The opposite of congress...

Progress, of course!

I've been giving thought to my decision to quit the ATA over their asinine adoption of a resolution designed to allow folks to think they're really Doing Something Important™ by having the Association thumb its nose at the current Administration. By allowing such debate, I fear the Association - which seems to be less interested in actually promoting the profession as times goes by, at least from the point of view of the working stiff - will be inundated next year by folks pushing their favorite agenda. (My bet is on someone introducing a resolution next year requiring translators to respect "the sanctity of life," or some equivalent formulation championed by folks from the right-hand side of the auditorium.)

In short, despite the fact that ATA hasn't been much of a help professionally and that ATA certification hasn't really been of much identifiable value, it'd still be a shame to throw all of that away, at least for now.

Part of the bad taste in my mouth has to do with the ATA's idiotic 'continuing education' requirement, which I consider a testament, in my (arrogant) opinion, to the Association's general lack of Clue™ regarding the real world (as opposed to, say, the academic world). As a professional engineer, I'm familiar with the theory and practice of continuing education (as there is a CE requirement in Florida), and it makes sense in fields where rules change all the time or where new techniques emerge to replace old ones. Still, I suppose one can at least argue the merits of CE as it applies to translation (though that really never occurred in the ATA, the requirements just sort of "appeared" with hardly any discussion that I am aware of).

Yet what really stinks is the system for accumulating points.

The basic rule is: you need 20 points over three years (compare with 8 points over two years for a Florida P.E., 4 of which have to do with awareness of regulatory changes).

For attending an ATA conference, you get 10 points. No additional points are awarded if you're a presenter at the conference. If the Toronto conference was any indication, there is also no actual requirement to attend any conference sessions. I got my certificate of attendance when I picked up my conference materials. You can also get points for reading articles in Conference proceedings.

On the other hand, if you write a book on translation, you get all of 4 points (and 4 points is the maximum you can get for writing books or articles during a three-year CE cycle). It seems to me there's something wrong about that.

In any event, I just sat down to see how many points I've racked up, and it turns out that, between the 2004 conference, a couple of articles in the Association's Chronicle, and some interpreter classroom training at NASA, I've satisfied the requirement.

Whoo. Whoo.

* * *In more important news, all attempts to send an eFax to France failed, so I went to a local packaging and mailing shop and did the fax from there. The fax refused to go through until we dropped the leading zero from the fax phone number, which is something eFax warned me about, but which seemed to make no difference when it came to actually sending the fax electronically (although in checking my eFax outbound log, I note that my most recent attempt without the zero has succeeded; apparently, Murphy is not only on the job, but has a sense of irony as well). At any rate, I've since Skyped my correspondent and everything is under control.

* * *We're keeping a wary eye out on the weather. I've found an interesting site (Weatherbonk) that allows you to combine the mapping power of Google with the dynamics of weather, thus allowing you to visualize what the weather will be along your driving route. According to the site, the optimum time to depart for Pagosa is tomorrow morning.

Which means I better turn to on the thousand and one tasks that must be done soonest!

Cheers...