As
we approach the end of another year of challenges and hard
work, my greetings to all of you readers of the Ccaps
Newsletter. It is a good feeling to connect in this
way with fellow translators and interpreters in my hometown
of Rio and in many other places covered by Ccaps. This is
not an easy market (let alone stable) in which to do business
and make a living. The speed of change overwhelms me daily.
It helps me, however, to think of the stories we will have
to tell our grandchildren and their children. Just think of
their faces when they hear about “the way we used to
work” at the turn of the millennium – the way
we typed and edited text, mailed translations, proofread our
documents, and the kind of equipment we used to interpret
meetings and conferences! Our profession is a truly modern
one and we are making history – in global communication
and in global business.
Trying
to keep up with the times is also the job of ATA – the
American Translators Association. I am pleased to be serving
my second term as administrator of the Portuguese Language
Division, which is one of our many divisions within ATA.
Scott
Brennan, our president, visited Brazil earlier this year to
talk about membership during the 3rd Ibero-American Conference
(CIATI) in São Paulo. We may be based in the U.S.,
but we have members all over the world. Scott explained that
we are open to everyone, including students and individuals
who are not U.S. residents. We are pleased to have 54 members
in Brazil at this time. This includes both certified and non-certified
members, distributed throughout 19 cities. Brennan made initial
contacts with ABRATES for future collaboration.
Many
ATA members coming from Brazil and many other countries have
attended our annual conferences in the U.S. and many have
given outstanding presentations on the different aspects of
translation and interpreting. Our 45th annual conference was
last month in Toronto (first time in Canada!) and we had two
lecturers from Brazil talking about legal translation challenges
– Tamara Barile, a legal translator with offices in
São Paulo and Vera Monteiro, a practicing attorney
also from São Paulo. Dr. Regina Alfarano and Paulo
Roberto Lopes, as well as Renato Beninatto (founder of the
Trad-Prt e-mail list) and João Roque Dias (technical
translator from Lisbon) have also presented at ATA conferences
in past years with great success.
ATA
has also been very active in sponsoring smaller, specialized
conferences in different cities, with a narrower focus on
subjects such as financial translation, translation for the
entertainment industry and court interpreting. These events
present an excellent opportunities for in-depth learning in
a variety of languages. Two years ago we were thrilled to
have Danilo Nogueira, from São Paulo, at the ATA Financial
Conference in New York. Last year we were able to invite Maria
Chaves de Mello, the dictionary author from Rio, to speak
at the ATA Legal Translation Conference in Jersey City.
The
website of our association, www.atanet.org,
has all the necessary information about how to become a member
and how to take the ATA certification exam. As a member, you
automatically start receiving our monthly magazine, The ATA
Chronicle. Also, when you become a member, you can pay a small
fee to add a membership to any division you want, including
our Portuguese Language Division. Our division provides many
opportunities for networking and learning in a more intimate
and effective way. We have our website and our own quarterly
publication, the PLData newsletter, with news, stories and
interviews. Last year we were able to interview Lia Wyler,
the translator of the Harry Potter books in Brazil, and our
most recent issue features my interview with Sergio Xavier
Ferreira, president Lula’s personal interpreter. Please
visit us at: www.ata-divisions.org/PLD
Another
initiative of the ATA Portuguese Language Division is our
Spring Meetings, held each year during the months of April
and May. Other divisions such as the Spanish Language Division
also hold this kind of mid-year conferences. The trend now
is to hold them bi-annually, instead of annually, due to other
equally interesting events sponsored by ATA throughout the
year. Our 10th anniversary of the Spring Meeting was held
last May in Providence, Rhode Island. Fifty plus colleagues
enjoyed professional and cultural enrichment sessions in the
heart of a geographical area rich with Portuguese-speaking
immigrants and descendants of immigrants from Portugal, Brazil,
the Azores, Cape Verde and Mozambique. These are short, two-day
meetings, deemed delightful by most participants.
Many
people ask for information about the ATA certification exam,
which is now also being offered outside of the U.S. There
was a sitting of the exam in Brazil last year and ATA has
plans for another sitting in 2005. There are still no set
dates at this time. The exam is offered in different locations
and different dates every year, depending on the availability
of an ATA chapter in a particular city or country, or at least
a certified ATA member willing to organize and proctor the
exam. The schedule is posted on the ATA website and appears
in Chronicle magazine. The ATA website has a section
dedicated to information about the ATA certification exam.
It is generally agreed to be an outstanding credential to
hold in our profession.
I
hope this information is useful to many readers. I am proud
to belong to ATA today, but I started in a much smaller way,
by joining local groups and associations in my own neighborhood.
I encourage every one of you beginners, in Brazil or elsewhere,
to look for your nearest group or association and join it.
More than in most other professions, we need each other.
Hook
up with people you truly love during this holiday season and
take a break, if you possibly can. We will all need our spirits
re-charged to keep up the good work in 2005 by helping people
communicate all over this planet. After all, we play a very
significant role in making it healthier, safer, freer and
more prosperous.
Happy
Holidays and Happy New Year!
Tereza d’Ávila Braga
is a native of Rio and a freelance translator based in Dallas.
She is an ATA-certified translator for English into Portuguese,
simultaneous interpreter, current administrator of the ATA
Portuguese Language Division and editor of the PLData newsletter.
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