Patricia Bown from McElroy Translations will explore the Spanish translation market at the Spanish Special Interest Group meeting at 10:15 a.m. on Saturday, February 9, at the Austin History Center.

She will address the changing needs that the Spanish translation market faces and how to prepare for it as a Spanish translator (areas of specialty that are in high demand in Spanish translation, qualifications agencies seek when hiring translators, and types of translations requests they get).

Susana Roca-Smith, Spanish Special Interest Group Coordinator, reports that SpanSIG and the Interpretation SIG have set dates for their respective meetings in 2008. Unless otherwise announced, all meetings will be held at the Austin History Center, 10:15am-12:00pm., on the following dates:

SpanSIG
Feb. 9
May 10
Sept. 13
Dec. 6
ISIG
April 12
June 14
August 9
Oct. 11

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.

The next AATIA Literary Special Interest Group will meet Saturday, January 12, from 2 to 4 p.m. Traci Andrighetti will present an excerpt from Rossana Campo’s The American Actor for review. Contact LitSIG Coordinator Marian Schwartz for directions. By way of introduction, Andrighetti had this to say:

This excerpt is from the latter pages of Rossana Campo’s The American Actor, a novel about an Italian journalist who decides to spend the holidays in New York hunting down an American actor with whom she had a one-night stand following the opening of his latest film in Paris, where she lives and works.

At this point in the story, our protagonist is in the process of discovering that the actor, Steve Rothman, with whom she is by now completely infatuated, is less like his character in the recent love story he has made and more like his characters in the gratuitously violent films “Dangerous Men” and “Bloody Brothers.”

Incidentally, the “storm” she refers to in the opening sentence of the excerpt has to do with the first sign she has seen of Steve’s dark side the previous evening.

Rossana Campo, born in Genoa to Neapolitan parents in 1963, writes novels, short stories, and theater. Her writing, recognized as part of an innovative literary style known as “New Fiction,” incorporates youth jargon and irony in the depiction of issues affecting the lives of women and has earned Campo recognition in Italy and abroad. She was a finalist in 1994 for the Premio nazionale di narrativa Bergamo and again this year for the Premio Ricercare. In 1999 her first novel, In principio erano le mutande (Feltrinelli, 1992), was made into a film directed by Anna Negri, for which Campo co-wrote the screenplay. In addition, several of her novels have been translated into Spanish, German and French, and one of her short stories has appeared in English.

Despite the paucity of her work in English translation, Campo’s fiction is often the subject of study in universities in both the United States and Great Britain. Because her work is closely related to the American postmodernist culture of quotation and parody, I believe that Campo would enjoy a wide audience in the United States. Unfortunately, not all of the university presses I have approached agree with me.

Much of the day-to-day work of interpreters is performed in courtrooms, at meetings, and in medical examining rooms. But occasionally they work in the public spotlight. At the next AATIA member meeting, Tony Beckwith will talk about interpreting the Democratic Presidential Candidate Debates for Univision Television Network.

In addition, Michele Aynesworth and Liliana Valenzuela will report highlights from the recent ALTA conference. According to Director for Membership Maurine McLean, the meeting will include updates on the AATIA website and previews of upcoming workshops, as well as door prizes, refreshments, and networking. Newcomers welcome!

Next AATIA member meeting: 1:00 p.m., January 5, 2008, Austin History Center (9th and Guadalupe) Note: due to scheduling conflicts the meeting will be held the first Saturday in January instead of the regular date.