The ATA Chronicle - January/February 2018 - 20

FEATURE

BY MOLLY YURICK

Marybeth Timmermann posing with advanced Spanish students (including her son Matt, next to her in a black shirt) and the result of their hands-on translation
activity at Greenville High School in Greenville, Illinois.

Profile of ATA 2016-2017 School Outreach Contest
Winner: Marybeth Timmermann
This year's ATA School Outreach Contest winner impressed her audience with real-life localization examples!

M

arybeth Timmermann, an
ATA-certified French>English
translator, is the winner of the
2016-2017 School Outreach Contest.
She won a free registration to ATA's 58th
Annual Conference in Washington, DC
for an all-smiles photo taken during her
presentation at Greenville High School in
Greenville, Illinois, where she spoke to
students in the school's advanced Spanish
class about translation.

RAISING AWARENESS ABOUT
TRANSLATION IN SMALL-TOWN ILLINOIS
Marybeth had been reading about the
School Outreach Program and contest in
The ATA Chronicle for many years and had
always been interested in participating.
20

The ATA Chronicle | January/February 2018

In March 2017 she gave her first School
Outreach presentation about translation to
her son's Spanish class at Greenville High
School. "I just called his teacher and asked
if I could present," Marybeth says. "He was
very excited to have me."
"Greenville is a small town and we
don't have much contact with people
who speak foreign languages," Marybeth
explains when asked about her
motivations for giving a presentation.
"Other languages just aren't a part of
our lives, so I wanted to stress the idea
that translating is something people
do, not just something that phones and
Google Translate do."
Marybeth decided to speak to the
school's advanced class because they
were juniors and seniors in high school

who had chosen to study Spanish as
an elective. Since studying languages
is considered impractical in her small
town, she wanted to challenge that way
of thinking before the students went off
to college. "I wanted to show them that
you don't just have to be a teacher if you
study language. You can do translation or
interpreting too."
Marybeth did a lot of research before
starting to prepare her outreach material. "I
read through all the presentations that are
available on the School Outreach website
and listened to one of ATA's free webinars
about the program." She found that none
of the presentations available online quite
fit what she wanted to do, so she decided
to create her presentation from scratch. She
then spent a lot of time researching Spanish
www.atanet.org
http://www.atanet.org
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of The ATA Chronicle - January/February 2018
