CPD roundup: April 2025
Welcome to April’s CPD round-up!
This is where I share a quick summary of the continuing profession development (CPD) I’ve completed during the month.
The Institute of Translation and Interpreting recommends that all members, including Qualified Members (MITIs) like me, do at least 30 hours of CPD per year. I normally end up doing rather more than that, and I normally only include subject-knowledge CPD (and sometimes some translation skills CPD) in this public summary. You can find out about the other types of CPD that the ITI recommends here and my previous summaries here.
Subject knowledge
Biodiversity science for 2030 - knowledge needs to support action to reach the targets of the Global Biodiversity Framework (Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery)
Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KkuqfzPrOU
This was quite a content-heavy webinar, hardly surprising given that it set out to answer three huge questions:
How do we gather the evidence that we are making progress towards national and global biodiversity goals?
How do we assemble a global biodiversity observing system that is fit for purpose?
How do we apply biodiversity science to guide action to achieve connectivity targets by 2030?
I won’t try to summarise the answers to all of these questions here. Instead, I will simply say that the webinar looked at some really interesting and innovative ways of assessing the current status of biodiversity around the world, then turned to some of the geopolitical and organisational aspects of assembling a system for gathering the necessary data.
Psychologie und Klimawandel – Ein individuell-kognitiver Blick auf ein globales Problem (FernUniversität in Hagen)
[Psychology and climate change – an individual-cognitive perspective on a global problem]
Recording: https://www.fernuni-hagen.de/forschung/schwerpunkte/eun/aktuelles-termine/videos/video-Fischer.shtml
This was another quite content-heavy presentation, this time focusing on various psychological models and how they affect the way individuals think about climate change through a metacognitive lens. There were a few messages, but one that came back time and again was that the climate “debate” has become highly politicised, and that this politicisation affects the way people think about the problem – this isn’t a surprise of course, but it’s useful to have the scientific evidence. It also concluded that an individual’s level of metacognitive abilities can be used as a predictor of their views about climate change and the threat it poses. Metacognition was found to be much better (in other words, people were better able to judge their own level of knowledge about a topic) when assessing non-political information than when dealing with political information. It also looked at some of the practical implications, like the effectiveness of infographics.
Durabilité: sens et non-sens (Vandelanotte)
[Sustainability: Sense and non-sense]
Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RS7jqeIDSy0
This was a fairly introductory-level webinar, but still a useful reminder of some of the key principles of sustainability reporting and the importance of transparency. It looked particularly at the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) and its implications for SMEs. One thing that I particularly appreciated was that it emphasised that sustainability reporting can actually be an asset to organisations, not just “another thing” that has to be done.
Soil (exhibition at Somerset House, London)
Recording: n/a
I’ll be honest, I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect from this exhibition. I was originally going to describe it as ‘otherworldly’, but the whole point of the exhibition is that soil is very much ‘thisworldly’. As with all exhibitions focusing on such a broad topic and involving a wide variety of contributors, some parts of it spoke more to me than others. It was well worth seeing though, and I bought the book, as there was more material than you could really absorb in one go. It was broadly divided into theme of life in the soil (especially microbial life), then how gardening and small-scale farming can foster social cohesion, and finally the effects of large-scale farming on the global health of soil, and how to reverse some of those impacts.
Gardening for Biodiversity with Sally Morgan (ITI SHEA Network)
Recording: private
It probably won’t surprise you that I’d been looking forward to this webinar for quite a while. Of course, I already know some of the basics, and I didn’t need any convincing of the importance of integrating wildlife into our gardens. There were a few things that I didn’t know, however, like just how much of plants’ photosynthetic outputs are exported into the soil – 40% apparently! It’s amazing to think that they would put so much effort into supporting the networks of life around them, but of course those networks then support the plant when the time comes. I don’t actually have a garden, but I do have an allotment, so I’ll be attempting to put some of the principles into action.
Owl and Birds of Prey Rescue (EWT Chelmsford Local Group)
Recording: not recorded, but more information about the charity (including clips of news reports) here
Honestly, I came away from this presentation astounded that one person could possibly fit some much into one day and still be so chipper and friendly – I suppose that’s the advantage of having found your life’s mission. Stephanie Callister-Jarrold was that individual, and she talked about the different types of birds and owls she had rescued, but mostly she talked about the practical work of trying to rear/rehabilitate them when they are orphaned/injured before releasing them. And it is an incredible amount of work. One thing that particularly impressed me about Stephanie’s work is how closely she works with a nearby farm (one of her ‘soft release’ sites) in their efforts to rewild their land. It was great to see this sort of collaboration in action.
Food for Thought - Helen Browning: Farming Icon & Soil Advocate (Food Museum / EA Festival)
Recording: not recorded
This was such a lovely way to end the CPD year (which runs May-April), especially since I got to combine it with a trip to the Food Museum (formerly the Museum of East Anglian Life), which I had never visited before. I have heard Helen speak before, so I was already familiar with her early life story, but she always has fascinating new insights into more recent developments in environmentally friendly agriculture. She talked about ELMS and the impact of the recent changes in government policy around these schemes. More generally, she also spoke about the growth of regenerative agriculture and its relationship to the longer-standing organic farming. Helen always has such a practical and open way of thinking through these issues and a great sensitivity to public understanding of them – as you would expect from the chief executive of the Soil Association!
Translation skills
Revision club
A revision club is a peer-learning exercise where a small group of translators get together to sharpen our translation skills. This normally involves one person translating a document as practice and the others reviewing it for potential improvements. It can also take the form of a ‘slam’, where everybody in the group translates the same text and then compares versions.
This month’s revision club was a brief news article on a campaign by a group of environmentalists against the opening of a new quarry. It seemed like it should be quite a straightforward piece to work on, but, as always, there were a few complications. The piece was written for a local publication and with quite a lot of local knowledge – knowledge the the intended readership was assumed to share. This would not necessarily be the case for an English-speaking audience, of course, so we had to contextualise quite a few things. We also had to do a certain amount of looking at the area of Google Maps to try and understand some of the geography of the site being discussed. Interestingly, in the time between the translation being sent round and us actually getting together to discuss it, the original piece had actually been edited, which says something about the fast-paced and shifting nature of some of the texts we translate!