At the end of October, Helena Batt, deputy director of TED Translators, traveled to São Paulo, Brazil, to meet with local translators and TEDx organizers ahead of this year’s TEDxSãoPaulo gathering. The goal was to connect these folks in order to further bolster the thriving Brazilian TED Translators community.
The evening before TEDxSãoPaulo, Helena and a dozen or so translators and organizers convened at Seen restaurant, where they discussed the extremely productive network these two cohorts have built together. As Helena puts it: “The Brazilian TED Translators community—with its consistent collaboration between translators, as well as between translators and TEDx organizers—is a model of success for other translation communities. Vital to this success is the excellent training and mentoring that Brazilian Language Coordinators provide new translators, in addition to their efforts to include TED Translators in local TEDx events.”
TEDxSãoPaulo went down the next day, October 24, and saw TED Translators from numerous parts of Brazil come together to participate in activities and conversations co-organized by the Skoll Foundation. “It was refreshing and inspiring, especially in a country currently quite divided by politics, to witness and be a part of such a warm and synergetic community in action,” Helena says. “TED Translators looks forward to continuing to help develop the Brazilian translation community and to identifying its best practices to apply to other translation communities around the world.”