CPD Roundup: March 2024
Welcome to March’s CPD round-up! This is where I share a quick summary of the continuing profession development (CPD) I’ve completed during the month.
The Institute of Translation and Interpreting recommends that all members, including Qualified Members (MITIs) like me, do at least 30 hours of CPD per year. I normally end up doing rather more than that, and I normally only include subject-knowledge CPD (and sometimes some translation skills CPD) in this public summary. You can find out about the other types of CPD that the ITI recommends here and my previous summaries here.
Subject knowledge
Epidemiological perspectives on wastewater and environmental surveillance for pathogens (Foundation for Water Research Community of the Institution of Environmental Sciences)
Recording: https://www.the-ies.org/events/fwr-webinar-WBE
(The webinar was recorded, but it does not yet seem to have been released publicly.)
This was a really interesting talk about something that I understand the broad principles of but have never really looked into in detail. Kath O’Reilly presented a really engaging summary of the types of information we can gather about disease burdens from wastewater, what the limitations are, and whether it is an economically viable method compared to the alternatives. It might seem a little off-topic given the kinds of areas I focus on, but the more we understand about how safe the wastewater that we are dumping into our environments is the better!
Improving Energy Efficiency (UN Global Compact UK Network)
Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6I3GROnBgVM
For me, the Historic England section of this talk was the real highlight. The format of these sessions, where huge players are often only given a limited window to talk about what they do, means the presentations can feel a little superficial, and therefore predictable. This isn’t anyone’s fault, of course, it’s just the nature of the format. But the myth-busting approach of the Historic England presentation worked really well, and gave me something to really think about. Particularly since (and I realise this is probably heresy) I think that a lot of these new highly-energy-efficient buildings are built in a style that I find rather unattractive and out of keeping with their surroundings. It almost seems like the function is the only relevant factor, so it was good to hear from an expert proving that we can successfully combine function and beauty.
Living Mulches (Organic Research Centre)
Recording: https://www.organicresearchcentre.com/our-research/research-project-library/orc-living-mulches/
(I believe the webinar was recorded, but it does not yet seem to have been released publicly.)
One of the things I really love about going to events aimed at farmers is that they tend to be incredibly practical and rooted (apologies for the pun) in real-world experience. This session was no exception, with farmers sharing frank and honest results of their experiments with living mulches – both good and bad. If you’re not aware, a living mulch is essentially a kind of cover crop that is grown alongside the main harvestable crop. They provide benefits like suppressing weed growth, and some, e.g. clovers, fix nitrogen in the soil in a way that is then available to the main crop. As this webinar showed, however, they’re fiddly things. You can’t grow something that is too competitive with the main crop, and getting the timing right seems, at the moment, to be more art than science. It’s all really fascinating work though and well worth watching if/when the recording becomes available.
Textile, beauté, santé... quand l'agriculture sort de nos assiettes (Fondation FARM)
[Textils, beauty, health… agriculture beyond the food on our plates]
Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LqaHOMfoPUM (French only)
This was a bit of a refreshing change of pace from the formal structured webinars that I normally feature in my CPD round-ups. This isn’t to say it was an unstructured event, but it was in more of a moderated chat-show format. And like most chats, the conversation covered a huge variety of issues influenced by the experiences of the people involved in the conversation, from using isotopes to identify the origin of cotton fibres to promoting agricultural collectives in the Global South. It was interesting, as always, to hear from a variety of different actors in the field about what they’re currently thinking about,
South Essex Wildlife Hospital (Chelmsford Local Group of the Essex Wildlife Trust)
As always, I’m a little biased about the events put on by this group, as I help to run them. But I did genuinely think this was really fascinating, and in some ways a little alarming. Because whilst the South Essex Wildlife Hospital does incredible work, they also highlighted how many of the accidents they see in the animals brought in to them could be avoided. And how many well-intentioned people are simply not equipped to deal with injured animals when they encounter them – myself included! Of course, the long-term answer is to return more of the country’s land to wildlife as soon as possible, but in the meantime, do have a look at the incredible work they’re doing at the SEWH.
Translation skills
Revision club
A revision club is a peer-learning exercise where a small group of translators get together to sharpen our translation skills. This normally involves one person translating a document as practice and the others reviewing it for potential improvements. It can also take the form of a ‘slam’, where everybody in the group translates the same text and then compares versions.
This month’s revision club was a text about the value of guide dogs for the blind. I can’t say it’s something I’ve ever worked on in a professional context, but it was interesting. One discussion we did have was about the most appropriate terminology to use for people who are blind or partially sighted. If you’ve ever taken the Tube in London past King’s Cross station, you may have noticed that there’s an announcement to “Exit here for the Royal National Institute of Blind People”, According to the RNIB’s website, the institute changed its name from “The Royal National Institute of the Blind” to “The Royal National Institute of Blind People” in 2008, but I still have a clear memory of the Tube announcement using “…the Blind” - I can’t remember exactly when, of course! The point is that terminology changes, and it’s our job as translators to keep up with the preferred language.
Neurodiversity Celebration Week
March was also the month in which the 2024 edition of Neurodiversity Celebration Week took place. When I say that I believe in a better world, I mean that in the broadest possible sense, so this was a great opportunity to think about the role that neurodiversity plays in my work, business and indeed in my world. The schedule was absolutely jampacked, so I chose to focus on the language- and communication-related events, namely:
Neuro-inclusive Language & Communications (NCW centrally organised event)
Embracing neurodiversity in translation (organised by the Neurodiversity Network of the Institute of Translation and Interpreting)
They were both really quite wide-ranging events, filled with as much personal experience and anecdote as stats and figures - and above all with a call for greater kindness and compassion all round. I couldn’t do justice to them here, so I will simply suggest that you take a moment to look at all the different event recordings.