CPD roundup: March 2025
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
Rebuilding Nature: Guidance on Ecological Restoration (RSK)
Recording: https://rskgroup.com/events/rebuilding-nature/
This webinar looked at a few different aspects of habitat restoration. particularly in light of RSK’s good practice guide for ecological restoration and about their future work plans. Two key takeaways for me was that restoration is inevitably an iterative process that needs to be carefully planned, monitored and adjusted throughout the course of the implementation, and that it’s almost always a good idea to look at restoration projects at scale.
Omnibus-Update und Einschätzung - Was Unternehmen jetzt beachten müssen (Tanso)
[Omnibus update and assessment – what companies need to be aware of now
Recording: https://www.tanso.de/en/webinare/omnibus-update
As the name suggests, this webinar was about the proposed changes to the timelines for the implementation of the CSRD. Tanso identifies four major groups that are affected by the changes – mostly in that they now have more time to put the necessary steps in place. That said, one thing that was very clear is that the speed of travel may have changed, but not the direction, so there’s no sense in putting off taking action if your company is, or will be, affected by the CSRD requirements.
Back to the future? The history of farming, its present, and possibilities (Emergent Generation)
Recording: not recorded
Unfortunately I couldn’t stay for the whole of this, but the presentation portion was really interesting, looking at how earlier (pre-industrial, and indeed pre-enclosure) ideas about farming and our relationship with the land were more sustainable, if imperfect. That isn’t to say that there isn’t a role for new technologies and approaches, but rather that they need to implemented in service of a larger vision of what our agricultural land and the countryside “should” look like.
CSRD: Comprendre les normes ESRS (ALTOPI)
[CSRD: Understanding the ESRS standards]
This webinar was more aimed at companies that fall under the ESRS requirements, but have not yet taken the steps needed to fulfil them. As such, it talked about the different standards and what they mean on a reportable indicator level. Whilst a lot of this was not new to me, I make a point of trying to refresh me knowledge of these different standards in the languages I translate from, so that I can recognise when certain key terms are being used.
Behaviour change for biodiversity conservation: An update! (Institution of Environmental Sciences)
Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DeEiQ-njvwE
I love to see interdisciplinarity in action, and this webinar was a great example. It talked about taking the principles of behaviour change, what we might call an area of psychology or organisation studies, and applied it to environmental science. It looked at some really interesting examples of where these principles had been put into action to achieve certain goals, such as reducing killing of wildlife and the illegal wildlife trade routes. It got a bit technical, so I won’t try to summarise the detail here, but it’s worth a watch!
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.
It was my turn to set the text this month, and I picked an extract from a sustainability newsletter. The content itself was not in and of itself too challenging on the technical side, but it was an interesting exercise for two reasons. Firstly, striking the right level of formality and tone was challenging – register levels tend to vary between languages, as do the levels of direct address, both of which are important factors in how friendly a text comes across. The tone had to be relaxed and approachable, but also authoritative enough to inspire confidence. The second challenge was that the newsletter itself is strongly associated with a particular area in France, so we had some interesting conversations about how much you would want to “localise” the content to make it more accessible to an international audience. Of course, in reality you would discuss it with the client and work out what the best strategy would be for what they were trying to achieve.