AATIA members qualify for specially discounted $20 tickets (usually $35) to two concerts by Peruvian Jorge Caballero and the Axis String Quartet on Friday & Saturday, June 20 and 21, at 7:30PM.

The evening of South American music at the new Mexican American Cultural Center on Lady Bird Lake will include the premiere performance of a new quintet by Argentine Tango Maestro Jorge Morel, who will be present. The quintet was commissioned by the event’s sponsor, the Austin Classical Guitar Society.

Call ACGS at 512-300-2247 before the June 12 discount deadline and mention this offer when you order your tickets.

Left to itself, every literature will exhaust its vitality if it is not refreshed by the interest and contributions of a foreign one.
— Goethe, 1827.

This belief that international literature plays a vital role in book culture is one that is shared by all the publishers and booksellers involved in Reading the World, a celebration of literature in translation to be held at BookPeople on Friday, June 6.

Noted Russian translator Marian Schwartz will moderate the hour-long program, which begins at 7 p.m. and will consist of three parts:

1. Liliana Valenzuela reading from her translation from English into Spanish: Cristina Garcia, A Handbook to Luck/Las Caras de la Suerte

2. Cristina Ferreira-Pinto Bailey reading from her translation from Portuguese: Teeth Under the Sun by Ignácio de Loyola Brandão (Dalkey Archive P, 2007).

3. Michele McKay Aynesworth presenting Beacons, the literary journal of the American Translators Association, with readings by the following: Liliana Valenzuela, Tony Beckwith, and Rob Cogswell and his translator, Horacio Peña.

This event is hosted by the Austin Area Translators and Interpreters Association. 

The National Council on Interpreting in Health Care  (NCIHC) will hold its 2nd Annual Membership Meeting at the Emory Conference Center in Atlanta, Georgia, on June 5-6, 2008. It will be followed by the Southeast Regional Interpreters Conference, held by the Medical Interpreter Network of Georgia (MING), at the same location on June 6-7, 2008.

The NCIHC offers a brochure on this year’s meeting and a report on last year’s event. Register and get hotel information. Information about submitting presentation proposals, exhibiting, or sponsoring may be viewed on the website or obtained by contacting a representative of NCIHC.

Don’t miss the chance to attend two great events over a long weekend!

AATIA will offer two great professional development opportunities in coming months. The first, “Business Basics for Freelancers,” will take place on the morning of June 14th. This four-hour workshop will cover general business aspects of freelancing, including basic bookkeeping and record-keeping requirements, ensuring payment, and tax and financial planning. The presenter, AATIA member Ted Wozniak, holds degrees in Accounting and German and has worked as an accountant in both the private and public sectors. Ted is also the owner of the well-known Payment Practices website.

The second event will be a “Translator’s Toolbox” seminar presented by Jost Zetzsche on September 6th. This all-day affair, designed to help you unleash the power of your computer for greater speed and efficiency in your work, will include two sessions, the morning devoted to computer basics and the afternoon to specific translation and terminology management tools. Participants will have the opportunity to register for one session or both. Jost is an ATA-accredited English-to-German translator, a consultant in the field of localization and translation, and a writer on technical solutions for the translation and localization industry, including the Tool Kit newsletter for translators. He is a frequent presenter at ATA and other conferences.

Mark your calendar, and watch this site for further information about these two events. Registration for the Business Basics workshop will begin in mid-May.

You are invited to a bilingual reading by novelist Cristina García (author of Dreaming in Cuban, The Agüero Sisters, and other books and anthologies) and her translator, Liliana Valenzuela. They will read from García’s latest novel A Handbook to Luck (Knopf, 2007), which Valenzuela translated into Spanish as Las Caras de la Suerte (Vintage Español, 2008). García will also read from her new children’s book The Dog Who Loved the Moon. 

7 p.m. Friday, May 2, 2008 at BookPeople (6^th St. & Lamar)

The American Translators Association has called for presentation proposals for its 49th Annual Conference, to be held at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida, November 5–8, 2008.

Proposals are invited on topics in all areas of translation and interpreting, including the following: Financial Translation and Interpreting; Independent Contractors; Interpreting; Language Services Providers; Language-specific Sessions; Language Technology; Legal Translation and Interpreting; Literary; Media; Medical Translation and Interpreting; Science and Technology; Terminology; and Training and Pedagogy.

Submission deadline is March 14, 2008.