NEaT event – The Influence of English in the Nordics

NEaT would like to invite you to a special online English as a Lingua Nordica presentation on Monday, 13 May at 6 pm EET, 5 pm CET. This talk will be on the influence of English-language culture and the role of English in the Nordic languages. Professor Kristy Beers Fägersten will discuss this influence through the examples of English and Swedish swear words, which apply to the Nordic languages in general. She will also discuss whether and how to translate swear words, the status of English swear words as appropriated into the Nordic languages, and the function of the censorship of native swear words.

The session is free to members, ten euros for non-members. If you are in Finland, pay to BIC NDEAFIHH, IBAN FI48 1237 3000 1522 20, and if outside of Finland, you will be sent a link for payment. Join the meeting here.

About the presenter: Kristy Beers Fägersten is Professor of English Linguistics at the School of Culture and Education at Södertörn University, Sweden. Her research disciplines include pragmatics, discourse analysis, sociolinguistics, and conversation analysis. Her publications feature analyses of the language of media and popular culture, with a special focus on language play, humor, and swearing. Beers Fägersten is the co-editor of English in the Nordic Countries: Connections, tensions, and everyday realities (Routledge, 2023) and co-author of “The evolution of swearing in television catchphrases” in Languages and Literature (2022), and “Censorship and taboo maintanance in L1 and LX swearing”, submitted to Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development

NEaT AGM and Tenth Anniversary Celebration

On 15 March 2014, a few editors and translators met in the back room of Leijuva Lahna to hammer out the foundations of a new organization. On the day NEaT turns ten, we return to the pub where it all began.

  • Place: Eerikinkatu 14, Helsinki, in the back room
  • Time: 5 pm EET for the AGM, 6 pm for the quiz

First, we will hold our annual AGM, which will start at 5 pm EET. The agenda for this is below. If you cannot come in person, you can join us on Zoom here. Note that we will be voting on updated wording on our website and in our constitution, and a new membership category. Note also the proposed increase in the membership fee.

Then, we’ll recreate the pub quiz from our first AGM and toast ten NEaT years together.

Nordic Editors and Translators Annual General Meeting 2024

Friday, 15 March 2024 at 17:00 EET

Leijuva Lahna, Eerikinkatu 14, Helsinki Finland and on Zoom (members will receive the Zoom link)

The agenda, as laid out in our constitution, is as follows.

The Annual General Meeting of the Association shall consider the following business:

  1. Opening of the meeting.
  2. Election of a chairperson, a secretary, two individuals to scrutinise the minutes. and two individuals to count the votes at the meeting where necessary.
  3. Verification that the meeting is lawful.
  4. Approval of the agenda for the meeting.
  5. Presentation of the financial statements and the annual report by the treasurer.
  6. Decision to confirm the financial statements and discharge the Board and other accountable persons from liability, subject to the auditor’s report.
  7. Presentation of the activities in 2023 and the operating plan for 2024 by the Chair of NEaT. The treasurer will comment on the budget for 2024.
  8. Confirmation of the operating plan and the budget.
  9. Confirmation of the membership subscription. It is proposed that the membership subscription be increased to 40 euros.
  10. Reports on events, education, cooperation and communications by the chairs of the respective committees.
  11. Election of the Chair and other members and deputy members of the Board for the following year.
  12. Election of one auditor and one deputy auditor. The board proposes Tomi Snellman as the auditor for 2023, with Matthew Paines as deputy auditor.
  13. Consideration of any other business specified in the invitation to the meeting.
    1. To introduce a new membership category, trial membership (koejäsen in Finnish, compare the Finnish Association of Translators and Interpreters membership category https://www.sktl.fi/liitto/sktl-n-hallinto/rules-saannot-englanniksi/) as follows with a proposed lower fee for 2024 of 25 euros. 

Trial membership of NEaT includes:

  • A lower fee
  • Access to the NEaT mentoring programme
  • Access to resources, events and training
  • The newsletter and social media groups (Facebook, LinkedIn)
  • But does not include access to the google group list where jobs are posted

Active trial members (participate in at least one event per year, online or in person) may renew membership for up to 3 years, after which they can apply to be full members.

  1. To add   “into or out of English as one of their working languages” to the description What is NEaT? on the NEaT website. This is to emphasize that NEaT is open to all language professionals who work with English, not only those whose primary working language is English.

Current wording:

Nordic Editors and Translators is an organization of editors, translators and language professionals who work in English as their primary language.

New wording:

Nordic Editors and Translators is an organization of editors, translators and language professionals who work into or out of English as one of their working languages.

New Finnish version: Nordic Editors and Translators ry on yhdistys, jonka jäseniä ovat kielentarkistajat, kääntäjät ja kieliammattilaiset, joiden yksi työkieli on englanti kielisuunnasta riippumatta.

  1. In accordance with b. above, to amend the wording of the English translation of point 2 of the NEaT constitution https://nordicedit.fi/?page_id=134 to replace add “who have English as one of their working languages.”
  2. Purpose, and nature of operations

Current wording:

The purpose of the Association shall be to promote and advance the collaboration, training and professional development of editors, translators  and other language professionals.

New wording:

The purpose of the Association shall be to promote and advance the collaboration, training and professional development of editors, translators  and other language professionals who have English as one of their working languages.

New Finnish version: Yhdistyksen tarkoituksena on perustaa ammattilaisverkosto kielentarkistajille, kääntäjille ja muille kieliammattilaisille, joiden yhtenä työkielenä on englanti, jatkokoulutusta ja työssä kehittymistä sekä ammatillisten standardien vakiinnuttamista varten ja ylläpitää tätä verkostoa.

NEaT deep dive: LLMs and AI

NEaT would like to welcome you to a special online English as a Lingua Nordica mini presentation on Tuesday, January 23 at 5 pm Helsinki time (4 pm CET) on Zoom. If we are going to take these new tools into our own work, we have to know what they do and how they work. Then you start to understand how they might fit into your own tasks. If you have questions or even concerns about large language models, ChatGPT and other AI, and how they work, this is the session for you. The session is free to members, ten euros for non-members, to be paid to BIC NDEAFIHH, IBAN FI48 1237 3000 1522 20. 

About the presenter: Mathias Creutz is a senior university lecturer in language technology at the University of Helsinki. During his career in academia and the industry he has worked on a broad range of natural language processing tasks, such as proofing tools, automatic morphological analysis, speech recognition, machine translation, information retrieval, paraphrasing, and grammatical error correction. During the past year he has tested new approaches to solving these tasks by utilizing large language models for conversational AI, such as ChatGPT.

Celebrate the holidays with NEaT

NEaT’s annual holiday party will be in Helsinki on the evening of Friday, 1 December. Join us after work at 6 pm for a relaxed and fun evening focused on getting to know each other. We’ll have a baked potato bar, so bring your favorite potato topping to add to the menu and your own beverages. NEaT will provide a welcoming drink, dessert and all the potatoes you can eat. 

This is an open event so bring a friend or colleague you would like to introduce to NEaT.

1 December at 6 pm

PAM Office, Säästöpankinranta 4 C 21, Helsinki, push the buzzer and we’ll open the door

Free for members, five euros for non-members

RSVP at info@nordicedit.fi.

If you miss the Helsinki gathering, you are welcome to join the NEaT new year online on Tuesday 9 January. 

A new year, a new you? See you in January to share experiences from last year and think about the year to come. What do you hope for yourself and your work in 2024? Do you have any new year’s resolutions? Join us on Zoom for an hour from 5 pm Helsinki time to ring in the new year with us.