ProZ.com 2016 international conference - Stockholm, Sweden

The art of giving and receiving substantial feedback

How do we maintain good work relationships with the faceless people at the other end of the World Wide Web, people we don't know, and people we might never know? And how do we prevent the anonymous nature of the translation industry from clouding our judgement when we review the work of our colleagues?

The presentation will evolve around the strategies we can use to ensure a good atmosphere, peace of mind, and an effective work process when handling review work and arbitration, both as translators and as reviewers.

During the main part of the presentation we will look at how we can deliver constructive, honest criticism that will help people grow as professionals. We will also have a look at how working as reviewers, and giving the text the time it needs and deserves, we can become better translators. Finally, we will take a look at how we can handle other people criticizing our own work, both when they are right and when we just want to tell them that they might want to look into getting another job.

Robin Joensuu (Germany)

Bio: Robin Joensuu is an English into Swedish translator mainly working in the fields of IT, telecom, marketing, and engineering. He holds a Master of Arts in Literature, Culture and Media (Lund University), and has studied various additional university courses in different ways related to his line of work. As primary reviewer for a major virtualization software company, and later as an in-house vendor for a renowned American IT company, where he spent his days pointing out translators’ mistakes as diplomatically as possible, Robin has collected a set of strategies that he more than willingly shares. Web site: http://www.swedish-translator.com ProZ.com member: Robin Joensuu