Distinguished Speakers

Learn from the experts! These select speakers were invited to contribute a high level of advanced learning, experience, and excellence.

Arabic Language Division

Said Shiyab is a professor of translation studies at Kent State University (KSU), where he has been teaching since 2014, and served as the graduate studies director from 2016-2019. Prior to joining KSU, he taught at the University of Geneva and other international universities for over 30 years. He has published five books and over 100 refereed articles. He is currently editing a volume on translator and interpreter training. In 2007, he received the College Best Performance Award for Excellence in Scholarship. He is a member of the International Federation of Translators (where he serves on the Babel editorial board), Chartered Institute of Linguists, and the Arab League.

Audiovisual Division

Carme Mangiron is a lecturer, researcher, and the director of the MA in Audiovisual Translation program at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. She has extensive experience as a translator, specializing in software and game localization. Her research interests include game localization, audiovisual translation, and accessibility to video games and the media. She has presented papers at numerous conferences, published extensively in international journals, and participated in several research projects. She is the co-author of Game Localization: Translating for the Global Digital Entertainment Industry, the first academic monograph on this topic.

Chinese Language Division

Kevin Lin has been the official interpreter of U.K. prime ministers since the mid 1990s. He has worked for six successive prime ministers and generations of leading figures in U.K. politics, business, and academic institutions. His freelance commercial translation work covers a vast range of topics. His textbooks on interpreting and translation have sold more than half a million copies. His company has the largest team of Chinese interpreters in Europe. He was awarded an Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II in 2001 for service to U.K.-China relations. He holds two professorships in the U.K. and China.

Education and Pedagogy Committee

Jamie Patterson spent 17 years teaching French across all grade levels. She is currently the world languages specialist for Fulton County (Georgia) Schools, where eight languages are taught to over 30,000 students across grades K-12. In addition to traditional second language acquisition courses, she has worked to develop programs in dual immersion, Spanish for native speakers, and workplace Spanish. She is vice president of advocacy for the Foreign Language Association of Georgia. She works to support the Joint National Committee for Languages to raise awareness of the benefits of multilingualism so that students can be provided with increasingly relevant language-learning experiences.

Educators Division & Interpreters Division

Andrew Gillies is a freelance conference interpreter working from French, German, and Polish into English. He teaches conference interpreting at the Institute of Intercultural Management and Communication (France) and the Master of Conference Interpreting program at Glendon College (Canada), and wrote consecutive curricula for both. He has provided training for interpreters for the International Association of Conference Interpreters and the European Parliament. He is the author of two books on consecutive interpreting and has also translated Jean-François Rozan's La Prise de Notes into English.

German Language Division

Dirk Siepmann is a professor of English as a second language at Osnabrück University, Germany. He has 25 years of experience in applied linguistics with an extensive background in translation, lexicography, and academic writing. He has co-authored 16 books and 80 journal articles and book chapters. He was offered the position as chair of English translation studies at Heidelberg University in 2014, but declined since his job at Osnabrueck afforded him greater freedom to conduct research. He acts as a linguistic consultant to the German Association of University Professors (Deutscher Hochschulverband) and is the academic director of its translation service.

Government Division

Ellie Sung is the community engagement manager at the District of Columbia Mayor's Office on Asian and Pacific Islander Affairs with a focus on language access, cultural competence, and community relations. She has worked on developing policies and programs advocating for Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in the District. Previously, she worked at the Embassy of the Republic of Korea as a legislative researcher and at the Public Affairs Office of the U.S. Embassy in Seoul. She also worked as a freelance Korean translator for organizations such as Google, the Discovery Channel, and Microsoft. She has a master's in international development.

Japanese Language Division

Chikako Tsuruta is a conference and broadcast interpreter with over 20 years of experience in interpreting and training interpreters. She is currently a professor at Tokyo Woman's Christian University and professor emeritus at the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies. She is a member of the International Association of Conference Interpreters and a councillor at the Japan Association for Interpretation and Translation Studies. She has an MBA from Columbia University. She has 10 years of experience in the finance world and is a chartered financial analyst. She speaks Japanese, English, French, and Italian.

Korean Language Division

David McCann taught classical Japanese language and literature and Korean literature and cultural history at Cornell University. He was also the first Korea Foundation Professor of Korean Literature at Harvard University. He has published many books about Korean literature, as well as several collections of his own poems. His book of sijo poems, Urban Temple, was published in a dual-language edition in Korea by Changbi Publishers. His course Writing Asian Poetry explores classical Chinese, the Japanese haiku, and the Korean sijo in their original forms, translations, and use as English-language forms.

Law Division

Fernando Cuñado has 25 years of experience in the corporate world. A freelance translator since 2008, his areas of expertise are contracts and corporate documents. A connoisseur of the British and American legal systems, he publishes articles on comparative law in Spanish legal journals. In addition to an MBA, he has a law degree from the Universidad de Valladolid.

Literary Division & Slavic Languages Division

Ellen Elias-Bursac is president of the American Literary Translators Association. She has translated over 20 books of fiction, literary nonfiction, and plays by Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian writers since the 1980s. She taught for 10 years for Harvard University's Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures. She also worked in the English translation unit as a reviser of documentary evidence at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague, Netherlands. Her book Translating Evidence and Interpreting Testimony at a War Crimes Tribunal: Working in a Tug-of-War was awarded the Mary Zirin Prize by the Association of Women in Slavic Studies.

Medical Division

Claudia Salazar is the owner and clinical director of the Center for Effective Psychological Services, a psychotherapy group practice located in Washington, DC. As a therapist, consultant, and trainer, she works closely with international humanitarian and development organizations to help strengthen resilience for professionals working in challenging environments. She has over 10 years of experience conducting and supervising psychological evaluations for political asylum, waivers for hardship and citizenship examinations, and other immigration related evaluations for clients from diverse backgrounds and languages.

Nordic Division

Tiina Kinnunen is a Finnish professional audiovisual translator with over 30 years of experience. Her specializations include U.S. politics, documentaries, and project management (accessibility and translation in international projects). Her jobs range from translating a children's movie script to subtitling the Oscar Gala. A co-author of the <Translator's Guide to the Industry, she believes in sharing, giving back, and spreading the word of best professional practices. She is a frequent presenter at translation conferences and a guest lecturer to translation students at universities.

Spanish Language Division

Sofía Rodríguez studied linguistics at the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, the Dean University of the Americas. With over 20 years of experience as a Spanish editor, proofreader, and academician at universities and several organizations, she has also proofread thousands of texts, directed several teams of proofreaders, and authored style manuals for private and government organizations. Her book, Manual de corrección. Técnicas, consejos y apuntes de clases, is recognized as a resource in editing and proofreading. A founding member of the Asociación de Correctores de Textos del Peru, she is a first-level editing and proofreader lecturer at international conferences.

Translation Company Division

Katherine Brown-Hoekstra is a fellow and past president of the Society for Technical Communication. As principal of Comgenesis, LLC., she provides consulting to her clients on localization and content strategy. She speaks at conferences worldwide and publishes regularly in industry magazines. She edited The Language of Localization and co-authored a book on managing virtual teams.