Conference Follow-up: Talking about Interpreting at Confluence

​The Confluence conference is designed to offer “workshops, and opportunities for discussion, networking and career development, and celebration focusing on various aspects of translation, including literary, practical and philosophical dimensions.”

It drew attendees from all local walks of life, including translators working between an impressive range of languages, a limited number of interpreters (like ourselves), and institutions. Here’s our take on the conference overall, and a bit about our small part in it.

The Conference

Confluence 2016 happened over two days, during International Translation Day, at Montgomery College near Washington DC. The first day, which we did not attend, was an open mic session with translators describing their translated works. The following day drew about 100 people, who attended presentations about both translating and interpreting topics.

The keynote was offered by David Bellos, of Is That a Fish in Your Ear? fame. One of the most impressive points made in this presentation has been previously mentioned in Thirwell’s review of the same book…

It’s often said, for instance, that a translation can’t ever be an adequate substitute for the original. But a translation, Bellos writes, isn’t trying to be the same as the original, but to be like it. Which is why the usual conceptual duo of translation — fidelity, and the literal — is too clumsy. These ideas just derive from the misplaced anxiety that a translation is trying to be a substitute.

Vivian Cook would be impressed.

Bellos’ presentation moved several audience members to explore a whole host of issues. For almost an hour, the questions came. Could it be that the translation community is hungry for a more theory/research driven approach to their practice? We hope so.

The presentations offered by others seemed more focused on the local community of translators and interpreters, and institutions. For example, local translators, like Andrew Gudgel and Minh Van T. Tran, spoke about their own translating work and discussed how poetic form can be maintained in translation. Later in the afternoon, Maria Brau and Amanda Curry discussed the FBI’s use of translators in an institutional capacity.

For our part…

Intran Solutions presented Signaling Quality through Interpretation. This focused on creating a new method of practice for interpreters that is designed from linguistic and economic perspectives. This was a big experiment for us, because we weren’t sure how the audience would take to discussing such topics, and we were very interested in getting critical feedback from the community. Wonderful things seem to have come out of it. Several audience members offered questions and critiques that will help us build on the idea.

Every conference brings something a little different to the table. Confluence focuses on the local Washington DC scene. If there was anything that we’d like to see changed, it would be to label interpreting as distinct from translation. Still, it was awesome to see such variety present in such a local event.
 
(Picture: Big Guns by Krystian Olszanski)

Author: Michael Grez

Intran Solutions' Director. Chinese/English Interpretation. Contact us at (610) 701-1345 or grezm@intransolutions.com