Continuing Education Programs in Publishing, the Humanities, Arts, Producing, Design, Writing, and Translation.
Join us for a preview of our Summer 2020 noncredit courses! CALA is hosting an info session on Thursday, May 7, at 4pm. To RSVP, visit http://tinyurl.com/calazoom2.
As always, course descriptions and registration are available via the NYU SPS Professional Pathways website.
Laila E. Dreidame, an alum of the MS in Professional Writing (MSPW) program, recently published “Bringing your whole self to work: Arab or Muslim Welcome” in Medium. Exploring multiple experiences of what it means to be Arab or Muslim in workplaces across the U.S., Laila was inspired to write on this topic by the timing of the beginning of Ramadan in April, designated as National Arab American Heritage Month (NAAHM). “I wanted to share the important distinction between the Muslim religion and the Arab people,” Laila explains. “There are so many people from these communities who feel their identity is invisible or misconstrued. With the overlap of NAAHM and the start of Ramadan, I was compelled to share my understanding of these two different groups with my family and friends.”
Laila hopes that her piece will increase awareness of Muslim and Arab identities and experiences and will create opportunities for discussion across professional networks and workplaces. In 2019, Laila was awarded the Professional Writing Impact Award, presented to a graduating student in the MSPW who has demonstrated a commitment to writing and communication endeavors that seek to impact society in positive ways.
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To learn more about the MS in Professional Writing, visit sps.nyu.edu/mspw or email sps.mspw@nyu.edu.
Congratulations to CALA adjunct professor Lourdes Olvera-Marshall on being named one of Crain’s New York Business 2020 Notable Women in Talent Resources!
Lourdes is Global Manager of Diversity & Inclusion at the law firm Fried Frank, where she has launched diversity initiatives globally. She has increased diversity rankings by five points nationally and improved LGBTQ representation from below average to national average. Here at NYU, Lourdes teaches courses on networking, diversity and inclusion, and how to gain workplace influence. She speaks regularly on these topics to diverse associations, universities, and large institutions, including the U.S. Senate staff members at Capitol Hill. She is an attorney in both Mexico and New York, an Executive Coach (graduate from NYU SPS), and the president of MexPro, a Mexican professional association linked with the Mexican Consulate. She also holds a culinary Cordon D’Or degree and previously worked as a Cultural Representative at Walt Disney World, Epcot Center.
This summer, Lourdes will be teaching Virtual Networking: Fostering Professional Resources in a Virtual World. The two-session class is ideal for recent graduates or established professionals seeking to cultivate a professional network or explore new career options. Class begins on June 2!
Adjunct professor Estelle Erasmus has alerted us to the publication of an article, “My 6-year-old has calmed me during quarantine,” by CALA student Holly Rizzuto Palker. Holly worked on the article in Estelle’s “Writing Parenthood” class prior to placing it in the New York Daily News.
Congratulations, Holly!
Do you have an experience or reflection to share about parenting in these strange times? This summer could be the perfect time to put your words to paper or to polish up a piece of writing you never quite finished. Join “Writing Parenthood: Writing for a Growing Market,” beginning June 22nd, to workshop your drafts and learn to navigate publishing opportunities. The class is self-paced to fit the busy schedules of parents, many of whom are juggling more responsibilities than ever under quarantine.
Congratulations to Dr. Kristine Rodriguez Kerr, Academic Director & Clinical Assistant Professor of the MS in Professional Writing (MSPW) program, for receiving the 2020 Teaching Excellence Award. This is an NYUSPS school-wide award that recognizes faculty members for their exceptional dedication to student engagement and innovative pedagogy.
In a virtual award ceremony on Monday evening, Kristine was described by colleagues as a “dedicated, multifaceted, and generous leader” and an “inspirational advocate for students and online learning.” Teaching Excellence Awardees are faculty who challenge, inspire, and support students with an unwavering commitment to educating the industry practitioners and leaders of tomorrow. Fully online since 2013, the MSPW program offers an applied, workshop-model curriculum that prepares students to craft strategic copy and shape important stories for target audiences across industries.
Please join us in congratulating Kristine for this well-deserved honor!
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For more information about the fully online MS in Professional Writing program, please visit sps.nyu.edu/mspw
Recent MS in Translation (MST) graduate Minxuan Sun recently took on her first large-scale translation project, creating the English translation of the CCTV documentary Xu Zhimo and His Contemporaries, originally recorded in Chinese. Xu Zhimo was a romantic poet of the early twentieth century whose Western influences and use of vernacular language challenged traditional Chinese poetic forms. Minxuan was selected for the translation position through MST instructor Dr. Yong Ho, who recommended her for the role. In the interview below, she describes her experience working on this project, the challenges she faced, and the lessons learned from her first major translation effort.
Q: Tell us a bit about your subtitling project on Xu Zhimo. How did you come to work on this project, and what were your responsibilities?
A: Xu Zhimo’s grandson Tony Hsu was collaborating with a Chinese director on this documentary and he wanted to have it broadcast in the U.S. He turned to professor Yong Ho to see if he knew any translator who could translate the documentary.
My job was mostly translating the documentary from Chinese into English. There were cases where Tony wanted to rewrite the English script and I would translate it back into Chinese accordingly. After the documentary was aired on CCTV, we found out that the script we received was incomplete and thus some parts were untranslated or poorly translated. So, in November, we did a second round of translation and revision. This time, an editor would first edit the translations of those parts and have me correct any mistranslations.
Q: What were some of the major challenges you faced on this project? What were the most rewarding elements of the process?
A: This project involved many historical events and figures, so doing research was key. Also, it was important to keep in mind that the American audience may be unfamiliar with some terms or figures that I am familiar with, so I had to include some brief introductions in the translation. It was a great learning opportunity for me: I would not have spent so much time studying the history of literature during the Republican era and poet Xu Zhimo if it were not for the project. Of course, nothing is more rewarding than seeing the final product.
Q: How did your training in the MST program prepare you for your work on this project? Did you have any previous professional or academic roles involving subtitling or translation?
A: I’ve learned a great deal in the MST program: how to quickly gather useful information, how to prepare glossaries, and, most importantly, how to work with fellow translators and editors.
Q: Is there anything else you would like to share about this project or your background?
A: I had the opportunity to work with some wonderful editors during this project. When I finished translating each batch, I would send my product to the editors and they would polish it up. One batch could undergo three to four rounds of editing. We learned from each other through the process. Translation projects involve more than just translation and any final product is the result of a joint effort.
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Thank you to Minxuan for sharing your experience working on this fascinating translation project.
A translation degree can help you to take charge of your career, whether you are new to the field or already working in the language professions. Apply for CALA’s M.S. in Translation & Interpreting, a fully online, 36-credit graduate degree.
Katherine McCabe, an experienced professional writer, has worked in Marketing for nearly two decades, assuming progressively more senior leadership roles. Katherine is currently the Head of Content & Digital Marketing at beqom, a global provider of compensation management software delivered via cloud computing. Her role involves extensive strategic and management responsibilities, but Katherine still carves out the time to take on writing projects.
Q: Describe your current role and your daily professional tasks and responsibilities.
A: In my 17+ years of marketing, I’ve stepped into many roles, some widely different from where I set out. Along the way I’ve gotten to do everything from technical writing to writing content for social media, recruitment, events, content strategy, and digital marketing transformation. Whatever I’m focused on in the world of marketing, I’ve never abandoned my writing roots, so you’ll still find me churning out everything from ad headlines to in-depth industry reports.
Today I am the Head of Content & Digital Marketing at beqom, a B2B software company headquartered in Switzerland with a US base in Connecticut. Along with my team, I create and have overall responsibility for the breadth of content used by Marketing and Sales, including theme development, editorial calendar, collateral, videos, press, social media, webcasts, emailing, ad copy, and web copy. On the digital marketing side, I oversee the company’s global digital marketing strategy and efforts, including web development, SEM/SEO, paid social media campaigns, and third-party lead generation. To round things out, I also manage our PR agency relationships, our department’s global budget, and our reporting, analytics, and dashboards.
Q: What made you realize that writing was something you wanted to pursue professionally?
A: It’s been so long since I knew I wanted to be some kind of writer, I can hardly remember. By sixth or seventh grade, I was leaning heavily into writing as my favorite activity, which mostly took the form of student journalism. That continued all through high school, where I eventually became editor of our school newspaper, and I first entered college as a Communications major intending to pursue print journalism. After a semester, my mother suggested that English majors could be journalists, but journalism majors may not have as many options, so I switched to English.
By the time I graduated in 2001, the prospects of print journalism did not seem so bright. I had always enjoyed fact-based writing more than fiction, and from working as a writing tutor at the campus Writing Center for a few years I had discovered the field of technical writing. That’s when I decided to pursue the Master’s in Professional Writing.
Q: Talk about a mentor, book, or experience that helped shape who you are as a writing professional.
A: Far and away the most significant experience in my career was my Master’s program. It’s been 18 years (yikes!) and I still use the principles of those classes daily. One of my professors was Dr. Erwin Steinberg, who helped found and pioneer the field of technical writing in the late 1950s. I find myself repeating his lessons to every new writer I onboard.
Q: In your role and industry, how important is collaboration? With whom do you collaborate?
A: I’ve led teams of writers for 10 years, and in anything we create, at least one other writer is called in to be an editor or proofreader. The adage about a second set of eyes exists for a reason.
This morning I worked on creating a new page for our website, which was only about 400-words long and minor in our scope of work. This simple page involved a team writer to work with an SME to create the draft, me as the editor, our creative lead to design the graphic elements, our SEO specialist to optimize the page, an outside translation agency, and two colleagues in Europe to validate the translations of text.
I also collaborate with our PR agencies, our website development agency, my boss and CMO, company executives, sales and pre-sales, other marketing departments, advertising vendors and partners . . . more groups that I can probably remember. Collaboration is all day, every day.
Q: What do you look for in assessing potential new hires?
A: My outlook has always been to look for writer talent first. Finding new hires who can see the spark of a story in a technical product release, turn it into something compelling, then write cleanly and to our style guide is the most important piece. After that, I look for people who have experience with reporting and technology.
Q: Is there anything else you would like to share?
A: I often review resumes for both interns and full-time hires, including resumes from recent graduates. When I’m assessing these candidates, I appreciate that they may not have had direct experience with, say, marketing for a B2B software company. Here’s what I look for when determining whether to progress:
A: Connect with me! https://www.linkedin.com/in/katherinemccabe/
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Thank you to Katherine McCabe for sharing her professional writing journey with us.
To learn more about the MS in Professional Writing program at NYU School of Professional Studies, visit sps.nyu.edu/mspw
Recent MS in Translation (MST) graduate Carol Lujan, who completed the program in January 2019, found both community and her first post-MST job at the 2019 American Translators Association (ATA) conference in Palm Springs. Her trip was supported by a new annual scholarship from the American Foundation for Translation and Interpretation (AFTI). AFTI has established these student scholarships to defray the cost of attending ATA.
The AFTI scholarship allowed Lujan to access the professional and intellectual resources of the conference. “I learned a lot more about the translation and localization industries,” she says. Lujan also met with other scholarship recipients and was featured in the ATA Chronicle.
She used this opportunity to connect with MST classmates and faculty, including MST Academic Director Annelise Finegan Wasmoen. “I even saw a classmate in the pool of the hotel I stayed at, she recalls. “It was such a coincidence!”
In addition to a stronger professional network, Lujan’s trip to the ATA conference resulted in a job offer. “I met a recruiter with whom I had an interview over the phone a couple of weeks before the conference and I ended up being hired,” she says. In her new role as a Foreign Language Analyst for the government contractor Amentum, Lujan is applying the skills she acquired in the MST while continuing to extend her knowledge of the field. “I love the positive team vibe and everyone is very cooperative,” she reports of Amentum. “I have learned to work with different publishing tools. I write in English with a journalistic style and translate into English as well.”
“A translator has a huge responsibility towards her audience and her clients and being bilingual is never enough to perform this role with the seriousness that it deserves,” Lujan states. “I strongly believe that obtaining my MS in Translation has opened the door to many opportunities, including attending the ATA conference.” The 2020 ATA conference is scheduled to be held in Boston this October. MST students and recent graduates can apply for an AFTI scholarship in the spring.
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A translation degree can help you to take charge of your career, whether you are new to the field or already working in the language professions. Apply for CALA’s M.S. in Translation & Interpreting, a fully online, 36-credit graduate degree.
An odd feature of protest and revolutionary discourses is that they seem constantly to reference their own obviousness. “We hold these truths to be self-evident.” “This is what democracy looks like.” But if they are indeed “self-evident,” why do such “truths” require revolutions and wide-scale social movements to take hold? Why must they be “declared” in the first place?
The CALA Storytelling Lab’s Andrew Dicus, Visiting Clinical Assistant Professor and coordinator of writing and communications courses at NYU SPS, addresses these issues in his article, “Terror and Self-Evidence: Robespierre and the General Will,” published in the current issue of European Romantic Review.
Conducting research that spans early-modern political philosophy, twentieth-century analytic philosophy, British literature, and revolutionary rhetoric in eighteenth-century France, Andrew argues that protest discourses of today have retained critical aspects that modernized political consciousness in the late-eighteenth-century (a revolutionary period for America, France, Haiti, and beyond), but that crucial changes in how they conceptualize “self-evidence” have allowed for expanded, and more robust, bottom-up agency.
In addition to coordinating CALA’s Storytelling Lab and writing courses, Andrew teaches various humanities classes in NYU SPS’s Division of Applied Undergraduate Studies.
Sandra Darkwah is a technical writer at DoubleVerify, a company that authenticates the quality and effectiveness of digital media for its client businesses. After graduating pre-med with a degree in English, Sandra ultimately chose to apply her skills to a career in technical writing. Her ability to grasp technical information and convey it to a non-specialist audience is an asset in her current role. In her interview below, Sandra comments on the significance of mentors in professional development, and the positive outcomes that can result from taking a chance on a career that resonates with your interests.
Q: Describe your current role and your daily professional tasks and responsibilities.
A: I currently work as a technical writer for DoubleVerify, a digital media authentication company. Authentication is a process enabling the validation of user identities or of the origin and integrity of data in order to reduce fraud. My role involves writing product glossaries, how-to guides, and other client-facing documentation for the products and features that our company creates. This means working closely with the Product Department to understand any new updates or product releases.
Q: Talk about a mentor, book, or experience that helped shape who you are as a writing professional.
A: I’ve been lucky enough to have three great mentors in my professional writing journey. Two were wonderful professors that I had in college, Dr. Paula Marantz Cohen & Dr. Miriam Kotzin. Both women were published authors who not only encouraged my love of literature and writing, but were also great resources in navigating the possibilities of writing professionally. The third mentor was Geri Outwater, who was the outgoing technical writer at my first job at Rockwell Collins. I had absolutely no idea how to write about trains or which resources to use to craft the massive engineering manuals that were needed. Geri patiently gave me a crash course on how to do this work. My biggest thanks to these three amazing women!
Q: In your role and industry, how important is collaboration? With whom do you collaborate?
A: Technical writing is an interesting mix of collaboration and solo work. My process always begins with a collaboration between myself, project managers, and engineers. They provide the bulk of the information that I usually need to craft documentation by explaining the more technical aspects of a new product or release. Depending on the documentation, I may also work with account managers, client services, or the marketing department to get a better understanding of tone or client concerns.
From that point, the solo part of technical writing begins, which involves me essentially translating what they’ve told me into plain speech while still maintaining the essence of a product’s function or process. At DoubleVerify, we have an established review process where all involved parties give notes or request changes. Once these have all been incorporated or addressed, then the documentation is published.
Q: What advice would you give to a professional writer interested in a career like yours?
A: I would encourage them to give technical writing a chance! It may not be the most well known career path, but it’s a great way to learn more about different technologies. I’m constantly researching or sitting in meetings with people who are so knowledgeable of systems and processes that I would probably never learn about otherwise. So if you are someone who enjoys tech and always learning new things, this is a great career.
Q: What do you look for in assessing potential new hires?
A: I look for someone who is organized (time management is so important!) and can work independently, but can also be a team player when it’s needed. As mentioned above, technical writing is both a collaborative and solo job so the ideal candidate would be someone who can navigate both. I would also look for someone who is genuinely curious and asks a lot of questions. You have to be interested in the things you write about in order to convey information in a way that offers solutions or answers questions, instead of raising them.
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Thank you to Sandra Darkwah for sharing her professional writing journey with us.
To learn more about the MS in Professional Writing program at NYU School of Professional Studies, visit sps.nyu.edu/mspw