The next Open Office will be held on Friday March 17.

In the past Open Office sessions, we discussed various important topics related to our business, the tools we use, and more. Colleagues got to know each other, to the point that some may consider others their closest peers.

Yet, we know far too little about each other’s work. In fact we may have never seen a sentence translated by the other. And this is nothing exceptional: in the 40+ translation conferences I attended in the past 10 years there were only a handful of sessions where one could get a glimpse into peers’ actual work. Perhaps this is why I found the [i]Assises de la traduction littéraire[/i] in Arles so refreshing, and this is why translation slams have been so well received in some other conferences.

When I started the Open Office series, I thought it might be a good environment to discuss and debate peers’ translations in detail. To see why the translator chose specific formulations, what choices others would have made, what makes a translation sound good for some but not for the others, etc. And if native speakers of both the source and the target language are present, translators seeking feedback can receive lots of useful tips.

It seems the time has come for staging the first such discussion. One of our colleagues kindly accepted the challenge to translate a great piece of text and present the work in progress.

The open office will open at 2:30 pm, and the discussion of the work-in-progress translation will start around 4 pm.

The usual buffet-style dinner will start around 7 pm. If someone (or someone’s partner) feels like joining us only for this part, they are welcome.

Hope to meet many of you on Friday!

Attila

Venue: Théâtre le Levain,
26 rue de la République 33130 Bègles