NETA board meetings are held four times a year, generally in September, January, March, and June, at BU's CELOP Center. All except the June meeting occur just before monthly meetings, and usually at 10:30 AM. Final dates, times, and agendas are announced in advance via email. All active NETA members are welcome to attend.

General meetings are usually held once a month from September through April on Saturday afternoons at BU's CELOP Center. 

Special workshops are generally held once or twice a year.

2011-12 

September 17: 6th Annual Translation Bash, 1:30-4:30  Email This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it , tell us your language pair, and receive a copy of this year's English passage. Translate that passage at your convenience before bash day, and join in as we debate the ins and outs of each sentence. We have a facilitator in place for Spanish. If you work in another language pair and would like to participate on September 17, just write to us. We'll keep a tally and let you know about other people who sign up to work with your language.

October: no monthly meeting due to the ATA conference being held in Boston

November 19: ATA Redux, 2:00-4:30  At this meeting NETA will revisit the ATA conference held in Boston in late October. Participants will share highlights of the best session they attended, learn about sessions they missed, pass on specific points learned, tell us how they are applying something new that they learned at the ATA conference, and find inspiration for their own work and for NETA's own annual conference scheduled for May 5. This will be a moderated discussion, and for the first time ever, we will be broadcasting this session via a remote conferencing system so that people who live far from Boston can participate, too.

December: Annual Holiday Party, 2:00-8:00 in Lexington, MA. Potluck dinner and Yankee Swap.

January 28: The Art of Networking, 2:00-4:00  Connections, connections! They are essential for a vibrant professional life, so it is in our interest to pursue connections effectively. According to this month's speaker, Jerry Villacres, networking, just like life, is an art. Mr Villacres's talk will focus on the goal of networking, successful strategies for networking, tips for networking, and personal experiences. There will be plenty of opportunity for questions and discussion.

February 25: TBA

March 24: Google Search Tricks

April 21: TBA 

May 5: Sixteenth Annual NETA Conference

In 2010-11 we sponsored the following programs:

September 25: 5th Annual Translation Bash, 1:30-4:30  Email  This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it , tell us your language pair, and receive a copy of this year's English passage. Translate that passage at your convenience before bash day, and join in as we debate the ins and outs of each sentence. We have facilitators in place for Spanish and Portuguese. If you work in another language pair and would like to join in on September 25, just write to us. We'll keep a tally and let you know about other people who sign up to work with your language.

October 23: How to Win and Keep Direct Clients, 2:00-4:00  While some translators and interpreters certainly are employed full-time by a large range of companies, institutions, and governmental agencies, many of us are contract professionals who depend on securing individual projects from translation agencies or direct clients. The emphasis at this meeting will be on the latter. How does one go about finding potential direct clients? Where does one turn? What techniques are effective, and which ones are sure not to yield the desired results? And once a direct client has been secured, what can be done to encourage repeat business? These are some of the questions to be discussed by Judy Lyons and Rudy Heller, two highly seasoned translators with combined experience of nearly 50 years in the field.

November 20: LinkedIn for Translators and Interpreters, 2:00-4:00  Find out what LinkedIn is and how it can help your freelance business. NETA's Diana Rhudick, a translation veteran of over 20 years, will explain the basics of setting up a LinkedIn account and discuss the main features of this professional networking site. Come with questions or tips on how you use LinkedIn.

December 4: Annual Holiday Party, 2:00-8:00 in Needham, MA. Potluck dinner and Yankee Swap. 

January 22: Excel with a Translator Twist (and hints for interpreters, too), 2:00-4:00  We will begin with a brief introduction to Excel, after which this session will be devoted to issues of particular interest to translators and interpreters. Primary focus will be on three topics: 1. Managing terminology with Excel, including importing and organizing existing glossaries; 2. Using Excel to keep business records and track payment; and 3. Tracking time and productivity in Excel. NETA's Bruce Popp, an experienced and popular speaker, will be our guide.

February 26: Establishing an Ergonomically Friendly Office Environment, 2:00-4:00  Translators spend a great deal of time at their computers. This presentation will share hands-on strategies on how to set up a computer station and establish healthy habits to compute in comfort. Strategies are drawn from evidence-based research and the collaboration with a board-certified ergonomist. Ellen Wuest and Jackie Markowitz, students at Boston University's College of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences: Sargent College, will be the presenters.

March 26: Strategies for Improving Memory and Note-Taking Skills, 2:00-4:00  All of us could stand to benefit from some hints as to how to listen more intensely and efficiently. This meeting will allow us to take a big step in that direction. We will learn memory strategies for everyday use and then find out how to apply them to interpreting sessions. Also, note-taking is an indispensable aid for interpreters. How can it be done most effectively? Active learning and reviewing are of the essence in relation to note-taking, and our speaker, Maria Vazquez, stands ready to be our guide.

April 23: Translating Poetry, 2:00-4:00  A Few Words About Translation: a talk with sample translations, touching upon the following: why the process is both impossible and essential; how to choose what to translate; honoring both languages; how to lose as little as possible; when to bend grammar and syntax; deciding what is most worth keeping; learning the virtues of humility and resignation. Our presenters, Rhina Espaillat and Bill Coyle, are both accomplished and recognized poets who are members of the Powow River Poets, centered in Newburyport, MA.

May 7: Fifteenth Annual NETA conference

In 2009-10 we sponsored the following programs:

September 26: 4th Annual Translation Bash

October 24: Simultaneous, Real-Time, and Recorded Interpretation for Virtual Events

November 21: Handy Computer Tips: Mail Merge, Tables, Headers and Footers, and Wildcards

January 30: The Indeterminacy of Translation: Meaning and Untranslatability as based on W. V. Quine's thesis

February 27: The Basics of Financial Management for the Self-Employed

March 27: Two Views of Book Translation

April 17: Interpreting During Crises: The Case of Haiti

May 22: Fourteenth Annual NETA Conference