Episode285

Screenshot of Kirsty, Suzie, Anna, Silvie, Aida, and Andrea in their Zoom meeting when the episode was recorded.

English with Kirsty – episode 285

8/10 Learning through conferences

You can listen to episode 285 here:

To celebrate 10 years of the English with Kirsty podcast, I’m creating a 10-part series to celebrate 10 different forms that learning can take.

Part eight of the series is about learning through conferences and what we can learn through attending, speaking at, or organising them.

I wanted different perspectives – geographically, in terms of specialisations, and to have different types of conference represented as well. So I put together our panel of five guests whom you’ll meet in this episode!

Who are my guests?

Silvie van der Zee is a Dutch translator who has been attending conferences since 2015 and who made her debut as a conference speaker at the BP25 conference in Kraków earlier this year.

Suzie Withers is a freelance French-to-English translator and also a copy editor, proofreader and content writer. She’s based in the UK and has attended a number of translation conferences (and unconferences!) in the UK and beyond over the last five years.

Andrea Egeresi is a Hungarian medical translator with 14 years of experience working mostly with clinical trial and regulatory materials. She has recently started working as a linguistic validation consultant as well and she has attended three conferences so far.

Anna Lewoc is a project manager at a boutique translation agency in Warsaw, Poland; university lecturer and
teacher of English; freelance translator, and organizer of conferences for translators.

Aída Ramos is a Madrid-based translator who specialises in marketing/transcreation and she works with a range of top‐level international brands as well as with a broad network of independent colleagues. Aída has designed and taught several courses on transcreation and she is always on the lookout for something new to learn.

What did we talk about?

It’s interesting how the main theme that ran through the answers was around community and connection rather than specific memorable talks and presentations! These were some of the topics that we discussed:

  • What’s one key thing that you have learned through a conference recently, whether as an attendee, a speaker, or an organiser?
  • Travel costs to attend large conferences in person can be a barrier for some. Have you experienced other variations on traditional conferences? (Moving the location each time, smaller events, online participation etc)
  • What would you say to someone who’s feeling overwhelmed with the number of options out there. How can they narrow down which event/events would be the best ones for them?
  • What about events that are aimed at the branch for which you translate? Do you have any experience of attending those?

Conference resources

At some point this list will go out of date because it includes upcoming events, but here are some of the conferences that we discussed.

Are you going to any of these events? Let us know!

This series is also a playlist on YouTube

If you’re enjoying this series in which we’re looking at the many different forms that learning can take, I’ve made a playlist on YouTube with all of the episodes! This is an audio podcast, so the YouTube episodes are audio too. You can Find the full playlist here.

How you can get in touch with me

I love to hear from my listeners! If you have any comments or questions, you can contact me using my contact form.

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