RMIT Translating & Interpreting Professional Development

FREE EVENT

This is a rare opportunity to enjoy a professional development session with an overseas presenter. Come and join us for these two exciting presentations and make the most of the occasion to network and mingle with colleagues at RMIT´s City Campus. 

Speaker Bio

Joseba Urkia has been an interpreter with the Basque Government's Official Translation Service (IZO) for over 30 years and currently serves as the chief interpreter. A sworn interpreter of Basque and Spanish, he has delivered seminars and training courses for interpreters and has served on examination and selection panels for various official bodies. He is also the author of the Interpreting Manual, Interpretearen Eskuliburua (2008).

Topic 1

Interpreters of the Basque Official Translation Service work almost exclusively from Basque into Spanish. These two languages are typologically very different, with sentence components arranged in completely opposite orders. As a result, interpreting between them is particularly challenging—especially when compared to neighbouring languages such as Spanish and French.

Since language structures cannot be altered, one of the few advantages available to interpreters is thorough subject knowledge and careful preparation of relevant documentation. There are no ‘magic’ tools to make the process easier. In this discussion, the presenter will explain how they operate, the strategies they use to address challenges, and the types of speeches that are most suitable for interpretation, along with the specific difficulties each one presents.

Topic 2

This talk will provide an insight into the work of revisers in the Basque Government’s Official Translation Service. Key topics will include the tools available to them, the types of corrections they make, the impact of Basque language normalisation on their work, and the main challenges they face. To illustrate their daily tasks, they will also present examples of their work.

Our service operates as a large team, making it challenging to maintain full consistency across all outputs. Additionally, external language service providers contribute to translation work, further complicating the standardisation of terminology. Moreover, as Basque is still undergoing a process of linguistic standardisation, we must navigate both translation challenges and issues related to the evolving nature of the language.