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EUROPEAN MASTER’S IN TRANSLATION NETWORK

Annual report 2018

29/05/2019

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Table of contents

Summary ...................................................................................................................................... 3

1. EMT milestones and internal matters ................................................................................... 4

a) Meetings of the EMT Network ........................................................................................ 4 Activities of the working groups .................................................................................... 5

b) Meetings of the EMT Board ........................................................................................... 6 c) Call for membership in the EMT network 2019-2024 .................................................... 6

2. EMT-DGT cooperation ..................................................................................................... 6

a) Translating Europe ......................................................................................................... 6 Translating Europe Forum .............................................................................................. 6

Translating Europe Workshops ................................................................................ 7 b) Visiting Translator Scheme (VTS) .................................................................................. 7 c) EMT trainees in DGT ..................................................................................................... 7 d) EMT universities and eTranslation ................................................................................ 8

e) DGT – EMT joint training activities .............................................................................. 8 DGT Academy ................................................................................................................ 8 Other training activities .................................................................................................. 8 f) The EMT secretariat in DGT .......................................................................................... 9

3. EMT – outreach .................................................................................................................... 9

a) Cooperation with the language industry ........................................................................ 9

b) PAMCIT .......................................................................................................................... 9

Conclusions and Outlook ........................................................................................................... 10

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SUMMARY

Based on the 2014-2019 framework of activities, the EMT network set itself the following

priorities for 2018.

PRIORITY RELATED ACTIVITIES

Knowledge sharing on curriculum

development

- best practices sessions during the network

meetings on Machine Translation, virtual

learning environments, study

programmes with multiple language

combinations

- various Translating Europe Workshops

(see Annex 1)

Promotion of EMT – outreach

- Intensified cooperation with the language

industry (LIND)

- EMT - PAMCIT cooperation

- EMT visibility in social media, in

particular to announce the 2018-2019

EMT selection

Preparing for the next EMT Generation

- increased ownership by the network

members engaged in joint projects set up

thanks to EMT meetings

- stress the link between EMT activities

and EU priorities in the field of education

- prepare call for EMT membership

Digitalisation and AI have had an impact also on the EMT in 2018. Most of the network

activities that year dealt with technology & data and the changes they bring about, not only

for the translation profession but also for training and education.

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1. EMT MILESTONES AND INTERNAL MATTERS

a) Meetings of the EMT Network

Following a now longstanding tradition, the EMT held two network meetings in 2018, on 19-

20 March 2018 in Brussels and on 19 October in Vienna.

Brussels

During the first part of the Brussels meeting the discussions around technology, started at the

Dublin meeting in the autumn 2017, continued. This time the focus was on virtual teaching

environments, resource bases and machine translation. Network members exchanged their

experiences with various platforms and tools, showed how they incorporate them in their

teaching, stressing advantages and drawbacks. They also discussed how to integrate machine

translation into the training, including DGT’s e-translation tool.

The meeting continued with first-hand information from a colleague from DG Education and

Culture about the future university cooperation in Europe, notably in the context of the

European Education Area. The EMT member programmes with an already existing stable

network and with clear competences defined, are the ideal incubator for their universities to

apply to become one of the European Universities of the future.

The final part of the meeting was again devoted to a topic closer to the translator training:

“Excellence in Translation”. Two DGT colleagues reported on their project aimed at eliciting

patterns as to what experienced professionals do when they translate/revise, how they do it

and why they do it this way. The interviews with selected DGT translators revealed common

patterns. When mapped against the new EMT Competence Framework all the competences

and skills were mirrored in the strategies developed by the interviewees.

The network meeting was followed by an info session about the upcoming call for

membership in the EMT network 2019-2024. This part was web-streamed to allow all

potentially interested universities to follow. For more information on the EMT call for

membership see section c) below.

Vienna

On the occasion of the Austrian EU presidency the 2018 autumn meeting of the EMT network

was hosted by the Centre for translation studies at the University of Vienna. The first

presentation of the morning had a direct link to Austria's EU presidency: Together with the

software developer Tilde from Latvia, the University of Vienna developed the EU Council

Presidency Translator, a platform based on DGT’s eTranslation that provides for machine

translations of documents related to the EU presidency. Judging from the questions and the

following debates it seemed as if some EMT members were thinking about extending the

project to the languages of future EU presidency countries.

The meeting continued with a presentation by Alexandra Krause on “Plurilingualism and

Multilingualism within one study programme” a special feature of the Master’s programme of

the University of Vienna. The EMT network proved to be a great pool of resources as it helps

deliver translation classes even for language combinations that are not officially taught in

Vienna.

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Another highlight of the Vienna meeting was Nicolas Froeliger’s experience with a student

survey on the EMT competences. The meeting participants applauded him for this initiative

asking students how well they master the EMT competences at the beginning and at the end

of the Master’s programme. Seeing the potential of this survey as a tool to measure the quality

of the training within the EMT, they decided to develop it into a ready-to-use survey for all

EMT programmes (see below “Activities of the working groups”).

The rest of the Vienna meeting was devoted to stocktaking of the current EMT network’s

achievements and formulating recommendations for the EMT network 2019-2024. The EMT

members agreed that in future the network should:

explicitly include public service interpretation and translation in the remit of the EMT,

since there is a societal need for community translation and the necessity to develop

professional guidelines in a sector currently working with mainly non-professional

volunteers;

develop double/joint diplomas, in line with the priorities of the European Commission

aiming at fostering university cooperation in the future European Education Area;

make the EMT fit for the digital era with projects such as DigiLing or innovative study

programmes such as “digital humanities” in Riga;

focus more on preparing students for the translation profession, by joining projects

such as INSTB (the International Network of Simulated Translation Bureaus);

reach out to non-EMT programmes on the national level, for instance by creating

national associations of translation study programmes such as the French AFFUMT.

The current EMT Board committed to communicating these recommendations to the next

EMT Board.

Activities of the working groups

The working group “Translation tools and technology" was the only official working group

still active in the last year of the EMT 2014-2019 mandate. The two chairpersons Andrew

Rothwell and Tomás Svoboda regularly informed the network members about the status of the

technology training in the EMT. Dragos Ciobanu developed a mapping exercise aiming at

collecting data about tools used in the various EMT programmes. Ultimately, the data will

serve to negotiate free licences for EMT members.

In line with the new approach to set up working groups only when there is a concrete need for

action, the EMT members constituted a small adhoc working group following the network

meeting in Vienna, with the aim to develop Nicolas Froeliger’s “do-it-yourself” student

survey into a fully-fledged survey ready to use for all network members. Nine EMT

universities volunteered for this activity1, starting by sharing conclusions from their various

survey experiences. The concrete work on the EMT competences survey began in March

2019.

1 Université Paris Diderot (chair); University of Swansea; University of Newcastle; Université de Haute-Alsace;

University of Turkuu; Université de Lille; Université Grenoble-Alpes; University of Ljubljana; Ghent University

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b) Meetings of the EMT Board

In 2018 the EMT Board focussed on the documents for the call for applications for the EMT

network 2019-2024. All Board meetings were dedicated to this task, including the meeting

with the LIND Board on 20 March, when both Boards discussed the involvement of the

language industry representatives in the EMT selection procedure. They agreed that the

members of the LIND Board would again participate in the assessment of the employability

aspects of the EMT applications. The EMT Board also consulted the LIND Board on the

elements of the application form for the next EMT selection, in particular on the section about

Market training and preparation for the profession, and on the weighting of the different

elements of this section.

In addition, the EMT Board Members also held 6 videoconferences between February and

September to finalise the application and assessment documents. These “virtual meetings”

proved an efficient way of exchanging views on and advancing with the preparations for the

EMT application procedure.

c) Call for membership in the EMT network 2019-2024

The EMT selection round 2018/19 included two calls:

a) A call for assessors to assist DGT in the evaluation of the applications for EMT

membership, published on 30/4/2018. The call for assessors resulted in 86 applications. 36

applications were ineligible. The remaining 50 candidates were shortlisted. As soon as the

final number of EMT applications was established, the DGT appointed 34 assessors to the

assessment panel, taking into account the language competences and profiles of the

candidates. The list of the appointed assessors was published on the EMT pages on Europa.

b) The call for membership in the EMT Network 2019-2024 was published from

14 September 2018 until 14 December 2018. It resulted in 109 applications to be assessed in

spring 2019. DGT will communicate the outcome of the assessment in June 2019.

2. EMT-DGT COOPERATION

a) Translating Europe

The idea of this initiative is to engage with various stakeholders in the translation sector and

to create a community of interest, with a view to giving visibility to the world of translation,

sharing good practice, developing common projects, and promoting a diversified and

sustainable market for professional translators in Europe. To this end, DGT organises every

year an event in Brussels – the Translating Europe Forum - and various Translating Europe

Workshops in the EU Member States.

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Translating Europe Forum

The Translating Europe Forum (TEF) took place in Brussels on 8-9 November 2018. The

topic Translation in the Age of Data attracted around 500 professionals from the language

industry, academia and the public sector. Many more followed the event online via the live

web-stream. The participants looked into what kind of data is relevant, what 'clean data'

means and how translators can benefit from the data they produce. Sharing translation data,

legal aspects and latest developments in neural machine translation were discussed as well.

A panel on the EU perspective gave an overview on what the EU is doing: the Connecting

Europe Facility, the multilingual ‘digital single market’, education, growth and jobs, and the

European Parliament report 'Language equality in the digital age'.

EMT students presented posters and demonstrated various machine translation systems during

the breaks in the 'Networking Village'. They also had the opportunity to participate in the

special session for “Newcomers to the language industry”.2

TEF 2019 is now being prepared.

Translating Europe Workshops

Translating Europe Workshops contribute at national level to the general aim of exploring and

facilitating synergies among translation stakeholders. 38 workshops were organised in 2018,

mainly by DGT field officers in the Commission Representations in the Member States. EMT

involvement in these workshops has increased considerably: EMT universities were the

primary convener of 9 workshops, i.e. they proposed the topic and were responsible for the

general organisation of the event. 22 more workshops had professors from the EMT network

as speakers or panellists. The majority of the workshops dealt with the impact of technology

on the translation profession, thus presenting a clear link to the Translating Europe Forums of

2017. Please see Annex 1 for the full list of Translating Europe Workshops and their content.

b) Visiting Translator Scheme (VTS)

Under the VTS 2018 DGT staff performed 26 visits to various institutions/administrations,

including 13 universities in 9 countries; 6 were EMT universities in 2018, 4 others had

applied for EMT membership in 2013.

EMT Member Universities EMT Candidates Other Universities

Dublin DCU Brno Osijek

KU Leuven (Antwerpen) Gdansk Zadar

Lille 3 Helsinki Zagreb

Prague Malta

2 For more detailed information including downloads of presentations see: https://ec.europa.eu/info/events/2018TEF_en

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Rome (UNINT)

Toulouse

As it was the case in the past, not all requests from EMT universities to host DGT VTS

participants could be satisfied. The proportion of VTS missions to EMT universities could be

increased if the EMT members communicated more clearly to DGT on what kind of projects

they would like to cooperate with the visiting translator from DGT3.

All in all the feedback was positive and confirmed that VTS is an enriching experience both

for the universities and the translators.

c) EMT trainees in DGT

In 2018 DGT hosted two types of trainees: the trainees that fall within the standard

Commission traineeship scheme of 5 months. The number of trainees in this category depends

on the quota allocated to DGT each year, which usually is around 84 trainees per year. The

short-term training placements are agreed directly between the sending university and the

DGT language departments. The number of trainees in this category depends on the hosting

capacity of the departments. In 2018, DGT offered 79 training placements, among which 45

to students from EMT Universities.

d) EMT universities and eTranslation

The EMT universities continued to have cost free access to DGT’s eTranslation on request for

teaching and research purposes for the duration of the current EMT period, i.e. until June

2019. In return, DGT hopes to receive outlines of and feedback from projects using

eTranslation. By the end of 2018, staff and students from 21 EMT universities in 11 Member

States and Switzerland had been given access.

e) DGT – EMT joint training activities

DGT Academy

DGT Academy is DGT's initiative to support the continuing professional development of its

translating staff, in particular in the thematic domains in which DGT has a particular interest

(law, economics and finance, science and technology) and in handling translation tools. After

a slow-down of the activities in 2017 due to a Commission-wide re-organisation affecting the

learning and development domain, DGT Academy took up again in 2018, with the following

Science and technology courses given by lecturers from Université Haute Alsace, Mulhouse:

Technologie – électronique: 8/10/2018 Brussels, 10/10/2018 Luxembourg

Maladies émergentes: 15/10/2018 Brussels, 17/10/2018 Luxembourg

3 As a reminder: DGT colleagues have to propose a project on which they intend to work together with the visited institution

(administration or university). The project can meet an individual learning need of the translator or a need of his/her language

department (better knowledge of a particular domain, language, terminology issues, better use of CAT tools and other

translation related applications…).

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Nomenclature chimique : postponed to 2019.

Other training activities

Professors from EMT programmes also took part in training activities outside the DGT

Academy scheme:

Maarit Koponen, Univ of Turku: 28-29/01/2019 – “Machine translation and post-

editing in Finnish Language”

Vojko Gorjanc, Univ of Ljubljana: 7/03/2019 – “Lecture on English-Slovenian

translation

Fieke Vander Gucht, Ghent University: 19/04/2018 – “Dutch: a world language”

Fernando Prieto, Univ of Geneva: 4-5/07/2018 – “Quality and terminology

management in legal translation

Rudy Loock, Univ of Lille : 14-15/07/2018 – “L’utilisation de corpus électronique

pour le traducteur professionnel”

f) The EMT secretariat in DGT

The EMT team in DGT provides the EMT project management and ensures the proper

functioning of the EMT Network from an administrative point of view. The team organised

and took an active part in the Board and Network meetings and it served as the EMT

secretariat.

Besides these services the EMT team also organised, with the support of the EMT Board, the

EMT call for membership 2019-2024. This entailed various web-meetings to coordinate the

drafting of all relevant documents, the communication about the call via the relevant channels,

mainly social media and the communication with applicants during the application phase.

The EMT platform on Yammer and the EMT Wiki4 are now the established communication

channels between the DGT EMT team and the network. The use of the Yammer social media

platform considerably increased and simplified the exchange of information between the

network partners. The amount of posts from network members increased considerably

showing an increasing sense of ownership and cohesion within the network.

3. EMT – OUTREACH

a) Cooperation with the language industry

The LIND Board continued to be the preferred partner of the EMT Board when it comes to

cooperation with the language industry on the European level. In 2018, the topic in the focus

was of course the call for EMT membership. The LIND Board members were closely

involved in drafting the related documents, mainly concerning the aspects of employability

and preparation for the profession.

4 https://webgate.ec.europa.eu/fpfis/wikis/display/EMT/EMT+WIKI+Home.

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As in the previous years, the EMT Board again contributed a couple of questions to the yearly

Language Industry Survey.

b) PAMCIT

The financing agreement between the EU and the UN Office in Nairobi in support of the Pan-

African Consortium of Master programmes in Conference Interpreting and Translation

(PAMCIT) provides among other things the possibility of training-for-trainers seminars in

translation. Following a call for expression of interest launched by the PAMCIT coordinator

in 2018, two professors from the EMT network, Andrew Rothwell from the University of

Swansea and David Orrego-Carmona from Aston University, were selected to deliver a train-

the-trainers seminars on CAT tools. The workshop took place from 9-13 July 2018 at the

University of Ghana. David delivered the course on site, while Andrew gave a webinar.

c) Social media

EMT has a stable presence on the social media. Over the year the EMT Facebook page

increased to 2004 regular followers. Main content shared are conferences organised at various

EMT universities, Translating Europe workshops, traineeship opportunities in the language

industry, including DGT and other EU activities related to training and young people. More

and more EMT members now post announcements on the FB page themselves, but the page is

not yet used to its full potential. A stronger use of FB and of the hashtag #EMTnet on Twitter

in relation with activities at the various EMT institutions would considerably enhance the

visibility of EMT.

CONCLUSIONS AND OUTLOOK

2018 was the last active year of the 2014-2019 EMT network. Despite the preparations for the

upcoming call for membership, the network continued its usual activities such as network and

Board meetings and Translating Europe Workshops. This is a sign of increased maturity. The

network members took over more responsibility for the organisation of the meetings,

especially related to their content. They also showed an increasing willingness to share best

practices openly and to join forces when working on common projects.

Looking at the various topics that the EMT dealt with over the year and the many contacts it

had with external partners, the conclusion for 2018 is one word: “Cooperation”. It is key on

all levels – university cooperation, university-industry cooperation, DGT-EMT cooperation,

virtual cooperation and human-machine cooperation – to ensure a bright future for the

translation profession and the EMT, also in its new setting after the selection in 2019.

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Annex 1 - List of Translation Europe Workshops 2018

The blue font indicates TE workshops with EMT professors as speakers. Green indicates TE workshops organised on the initiative of EMT

universities.

COUNTRY WORKSHOP TITLE EMT Members involved EVENT DATE

Belgium

Enhanced cooperation between the EU institutions and Translation Studies in Flanders and The Netherlands University of Antwerpen, U Ghent, KU Leuven, VUB 30-05-2018

Bulgaria Тhe (R)evolution of Translation: Machines and Humans in the Era of Neural Machine Translation Sofia University St. Kliment Ohridski 29-11-2018

Croatia Training the trainers: what's hot and what's not University of Portsmouth, Dublin City University 16-04-2018

Croatia Translator in the Digital Age - What Skills to Make it in Today's Market 07-12-2018

Czech Republic The rise of the machines: how to get the most of data and the MT Charles University Prague, University of Warsaw 02-11-2018

Denmark Translation, Technologies and Quality Assurance Aarhus University 11-10-2018

Estonia Audiovisual translation – new trends in translation technology Tallinn University 17-05-2018

Finland The cultural and societal impact of translation and multilingualism in Finland University of Turku

Finland Tech & skills in recent language industry surveys University of Turku, University of Tampere, University of Eastern Finland 08-10-2018

France International translation Day ESIT, ISIT, Paris Diderot 29-09-2018

France Interculturalism, translation and interpretation: the case of refugees and asylum seekers University Toulouse Jean Jaurès 09-10-2018

Germany

Keeping up with moving times- how and when changes on the translation market find their way on university curricula University of Vienna 16-11-2018

Hungary Consultation with terminology experts on the Hungarian terminology strategy in preparation Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE) 05-09-2018

Hungary Neural Machine Translation and Post-editing: required skills and competences (a hands-on University of Vienna 28-09-2018

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workshop and a hands-off presentation)

Hungary

Data collection for the freelance market observatory meeting with MFTE, Proford and Szoft (HU translators' associations) 29-10-2018

Hungary Meet Central Europe conference 30-10-2018

Italy Legal translators between law and language - what kind of education is needed? University of Triest; IULM Milan; University of Bologna-Forlì 24-05-2018

Italy Translating tourism and cultural heritage: challenges in professional training IULM Milan 12-04-2018

Italy How to harness translation tools to maximize efficiency and accuracy Rome - UNINT 03-05-2018

Italy Specialized translation, interpretation and creativity: skills, tools, approaches IULM Milan 26-10-2018

Italy

Less common language pairs - challenges and opportunities in training future and current translators Trieste, Riga Technical University 15-11-2018

Latvia Translator's Work: From Data to Language Ventspils University 08-11-2018

Lithuania

Professional forum “Cooperation of the EU and Lithuanian institutions in the field of legal terminology” 31-05-2017

Lithuania Humans and Technologies Vilnius University 29-11-2018

Lithuania Translation as a Language Learning Tool 20-11-2018

Malta Digital prospects: the online survival of Maltese (working title; tbc)

20-10-2018

Netherlands Language and Law (in the framework of Festival Europe) 18-05-2019

Netherlands How can IP legislation benefit translators? 23-11-2018

Netherlands DRONGO language festival 09-11-2018

Poland

The changing profile of the translator profession: technology, competences and fit-for-market training University of Warsaw, Poland + Vilinius University, Lithuania 24-05-2018

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Poland Translators and Interpreters in the Digital Era. Data Management and Translator’s Ethics University of Warsaw, Adam Mickiewicz University of Poznan 01-12-2018

Portugal Translation Roadshow Porto University

Romania

Challenges and Opportunities in Language Service Provision: How to Adapt to the New Market Realities University of Vienna 07-06-2018

Slovakia Language applications in translation Constantine the Philosopher University in Nitra 30-10-2018

Slovakia Translation, Interpreting, Culture: Academia vs Practice Constantine the Philosopher University in Nitra 26-09-2018

Slovenia Career Days University of Ljubljana 17-04-2018

Spain

Technology at the service of PSIT. Raising awareness and sharing experiences and resources about the importance of MT & Cat tools in crisis situations. Alcalá de Henares (Madrid) 10-12-2018

UK Translators in the digital era – what kind of jobs will we have ten years from now? Manchester University 10-11-2018