Over four days in late May, one of the Spanish language community’s largest workshops for TEDx organizers and TED Translators, GranTOTE 2020 (or Gran Taller de Organizadores TEDx y Traductores en Español 2020), took place virtually. The theme of this year’s event was “Earth”, and the online gathering’s attendees included organizers and translators from Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, Italy, Mexico, Peru, Spain, the UK and the US.
Two of the participants were GranTOTE 2020’s TED Translators workshop host, Sebastian Betti, and its cohost, Gisela Giardino. The session was called “TED Translators: Translations to go further”, which, as Sebastian told us, focused on exploring the following questions and propositions:
“While organizing an event, we frequently ask ourselves if what we are doing contributes to the spreading of ideas. But in [the] context of lockdown, in which we lose physical contact with the audience, can we reinvent ourselves so as not to lose relevance? Can translations help us in that endeavor? Let’s think together about ways to use…translation to bring…ideas to more people.”
The workshop’s participants were encouraged to think up novel, even eccentric, approaches to expanding the reach of TED Translators’ work. The discussion homed in on increasing the engagement of both new and frequent viewers of TED and TEDx talks. In the end, Sebastian and Gisela’s session yielded over 100 ways to potentially accomplish these goals; here are 20 that Sebastian translated into English.
“We consider these ideas ‘throwable concepts’,” Sebastian said, “which is a category we adopted from previous workshops, like TOTE2020 in Notion and TOTE2020 in Padlet.” Among the out-of-the-box ideas explored in the workshop was a sing-along to Nina Vais’ performance, providing a much-needed mental break and altering the experience from passive to active.
“At the end of the workshop,” Sebastian added, “Gisela and I showed the TED Translators promo video and invited the attendees to join the TED Translators program.”
For our part, we look forward to welcoming these new volunteers to the TED Translators global family!