One tip from a friend gleaned during the first lockdown (March/April 2020) was to try to learn something new every day to help your work.
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Where did you learn German?
In September 1990, aged 13 I took the decision as I started at Taunton School (having previously been at its then boys only preparatory school (Taunton Junior Boys School)) to take German as a second modern language.
As a child I learned that an alarm clock was used to wake you up. But it took me a lot longer to realise that an alarm clock was a tool to send you to sleep and sleep more.
I turned 44 on 24 June 2021. The momentous realisation was that I was halfway between graduating (23) and retirement (65), and fortunately I had an excellent opportunity to take stock of things, giving a talk to a class of MA course Translation students at the Department of Translation Studies at the University of Graz at the invitation of Hendrik Bower.
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Back to the “normal” Office
After having worked from home for sixteen weeks, last week I was back in my “normal” office, in the room that I have worked in since 2014, since I joined my employer.
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Copying the in-office setup at home
When I turned off the light in my office on the evening of 13 March 2020, I hadn’t anticipated that three months later I would be still working from home. Fortunately, we had always kept a home office “just in case” although it was planning to be repurposed to become a room for our twins. Then COVID-19 became an issue in Austria.
This year I have decided to try and take one term each week in German and the following week one in English for each letter of the alphabet to illustrate the diverse nature of my work as a Financial Markets Supervision Translator. I’m using the hashtag #AtoZFMST to do so.
The intention behind it is to introduce some of the key concepts of the job of an embedded translator in the supervisory setting. One reason behind this was because from talking to other people at recent conferences a number asked about the kinds of documents that are handled within the job, as it can be a somewhat arcane field of specialisation that seems impenetrable to an outsider.
Two primary reasons exist for the burgeoning demand for translation in financial market supervision. Firstly, increasing Europeanisation of financial market supervision, following the advent of the Single Supervisory Mechanism in banking supervision, the establishment of European Supervisory Authorities in banking, insurance and occupational pensions, and securities and markets supervision, and bank resolution within the Single Resolution Mechanism, and their language regimes have created increased demand in the national language to English combination. Secondly, the cross-border nature of activities of supervised entities, particularly those whose cross-border activities are not restricted only to other EU Member States, also presents particular challenges with regard to legal translation in relation to ongoing supervisory activities. In addition, the constantly evolving language services market also presents considerable challenges for both translators and consumers of legal translation services. Finally, while technology increases productivity, its use also affects charging models, which can in turn complicate the procurement of legal translation.
Keywords: Europeanisation, cross-border supervision, Austria, language services, procurement, productivity