Conference season 2017

At the beginning of the year it always seems like it’s ages away – but now, late-November, it seems to have snuck up on us. We’ve been to ATC conference in London, tekom in Germany, plus NTIF in Helsinki. Although the destinations are wonderful, why do we really go there?

Making connections

Let’s be completely honest – the reason why every businessman and woman goes to conferences is to meet new people, and more importantly –  meet that new, regular client. Meeting industry peers helps them put a face on your business, and you can put a face behind theirs. This helps when down the line people need a service, and then remember you and you do it. Also, if there happens to be problems when working together, being able to give each other a call and sort things out as friends can sometimes save a meltdown.

Keeping up to date with industry trends

Like all other industries, the translation industry is evolving. If you haven’t seen a CAT tool in the last 5 years, you’d be shocked at the number of new features. The same goes for MT – with the rise of Neural Machine Translation. MT is becoming so much more accepted rather than being something that translators dread. We’re all pretty busy meeting clients’ super tight deadlines. Trying to keep on top of these trends is sometimes difficult. Getting to go to conferences and hear about everything all in one place really helps to make things a lot easier. Conferences are normally a place of inspiration, and just like us, you probably always come away with ways to better your business.

Work hard play hard

Us translators are a bit hard done by. No one really cares about the work we do until it goes wrong, do they. But by going to conferences we can let our hair down with our friends, relax, and realise we’re not alone. Our industry is a close-knit community. Often we’ll come away with more than just business partners, we’ll come away with life-long friends.