training remains – and METMs continue to provide an ideal forum for this.

To celebrate 20 years of METMs, we look back at how METMs (and MET) began, how the conference has changed over the years and how organizers have overcome bumps along the way. Are METMs now what our founder members envisaged? What knowledge gaps do panellists still think need plugging? How has MET responded to the need for more online training? What does the future hold for MET in the age of AI? And how does MET maintain its unique identity and continue to serve its members’ needs?

Joining current membership chair Hayley Smith on the panel will be three past chairs of MET council: long-standing member Kim Eddy, and founder members Alan Lounds and Mary Ellen Kerans. Former council member Helen Oclee-Brown will guide this walk through METM history, delving into the panellists’ collective memory.

The themes of community, knowledge-sharing and interdisciplinary learning in the Mediterranean and beyond will be central to the panel’s discussions. METMs are a broad church, but organizers’ ability to promote the “cross-pollination” of disciplines has reliably helped attendees learn from each other and sharpen their skills. Long may that continue!
[Read a member's review of the session.]

About the presenters

	Mary Ellen Kerans, one of MET’s founders, is a semi-retired freelance authors’ editor and translator who still works mainly but not exclusively with clinical scientists and historians. She comes from a background in teaching English for specific purposes and has taught writing for publication purposes.
	Alan Lounds is a semi-retired translator and authors’ editor specialized in helping scholars who have English as an additional language to publish successfully in international journals. He is a founder member and former chair of Mediterranean Editors and Translators.
	Kim Eddy is a language trainer, translator and reviser/editor based in the Canary Islands, Spain. She has been a MET member since 2006, and was a MET council member – promotion chair, membership chair and MET chair – from 2010 to 2020.
	Hayley Smith is an in-house translator, editor, proofreader and project manager based in northeast Italy. She joined MET in 2019 and was quickly catapulted into association life, first facilitating memoQ training in 2021, then acting as an MC for METM21 Online, before joining MET Council as membership chair in 2022.
	Helen Oclee-Brown is a translator and editor. She works for the International Brigade Memorial Trust, editing the Trust’s triannual magazine ¡No pasarán!. A career-long linguist, she has been translating and editing for nearly two decades.