Lacrosse is delighted to announce that it has become a member of Elia, the European Language Industry Association, an organization committed to promoting ethics and quality standards throughout the translation and localization industry. Elia encourages those entering the industry by organising the Elia Exchange with participating universities. The programme gives students opportunities to improve their skills by obtaining work experience with language service providers. Elia is best-known for organising their Networking Days, innovative industry meetings, where the emphasis is on discussion, exchange of ideas and innovation.
The latest Networking Days took place earlier this month in Krakow, Poland’s former capital, which played a key role in the country’s history and is still considered by many to be its cultural capital. Now with the new Pendolino service, Krakow is only two and a half hours from Warsaw, so we were able to attend a day session and be back home again in the evening.
The first session we attended was a heart-felt presentation by Stephen Lank, entitled “A modest proposal” about ways to address the asymmetry in the relationship between agencies and freelancers, as the success of both sides are interdependent. Market research carried out by Mr Lank showed that feedback, respect and reward for experience were key ingredients on the “want lists” of freelancers, while vendor managers felt they needed freelancers to understand their business objectives and to be professionally responsible for their work. His experience was that as a vendor manger he was more successful than most because he was a listener and maintained contact with his freelancers on a human level. As such he urged the use of terms like ‘talent” rather than “resource” or “vendor” in order to establish an atmosphere of mutual respect.
Marek Gawrysiak of TextPartner gave a novel, multimedia presentation on the benefits of using checklists in the workflows of translators and reviewers and editors, presented in the context of other industries such as medicine, construction on the one hand and in the art of parenting on the other, where formalized checklists sometimes saved lives and always saved time.
The Keynote speech was delivered by Amy Barnes and John Scherer of Scherer Leadership International. In a presentation which was a beautiful mix of clearly intoned advice on adding value to customer relationships by truly listening and understanding their needs and providing that something that goes beyond excellent service. The presentation was clearly based on SLI’s own experience and was delivered as a comfortably overlapping double act, with the right amount of humor and careful audience interaction.
After showing some new friends from Milton Keynes one of the better Kraków establishments by the Planty, a ring of gardens surrounding the city walls, we continued on to an excellent evening event hosted by the City of Kraków at the Kraków Museum in the Old Town Square.It should have been short walk back to the railway station, where the Pendolino was departing for the return journey to Warsaw. A pity it left on time…