Oana Fărcaş - SAF Recipient 2006

 

 

 

 

REPORT | Romania 2006

Oana Fărcaş


My words could not express enough what a great experience EFSLI 2006 has been for me. I shall try, however, to share with you a few thoughts on this event from my perspective.

 I went to Prague having this in my mind: TEAM means Together Each Achieves More and at the end of the EFSLI 2006, I arrived at the conclusion that TEAM can also mean Together Everyone Accomplishes More. I will further refer to the topic of the conference: „Innovative Practices in Team Interpreting�? and to the warm atmosphere in all the aspects of the event.  I can say that I felt an open context to learn from others’ experiences and to share with others the situation in my country. I appreciated so much that I had the possibility to be informed on the Sign language interpreters' situation in different parts of Europe. This aspect was important because it was a motivation for me to come back home encouraging people to think and action toward a wise strategy to develop the interpreting services.

It was also nice to hear that the colleagues from Europe work in many different situations but at the core we are the same. So, thinking again of the slogan Together Each Achieves More transformed in Together Everyone Accomplishes More I realized that these exchanges are so helpful because one can cross the border from an individualized view to a more complex perspective. I have received some very good suggestions on how to try to solve some issues about team interpreting in my country.

I also had chances to present the situation in my country, so the colleagues from Europe could get to know about our context and the challenges we meet. Furthermore, it was an honor to present a paper at the conference and I was so happy that colleagues representing the 23 countries joined in the special activity that I proposed. I felt like in the interpreting profession, people are bold enough to take risks and to learn valuable lessons from challenges.  
Likewise, I am very thankful that this year, EFSLI SAF supported me for the AGM, Conference and for the membership fee and I feel that I will not be just a one-time visitor to EFSLI and that I will find the way in the future to become a regular participant to these events and a good partner in future tasks. I thank Dutch Association of Sign Language Interpreters (NBTG) from the depth of my heart for having raised the funds needed for my participation. I also mention that the Charis Foundation from Romania supported me for the traveling costs. I understood one more time that my participation was possible because of a joint effort and I am glad to have such supportive people around me. I want to thank especially Maya de Wit and Lianne Van Dijken for they were my inspiration and encouragers during this nice experience.

By attending the EFSLI event, I gained a new experience about an interpreter’s job and I made contacts with other nation’s interpreters.
Thinking of the conference topic, I appreciate so much all the presenters because they spoke from their professional experience but they also brought new information. I enjoyed especially the moments when we had the chance to have group discussions about team interpreting because I understood better the particularities in different parts of Europe.

…And now thinking of the organizational sides, I should congratulate The Czech Chamber of Sign Language Interpreters because they were warm hosts and they proved to be a very nice team in all the different aspects that they invest their efforts in.

I had the chance to share my experience with many people from the National Association for the Deaf in Romania and with the students from the Babes-Bolyai University, Faculty of Letters, Department of Applied Modern Languages. I’ve shared with them concepts such as: team work, professionalism, motivation, respect, enthusiasm, learning from others experiences, real-life communication, quality responsibility. I am convinced that those will be inspiring especially to the students that have now the chance to learn sign language at university level but also to the decision-making factors who will understand that this emerging profession of sign language interpreting needs to be accredited and supported.

For the end, some thoughts that I will always keep in my mind and in my heart about the EFSLI 2006 in Prague:

Team interpreting
Huge challenges and nice interactions
Actions for the development of the interpreting profession
Need to share information and experiences
Kind regards to all the participants
See you soon!

THANKS for everything!

Kind regards,
Oana Fărcaş

oana_farcas@yahoo.com