International Association of Translation and Intercultural Studies

The From Our Lips to Your Ears project was featured in this month's bulletin from the International Association of Translation and Intercultural Studies (IATIS). Special thanks to IATIS for helping others learn about this opportunity!

The next IATIS conference will be held in Melbourne, Australia, July 8-10, 2009. The Conference theme will be Mediation and Conflict: Translation and Culture in a Global Context.

The Word is Getting Out!

Over the past couple of days, I've been hearing from our colleagues from Down Under as a result of the project being mentioned in the eNewsletter for AUSIT, a professional association for interpreters in Australia with more than 750 members. Thank you, AUSIT!

The national symbol for interpreting services in Australia is pictured at left.

I am also happy to report that many university professors around the world have also been willing to help spread the word among fellow faculty and students.

Our project continues to receive mentions in the blogosphere! It has been mentioned on Transblawg, a blog for German translators, the N-Zone blog, written by Norayda de Leon-Jones, a Spanish<>English court interpreter, and the Translation Blog, written by Céline Graciet.

This week, I also heard from a colleague to let me know that she had already heard about the publication in a variety of ways. The fact that people are hearing about the project from multiple sources is encouraging. Still, my hope is that all interpreters will have the opportunity to participate in the project, if they are so inclined. So, there is still work to be done and still more interpreters to reach. If you are interested in helping get the word out, feel free to visit the project website for some ideas.

The media release continues to be picked up by so many sites, we've lost track! A few new ones we received through Google Alerts include the SmartMoney site, ABC7 news (Los Angeles) and WLS-TV / ABC (Chicago).

In response to the recent story in the Washington Post, I am also supporting other journalists who are writing about interpreting issues. More items are currently in the works. If this project is mentioned in any of them, I will be sure to post an update here.

You can now subscribe to the From Our Lips to Your Ears blog in a reader. To do that, simply click on the small orange icon in the right-hand column. This enables you to view this blog using the news reader of your choice (Yahoo, Google, Explorer, AOL, etc.).

Within just a couple of days of adding the subscription feature this week, the FeedBurner stats indicated that quite a few people are already subscribing to this blog in a news reader. That was a surprise to me, but I chalk it up to the fact that we all enjoy reading positive things about our profession. Also, I may have underestimated the number of contributors who like to stay updated about the project.

I've also been getting requests from individuals for me to receive my "newsletter" and be added to my "mailing list". I had not yet planned for either of those, but given the interest, it looks like I will need to do so in the near future. For now, I've added another new feature, so that now, you can receive blog entries via email. If you're interested, it's easy to do - just enter your email address into the little box in the right-hand column.

Each day, more and more submissions, questions and ideas keep pouring in! So much so, in fact, that it's very hard to keep up with it all. Still, it's inspiring and encouraging to see so much support, both within the U.S. and internationally, for the project.

At this point, several of the interpreters and colleagues who have contacted me have said that this project is a wonderful public relations effort for the entire interpreting community. I consider it an honor to help people understand the value of interpreters in society. So, I can see why the project is being viewed this way. Still, my goal is much simpler: to collect and record anecdotes that demonstrate how interpreters are changing the world, and make them available through a publication. I believe that one of the project's benefits will be greater outreach to the public at large, in a positive way.

Thanks again for the amazing support, now evidenced through hundreds of emails, thousands of unique hits on the project website, as well as your continued phone calls and comments on this blog. As a special treat, click here to learn how to say Thank You in 465 languages.

Valerie Taylor-Bouladon Barnes

I am excited to report that I've been in touch with another author, Valerie Taylor-Bouladon Barnes, former Geneva-based UN interpreter, and the author of A Foreign Affair (published by Random House), who currently resides in Australia. Here are what reviewers had to say about her book:

"Barnes' writing technique, which is heavily dependent on anecdotes and vignettes, is entertaining." - Sydney Morning Herald

"Oh, to have led Valerie Barnes's life. [...] British-born Barnes was 20 when World War II ended and she was looking for adventure. Brilliant at languages - she could speak both French and Spanish fluently [...], a chance meeting and a bit of good luck landed her a short contract at the UN in Geneva as a translator. From there she never looked back." - Vogue

Valerie is also the author of another book, Conference Interpreting, Principles and Practice. She has offered to give our project permission to use as many anecdotes and stories from her books as we would like (giving due recognition to the source, obviously.) You can visit her site by clicking here.

About the author: Valerie Taylor-Bouladon Barnes was born in England but lived most of her life in Switzerland, working for the United Nations in Geneva. She started work there in October 1948 as a trilingual reporter, became a translator (English, French, Spanish and Russian) and then a simultaneous interpreter (English, French and Spanish). She interpreted at UN conferences in India, most of the countries of Africa and Europe, North and South America, the Middle East, China, Korea, Japan, Iran, Kuwait and now Australia, Kuala Lumpur, Sri Lanka, New Zealand, Tahiti, Samoa, Fiji, Rarotonga, New Caledonia and others.

While this post focuses on conference interpreting, since that is the field that Taylor-Bouladon Barnes worked in, I want to again emphasize that the From Our Lips to Your Ears project will include stories from all types of interpreting. All of these stories are important, meaningful and interesting