Continuing Professional Development: is CPD for me?
January is the month of resolutions and of plans for the new year ahead. We have all made lists of things we would like to change about ourselves and our lives and it seems like every year there are new fads with catchy names, like Veganuary, for instance. Some might make resolutions about starting to work out and going to the gym, or we might plan our vacations and holiday destinations for the next year, but all resolutions focus on how we can improve ourselves. While I believe that resolutions per se are not truly useful (if we want to make a commitment, there is no point in waiting for the 31st December to start making plans), the start of the year is a great moment for drawing up a training plan.
I believe that Continuing Professional Development (CPD) is crucial for our profession, whether we do it to develop existing skills and improving our knowledge of a specific industry we already work in, or whether our objective is to find a new specialism. However, CPD can be quite expensive, and at times, it is difficult to know if it will be worth our time and money.
We should definitely take some things into account before deciding to splash out on costly seminars or conferences. First of all, we should figure out if we want tailored CPD for language professionals, or if we should focus on specialised conferences or seminars for experts in the fields we work in. While both options are valid, it truly depends on our needs and goals. For instance, by attending conferences aimed at professionals in the legal field, for example, we would mingle with potential clients, while learning their jargon, finding out about trends in that field from the true experts and network with them. On the other hand, if we feel like we are lacking language-specific knowledge or techniques, a workshop on legal translation in our language combination would be ideal.
Attending workshops might be expensive, but there are free options out there, for instance Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). There are several MOOC platforms out there but my two favourite ones are Future Learn and Coursera. You can select the category and field you are interested in and sign up to courses, which provide videos, articles and learning material in a variety of subjects. While these platforms do not have tailored content for linguists, they can give us the subject-matter knowledge we are looking for. I have personally taken several MOOCs on subjects I am interested in, such as Corpus Linguistics, the science of cancer, dementia, psychology and mental health, or the UK legal system.
When it comes to translation-related CPD opportunities, there is a plethora of options out there, but it is important to ask ourselves if they will actually benefit us. Sure, it might be interesting to attend a practical workshop on translation in the life sciences field, but if you do not work in that area and do not have a background in biology, simply attending one workshop will not make you an expert.
As far as my personal CPD goals for 2018, I want to keep my options open, but I already have a list of events I will attend. At the end of this month, for instance, I will attend a workshop on SDL Trados Studio 2017, to refresh my knowledge and become more familiar with the advanced features of these tools, as I have only recently switched from the 2015 to the 2017 version. This month, I will also attend a free event in Brussels, The Brussels Happiness Project, the first of a series of events I am planning on attending. The project is meant to help participants set and follow-up on personal growth and development goals and it brings together motivational speakers from different fields. At the end of the year, I am planning on attending the Translating Europe Forum, organised by the Commission’s Directorate-General for Translation, as the 2017 edition was extremely insightful and gave me a good overview of the current and future trends in the industry. I also know I want to attend a subject specific conference or workshop in the field of legal translation, so I am in the process of researching contenders.
A great way of finding CPD opportunities is through your national or regional professional associations and the webinars or workshops they organise. While I am no longer UK-based, I am still a member of the Yorkshire Translators and Interpreters association (a regional branch of the ITI), and I am planning on mixing business with pleasure and planning a trip back to Yorkshire that will coincide with a YTI event.
What about you? What are your CPD goals for 2018? Are you interested in translation/interpreting events, or industry conferences?
