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BP conference, BP24conf, Conferences, CPD, freelance translator, Networking, Professional translator, Seville, Translation
Despite being a keen conference goer, I’d never attended a BP Conference before this April. I’d registered for the event in Vienna in April 2018, but an accident on the ski slopes a few weeks earlier and a ruptured ACL put paid to that. The following year, the event was very close to the ITI Conference in Sheffield, which I couldn’t miss (and wouldn’t want to!) as a Fellow and new board member, then of course it was the pandemic in 2020… So when I saw that this year’s event was due to be held in Seville, my Spanish linguist-son’s all-time favourite Spanish city, I couldn’t resist. I’d heard a lot of hype about the BP conferences, now it was finally time to experience it for myself.
First impressions? A very friendly bunch of people and excellent vibes. I’d met a fair few of the delegates before, either online or at other conferences, but there were many long-term BP attendees I hadn’t met before and lots of newbies like me, of course. It was great to finally meet up with some Foodie Translators I’d only ever met online, even though we only had time to fit in a foodie breakfast at the hotel on this occasion. This was no hardship as the food at the venue, Hotel Silken Al Andalus Palace, was excellent – amazing breakfast buffet with lashings of fresh fruit, bread, pastries, hot food, cheese, ham, etc. They did us proud at lunchtime too – this was a far cry from beige conference food with fresh paella, a range of hot choices and delicious salads and desserts. There was even wine on the table, something I’ve only experienced at Spanish conferences!
I’d chosen to stay at the hotel, even though it was a 30-minute walk from the centre of Seville, because it was easier to access the conference sessions and the welcome reception, plus it’s always good to know you can return to your room during the day if you need time to yourself. The hotel also had a lovely pool, which was an extra bonus – perfect for decompressing at the end of a long day of listening and networking! Unusually (in my experience) for Spanish hotels, my room also had a kettle, so I was able to keep my tea levels topped up, although others weren’t so fortunate. I’d taken my trusty travel kettle just in case, after forgetting when I attended Elia Together in Barcelona in 2016 and having to share a friend’s immersion heater for my bedtime cuppa.
I’ve also learnt from experience over the years that it’s good to take a day or so either side of the conference to settle in and allow time for sightseeing. Translation conferences can be very intense affairs, with every minute accounted for, so it’s essential to allow time for yourself. This time, I arrived on the Sunday before the conference reception on the Monday evening, and arranged to meet up with colleague Dagmar Jenner, who I hadn’t met in person since the ProZ conference in Vienna in 2009! We are both part of an online translators’ yoga accountability group set up by her twin Judy in March 2020 and still going to this day. It has proved to be a wonderful support mechanism, not only for yoga, but for other life crises. It was lovely to spend the day sightseeing together, getting an introductory feel for this beautiful city and viewing it from the walkway at the top of the Setas, fascinating mushroom-like wooden structures overlooking the old city, and from the river when we took a boat trip at the end of the day.
More networking opportunities the next day when a group of us had arranged to visit the Real Alcazar together, a beautiful Moorish fortress in the heart of the city, followed by lunch of tasty tapas and tinto de verano in a bar off a secluded square – no mean feat trying to get a largish group to sit down together! The evening welcome reception was drinks and canapés by the pool, a delightful chance to renew acquaintances and meet new colleagues.
The conference proper started on Tuesday morning, with a somewhat lacklustre keynote session on AI-Geddon from a nervous first-time presenter rather than the high-profile presentations I’ve come to expect from other conferences. One of the reasons I’ve been wary of attending BP Conferences before is that I was concerned that the sessions were very much marketing-based and this time there was a fair sprinkling of AI in the mix too. At the tail end of my career, and working predominantly for direct clients, I did wonder whether there would be much of interest for me, but I’m happy to say things did improve from there on!
Highlights for me included Rea Gutzwiller’s talk on Saying No to Clients, something I’ve been doing for many years, but it’s always good to have a reminder and Rea put her point across very well. Only last week I wished I’d listened to my own advice when I found myself being pressured into accepting a marriage certificate translation for a local client even though I’d initially said I was too busy. She was very persistent (in a pleasant way) and I eventually agreed to meet up with her, but ended up pulling out the day before as I really was too busy, and by then had extra medical appointments to slot in too. Motto: we are freelancers and therefore free to choose what we want to do – don’t allow anyone to wear you down! I hasten to add that I did find a colleague who could help her instead (as I’d offered to do at the outset).
As Rea said so succinctly, turning jobs down invariably leads to you having time to accept other more enjoyable/lucrative opportunities. There’s nothing worse than accepting a job you really don’t want to do, only to find a tantalising project arriving in your inbox the very next day, but you’re now too tied up to accept it… I’m not sure whether it was Rea or someone in the audience who suggested putting the end date of a particularly grim project you’ve turned down in your calendar, so that you can breathe a sigh of relief all over again when the date comes around and you’ve not had to spend all that time working on something you’ve hated – and hopefully been doing something much more exciting instead!
Another excellent presentation was given by Alicja Tokarska who spoke entertainingly about working a 4-day week, harnessing your own natural lark/night owl inclinations to work more effectively, when it suits you, and gaining an extra day off. She also mentioned that according to psychologist Michael Breus there are four chronotypes, not just the standard lark/owl: lion, dolphin, bear, and wolf: https://sleepdoctor.com/how-sleep-works/chronotypes/ Unfortunately, after doing the quiz, I came out as a bear and I’m pretty sure I’m a wolf, but hey ho, it’s good to know when you function best whether or not you fit standard descriptions.
Graph courtesy of www.sleepdoctor.com
Dana Szabados gave a fascinating presentation on gender stereotypes in negotiation (so true!) and Agostina Babbo spoke engagingly about her experience of workcations, with useful tips like finding a coworking space when you’re travel so you don’t have to take all your technical gear with you – bonus if you manage to hook up with a translators’ co-working group as you’ll meet new colleagues in the process. She mentioned an app called Croissant (www.getcroissant.com/) which is an easy way to find coworking spaces wherever in the world you may be.
While I try not to work while I’m on holiday, when I spent a month in the US last year for the birth of my fourth grandchild, I did take my laptop and did a few translations to keep my hand in and avoid letting regular clients down. The time difference can work in your favour too. I ended up outsourcing a larger job that came in to a trusted colleague and then just did the editing, which worked really well given that I didn’t want to work that many hours. I also asked a colleague to house/dogsit for me in my absence; nice for her to explore a new area and work from my house, and nice for me not to have to worry about Leo the labrador. I posted on a couple of my networks and received so many replies from people keen to stay in the UK, so if you ever fancy a change of scenery, it’s something worth considering before you pay for Airbnb.
On a more technical note, I thoroughly enjoyed Carlos La Orden Tovar’s presentation on glossary management. Having access to lots of glossaries is key to how I use Trados and he gave lots of useful tips, such as using RWS Multiterm Extract to extract terms before starting a new project. He also suggested creating and offering glossaries to clients to provide added value and demonstrate that you’re a true expert in your field. He reminded us too of TermExcelerator, which allows you to use a glossary you’ve received as a spreadsheet straight in Trados without putting it through Glossary Converter first – something I’d forgotten, I must admit. Finally (I said it was a useful session!) he mentioned a couple of helpful online glossaries: Agrovoc (https://www.fao.org/agrovoc/) for all terms agricultural and WIPO Pearl, WIPO’s Multilingual Terminology Portal for patents (https://www.wipo.int/reference/en/wipopearl/).
Finally, I also enjoyed Jerzy Czopik’s session on QA in CAT tools. While I do use the QA functions in Trados and find them so useful (especially checking for numbers I’ve inadvertently missed in long patent sentences), it seems many people just accept the default settings, which are minimal. It definitely pays to look in the individual settings for your QA checker (whether MemoQ or Trados) and see whether you can add things that will help in your specific language combination. He mentioned using REGEX to check for spaces between numbers and units of measurement, but as I’ve failed miserably to get to grips with REGEX (too much like coding for my non-techy brain), he did promise to send us the code string if we emailed – I must remember to do so!
He also solved a problem I’ve had with not being able to save the QA settings for future projects when you change them within a project as you can’t edit the QA settings during project set-up. It turns out there’s a ‘Create new project template’ option in the ribbon, so if you click that when you know you’ve made changes that you want to re-use in future templates, you can then use that going forward – perfect! That tip (and the one I received from a colleague at breakfast (thanks, Nancy!) about disabling the annoying motivational messages and sound effects on Duolingo) almost made the conference worthwhile in their own right for me!
The last session of the conference was a new open mic session, about which I had mixed feelings. A few candidates used it as an opportunity to do a marketing spiel for their own products/company, which I really don’t think was acceptable, whereas others were excellent. Kudos to Desiree Tigerstrand Cox (good to meet my namesake at last – I had no idea there were any Coxes in Germany!) for standing up and talking about neurodivergence – it takes a great deal of courage to stand up and speak in front of hundreds of people and I think her words struck a chord with many of us. Translators are often introverted, feel overwhelmed by large gatherings and are subject to sensory overload, but we certainly don’t look any different from the next person.
Jerzy ended this closing session with a brief word about discount grids issued by agencies. I rarely work for agencies these days, and don’t offer discounts for fuzzy matches on the odd occasion I do, but it turns out that some unscrupulous agencies are now tweaking their charts to include internal fuzzy matches, which in effect means they are profiting from your future work. This can make a huge difference to your bottom line, especially in large projects, so do watch out.
There were other sessions I’ve heard great things about, and one of the joys of the post-pandemic world is that most conferences are now streamed as well, so even in-person attendees can catch up with the sessions they missed after the event. The online sessions will be held on 14-17 May.
Csaba, the conference organiser, had laid on some excellent optional day trips (more networking with a different group of people!) on the Thursday and Friday after the conference proper and I’d opted to go on the trip to Ronda and Setenil, which was stunning, if a bit of a rush. Perhaps just visiting Ronda would have been enough in retrospect? On the final morning, I managed to fit in a whirlwind tour of two of the gardens Monty Don had mentioned on his Spanish Gardens programme (Casa de Pilatos and Palacio de las Dueñas) with a colleague. I’m so glad I did as they were truly beautiful: the perfect way to unwind after a busy trip, especially for a gardening translator.
All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed my time in Seville and my first BP conference. Next year’s event will be in Krakow – I haven’t decided yet whether I’ll be going, but I certainly recommend the experience! For me, despite being an inveterate introvert, conferences are all about the people and this one delivered in spades.
ClaireCoxTranslations 