
Call for papers
Meet Central Europe Conference 2023
#MCE 2023 theme: Inspiring talent management
In 2023 MCE returns to Budapest - the city where our story started five years ago. It’s fascinating to look back to 2018: the world at large as well as our own small world of the GILT industry looked rather different before the pandemic and the war in Ukraine but also before the swift rise of generative AI.
This October we’ll focus on the change that has taken place and the forces that shape our industry. We are looking for candid, exciting, and inspiring talks, workshops and discussions addressing the most pressing issues that vendor managers, project managers, CEOs, and freelance linguists are facing. If you have something important and interesting to say, reach out to us and submit your paper! Maybe you haven’t had major breakthroughs and inspiring successes in the past year - but we’re sure you’ve had quiet or spectacular failures that ultimately were conquered. Bring these on; we’d love to hear about them - how you learned from mistakes and failures and how the learning curve impacted your work.
Target audience
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Vendor managers and project managers seeking inspiration and expert advice on how to best recruit, manage and retain top linguistic and non-linguistic talent
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Freelance translators who are interested in working together with translation companies and who would like to learn more about project management and other translation topics
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Anyone seeking to find new Central and Eastern European linguistic partners
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Central European translation providers looking to expand their markets
Competition for talent - new ways for LSCs and freelancers to connect
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Good talent is scarce. How do you, as an LSC, stand out from the crowd and become an attractive client?
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Keeping engagement. Alternative deals with dedicated freelance talents (retainer arrangements, etc) to make them motivated and available. Use cases, aspects to consider, pros and cons.
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Using social networks to advertise the LSC brand for FRL recruitment…
Getting out of the VM’s comfort zone
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How to create an efficient team of linguists when an LSC is launching a new language pair or service (e.g. subtitling, remote interpreting, transcreation, etc.)
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Differences between recruiting translators and non-translator language talent (sourcing copywriters, SEO experts, post editors, etc.)
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Peculiarities of finding non-linguistic talents (technicians, QA experts, engineers, voice-over artists, video experts, testers, subject matter experts, etc.)
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Crowdsourcing - the specialties of non-professional talent recruitment (e.g. data annotation, validation, etc.)
Tech enabled VM (tools, workflows, processes, data, metrics)
Automation in supply chain management (pros and cons):
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Automations in recruitment
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Automations in job allocation
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Communication paths - AI chatbots?
Data driven approach in:
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translation quality monitoring
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cost control
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throughput monitoring
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talent pool management
Fair rates
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What IS fairness in our industry and how to build it in our VM practices?
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Fairness and sustainability in the GILT-industry
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Price-setting: what to factor in on the buy- and the supply side?
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Pandemia, war, inflation: have the disruptive economic and geopolitical events had an effect on the market rates?
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Alternative payment schemes and compensation methods
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Data-driven negotiation methodologies
Money talks - VM motivation & remuneration
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VM compensation package models, salaries, commissions and the like
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VM evolution and career opportunities
The buy-side perspective
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Localization technology strategy to automate and streamline operations: how to build one, calculate ROI and acquire buy-in from other departments and executives
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Crafting made-to-measure LSC partnerships: benefits and risks of a direct linguist model through bespoke vendor relations (direct connection between linguists and the end client)
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Linguist coaching and nurturing: how to educate translators to become experts in the client's products and stay motivated through challenging content launches
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Localization isn't a product or feature, it's every product and every feature. The importance of integrating localization from the early stages of the product development process
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Localization quality assurance: defining and optimizing translation quality management. Does a more advanced LQA process equal high quality translated output?
The conference will have presentations for language services companies (LSCs) and freelance translators.
Topics of interest
Form of appearance
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Presentations (duration: 30 minutes)
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Workshops (duration: 2 hours, including a coffee break)
Submission of the paper
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title of the presentation
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short abstract (450 word maximum)
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speaker details (a short bio, online profile, photo, etc.)
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link to a brief, maximum 1-minute-long video recording introducing yourself and your presentation (can be a smartphone recording - this will never be made public; it’s for the content committee only
Important dates
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Submission deadline: May 31, 2023
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Notification date: June 30, 2023
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Final paper submission for selected speakers: July 30, 2023
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Conference dates: October 17-19 2023