Meet Central Europe 2018
Our participation at Meet Central Europe 2018 – the trailblazing international conference of central and eastern European translation agencies and translators
At the end of October we attended the Meet Central Europe conference in Budapest. It was the first annual meeting under the auspices of four independent Central European translation associations from Austria, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia (AATC - Austrian Association of Translation Companies, ACTA - Association of Czech Translation Agencies, ATCSK - Association of Translation Companies of Slovakia and Proford - Hungarian Association of Professional Language Service Providers). The conference took place in the modern premises of BMC (Budapest Music Centre).
The whole conference was focused mainly on Vendor Management, which in our language means working with translators and interpreters - finding, qualifying and testing suppliers is a significant investment for most language service providers and is a very important part of our work. Experienced, professionally equipped, technically trained and motivated translators are the foundation and valuable resource of any translation company. We are interested in management systems and modern trends in this important area, so we were keen to attend the lectures, where we were represented by our purchasing manager Zdenka Moravcsiková.
All translation companies, whether small or large, deal with the same topics, such as quality, processes, evaluation and feedback, to name a few, and Aspena was assured after attending the lectures that its processes, set up in accordance with ISO, are of a very high standard. Nevertheless, we brought away inspiration and suggestions for further improvements to our procedures.
Topics revolved around, among other things, machine translation post-editing (this is a specific service during which a translator, or post-editor, checks and edits machine-translated text. The post-editor works with the original text to understand its meaning and must therefore have an above-average knowledge of both languages. The resulting text is then comparable in quality to a traditional translation by a translator). It is a major challenge for us translation companies and for individual translators.
Another big topic was working with machine translation (MT). Our Executive Director Jakub Čapek participated in the discussions on machine translation. Machine translation as such has been on the market for several years and every translation agency has become familiar with it and tested it with more or less success. Machine translation is only suitable for certain kinds of texts and languages, so it has been very interesting to see how much it has advanced. Our company is very traditional in this respect and the emphasis on the quality of work done by a "human" translator is the basis of our work. However, we have become convinced that testing the capabilities of machine translation is a necessity in our industry to keep up with new trends in the field, and our development department has therefore moved in the right direction in the area of machine translation.
Using the Whova app to track and schedule the agenda, easily make appointments with other conference attendees, post ads for translators or other job opportunities, share photos from the conference, etc. has proven to be very effective.
Two days full of lectures, meetings, lots of interesting people and colleagues from the translation industry, as well as an unforgettable networking dinner organised by theGALA association at the renownedKIOSK restaurant, convinced us that Aspena cannot miss the next edition of Meet Central Europe 2019, which will be held in Prague.
Topics revolved around, among other things, machine translation post-editing (this is a specific service during which a translator, or post-editor, checks and edits machine-translated text. The post-editor works with the original text to understand its meaning and must therefore have an above-average knowledge of both languages. The resulting text is then comparable in quality to a traditional translation by a translator). It is a major challenge for us translation companies and for individual translators.
Another big topic was working with machine translation (MT). Our Executive Director Jakub Čapek participated in the discussions on machine translation. Machine translation as such has been on the market for several years and every translation agency has become familiar with it and tested it with more or less success. Machine translation is only suitable for certain kinds of texts and languages, so it has been very interesting to see how much it has advanced. Our company is very traditional in this respect and the emphasis on the quality of work done by a "human" translator is the basis of our work. However, we have become convinced that testing the capabilities of machine translation is a necessity in our industry to keep up with new trends in the field, and our development department has therefore moved in the right direction in the area of machine translation.
Using the Whova app to track and schedule the agenda, easily make appointments with other conference attendees, post ads for translators or other job opportunities, share photos from the conference, etc. has proven to be very effective.
Two days full of lectures, meetings, lots of interesting people and colleagues from the translation industry, as well as an unforgettable networking dinner organised by theGALA association at the renownedKIOSK restaurant, convinced us that Aspena cannot miss the next edition of Meet Central Europe 2019, which will be held in Prague.