2019 workshops
Nantes, 26 April 2019
Our 2019 workshop season kicked off in France at the Faculty of Foreign Languages and Cultures (FLCE) at the University of Nantes.
Ruth Simpson and Timothy Barton got the day off to a flying start with their parallel workshops, Wine words – Translating in the wine world and Perfecting it with PerfectIt, respectively. Both hands-on sessions put attendees to the test.
After recounting the year in the life of a wine estate, Ruth took her group through specialist revision and rewriting exercises, before quizzing attendees on wine descriptions and guiding them through a tasting session – how they suffered!
In an equally practical session, Timothy Barton outlined PerfectIt’s main functions before helping attendees customize their own style sheets to match their clients’ demands, meaning that attendees could immediately apply what they’d learned to their work.
After a convivial lunch at a nearby restaurant, Didier Delorme, Dean of the FLCE, formally welcomed MET to the university. Luckily for the non-French speakers among us, one of our student volunteers, Marion Letellier, was on hand to artfully interpret Didier’s warm and witty address.
Next up was MET stalwart Valerie Matarese, who gave a short talk charting MET’s 15-year history, explaining who we are, what we do and how we have changed over the years.
Our afternoon programme comprised a medley of three talks. Emma Goldsmith shared some of the highlights from MET’s own online resource hub, the Hive. Then, Helen Oclee-Brown pondered how to dodge common translation traps that often ensnare French-to-English translators. Last, Michael Farrell took an unashamedly pragmatic look at what post-editing machine translation (PEMT) can and cannot do, leading to plenty of lively discussion.
Despite a busy CPD programme, we still had time to take in the local surroundings in what was MET’s first trip to France. Besides networking over dinner and drinks, attendees explored the city on foot and visited the Île de Versailles, an artificial island that plays host to a Japanese-style garden.
We are grateful to the FLCE for kindly letting us use its premises and to our student volunteers for their hard work. Special thanks go to our FLCE liaison, Vice-Dean Isabelle Richard, and to our industrious team on the ground: Louise Normandière, Janet Klain Ratiu, Mar Fernández Núñez and Maighread Gallagher-Gambarelli. And we are indebted to our CPD chair, Marije de Jager, for putting together such a thought-provoking programme.
Unless otherwise stated, all photos are by Thomas Deslypper-Hamon.
