How eCPD has revolutionised online training for translators

Taking stock after three and a half years at eCPD

 

In today’s fast-moving world, translators worth their salt strive to keep up with trends, changes and technology developments in their specialist areas and in the “mechanics” of translation.

As recently as 2009 such translators needed to travel to attend courses and seminars to find out about the latest developments in the T&I world as well as in their specialist areas.

That’s where eCPD came in. In 2009 Managing Director Lucy Brooks, through her professional association, started to run some experimental webinars to help those translators who, for one reason or another, were unable to travel to cities to attend courses. These first webinars were a great success and from those early days eCPD Webinars was born.

Since then there has been an explosion in the availability of on-line training for translators and interpreters. Providers are springing up in every country of Europe (and eCPD is in touch with very many of them). Professional associations are organising programmes of online events for their members to supplement their face-to-face seminars and conferences. Some of these associations provide such webinars to their members through eCPD Webinars, since we are the acknowledged experts in the field.

Other providers come to us for advice and with offers of collaboration, and we are very pleased to talk with them too.

I feel really proud that our company has made such a big difference to the provision of high-quality training and I like to think that eCPD has turned training provision upside-down (for the better) since 2009.

Online webinars and even interactive courses will never replace face-to-face conferences and seminars. But they do make learning available to everyone, especially to those with children or elderly relatives to care for. No travelling time at all is required, so participants only need to set aside the actual studying time to be able to attend. And distance no longer matters. We welcome students from every part of the globe!

But a word of caution. At eCPD we seek out experts in the relevant fields to provide the training. You need to be sure that the course or webinar you are booking is also offering an expert in the field you are interested in. And experts don’t always need to have a string of letters after their name!

My job is to seek out new speakers for future webinars, and to guide the people we engage through their experience of presenting by webinar. I love this part of the job.

Speakers need to be engaging – not easy when talking to a computer. We help them overcome the barrier of the computer screen and make it interesting both for the audience and for them too.

With online training it is very easy for translators and interpreters to maintain their CPD records and their professional standards.

Check out the programme of events coming up in the future: 

Lucy Brooks is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Linguists (CIoL) and a Qualified Member of the Institute of Translation and Interpreting (ITI).

After several careers in other areas, she has been translating professionally for nearly 25 years and has seen vast changes in the profession since her early days in the 1990s.