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.

Belgian Paul Verhaeghen, who won the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize for his novel Omega Minor, has decided to donate his prize money to the ACLU. Normally the prize is split between author and translator, but having translated his own novel into English from the original Dutch, he won the entire prize.

An excerpt from his acceptance statement (which can be found in its entirety on his blog Babylon Blues:

…to avoid supporting the regime with more tax dollars than I already owe them, I have asked the Arts Council England to donate the money associated with the Prize, all 10,000 pounds of it, to the American Civil Liberties Union. Withholding the tax portion of those 10,000 pounds from the US Treasury will shorten the war by a mere eye-blink - its cost is currently 3,810 dollar per second - but the ACLU can use that money to great effect in their legal battles against torture, detainee abuse, and the silence surrounding it.

We are not immune to history. But neither is history immune to us.

Thanks to Marian Schwartz for passing along this amazing news, which she found on E.J. Van Lanen’s Three Percent. 

FCICE Written Test Prep Seminars are beginning in a city near you! These training seminars by the National Center for Interpretation have assisted up to 40% of participants in passing the written portion of the FCICE. Test Prep Seminars will be offered in Texas on these dates:
El Paso - May 31 and June 1, 2008
Houston - August 9 and 10, 2008

Cost: $375. For more information download the brochure.

If you cannot attend one of these seminars, take a look at the FCICE Written Sample Examinations so that you can practice at your convenience!

The New York Moon, an Internet-based publication, is a collection of experimental, reflective, and imaginative projects that unfold in any medium. The just-released April 2008 issue focuses on translation.

Translation is usually considered a practical activity. Someone who speaks one language needs to understand something in another language. But in our polyglot world and city, it can also be a challenge, a game — the intersection of a dozen cultures. In this edition of the Moon, our correspondents approached the theme from widely different vantages, but each showed that there is a hidden movement to “translation.” After all, the Latin word, translatus, means “carried over.”

Submissions are now being accepted for TransLit Volume 8, a special themed issue titled “Poetry and Short Stories of the Americas” that will be published in spring 2009 by the Literary Translation Collective of the Association of Translators and Interpreters of Alberta (ATIA) in cooperation with the Literary Translators’ Association of Canada (LTAC).

Interested translators may submit a short (<2500 words) translation to or from one of the four main languages of the Americas (English, French, Spanish, or Portuguese) or any indigenous language along with the original text. The original or translation must be in English or French. The submission should include brief biographies of the translator and the author, permission to publish from the author and publisher, and bibliographical data for the original.

Send submissions by July 1, 2008 to:

Editors, TransLit Volume 8
School of Translation and Interpretation
University of Ottawa
Arts Building, 4th Floor
Ottawa, Ontario
CANADA K1N 6N5

Contact editors Marc Charron or Luise von Flotow for more information.

XE.com offers many online foreign exchange tools, including a convenient table of cross rates, e.g., the ratios of one currency to another, for frequently consulted currencies. Live mid-market rates are refreshed once a minute. You can also create cross rate tables based in currencies of your choice (even obsolete currencies) using current or historical rates.

The site has a quick currency converter, but you can access a "full" version of the Universal Currency Converter, which contains every known world currency: over 180 currencies in over 250 geographical locations.

Source, the Newsletter of the ATA’s Literary Division, will take the form of an online newsletter and has issued a call for submissions for its August 2008 issue.

The newsletter provides “a forum for activities, issues, and humor pertaining to the tricky craft of literary translation.” It seeks contributions of general interest to literary translators: reviews, news, articles of general interest, interviews, photos, cartoons, fora, and conundra.

If you would like to host a regular column or wish to contribute to the August issue—deadline for submissions is June 15—contact Editor Michele Aynesworth.

Nora Comstock will speak at the next SpanSIG meeting. She is the Executive Director of Las Comadres, an informal internet-based group that meets monthly in many US cities to build connections and community with other Latinas.

The meeting will be held at the Austin History Center, 9th & Guadalupe, 10:15-12 noon, on Saturday, May 10. Don’t forget the member meeting at 1:00 p.m. the same day, same place.