STI Attends the 51st Annual ATA Conference in Denver
Brett Gallagher July 5 2011 10:03:04 AM
Being a corporate member of the American Translators Association (ATA) and a prominent player in the translation industry for more than three decades, STI is a regular attendee at the Annual ATA Conference, and this past week, I had the privilege of attending my third ATA Conference, this year being hosted at the Hyatt Regency in Denver, Colorado.
It also just so happens that my grandparents live several hours from Denver, in Basalt, Colorado (about 30 minutes from Aspen), so I was fortunate enough to be able to mix a short vacation with a business trip. Having never been to the Rocky Mountains, I was thoroughly impressed with the breathtaking scenery of the Aspen area. We visited the Maroon Bells, two famous peaks in the Elk Mountains, about 12 miles outside of Aspen, as well as Aspen itself, and then made a 3-hour trip to Moah, Utah, where we visited the Arches National Park.
Most of the time, however, I spent talking with my grandfather, a colorful character who immigrated to the United States from Northeast China (Harbin, to be exact) in the 1930s (although he is Russian, not ethnic Chinese). At 91 years young, he is still very active and lively, skiing every day during the winter.
By Thursday morning, though, it was time to get back to business and up to Denver to attend the conference. As with my past two experiences at the ATA conferences in San Francisco (in 2007) and New York (in 2009), the hotel in Denver was very nice, and the conference was well attended. Being the only representative from STI to attend the event this year, my work was cut out for me, as there were a number of sessions I wanted to attend, as well as browsing the exhibit hall, visiting the job marketplace to pick up resumes and business cards for prospective new translators, as well as taking some time to meet with several of our independent contract translators who were also in attendance.
My first session was a fascinating analysis of language service provider (LSP) websites and sales/marketing, based on a survey conducted by Common Sense Advisory (presented by Ben Sargent). I was surprised to learn how much uniformity there was amongst translation companies when it came to their website layout and designs, but also came back with a few new marketing ideas of my own. I was also able to attend a session on social media, which was likewise very informative, and seemed to be the 'buzz' at this year's conference. I personally enjoyed 'tweeting' from the event, and managed to pick up a few new Twitter followers myself (If any of our readers interested, you can follow me on Twitter, too -- @STITransDavid).
On Saturday morning, I trudged over to the Convention Center to attend a session on Classical Chinese, one of my personal interests (and what I studied in graduate school), but was a little surprised when the speaker never showed up! It turned out pretty well, though, when I got to meet several new Chinese linguist friends, a couple of whom came from Taiwan, where I lived for nearly six years. It was a blast to speak with them about many of the places I visited and fun things I did while in Taiwan, and I even managed to give them a fairly decent, albeit brief lesson on how to deal with Classical Chinese phrases when they appear in translations (as they sometimes do). So, hopefully they didn't feel too disappointed that they missed out on that particular session's content!
Finally, on Saturday afternoon, it was my turn to present a session, on 'Sun Tzu's The Art of War & Business,' which I had presented to the management team here at STI earlier in the year. Not being a business manager or sales expert by education (my fields were Chinese language and literature), it was fun to be able to blend my personal interest in classical Chinese literature (namely, Sun Tzu's The Art of War) along with some practical business applications of that philosophy.
It just so happened, though, that there was a session on machine translation right next door at the same time (along with social media, that subject also seemed to be generating quite a bit of 'buzz' at this year's conference), so my own session was not as well attended as I may have hoped. Nevertheless, 30-40 attendees certainly wasn't bad at all, and I hope that each of them went away from the presentation having learned something new and interesting!
Having spent more than a week out in Colorado, though, by Sunday morning, I was more than ready to make the journey back to Maryland (and yes, even come back to the office to work!).
Next year's ATA Conference will be held in Boston, Massachusetts, on October 26-29, 2011, so hopefully we will see some of you then!
Written by David Evseeff
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About STI, Inc.
STI has been a leading provider in the patent & IP translation industry for more than 30 years, helping numerous government and private sector clients to meet their translation, localization, and interpretation needs. STI integrates the best in human and technological resources to help our clients break down language barriers and face the demands of increasingly rapid globalization. With an effective, personalized, and proven system of project management, there is no project too big or too small.
STI is a Corporate Member of the American Translators Association (ATA) and a Charter Member of the Association of Language Companies (ALC), the only trade association in the U.S. devoted to the language industry. STI's President, Marla Schulman, is the Immediate Past President of the AlC.
STI is located in the Washington D.C metro area. To learn more, please contact STI at www.schreibernet.com, or call (301) 424-7737.
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