Today I received a nice little new year gift in my inbox: the session survey results collected at the ATA 61st Annual Conference. All 15 of the 15 reviews received rated my presentation "excellent".

In the presentation titled From Little Fresh Meat to Oily Uncles: A Beginner's Guide to Translating Chinese Internet Slang Terms, I discussed my repertoire of tools and techniques for translating and interpreting some of the most prevalent Chinese online slang terms, with examples from real-life translation and interpreting assignments where I had to deal with such viral words as 风口, 布局 and 抓手 as related to popular culture, business and journalism.

To share a few comments from the ATA61 session survey results:

In hindsight, I attribute the good reception of this presentation to two things I did right:

1. I started the preparation process 10 months out, jotting down ideas and examples whenever I came across something relevant. Turning 17 pages of notes into a 60-min presentation was so much fun.

2. Knowing that my audience at the ATA Annual Conference would be mostly Chinese translators and interpreters, I chose to deliver the workshop in my own mother tongue (Mandarin), which allowed me to sound more intelligent, engaging and entertaining.

I always believe that a conference where everyone is forced to speak (sometimes broken) English is never a truly international conference.

Here is my message to anyone organizing international conferences and events: if you want to hear fresh perspectives and ideas, consider working with translators and interpreters so that your guests can participate in their own mother tongue!

Congratulations, American Translators Association, for such a successful virtual conference. I can’t wait to attend the next one, hopefully in person!