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Summer Social 2025

Our intrepid ITI East Anglia team

“2nd July? We’re bound to have some nice weather!” we naively thought, back when we were planning our summer social, a walk and picnic from Manningtree train station to Flatford Mill. And it was nice weather – for the ducks, at least. For the humans, it was probably slightly more on the damp side than ideal, but still we set out, undeterred!

The walk from Manningtree train station to Flatford Mill takes you through some of the most beautiful countryside in the East Anglia region, if not the whole of the UK – not for nothing is the area called “Constable Country”. And indeed, Flatford Mill is closely associated with the work of John Constable, whose father inherited the mill in 1764. It is now owned by the National Trust, and on more summery summer days, is a very popular spot. Along with the mill itself, there’s all the amenities you expect from a National Trust property, including a café and second-hand bookshop, along with a few more unusual features, like the historic cottage and boats for hire so you can paddle up and down the River Stour a little.

Unfortunately, hiring a boat would probably have been pushing it a little given the weather – intrepid we may be, but not foolhardy. It probably would have been a bit of a squeeze to get all seven of us in the boat anyway. Instead, we sat under some very dense trees and ate our picnic, with hot tea from the café. We talked about all the things translators and interpreters talk about when we get together – the state of the industry, technological developments, the challenges of starting out in the current climate. We also discussed other important issues, like which shape of crisp provided the best combination of flavour and texture, and we also all tried some limelon provided by one of the attendees. It’s too complicated an issue to get into the details of here, but let us say, opinions are divided.

All in all, it was a lovely and refreshing day out, in spite of the weather. And it could have been worse, as Constable’s Rainstorm over the Sea (ca. 1824-1828) reminds us…

Write-up by our member David Stockings MITI MCIL MA (he/him) Translator, German and French to English

Bravely battling through the undergrowth!
The beautiful Flatford Mill – the backdrop for our rainy picnic
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May’s Monthly Chat

The ITI East Anglia Network’s most recent online monthly chat (on 21 May) was a brainstorming on how our work as language professionals is changing, how the group members got to where they are and how they are adapting to the industry’s new normal. This was a follow-up to our last session “How (not) to make £100k as a freelance translator: a fresh take on advice for newbies” by Sarah Bowtell.

We discussed how we are positioning ourselves in terms of rates, both in resisting downwards market pressures and trying (sometimes successfully) to put our rates up occasionally to reflect rising costs. We also talked about the importance of investing our time in marketing in the broadest sense, by identifying our USP, as well as using all avenues available to us, including wider industry networking events. Face-to-face meetings allow us to meet people from our communities and business sectors and can bring all kinds of opportunities. When we think about networking, we most often think of selling, but actually it can be more effective to ask for help from contacts with questions like “do you know somebody who needs x?”

We agreed that it is now more important than ever to be ready with our response to the AI question. We should be prepared to counter the sceptics and clearly communicate why our work as translators and interpreters is still needed and what AI can’t do for our clients.

We also talked about how we need to feed back to clients on the workflow, and how this is even more relevant as processes change with MT and AI. When something does not work as we are expecting, or when it takes longer, we need to tell clients in a clear and timely way. If a job was meant to take three hours and took ten, we shouldn’t quietly absorb the costs for that. We recognised that this becomes easier with experience, when we are more confident in how long something should take.

We are looking forward to the next monthly chat on “Managing expenses and keeping costs down” on 25 June.

Blog post written by our ITI East Anglia Network member Catherine Fox

If you like the sound of our online monthly chats and fancy joining us for the next one, visit our Join page for more info!

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(Love)crafting some royally good stories with the East Anglia Network

On a gloomy late-October afternoon a couple of years ago, seven brave East Anglia Networkers clad in Halloween costumes gathered in front of their screens for a wicked online workshop, Don’t Be Afraid of Writing.

They might have expected some kind of trickery but they were actually in for a fun treat. They were about to summon the spirits of famous horror authors for an afternoon.

Once the courageous attendees split into two teams (no limbs were harmed in the splitting), they spun the Wheel of Doom.

The mighty Wheel decided on their fate and gave each team the name of a well-known author. The teams had to look at a sample of their author’s writing, analyse it with the help of some witchery (i.e. a handout with pointers), then call upon the scribbling spirits and write a piece of their own in their author’s style.

Team A’s destiny was to channel Stephen King, team B had to capture H. P. Lovecraft’s essence.

As the event’s main organiser and an attendee, Anikó Pető-Mordovski had some scary good fun with this workshop!

When preparing for it, she had a chance to come up with some corny Halloween puns and cram them all in the event’s “Spooky Styles” handout. This is essentially a quick guide for analysing an author’s writing style, looking at different aspects, such as vocabulary, poetic devices, sentence structure and the voice of the narrator.

Besides preparing for the event, she also got to participate in the collaborative writing exercise. It was amazing to bounce ideas off each other and observe how others’ minds work in a creative scenario. She was in the team that had the challenge of trying to think as the Victorian author, Lovecraft. The other team had to tackle King’s very American way of writing and cultural references.

As Holly-Anne Whyte, one of Team King said: “I think we worked together really well and even though progress was slow because we played around with all the different ideas, we made a very creative, well-written start on our horror story.”

Alanah Reynor, her team mate enjoyed the atmosphere: “Our Halloween costumes may not have won us any prizes, but the ambiance was perfect. Stephen King’s mysterious writing was the eerie focus of a fun and scary workshop, organised to the finest detail by Anikó. Working with colleagues to craft a spooky backdrop to our story was an enriching, yet spine-chilling, experience. We never finished, but the ominous feeling was certainly there.”

For Laura Elvin of Team Lovecraft collaboration was one of the fun – and useful – aspects of the workshop: “Writing collaboratively in a small group provided a great opportunity for teamwork. The workshop was a fun and entertaining way to round off the working day in congenial company. Not only that, it was a useful exercise in analysing and identifying different styles of writing and then imitating them, a valuable skill for all translators. All in all, a very enjoyable event!”

And this year, our brave East Anglians are ready to repeat the terrific experience: we’re coming together to tackle AI and its interpretations of great authors on 30 October, during our GhoulGPT event.

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Oh, the horror! An afternoon with H. P. Lovecraft and Stephen King

On a gloomy late October afternoon some of our network members gathered for a fun Halloween-themed online writing workshop.

The attendees were divided into two groups and each group received an assignment: they first analysed a sample of a well-known horror author’s writing with the help of some prompts and then they set out to write their own piece in that author’s style.

One of the teams worked on a Victorian story in H. P. Lovecraft’s style, while the other one had to imitate the contemporary American writer, Stephen King.

And… Here are the results!

King impersonators

Written by Fiona Gray, Holly-Anne Whyte, Alanah Reynor and Afra Madkhana

It was 15 minutes after midnight and Burt Fitzgerald had just dozed off when a loud crash had awoken him from a fitful dream, the kind you have when you’re sleeping in a bed that’s not your own. It was the old bed in the attic room that creaked and groaned in harmony with the wind outside. It was the last week of October, the run up to Halloween, and houses along the street were decked with dollar-store cobwebs and jack-o’-lanterns, their flames flickering and sputtering out as the storm picked up. I’d just gone out for the third time to relight the candles purchased for the occasion, yet more paraphernalia, a tribute to the Gods of the consumer season that my wife had worshiped as a devoted disciple. Each year she had filled her cart with Walmart’s finest from mid-September through to the new year like a magpie gathering shiny trinkets for his mate.

Love-crafted lines

Written by David Stockings, Laura Elvin and Anikó Pető-Mordovski

There is no arrogance greater than keeping a journal of the mundane and workaday thoughts of the average man; the compulsion to capture the most trivial detail of human existence against the grand significance of the cosmic cycle is pitiable. And yet, when one happens to chance upon the diary of a truly transcendent mind, one cannot help but be enmarvelled. Such was the case when I opened the mysterious brown package delivered by persons unseen and with no postmark to my office at the College. I was amazed to recognise the singular handwriting of my late colleague, Professor Emeritus Archibald Homer Augustus III.

The journal contained oracular but alarming statements about the universe and human existence; at least those parts that had not been scratched out with frenzied penstrokes, which grew greater in number as the journal progressed. These unnerving revelations – which I shall not burden you with – were still weighing heavily on my mind as I drifted off to sleep. I found no rest in my slumber, plagued as my dreams were by shapes that my mind could not interpret and echoes of the esteemed professor’s words ringing out in the dark.

Jolted awake by a sudden rapping at my chamber window, I hastily sprang out of bed and flung open the windows, struggling against the gales that battered the walls of my abode. Spying nothing amiss, I battled to close the casements, and attempted to return to my fitful rest; futile, of course. The rapping came again, more insistent than before, but seemingly at the tradesmen’s door this time.

Arming myself with the third volume of Dictionary of the Semitic Languages in one hand and a brass candlestick in the other, I hastened down the stairs, not even pausing to throw on my house coat. Once in the kitchen, I gathered my resolve and prepared to throw open the door and catch the miscreant off-guard. But the heavy oak portal swung open to reveal…nothing; no sign of a living being, neither animal nor human. Feeling somewhat foolish, I was about to turn to fasten the door, when all of a sudden, out of the corner of my eye I glimpsed a dark anthropic ectoplasm lingering beneath the skeleton of a lightning-stricken apple tree. As I narrowed my eyes to focus on the figure in the stormy gloom, my blood ran cold in my veins as the realisation struck me: the shadowy figure was, beyond a doubt, none other than the journal’s author, Archibald Homer Augustus III!

You can read more about the workshop in the January-February 2023 issue of the ITI Bulletin.

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We are on LinkedIn!

Did you know? The ITI East Anglia Network is now on LinkedIn!

As most of our members are active on LinkedIn, we thought having a LinkedIn page for the network would be a great way of keeping in touch and sharing network news. It would also be a good place for people thinking about joining us to learn more about what we do at the ITI East Anglia Network.

Follow us for network updates, localisation industry news and much more! Feel free to tag us if you have an update to share on the platform!

Find us at: ITI East Anglia Network