Nearly 200 representatives from committee member companies, language service providers, universities, research institutes and industry organizations attended the “Forum on Best Practices in the Pandemic and 2020 Annual Meeting of the Translation Service Committee of the Translators Association of China” on Sept 26. The annual event was held online this time with the motto “Work together to overcome hardships.”
The keynote speaker, Mr. Gangyi Wang, Executive VP and Secretary-general of the TAC, congratulated all members of the language service industry for their outstanding contributions and active measures adopted, the strengthened mutual exchanges, which helped minimize the damage caused by the pandemic to business operations, and the achievement of impressive results. Mr. Wang acknowledged the key role of technological innovations adopted by this industry, an active attempt to adapt to the current circumstances.
Frank Wei, CEO of Master Translations, gave a speech entitled “Challenges and Opportunities Faced by the International Language Industry during the Pandemic”. Mr. Wei referred to the unprecedented impact that Covid-19 has brought to domestic and foreign language service companies and shared survey findings by research institutions CSA and Slator. While the global demand for translation and on-site interpretation as well as the workload for freelance translators have all dropped drastically, companies with strong translation technology have risen against the trend. He made a comparison between the domestic China market and global market in the hope to bring insights for the domestic companies to better face the challenges of the pandemic.
Frank later joined a panel discussion to share his experience and insights on how LSPs can benefit from the available policies to ride the tide of Covid-19.
Dozens of speakers and panelists discussed and analyzed the current state of the industry during the whole day forum. Standardization of Chinese language services, technology, customer satisfaction, preferential policies such as tax deductions and financial support and the standard “Translation services and translation service requirements” (T / TAC) 1-2016) were some of the central topics.
Gu Xiaofang, Secretary General of TAC closed the event with a speech appreciative of the relevance of the discussions, all in line with the current situation. The participants’ impressive sharing of enterprise management methods, translation technology, industry standards and preferential policies provided a source of reference for the participating language service enterprises, especially traditional translation companies.