By Alexandra de Vries, DLD Blog Editor
Hello Dutch Language Division members,
It has been a while since we posted on our blog. We all know what it’s like as translators and/or interpreters. Our days just get away from us with projects and assignments. And especially when we don’t have a hard deadline for completing a project it is even more of a challenge. But after attending our small but fierce Dutch Language Division’s first birthday at the ATA Conference in Washington DC, I am all excited to fire up the keyboard and share regular posts on all things DLD and Dutch.
The annual conference is one of my favorite professional and personal events of the year as it allows me to catch up with colleagues and friends and attend some excellent sessions. In our upcoming blog post we will feature an interview with Neil Gouw who presented an interesting DLD session this year on our personal biases in translations).
On October 26th we held our Dutch Language Division Annual Meeting, aka our first birthday.
As we currently boast 252 members, including individuals and agencies or companies, I would like to share some division news especially for those who weren’t able to attend all the DLD activities at the conference.
We began the meeting with an overview of the various DLD information forums. Mery Molenaar, our webmaster, started off with the DLD website. For those who haven’t had a change to check out our website, please go to: www.ata-divisions.org/DLD/.
The site can be tricky to find, so you may want to bookmark the page. We would love to receive contributions, interesting links or other suggestions for content. Please send your ideas to: mery@molenaartranslations.com.
Next, Google Group Forum Moderator Irene Paquet gave an overview of the DLD Forum on Google Groups. The easiest way to join this Forum is by signing up with your Gmail account. However, you don’t need a Gmail account to sign up. You can use any email address. The name of the group is: ATA_DutchLD.
The DLD also has a presence on Twitter and Facebook. Social Media Coordinator Dennis Seine reported that over the course of the year we have posted 372 messages, we follow 323 other Twitter members and have 189 followers. Our Twitter handle is @ATA_DLD. Those who prefer to keep an eye on DLD through Facebook can check us out at www.facebook.com/DutchLanguageDivision/. Here you can also read all our tweets.
Blog Editor Cindi Sheridan-Heller expressed that for personal reasons she was unable to continue as blog editor so I have taken on this role for this upcoming year.
The next item on the agenda of the DLD Annual Meeting was next year’s election of the DLD officers. ATA division officers are elected for a two-year term so in the summer of 2018 DLD will hold an election for Administrator and Assistant Administrator. As required by the ATA Governing Policy for Divisions, there is a Nominating Committee. The committee is composed of DLD members Maha El Metwally and Dorine Oz-Vermeulen. DLD members should receive more information on the upcoming election in summer 2018.
We concluded the meeting by discussing the opportunity of inviting a DLD Guest Speaker for ATA59. Ideally, the speaker should be someone of interest to the DLD but with a broader appeal as well. ATA provides some funding to cover expenses for this speaker. If members would like to suggest a speaker or have questions on what this entails, please contact Leo van Zanten by January 1, 2018 at leillo61@gmail.com.
Photo by Lisseth Morin
Last but not least, an ATA conference wouldn’t be complete without our traditional Dutch Language dinner and social. For this year’s DLD dinner we gathered at a Belgian restaurant near the conference hotel. Approximately 25 members and friends enjoyed a lovely evening with great food and drinks. We were also joined by outgoing ATA president David Rumsey, who took the opportunity to spend some time with ATA’s youngest (and dare we say coolest?) division.
See the photo gallery for more pictures of our gathering. I know some of us already look forward to next year’s event in New Orleans! It’s never too early to start planning so if you have any ideas, please share them with us.
For now I wish you all the best for the final stretch of 2017 and hope you get to take some time off over the holidays.