CPD roundup: September 2025
Welcome to September’s CPD round-up!
This is where I share a quick summary of the CPD I’ve completed during the month.
What is CPD?
CPD is short for ‘continuing professional development’, and it’s a requirement of many different professions, taking a slightly different form in each profession. Essentially, it’s a commitment to carry on learning about and improving your knowledge and skills even after you have finished your formal education. It can take a variety of different forms, from formal training and courses to self-directed studying and even collaborative activities like peer revision and mentoring.
This commitment to ongoing, iterative and intentional improvement is one of the things that sets human translators apart from machine translation. Where machine learning systems can only improve by absorbing ever more data, human translators learn by identifying weaknesses and exchanging ideas and views about best practices.
The Institute of Translation and Interpreting (ITI) recommends that all members, including Qualified Members (MITIs) like me, do at least 30 hours of CPD per year. The Chartered Institute of Linguists (CIOL) also has the same requirement, and Chartered Linguists like me can have their CPD records audited at any time to make sure we are staying on track.
As a specialist sustainability translator, I normally end up doing rather more than just 30 hours, 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
Why human rights matter to construction and infrastructure and how ecologists can protect them (RSK Biocensus)
Recording: https://rskgroup.com/webinars/why-human-rights-matter-to-construction-and-infrastructure/
An interesting and timely reminder of an often-overlooked component of the ‘just’ transition, this webinar laid out a variety of ways that construction can have an impact on human rights, including some may not be so obvious at first glance. Interestingly, the webinar made the point that – unlike other obligations imposed on construction projects, there is no mechanism to offset harm done to people’s human rights through philanthropy or other offsets. This means that human rights obligations have to be completed with throughout the process, they cannot be balanced out over a lifecycle analysis, for example. I particularly liked that the discussion was accompanied by case studies and practical takeaways.
Climate Transition Plan (CTP) nach ESRS E1 – Herausforderungen meistern, Zukunft gestalten (DFGE)
Climate Transition Plan (CPT) per ESRS E1 – overcoming the challenges, shaping the future
Recording: Only available to participants
A fairly technical webinar, but an interesting one for any businesses faced with the prospect of producing a Climate Transition Plan (CTP) following the amendments implemented by the omnibus amendment – and also very relevant for any translator who has to work on translating this material! The presentation went through each element of the CSRD step-by-step (climate transition plan, climate targets, climate risk & opportunities, GHG accounting, climate policies & governance, carbon neutrality and internal carbon pricing), explaining the differences and the new requirements on companies.
Objectif médaille EcoVadis : Réussissez votre évaluation (Altopi)
Goal: EcoVadis medal: Succeeding in your evaluation
Another webinar about sustainability reporting for companies, this time looking at the EcoVadis certification. It may have been a little less technical, but was no less comprehensive for it. I’ve been aware of EcoVadis for a while, of course, but I wasn’t really familiar with the actual mechanics of the evaluation system, so this was really interesting from that perspective. It was a fairly short webinar, and, of course, it’s difficult to give advice that can apply to every company in every situation, especially since companies in any sector can apply to EcoVadis, so the actual detail was fairly limited. But it was an interesting introduction all the same!