Outreach

ITI and its members are committed to promoting greater understanding of the translation and interpreting profession through a variety of outreach activities. 

Our members are active in promoting the translation and interpreting profession in schools, universities and to business organisations. They regularly visit schools and universities, and deliver presentations on careers relating to translation and interpreting. Many are also actively involved with their local Chambers of Commerce and local business and networking organisations.

Please have a look at each of the sections below to find out more about outreach. 

Interested in ITI outreach for your organisation?

If you are interested in an ITI member coming to talk to your school, university or organisation about the translation and interpreting professions then please email us at [email protected] and we will do our best to put you in touch with an ITI member who can help you. 

Supporting resources to download

 We have created some infographics to help explain the role of translators and interpreters that we hope will be helpful for you and your colleagues / students.

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Use this version when talking to businesses, chambers of commerce etc.
Download as PDF
Download as image

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Use this version when talking to students in schools or university.
Download as PDF
Download as image

The Slow translation manifesto

Join the slow translation movement!

Slow translation prioritises quality, responsibility and accuracy above speed in order to create meaningful communication between people and cultures. If you share our vision, download our Slow translation manifesto and share it with colleagues and clients.

Outreach to the business community

Many of our members have built strong links with the business community, helping them better understand how to use translation and interpreting to meet and exceed their business goals. 

Watch this video to learn more about how our Qualified Members (MITIs and Fellows) work to the highest standards in the profession.

Why hire a professional?

To find out more about the jobs and projects translators and interpreters get involved in on a day-to-day basis, ITI member Emma Plested has written a series of blogs that feature case studies from the ITI Western Regional Group. They will help you to understand more about how languages are used and needed for business.

Business West Blog - Part 1
Business West Blog - Part 2 
Business West Blog - Part 3 

Organisations promoting outreach

To find out more about other organsations undertaking important outreach work relating to languages, translation and interpreting, and those seeking to promote links between business and education, explore the following websites:

Shadow Heroes

Shadow Heroes is an education initative that supports young people in embracing all sides of their linguistic and cultural heritages. They run translation workshops that explore issues of representation, self-expression, colonial history and the power of language. 

Find out more about their work, in this article, written by Shadow Heroes Co-founder and Director Gitanjali Patel, and Communications Manager Jessie Spivey.

The Queen's College Translation Exchange

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The Queen’s College Translation Exchange (QTE) was founded by Charlotte Ryland in 2018. It is based at Oxford University but open to everyone, with a particular focus on young people. Their mission is to enrich and ultimately transform the teaching and learning of languages across the UK through creative, intercultural experiences for people of all ages. Professional translators and university language students are central to all their programmes.

QTE’s flagship programmes are the Anthea Bell Prize for Young Translators and the Creative Translation Ambassadors scheme. Launched in 2020, to date the Anthea Bell Prize has engaged over 500 schools and 10,000 young people in creative translation activities. QTE trains students from universities across the UK to design and deliver translation workshops in schools, following the ‘Translators in Schools’ model developed by the Stephen Spender Trust.

QTE also runs virtual book clubs and translation workshops, which are open to all.

World Kid Lit

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Project World Kid Lit is a campaign that celebrates children's books in translation, and is run by a group of volunteers. The World Kid Lit website contains a wealth of useful resources for those interested in the topic, including recommendations for books that can be used in schools. 

World Kid Lit Month, which takes place in September, is a month to celebrate world literature for kids and teens, especially fiction and non-fiction translated to English from other languages.

The Stephen Spender Trust

Creative Translation for All

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The Stephen Spender Trust has been running creative, multilingual translation workshops in schools since 2010, with a particular focus on ‘heritage’ and ‘community’ languages and those taught in schools. Their first programme, Translation Nation, brought translators together with hundreds of primary school children in East London to share, translate and perform oral tales gathered from parents, grandparents and neighbours. Since then, SST has trained over 150 translators and teachers, run workshops for over 8,000 young people, and worked with 130 schools across 35 languages through their Translators in Schools, Big Translate and Creative Translation in the Classroom initiatives.

The annual Stephen Spender Prize for poetry in translation is a major prize for as-yet-unpublished translations. Anybody can enter, and entries in their youth categories have doubled every year since 2018.

SST trains translators to design and deliver workshops and virtual resources, and creates opportunities for them to work in schools and community groups through partnerships with arts, educational and cultural organisations. Their Multilingual Creators programme, launched in 2021, partners with the National Centre for Writing, New Writing North and Comma Press to train translators to run workshops in and around Newcastle, Greater Manchester and Norwich.

SST’s vision is of a cohesive, outward-looking society. They believe that the key to that cultural shift lies in a multilingual education for all, with its life-changing power to raise aspiration, inspire empathy and build bridges between communities.

The charity is not endowed and has no core funding, so relies on grants from trust and foundations and on donations from individuals. All support, including the £9 entry fee for the Stephen Spender Prize, goes directly to SST’s work with young people.

Business Language Champions

Business Language Champions aims to promote modern foreign languages and cultural cohesion by demonstrating to young students the importance of language skills in the workplace. By bringing schools and international business people together they inspire more young students to continue with their language learning through to further education and then beyond into language-related careers.

Inspiring the Future

Inspiring the Future connects schools and colleges with appropriate volunteers from a range of sectors and professions that match their particular requirements. Activities can take place in school to connect with volunteers from the local community, or virtually.

 

ITI Outreach Champion Award

ITI is pleased to include an Outreach Champion category within the annual ITI Awards and you can read more about the category here

Resources for ITI members to use

A number of existing members have developed their own resources to use in outreach, and ITI has collated others that can be used by all ITI members. They can be found within the My Membership section of My ITI (member-only access).