The final issue of The AATIA Letter is now online. This (July 2008) issue provides advance details about September’s Translation Tools workshop, led by Jost Zetzsche, and AATIA’s July 12 member meeting, which will spotlight Austin’s Sister Cities.

It also contains farewells from regular columnist and cartoonist Tony Beckwith and editor Michael Conner, plus a recap of entries posted on the blog in the period since the previous issue of the newsletter.

The City of Austin will host a Small & Minority Business Resources “Certification 101 Workshop” on Wednesday, July 9th, 5:30–7:30 p.m., at 625 E. 10th Street, Room 105.

• Find out more about the requirements and benefits of obtaining your Minority-Owned Business Enterprise and/or Women-Owned Business Enterprise Certification (MBE/WBE) through the City of Austin Procurement Program.
• Learn about Disadvantaged Business Enterprise (DBE) Certification
• Work with the City’s Vendor Registration Department to add or update your information on the Vendor Registration System.

“In addition to becoming certified for City minority and women-owned business procurement opportunities, Small & Minority Business Resources can help businesses with certification as a Disadvantaged Business Enterprise, used in federal transportation and aviation projects, as well as the Historically Underutilized Business Program, which encompasses the state of Texas procurement opportunities,” said SMBR Director Stephen Elkins.

RSVP to Blender Hill at 512.974.7677.

Marianne Martinez of the Austin Sister Cities program will be one of the featured speakers at AATIA’s next member meeting at 1 p.m. on Saturday, July 12. The broad goals of the program are to foster friendly relations and promote understanding between the people of Austin and the citizens of our sister cities around the world.

This program is designed to contribute to the educational, cultural, social, and economic presence of the City of Austin in the international community of nations. You may have noticed the related displays at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport.

The meeting, to be held at the Austin History Center (9th & Guadalupe), will have the usual high-quality networking, top-notch refreshments, and other meeting segments, which will be announced here as the details surface.

The International Hospitality Council of Austin is arranging one-week home stays for English as a Second Language teachers from Mexico who will be participating in a training program at UT. Each ESL teacher will have a one-week home stay with an Austin family. The family may host one or more teachers for a week and/or may host a different teacher(s) all three weeks. The family will receive a stipend of $200 for each teacher hosted to help cover the expenses.

Dates of Home Stay Program
Week 1: July 12 to 18
Week 2: July 19 to 25
Week 3: July 26 to Aug. 1

Objectives of ESL Services Home Stay Program:

• to give each teacher a chance to meet an American and learn more about American culture
• to give each teacher a chance to practice speaking and listening to English
• to give each host family the chance to make a friend from another culture and to learn more about that culture

We are looking for families who are interested in meeting people from other countries and have time to spend with them in the evenings and on the weekend. We have a very loose definition of "family." We are looking for families of all shapes and sizes. Single people, couples, families with small children, families with older children are all most welcome.

Your responsibilities as host:

• pick up your teacher at the International Office at UT at 6 p.m. on the Saturday of your week and keep him/her until the following Friday morning.
• arrange transportation for your teacher to and from the International Office at UT on week days so that he or/she may attend classes, which run from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
• provide all weekend meals and weekday dinner and breakfast (If you prefer, you may return the teacher to the International Office at UT early so that he or she can have breakfast at the Castilian Dorm).
• spend time with your teacher on the weekend and evenings either doing your normal family activities or taking him/her somewhere
• speak English with your teacher

Benefits to you:

• You will make a new friend
• You will help an English teacher to learn more
• You might get out and do something interesting in Austin that you’ve been meaning to do
• You will be helping to foster intercultural awareness

If you have any questions, please contact Margie Kidd at 512-858-4443 (home) or 512-576-2018 (cell)

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 International Partnership of Austin (IPA) held a joint conference on investment in China with the Hong Kong Trade Development Council (HKTDC) at the Stephen F. Austin Inter-Continental Hotel in Austin on Tuesday, April 22, 2008. A group of AATIA members were invited to attend. The AATIA group included Julie Nordskog, Takao Nonaka, Shwujen Wu, and myself. Julie operated the name tag table for attendees and acted as a gracious host during the half-day conference.

The featured speaker was Texas Secretary of State Phil Wilson. Stephen Wong, regional director for HKTDC, led a panel discussion on the experience of doing business in Hong Kong and China. Bob Pearson, VP Dell, gave a presentation on the influence of China on the World Wide Web and the online experience. Other parts of the conference were a panel discussion on sourcing and manufacturing in Hong Kong and China, a presentation describing the Hong Kong Science and Technology Park, a talk on capital issues in China by Peter Harris, partner in Javelin Investments, and a “Nuts and Bolts” workshop given by all the experts present at the conference.

Special thanks should go to Julie for her tireless hosting at the conference. She gave us a professional image.

In observance of World in Translation Month, the American Literary Translation Association (ALTA) has created a poster that contains a quotation from scholar, theologian, and bibliophile Miles Smith (1554-1624), known for his mastery of Biblical languages. Smith was an integral participant in the translation and publication of the King James Version of the Bible. Download the poster (pdf), print up a couple, and post them on your favorite bulletin boards.

Related:
> Wikipedia article on Miles Smith
> Who were the King James Version translators?

The May 2008 issue of The AATIA Letter is now online. This issue, the next-to-last, examines AATIA’s future without our venerable newsletter, a review of the last two month’s entries posted on its replacement, the weblog you are reading now, and an announcement of the May 10 member meeting.