METM24 presentation

Raising your game with inverse translation as CPD

Jacqueline Lamb, Barcelona, Spain

Continuing professional development is essential for language professionals, but the longer you work in your field, the more difficult it becomes to find truly useful training opportunities to improve your craft. With this in mind, this presentation aims to share my recent experience of inverse translation – translating out of my native language into a source language – as an unexpectedly effective means of CPD.

Twelve years into my translation career working almost exclusively in the medical field, I embarked upon a master’s in medical translation from my native English into Spanish, one of my source languages. This challenging experience far exceeded my initial goal of improving my subject-matter knowledge and Spanish language skills, and I was genuinely surprised at how much the change of language direction and perspective has improved my translations into English. In this talk, I will share examples of how the experience has helped me tighten up my writing, streamline my decision-making processes and identify blind spots. In the first part, I will focus on my initial experience of translating out of my native language during the master’s course, with examples from the medical field. In the second part, I will explain how I have continued to practise inverse translation into my other source languages as a form of self-directed CPD, with examples from various text types.

This session is for anyone looking for new approaches and ideas to improve their language skills. Given the focus on inverse translation as a change of perspective, it will be especially relevant to translators who do not have previous experience in translating out of their native language. Examples will be given in Spanish, Catalan, French and Portuguese, but knowledge of these languages is not required to follow the presentation.

About the presenter

Jacqueline Lamb is a freelance medical translator from Spanish, Catalan, French and Portuguese into English. She has been based in Catalonia since graduating from the University of Glasgow in 2010. A self-confessed CPD addict, she is always on the lookout for new opportunities to improve her language skills.