Sun, rain and wind: Scotland at its best

Every other year, the ITI (the British Institute of Translation and Interpreting) brings together its members as well as language professionals from all over the world at its renowned conference. This year, we were all invited to visit Edinburgh, the Scottish capital, in early June.

Conference setting

This year’s conference motto was “New World, New Work,” which felt like an apt choice given recent developments in the language sector. And the conference did live up to it: it was hardly surprising that one of the dominant topics was artificial intelligence (AI), but also many other aspects of our “new world” that affect us as language professionals were discussed.

AI dominating day 1

The first of the two conference days was packed with AI-related content. Since the rise to fame of ChatGPT, many colleagues have been feeling threatened by this new technology, which is often sold as a panacea for all things related to language.

The presentations at the conference highlighted various aspects of AI, from advantages and disadvantages of this new technology, to its role as competition for our profession and its potential in helping people from “smaller” languages to preserve the knowledge of their communities and communicate with the rest of the world.

In the end, all speakers seemed to agree: AI has come to stay. And yes, it will transform our profession—but this has happened many times before, from the rise of tools for computer-assisted translation to neural machine translation. But will it replace us? That seems, as of yet, very unlikely, since emotional intelligence, social awareness and other human aspects are still very much our domain.

A diverse programme

But AI is not the only factor shaping the language sector in 2024. It is therefore hardly surprising that a lot of other important topics affecting our profession and especially us as sole traders made it into the conference agenda. Some examples included the question of diversification or specialisation of services, protecting our one-person companies against accidents and other emergencies, and translation and interpreting in sports, which seems to gaining more and more publicity. Very timely, given the Paris Olympics and Paralympics this summer!

Useful information

As usual, the goal of the ITI Conference was to give speakers an opportunity share their knowledge, personal experiences and expertise with their colleagues. One fantastic talk included advice on using figures of speech to improve our texts, another focused on grammar issues, and there was even one that was all about translating swearwords (which sounds easy, but poses all kinds of culture-related difficulties!).

Conclusion

As always, the ITI Conference was an informative, well-organised event that allowed ample time for learning, but also for networking and discussing the topics covered. And once again, it gave me a lot inspiration and tips for my day-to-day work. Thank you, ITI, for this amazing conference; I can’t wait for 2026!