AUSIT NEWS
A team of six translators, all members of AUSIT, received a prestigious international award, the triennial FIT Prize for Excellence in Scientific and Technical Translation, at the XXIII FIT World Congress last month.
Facundo Alvarez (Spanish), Karine Bachelier (French), Olga Kozyrevitch (Russian), Jesús Martínez (Spanish), Anar Umerkhanova (Russian) and Mariana Cordeiro (Communications Assistant), make up the translation team for the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR).
The team provides an expert scientific and diplomatic language service for all official documents and communications of the Commission and its Scientific Committee in the four official languages of the Commission: English, French, Spanish and Russian.
Concretely, this entails the translation of complex scientific working papers throughout the year, including on wide-ranging and evolving issues such as ecosystem monitoring and management, statistical assessments, acoustic surveys, marine biology and climate change. Due to the rapidly developing nature of these scientific fields, translators are required to be adept in not only the latest terminology, but also the development of appropriate translations for concepts that are still emerging and changing.
While most of the original texts received by the team are written in English and must be translated into French, Russian and Spanish, some are in French, Russian or Spanish, each of which is translated into English first, then from English, into the remaining two languages.
During the Commission’s annual meetings, held in October, the team translates all draft report text in real time for formal adoption, a process that requires extremely nuanced, high-quality work under extreme time pressure. The provision of these language services is critical to ensuring equity, and also the smooth functioning of often challenging diplomatic relations. Preliminary reports – of the Scientific Committee, working groups and standing committees, on implementation, compliance and administration respectively – are also translated by the team in a period of less than three weeks, with reports typically running at well over 100,000 words in total. These written texts also support real-time simultaneous interpreting of each meeting’s proceedings. The translation of draft conservation measures for endorsement by the Commission constitutes formal binding law, and this demands extremely high levels of technical skill and precision.
All official correspondence and circulars are also provided for Members in the Commission’s four official languages, with a strong emphasis on organisational reporting and diplomatic representations. Other critical sources – including scientific observer and vessel monitoring reports, technical guidelines, data summaries and website text – are also regularly translated throughout each year.
This small, agile team’s performance is crucial to the proper functioning of the Commission and its objective: conservation of the Antarctic. The reliability and accuracy of their translations are also foundational to both international understanding and the scientific evidence that makes up the bedrock of CCAMLR.
The pre-eminence of CCAMLR translation in the Australian scientific field also contributes to the growth and professional standing of the translation profession at large, including through the provision and support of internships and the support of junior professional staff.
AUSIT Fellow and past president of FIT Adolfo Gentile accepted the prize on behalf of the CCAMLR translation team, at the XXIII FIT World Congress, held in Geneva, Switzerland in early September.
Congratulations Facundo, Karine, Mariana, Olga, Jesús and Anar on your prize!
AUSIT member Alan Cockerill was also nominated for the FIT Aurora Borealis Prize for Outstanding Translation of Non-Fiction Literature, and was awarded an Honourable Mention by the jury. We’ll tell you about the body of work for which Alan received this honour in our Summer issue.
