Report from the President

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It seems that by all accounts the New York Circle of Translators saw a comeback in 2012. The current board continues its efforts to professionalize its administration and better serve members. One issue that the board inherited upon taking office in 2012 was dwindling membership. This, in turn, was one of many problems caused by a series of crises in the Circle, including early resignation of several officers in the 2010-2011 period. Membership rose in 2012 to around 250 members from under 200 at close of 2011. This was achieved not least by a series of compelling speakers and monthly events to which former members were also invited, regular publication of the Gotham Translator, and the implementation of Constant Contact to improve mass communication to current and former members.

Another challenge that preceded the current board is the New York Circle Web site, which was fraught with problems, including frequent errors occurring in the member database, difficulties registering or renewing memberships, defects in the calendar function that hampered announcement of events, and grammatical and typographical errors in the text of the Web site. The current board, under the leadership of Secretary Gigi Branch-Shaw, has endeavored to bring full functionality to the Web site. Unfortunately, this goal has proven even more challenging than anticipated. Many of the issues have been remedied, but it is apparent that our problems will not be resolved completely until we have migrated the entire site to a new platform (from the outdated ASP.NET in all likelihood to WordPress).

An issue related to the Web site is accounting. Member registrations via the Web site are needlessly complicated for the treasurer (and hence slower for members) since they require a two-step process whereby the treasurer manually has to link member registrations to payments made by PayPal or check. Furthermore, glitches have arisen whereby old members are given current-member status; also, member expiration dates in the system are mysteriously erroneous. These problems underscore the need for a new database that can adequately administer member data and insure acceptable service. Treasurer Paolo Modigliani is also migrating current member data and payment status to QuickBooks from an Excel file where these data are now housed. So the board is tackling all these issues in a multi-step and delicate process.

When I took office as president-elect in January of 2012, it was obvious that the Circle faced a host of problems that threatened the organization’s survival. Despite the sincerity of the current board’s efforts to better serve the membership and the profession, however, changes in its modus operandi would lack legitimacy if the members had not been consulted. Louise Jennewine, program director, came up with an invaluable proposition to address this issue: an anonymous online member survey. The survey was conducted in January and its results will soon be available for members to consult, complete with anonymous quotes, member statistics, and valuable suggestions, much of which is captured in colored charts. Two salient results are members’ expressed priorities of keeping up to speed with industry developments and networking. Another is the overwhelming predominance of European languages represented in the membership (particularly French and Spanish).

What promises to be the 2013 board’s flagship project is its campaign to raise awareness of the work of translators and interpreters among potential clients, persons considering entering the field, and society at large. The fact that the New York Circle is unknown even to many practicing linguists in New York City cries out for the organization to raise its profile. An Outreach and Social Media Committee has been established to this end, including the generous collaboration of members Chunwen Wang and Seamus Mullarkey. The primary messages will be (1) the cost effectiveness of hiring professional interpreters and translators, recognizing what good work really entails and the extensive training and experience it requires; (2) the value gained by joining the New York Circle; and (3) some of the challenges that practicing linguists face. The plan is to approach business organizations, government agencies, ethnic community organizations, and universities about speaking engagements throughout 2013.

The other newly founded committee is Fundraising. The impetus for its creation was the need for continuity of the organization. Members appear to agree that the current board is facing these challenges aggressively. But what about future boards? It seems only realistic to assume that the Circle might, at times, have less proactive boards in the future. A further potential bottleneck is the yearly transition of officers, which can cause loss of valuable information and experience of past governance. For this reason, we have set a goal of hiring a paid administrator to ensure the ongoing continuity of the Circle. The current finances of the organization, however, will not necessarily allow this. One or both of two things will have to happen: the board will have to find a way to use the money in the bequest of Charles Stern* to this end; and/or the board will have to raise funds from donors. Neither of these tasks is simple, and the Fundraising Committee, under the leadership of Kathy Brahimi, is working hard to address them.

Margarite Heintz-Montez, editor of the Gotham Translator, and the board were approached by EBSCO Publishing with a request to include our newsletter in one of their periodicals databases. The EBSCO representative told us they had selected the Gotham through a strict vetting process and that inclusion in their database would give us much greater exposure. After reviewing their offer in consultation with the board, Margarite and I entered into an agreement with EBSCO on behalf of the Circle. The Gotham Translator is now slated to be included in an EBSCO periodicals database that can be accessed by library users at 121 educational institutions.

As the year progresses, the board will keep the membership abreast of these campaigns and their outcomes. Stay tuned! If you are interested in participating in any of these projects, please contact me at Ltmorin[at]earthlink[dot]net. All the better!

Originally published in The Gotham Translator.

* The current terms of the endowment, which stipulate an award “not exceeding a total of Five Hundred ($500.00) Dollars in any particular year . . . to the one worthiest, needy male and to the one worthiest, needy female members of the CIRCLE,” have proven unviable due to both the amount of the grant and its wording, which recipients have found stigmatizing. On the initiative of current President-Elect Edna Ditaranto, and aided by her invaluable institutional experience within the Circle, the Board is looking into ways of reallocating the funds to promote the Circle’s continued existence and prosperity. Legal restrictions may limit our options, but the task of addressing this problem has been passed down from one board to the next since the nineties.

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