NEaT – Page 29 – Nordic Editors and Translators ry

Annual Review 2016: Partnerships and parties

Thank you all for a successful 2016! January 16 is NEaT’s birthday, and we will turn three. Our plan is to continue providing networking and seminars to engage more and more professionals of the English language in the Nordic countries while developing our skills and standards.

In 2016, we held our second English Today seminar in conjunction with the Finnish-British Society (Finnbrit). We also became an official partner of Finnbrit, which means that our members are welcome to their events and that we can combine our resources to plan bigger and better events for our members.

We continued our cooperation with Translation Industry Professionals KAJ in the form of seminars. In September, we organized a joint workshop on personal style guides, including a presentation by Julie Uusinarkaus. In 2017, we will work with KAJ on the legal standing of editors in Finland and on educational seminars.

NEaT is also an official partner organization of Mediterranean Translators and Editors (MET), which provides excellent further education and networking opportunities in English for language professionals outside the Mediterranean area, too.

Other education this year included a lecture on English in business by Anne Kankaanranta of the Aalto University Department of Management Studies and a roundtable discussion on current topics in grammar and style at Finnbrit, introduced by our members Rebecca von Bonsdorff, Alice Lehtinen and Terry Forster.

We now have an official brochure to give to potential members and partners at meetings and events in any of the Nordic countries. Please ask for brochures to hand out! We also now have an online discussion group to share both questions and ideas and job listings, and we communicate actively through Facebook, on both a public page and a private group for members only. In addition, we use Twitter and LinkedIn for communication and discussion.

NEaT members met for meetups and networking for our anniversary at Beerhouse Kaisla in Helsinki in January, for our first annual picnic in Suomenlinna in August, and at the Christmas party in Hakaniemi in the beginning of December. For the fun of it, here are the results of the translation-slam-christmas-2016 from the Christmas party. This year in April, our Annual General Meeting included a beer tasting lesson after the official agenda.

2016 Christmas party

Save the date! The annual NEaT Christmas party and the first NEaT Translation Slam will be held on December 5 at 5 pm. The party is free for paid members, but five euros for non-members.

NEaT is excited to host our first Translation Slam. Translation slams, or translation duels, are innovative events where participants compete for the best version or compare different versions of a given (usually literary or creative) text. Slams are also open forums to see, for example, who can best embody an author’s voice, how translation happens, what different readings may a paragraph have, and what constitutes the art of translation itself.

If you are interested in participating, please contact Virve at virve (a) capecontext.com for a text. We’ll do two levels, an easy text and a master level text. The texts will be short and flexible enough for you to choose any style you wish for the final version. If we get more than three participants for either level, you may be assigned a team. In any case, teams are welcome!

The board will provide an open Mexican buffet and a welcome drink. If you would like to have something more to drink with your meal, please bring your own beverage.

RSVP by November 28 to julie.uusinarkaus (a) helsinki.fi.
A NEaT Christmas
December 5 from 5 pm
PAM Office, Säästöpankinranta 4 C 21

Roundtable Style Discussion I summary: serial comma, singular they and passive voice

Nordic Editors and Translators hosted the first roundtable discussion on grammar and style issues on 7 October 2016 at the Finnbrit Society. Rebecca von Bonsdorff led the discussion with the help of Alice Lehtinen and Terese Forster. This session covered the serial comma, singular they and the passive voice.

Summary:

Three grammatical subjects were presented by the hosts.

Rebecca von Bonsdorff introduced the serial comma.

It was discovered that the group was split fairly well in half by those who do use the serial comma and those who don’t. It could roughly be said that participants who had an education in the US fell into the first category and those with a British background fell into the second.

After working through some examples of lists it was agreed that the use of the serial comma depends upon the situation. The most important factor to be taken into consideration is the clarity of the text and how punctuation can be used in a way that is most effective. For those who are averse to using the serial comma, other punctuation is always possible.

Terry Forster introduced the singular ‘they’.

In the absence of a gender-neutral pronoun in the English language, is ‘they’ acceptable instead of he or she or it? Numerous examples were given and many participants had their own experiences with texts which were problematic without a gender-neutral pronoun. The options of he/she or s/he were seen as being cumbersome.

It was concluded that many participants felt that attitudes towards using ‘they’ in the singular were changing. It is becoming a more acceptable feature of writing.

Alice Lehtinen introduced the passive.

The pros and cons of using the passive in a text were discussed in some depth by the group. It was seen that using the passive is cheaper due to it having less characters than the active form. However, many participants felt that they preferred to minimize the amount of the passive in a text. It was agreed that generally people were moving away from using it, even in academic writing.

It was concluded that the use of the passive would eventually depend on the context in which it is being used, what the writer is intending to do and who the target reader is. Again, an important issue that needs to be considered is that a text has clarity.

NEaT announces partnership with Finnbrit

Nordic Editors and Translators are happy to announce partnership with Finnbrit, also known as The Finnish-British Society. The society was formed already in 1926 and currently operates in Punavuori where they provide English-language training and examinations as well as a hub of cultural activities

Finnbrit offers various forms of education and social events in English.

Finnbrit offers a wide range of open language courses with over 60 years of experience in language training and one-to-one training courses. All teachers are native speakers with over ten years of teaching experience. Finnbrit is the only authorized examination centre for IELTS in Finland and is also an authorized centre for the Cambridge English Language Assessment Examinations. They offer exams arranged by the Admissions Testing Service including BMAT, TSA and STEP. Examination Service arranges exams for the University of London External Programme, Open University and many universities in the UK and Australia.

In addition, Finnbrit offers an extensive network of translators and proofreaders and an ideal downtown location for conferences, meetings and dinner parties. All rooms have a computer and a wireless Internet connection. Due to partnership, NEaT can now arrange events and seminars in the same location that includes:

The Scottish Room suitable for small meetings (capacity 10–12 people)
The History Room suitable for meetings and small discussion events (capacity 14 people)
The Big Room suitable for larger meetings and dinner parties (capacity 16–20 people)
The inviting atmosphere of the Club Room suitable for meetings and social gatherings (capacity 15 people).

The Finnish-British Society arranges different types of cultural programmes for its members and other interested people including live musical performances, presentations, debating events, literature reviews, theatre trips and many more. Under the auspices of the Society, there are also clubs for special interests such as the Finn-Brit Players, Helsinki Morrisers, Helsinki International Folk Club, the Nursery Rhyme group and the Real Toads Poetry group. These organisations arrange their own programmes on a regular basis.

For more information about Finnbrit, please visit their website at https://www.finnbrit.fi/