‘Show me who your friends are, and I’ll tell you who you are!’ Being in this world means being in a context. This also applies to legal bodies such as FIT. Luckily, FIT has a lot of friends, some with formalised documents or memorandums of understanding (MOUs), and others with less formal arrangements.
Overall aim of FIT’s partnerships
The overall aim of such arrangements is to optimise the mutual benefits for organisations, member associations, and eventually our members’ individual members, through the exchange of information, advocacy, reciprocal participation in events and webinars, networking, etc. However, one should not underestimate the brand value of collaboration: ‘Show me who your friends are…!’.
Recent developments and new partnerships
Thanks to our very strong relationship with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), FIT was granted the opportunity to hold our recent congresses at WIPO HQ in Geneva, Switzerland. Just before the Statutory Congress, FIT and PEN International signed a cooperation agreement. Both organisations count more than one hundred members that are associations or centres, and many are themselves members of both organisations. Right after Congress, FIT and Translation Commons signed an agreement, and FIT was also invited to take part in the online annual meeting of INFOTERM and attend a meeting of the UNESCO Committee on Non-Governmental Partners.
A long list of partners
The Partners page on the FIT website provides a list of even more partners: AIIC, CIUTI, CEATL, to name-drop a few. And of course, FIT has excellent relations with a large number of training institutions at all levels, whether through FIT Mundus, Regional Centres, member associations, or the individuals who belong to them. We are all dealing with major challenges, for example artificial intelligence. How will it affect the training of future members of our professions? How will it affect the status of languages and language diversity? How will it affect the way we work and make a living? Together, we can try to find better answers.
Optimisation of benefits
To my mind, there is no doubt that FIT can enhance its offerings to members at a low cost – or even for free – by strengthening communication and collaboration with our partners.
In my capacity as chair of the External Relations Standing Committee (while writing this article), and also as a Council member, I believe that many of our collaboration agreements should be reviewed and revitalised to generate more mutual benefits for our members and stakeholders, while at the same time expanding our international presence, influence, and visibility.
FIT: the voice of translators
The voices of translators, interpreters, and terminologists need to be heard more than ever these days. I will do my best throughout my current term to update our context, our global collaboration, so that when you ask me who FIT’s friends are, I can confidently show you who FIT is.
Jørgen Christian Wind Nielsen, External Relations Standing Committee