The NEaT mentoring scheme is running for the second year in 2023 for members to share experience and expertise. Mentors provide a few hours of their time to mentees to work on a particular issue. This can be core skills in a specific area of translation or editing, or specific business, marketing, IT or other skills related to our work. Regardless of how long you have been working, there are always new skills you might need to learn. Mentees will have a clear goal or skill related to their work as translators or editors that they want to work on over three one-to-one sessions.
NEaT mentors offer the following:
Specialisms: medical, sciences, academic, historical texts (primary and secondary sources), nonfiction books, public service, audiovisual and subtitling, plain and easy English
Linguistic core skills: Finnish and Swedish to English translation, Finnish authorised translator certification, copy-editing, proofreading
Writing: blogging, copywriting, nonfiction, academic, grant applications, marketing, SEO, content creation
Tech: Overleaf, tech tools for (academic) editing, audiovisual and subtitling
Business skills: navigating the LSP market, networking, setting up and working as a sole trader/toiminimi, business/entrepreneurship skills and practice
Other: if you are moving into a new field or developing a new skill not listed here, contact the mentoring coordinator who will try to match you to a more experenced mentee.
The programme is open to NEaT members only. If you are interested, contact Kate Sotejeff-Wilson for more information.
Are you curious about SEO? Join our first-ever online introduction to Search Engine Optimization and find out what it is, how it works and why you should use it! See how it may also affect you as a translator/copywriter/copyeditor/etc. All NEaT members are welcome to attend regardless of your background or profession. This webinar will be hosted by Jessica Blackburn. Jessica has knowledge in this area from her bachelor’s degree study program and has experience consulting about SEO during our mentorship programme. Her study background is in business administration and she is also a freelance proofreader. As the optimum number of participants is 10, Jessica has kindly agreed to do a repeat session on 3 June if registrations exceed 10. Please register at info@nordicedit.fi
University of Helsinki, Room 203, Fabianinkatu 26, Helsinki, Finland
The agenda, as laid out in our constitution, is as follows.
The Annual General Meeting of the Association shall consider the following business:
Opening of the meeting.
Election of a chairperson, a secretary, two individuals to scrutinise the minutes. and two individuals to count the votes at the meeting where necessary.
Verification that the meeting is lawful.
Approval of the agenda for the meeting.
Presentation of the financial statements and the annual report by the treasurer.
Decision to confirm the financial statements and discharge the Board and other accountable persons from liability, subject to the auditor’s report.
Presentation of the activities in 2022 and the operating plan for 2023 by the Chair of NEaT. The treasurer will comment on the budget for 2023.
Confirmation of the operating plan and the budget.
Confirmation of the membership subscription.
Reports on events, education, cooperation and communications by the chairs of the respective committees.
Election of the Chair and other members and deputy members of the Board for the following year.
Election of one auditor and one deputy auditor. The board proposes Tomi Snellman as the auditor for 2023, with Matthew Paines as deputy auditor.
Consideration of any other business specified in the invitation to the meeting.
13a) Amend the wording of the English translation of the NEaT constitution https://nordicedit.fi/?page_id=134 to replace (Vice-)Chairman and Chairperson with (Vice-)Chair throughout.
We invite all interested members to join us for the NEaT Annual General Meeting on Friday 21 April 2023. Please RSVP to info@nordicedit.fi by 14 April 2023 to ensure enough coffee and refreshments for all. All members will be sent the Zoom link. You are also welcome to attend without prior notice, in which case coffee and refreshments cannot be guaranteed.
The ELN series highlights the ways we can use language to contribute to a just society. This year’s seminar #ELN2023 will delve deep into two current issues in sociolinguistics affecting English use globally and in the Nordics.
Robert Lawson, Associate Professor in Sociolinguistics at Birmingham City University, will speak on “Language maketh man: exploring positive masculinities in the media,” related to his new book Language and Mediated Masculinities: Cultures, Contexts, Constraints (Oxford University Press 2023).
Dave Sayers, Senior Lecturer in the Department of Language and Communication Studies at the University of Jyväskylä, will talk to us about “Language in the human-machine era: what happens when we are all cyborgs?” related to his work as Chair of the EU COST Action LITHME.eu.
After the seminar closes at 5 pm, join us that evening for the Nordic Editors and Translators Annual General Meeting and for dinner.
Robert Lawson is Associate Professor in Sociolinguistics at Birmingham City University. He has held numerous international positions, including at the University of Pittsburgh as a Fulbright Scholar and the University of Jyväskylä as a Junior Visiting Professor. He is the editor of Sociolinguistics in Scotland, co-editor of Sociolinguistic Research: Application and Impact, and has publications in major peer-reviewed journals, including the Journal of Sociolinguistics, Gender and Language, English World-Wide,Discourse, Context & Media, and Social Media+Society. His research focuses on language and masculinities, the application of language research outside academia, and language in media contexts.
Offers a comprehensive analysis of language, men, and masculinities across a range of media contexts, including newspapers, television shows, forums, the manosphere, and social media sites
Draws on methods from critical discourse analysis, corpus linguistics, and sociolinguistics to uncover how language intersects with masculinities in media spaces
Examines issues related to contemporary masculinities, including male friendship, fatherhood, positive masculinity, male supremacism, online radicalization, and toxic masculinity
Dave Sayers is Chair of the LITHME Action
I am a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Language and Communication Studies at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland; and chair of EU COST Action CA19102 ‘Language In The Human Machine Era’ (https://lithme.eu/). My research interests include language policy and language planning (particularly Welsh and Cornish), variationist sociolinguistics (including varieties of British English), and the impact of new and emerging technologies on language use. I’ve previously lectured at the University of Turku, Finland; Åbo Akademi University, Finland; and Sheffield Hallam University, UK. I’ve also worked as Research Manager for Caer Las Cymru, a charity in south Wales. Elsewhere I sit on the UK Economic and Social Research Council’s Peer Review College, and the International Panel of Experts at the Kazakh National Centre of Science and Technology Evaluation. I’m the founder and lead moderator of the Sociolinguistic Events Calendar and TeachLing. I’m also a member of the Language, Culture and Identity Research Network of the Wales Institute of Social & Economic Research, Data & Methods (WISERD).
LITHME is a COST Action network with members from every EU member state, plus a number of other countries outside the EU.
How will pervasive augmentation technology affect language in areas such as international law, translation, and other forms of language work? What will this mean for how people identify with specific languages? Could increasing reliance on real-time language technologies actually change the structure of language? Longer term, could developments in brain-machine interfaces serve to complement or even supersede language altogether? Linguistics will be far stronger for robust technological foresight, while developers will benefit from better understanding potential linguistic and societal consequences of their creations.
Meanwhile LITHME will shine a light on the ethical implications of emerging language technologies. Inequality of access to technologies, questions of privacy and security, new vectors for deception and crime; these and other critical issues would be kept to the fore. LITHME will equip linguists and stakeholders for the human-machine era.
