7 minute read
A letter from Prof. Regina Galasso Director’s Note1
from Translations Times
by UMass HFA
Greetings, Translation Center Community and Friends Near and Far!
Welcome to Translation Times! I hope this newsletter finds everyone healthy and hopeful that better days are ahead.
Advertisement
We started assembling this newsletter in the summer of 2020 and wished to release it at the start of the fall semester. However, the constant flow of shifts associated with the pandemic slowed that plan down. But here it is! Some of you will know that this is not the first newsletter the Translation Center has ever published. In our archives, we found volume 1, issue one, published in December 1996. It was called Translation Center News. In 1999, the publication had another name Translation Times. Reports were also published in addition to newsletters. Some of these documents from the archives are on our website. We’ll continue to use Translation Times as the title.
This current issue covers 2018-2020. Following what was done in the past, Translation Times includes news from the Translation Center--projects we work on and activities we sponsor--and on scholarly and educational activities related to translation initiated by members of the University of Massachusetts Amherst and the nearby collegesAmherst, Hampshire, Mount Holyoke, and Smith. The last time we tried to count, we identified over 70 faculty members affiliated with our five campuses who either translate literary or scholarly texts or publish about translation phenomena. (Please see the “People” section on the Translation Center’s website. If there’s an update we need to make, please let us know!) An article "Bridging the Gaps of Language," that was published in a local newspaper in May 1979 announces the opening of the "new UMass Translation Center" and calls our
1
DIRECTOR’S NOTE
university and colleges “a harbor filled with multilingual persons.” Four decades later, it still is!
Although we look out for translation-related activities on our campuses and in the area and many of you send us updates, there are certainly things we miss, so, please, let us know about them. Apologies for the many events and activities we missed including here! Translation Times relies on contributions from our community members. Look out for a call for contributions from the Translation Center at the end of the spring semester for the 2020-2021 newsletter. If you have content you’d like to share before then, please send it to Aitor Bouso Gavín, our graduate student assistant. I thank Aitor for collecting the content for and putting together this current issue. I also thank our undergraduate student assistant, Vitor Silva, for helping him. Their example shows that students continue to be an important part of the work of the Translation Center. I thank the students who contributed pieces to this newsletter and the faculty members who responded to our call or accepted our invitation to contribute to this newsletter.
One of the highlights of the past two years was the Translation Center’s 40th anniversary. On September 30, 2019, International Translation Day, we held a celebration at the Translation Center in Herter Hall which began with a workshop with literary translator Emma Ramadan followed by a reception featuring remarks by the Translation Center’s former director (1994-2014) Edwin Gentzler, Professor Emeritus of Comparative Literature, Dr. Julie Hayes, former Dean of the College of Humanities and Fine Arts, and UMass Amherst faculty and students, a book display titled “On and In Translation,” curated by graduate student Hyongrae Kim (Comparative Literature Program), an open mic, and sweet treats. This newsletter includes the celebration’s program and a letter from Professor Gentzler to mark this milestone.
Another highlight from the past two years, has been the creation of a workshop series for interpreters and translators in education. The workshop series provides an educational and professional setting in which participants can learn more about the standards and procedures of interpreting and translation and helps schools improve the quality of language access offered to families. The first version of the program was developed in the summer of 2018 for Holyoke Public Schools upon the request of Dr. Stephen Zrike, former superintendent/receiver for HPS, for bilingual school employees who offer translation and interpreting services in their schools. Since then, the Translation Center has offered the series to other school districts, including Amherst Regional Public Schools (see Paulina OchoaFigueroa’s article), and freelance translators and interpreters. The individual workshops are led by UMass Amherst faculty members, including Professors Meghan Armstrong-Abrami, Moira Inghilleri, and Cristiano Mazzei, and professional interpreters, translators, and individuals with notable experience in language access in education lead the individual workshops. UMass Amherst graduate students provide support to the workshop instructors and participants, and help the Translation Center manage the series. The workshop series includes a customized language assessment led by Professor Danielle Thomas in collaboration with graduate students, translators, and interpreters, that helps districts and schools determine if their bilingual employees should develop their skills as interpreters, translators, or both. The workshop series transforms and expands depending on the profiles and needs of each district, and what we learn from participants. Starting in the 2020-2021 academic year, a partnership with the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education will allow over 100 bilingual employees from multiple school districts throughout the state to participate in the workshop series.
In looking through files, the Translation Center has a history of working with Massachusetts partners to develop programs to meet specific needs regarding interpreter and translator education. The Translation Center has a history of helping the state to improve language services. In the late 1990s, the Translation Center responded to a request from the Trial Court of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and developed, again, thanks to collaboration with UMass Amherst faculty and graduate students, a customized “Spanish for Court Employees” course
offered statewide, starting in Holyoke, Worcester, and Dorchester. In 2000, the Translation Center developed another program with state courts to “increase the pool of qualified interpreters in the state” with the goal of improving “the delivery of justice in the Commonwealth and to provide jobs for UMass graduates in the language programs” (Fall 1999, Translation Times). I’m thrilled to be a leading part of the Translation Center’s history of efforts to bring together the expertise of our faculty and students to help the state strengthen language access for its residents.
These two highlights and many of the events you’ll read about in this newsletter represent events and programs that take more than a day to create and carry out. But on a daily basis the Translation Center provides an essential service to many individuals, organizations, museums, schools, and businesses by translating documents, scheduling interpreters, and more to meet urgent needs. The current pandemic has exposed language access divides in Massachusetts and beyond. The Translation Center continues to work with longtime clients and has enjoyed learning about the needs of new clients. In times like these and always, everyone must get the message. Our project managers, Shawn Lindholm and Río Hernández, continue to carry out the everyday operations of the Translation Center. They have adapted to working remotely during the pandemic and kept our essential services running as smoothly as possible despite furloughs and other obstacles. THANK YOU! An increase in the demand in our services means that the Translation Center has been able to offer more work to our translators and interpreters, and they have not let us down. Thank you! Please continue to encourage individuals, organizations, businesses, and companies to translate with us. The best way to reach the Translation Center is at our new email address translate@umass.edu. Pass it on!
Although the Translation Center offers the same services as language service providers, we are not the same because we belong to UMass Amherst. The work we do is set in a larger context where so many people are thinking about translation and translating. And that makes a difference. The more support the Translation Center receives from clients and partners, the more support we can offer to the community, the university, faculty, and students. Don’t miss the words from our students in this newsletter. They are such a special part of the Translation Center. And thanks to their time with us, students gain valuable professional experience and develop an awareness of responsible language use and language accessibility that they will have with them forever to influence their professional and intellectual lives. The current brand campaign of UMass Amherst is BE REVOLUTIONARY. Being revolutionary sits very well with translators because we know that translation changes everything, translation challenges everything, and that every translation makes a difference. In his book Translation and Rewriting in the Age of PostTranslation Studies (Routledge, 2017), Professor Gentzler says “...translation is one of the most revolutionary acts: bringing across an idea or form from another culture and offering the possibility to change people’s lives” (230).
For Spring 2021, besides continuing to work on essential projects of all sizes in multiple languages, we especially look forward to having a search for an assistant director of the Translation Center. In the next issue of Translation Times, we’ll include content related to translation activity from the 2020-2021 academic year. Happy New Year!
Take good care and be in touch,
Regina Galasso, PhD
Director, Translation Center Associate Professor, Spanish and Portuguese Studies UMass Amherst
