ATA Conference Review

I returned home from the ATA conference in Orlando on Saturday night and have been exceptionally busy ever since. I had suspected that I would have a hectic few days upon my return so I decided to keep today free to catch up with e-mail correspondence, go over my notes from the various sessions and draw up an action plan for any areas that might require further attention.

This was my third ATA conference since moving to the United States in 2005 and once again I found it enjoyable and informative. As a Midwesterner, I spent every second that I could attempting to soak in Orlando's 81ºF (27ºC) weather. If I try hard enough I can just about feel the Florida sunshine on my back rather than the freezing drizzle outside my window right now. The beautiful weather also meant that we were able to enjoy a number of events outdoors, including most receptions and breakfast, something that was just not possible in other locations. The trade-off was that the resort was located outside of the city centre and attendees were reliant on renting a car, knowing somebody who did or walking to Downtown Disney if they wanted to go "off-campus".

Now to the sessions themselves:

Favourite session: Chris Durban's Building a Clientele of Direct Clients. Funny and informative, I learned many little tricks for landing direct clients and it was easily my favourite presentation in three years of coming to ATA conferences.

A close second was Dr. Thea Döhler's session on time management. As a result of Thea's presentation, I am going to be altering my working day: there will be fewer blog posts from me in the morning and I will also be checking my e-mail less frequently once all of my projects for the day have arrived. Mornings are going to be dedicated solely to translation and translation as far as possible.

I also learned a great deal about Societas Europaea in Barbara Müller-Grant's presentation and enjoyed Patrick Oblander and Ken Le's session on environmental translation. More on that at a later date.

Favourite exhibition hall booth: InTrans Book Service where I purchased a new German-English environmental dictionary (Wörterbuch der Umweltrisikoprüfung und Altlastenerkündung by George Lindemann). Time and again, I am pleasantly surprised with my finds at Freek Lankhof's booth. As always, however, the book stand was rivalled by the massage station where I gained some much-needed relief for my feet and shoulders. I was also reminded that it is almost time to schedule my monthly chiropractor visit given the amount of tension that the massage therapist found in my neck.

I did not really spend as much time as usual in the exhibition hall this year because was too busy enjoying the sunny weather during the breaks and I am not really on the lookout for new agency clients or technologies. A couple of the brochures that I picked up from booths had some absolutely awful spelling mistakes, so much so that I began to wonder if proofreading was part of their assessment programme. Unfortunately not. This is a conference for language professionals, people. You really should have your advertising documents proofread – a message that apparently has not even reached some companies within our own industry.

Favourite official networking event: Despite being astoundingly bad value for money from a food and beverage perspective, the GLD Wine and Cheese Reception again proved to be a great opportunity to mingle and network with fellow German translators.

Favourite non-official networking event: Apart from having dinner and drinks with fellow German translators each night, one of the highlights for me was the blog lunch. Jill, Corinne, Judy, Michael, Susanne and I were joined by a couple of blog readers for lunch at a Mexican restaurant. I am fairly certain that either Jill or Judy took photos at lunch and I will add links once they have them posted on their blogs. Hopefully we will be able to make the blog lunch a permanent feature of the ATA conference.

I heard the same three messages in many of the presentations I attended: Specialise, be professional and raise rates whenever possible. As someone who beats the specialisation drum, it warmed my heart to hear how many presenters felt the same way. I also intend to come back to the issue of specialisation and tell the tale of Trash Girl later on this week. Stay tuned for that. For now, though, I will go back to pretending that I am sipping my coffee next to a pool in glorious sunshine.