From the Executive Director
Walter Bacak, CAE
walter@atanet.org
The American Translators Association’s Board of Directors held its Winter Board meeting virtually January 23–24. Here are some meeting highlights.
Committee Appointments
President Ted Wozniak led the Board discussion on his research regarding appointments to ATA committees. The current wording of the Bylaws along with our parliamentary authority, Robert’s Rules of Order Newly Revised, require that the appointment of members of all standing committees be approved by the Board. ATA has 20 standing committees and a handful of special committees. Special committees are established for a specific purpose, such as the Ad Hoc Website Committee, and dissolve once the project is completed. (Please see http://bit.ly/ATA-committees for the list of committees and their charges.)
New Committee Chairs
In addition to several committee appointments, the Board approved the appointment of Lebzy Gonzalez as chair of the Divisions Committee and Secretary Karen Tkaczyk as chair of the Honors and Awards Committee. Thanks to outgoing chairs Daniel Sebesta (Divisions Committee) and Loie Feuerle (Honors and Awards Committee) for all their time and work for ATA.
Ad Hoc Committees
At the last Board meeting in October, the Board approved creating two ad hoc committees to investigate establishing a national registry of freelance translators and interpreters in the U.S. and offering a basic credential for translators and interpreters. The Board also approved the appointment of the members to the ad hoc committees. Geoff Koby is the chair of both committees.
Certification
Certification Committee Chair Michèle Hansen and Deputy Chair Larry Bogoslaw briefed the Board on the committee’s work investigating and testing remote exam options. The committee is optimistic about ATA offering remote exam options later this year. The current plans are for ATA to continue offering in-person exam sittings as well. For this year, we’ve started to schedule limited exam sittings. These sittings are all tentative and subject to local mandates and regulations.
Certification Renewal Fee
The Board approved increasing the three-year certification renewal fee to $75 effective January 1, 2022. This is the first change since the fee was instituted in 2009 and is intended to more closely reflect the costs of renewal.
Nominating and Leadership Development Committee
The Board approved the appointment of the Nominating and Leadership Development Committee: Lebzy Gonzalez, Yolanda Secos, David Stephenson, and Izumi Suzuki. The chair is Past President David Rumsey, who was approved in July 2020. The Nominating and Leadership Development Committee is responsible for putting forward the slate of candidates for the fall election. This year, they will be putting forward two candidates for each officer position—president-elect, secretary, and treasurer—and two for each of the three directors’ positions.
The Board meeting summary is posted online. The minutes will be posted once they are approved at the next Board meeting. Past meeting summaries and minutes are also posted online at stg-americantranslators-staging.kinsta.cloud/membership/minutes.php. The next Board meeting is set for April 24–25, 2021. The meeting will be virtual.