Get ready for...the Summer?

Yes, it is time to get ready for the summer. This year I am saving my money towards one goal: to travel and attend a summer school on Translation or Interpretation. Call me a nerd, but going to a foreign country to intensively learn/improve my translation and interpretation skills just sounds like total fun to me. I definitely want to do it, but I realized there are many options out there and I need to analyze them carefully. If you are also thinking about going to summer school, look carefully at what each school has to offer and analyze how this experience could contribute to your profession.

Keep in mind your  long-term professional goals

One can get very excited about the possibility of going abroad and learning about new topics in the fields of translation and interpretation. For example, I found out about the Translation Research Summer School and I immediately thought: "Oh my God, this is for me!" However, after a more careful examination, I decided the aims of this Summer School were not aligned with my own long-term professional goals.

While I am interested in the linguistic and cognitive theories behind my work as a translator/interpreter, I do  not see myself carrying out research in these areas in the near future. This program looks very good for someone thinking about to begin a PhD in Translation/Intercultural Studies. If you are an M.A. student wondering about possible research proposals to continue your PhD, then this is for you!

One of my long-term goals includes gaining more expertise in my fields of specialization. I work in the realm of social sciences, namely Economics, Law, Finance, International Development, and Marketing.  The Summer School at  Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh offers precisely lectures on these topics and their English to Spanish Conference Interpreting Workshop sounds really interesting.  They have not posted their fees yet, but let's hope they do it soon.

Another well-known option for professional interpreters is the Cambridge Conference Interpretation Course. This will be specially helpful is you are a professional interpreter that needs to brush-up their interpretation skills. Given that the great majority of interpretation work I do is from English into Spanish, I would love to get more practice and feedback on my French into Spanish interpretation performance. The working languages of this course are: English, French, German, Spanish, Russian, and Italian.

Another goal of mine this year is to improve my technological skills. I want to gain knowledge on more than just CAT tools. The Translation Technologies Summer School in Croatia seems to be a good option for those of us who want to learn more about machine translation, localization, and terminology management.  

Finally, if one of your long-term professional goals is to work in the field of Audiovisual Translation, then this Intensive Summer Course in London is a perfect option. There are several language pairs being offered; and If you are a literary translator or would like to become one, there are plenty of workshop options in Norwich, London, and Paris.

Have you attended some of these summer schools? Do you know about any other summer workshops/courses? What are your thoughts on spending part of your summer in this way?