Report on Babels-El meeting - February 25, 2006

Agenda

1. Parliamentarian Forum
2. Accommodation
3. Coordinators coming before the ESF06
4. Outreach trips throughout Greece and abroad
5. Booth planning
6. Room coordination
7. Translation during the ESF06
8. Frankfurt EPA
9. Test event/Sit-prep

People present : Anastasia L., Dimitris E., Evi, Graziela S., Lina F., Luis F., Maria V., Panayotis Y., Vassilis T.

1. Parliamentarian Forum

Babels-el have been asked to organize interpretation for the Parliamentarian Forum, which is to be held on May 5 and 6. After pondering whether we should send a message to Babels on this issue we agreed that this Forum and ESF are two completely separated things and there is no point in taking volunteers from the ESF to work for the Parliamentarian Forum.

2. Accommodation

Accommodation procedures should start immediately. Dimitris is going to send a message to launch a campaign for solidarity accommodation as well as have it published on the ESF 06 website. Then, he will start contacting people to see how many beds there are available. We are aware of the fact that the best solution is to have interpreters staying together, since it makes things easier for them.

3. Coordinators coming before the ESF06

We know that generally the more coordinators we can have some days before the ESF starts the best, it is just a matter of how many people from each country and how long before. Since we don’t have an idea whether we can find solidarity accommodation for more than 6 nights we still cannot estimate the total number of coordinators, but it should be something like 1 per country/coordination who are able to come, let’s say, a week in advance or so (April 25).

4. Outreach trips throughout Greece and abroad (Russia)

We talked about having some outreach meetings in some places in Greece, such as Corfu, Thessaloniki, Ioannina and Crete. Anastasia should have a meeting at the school of translation and interpretation in Corfu and Graziela should go to Crete. The new Babels poster and pamphlet will be ready at the end of the month and it will be sent to all universities and schools of philosophy.

Panayotis Y. will travel to Moscow and he will try to mobilize Russian interpreters.

5. Booth planning

Luis Ferraz is going to be in charge of booth planning. Laurent Jesover is coming in April to help with this issue. Yan Brailowsky is also willing to come and help setting up and “train” a team.

6. Room coordination

We are aware of the fact that room coordination didn’t work in POA 05, but we have talked to some interpreters and they all agree that there is the need to have someone who should liase with the “facilitator” interpreter and should definitely have good interpreting notions and be able to meet the real needs (we are currently preparing a list of “tasks”). Luis has also suggested that stand by interpreters should maybe not be at a room, but have some tours around, which is possible since the venue allows it.

7. Translation during the ESF06

We talked about having a team of translators during the ESF 06. Although we know from previous forums that there is no such a need we also know that someone has to do the work, generally someone from the office, in a hurry, under a lot of pressure. Thus we want to set up a small local team that can work together with an “emergencial” transtrad, with a limited number of languages at first, and then translate into other languages aftewards. In order to do so, we need to define the working languages and get to know approximately the quantity of translations needed per day.

8. Frankfurt EPA

Lina Filopoulou, Maria Roussou and Panayotis Yulis are going to Frankfurt and they should assure that the word is spread among all organizations that we need to mobilize. We absolutely made it clear that it is very difficult – if not impossible – to provide interpretation for four time slots. We also agreed that the Babels participants should make it clear that if the Eastern European participants want to have interpretation in their own language, they should help Babels mobilize people.

9. Test Event/Sit-prep

Before the so called Test Event, which was held on February 19 at Politekhnio, Athens, we had the first group Sit-prep at Babels-el office on February 17, from 5pm to 7:30 pm, with the participation of some professionals and some first-experience volunteer intepreters. Right after that we had the instalation of an equiped booth at the office; at the Test Event we agreed with volunteers to have group Sit-preps every Wednesday, and if some people cannot take part during the week, on weekends as well. We had then the second group Sit-prep on Wednesday March 1, this time using the booth. We believe it is very important to have such meetings, not only to “train”, but to discuss topics on interpretation and Social Forums.