By Guillaume Deneufbourg
(FIT President)
Dear members,
We are all aware that time flies by. It’s no different for our Federation: slowly but surely, we are drawing closer to our next annual general meeting (AGM). This meeting will mark the first year of office for the Council elected at the Statutory Congress last September.
For several months now, the standing committees, the various working groups and our five Regional Centres have been hands-on and busy serving our members, representing our professions and defending their best interests.
As for the Council, it has been overseeing the effective coordination of these duties. It has also been working with the Permanent Secretariat to ensure the hundred or so colleagues involved in these initiatives can do their jobs in optimal conditions.
We are also responsible for the Federation’s financial and administrative management. On this front, I am pleased to announce that, thanks to the past year’s efforts, we have finally been able to open a new bank account, which is now fully operational. For an international federation such as ours, with administrators and members across every region of the world, what might seem like a straightforward process is, in fact, a very real challenge, given the particularly strict and cautious regulatory environment we find ourselves in nowadays. We are therefore relieved to have brought this task to a successful conclusion.
As you are also aware, FIT will be holding annual AGMs online from now on, except in congress years. This change aims to improve communication with our members and ensure that the Federation operates more responsively and seamlessly.
During this first year of our mandate, we have chosen to focus much of our effort on modernising the way FIT is structured and run – an undertaking many of you had been calling for. The Procedures and Structural Reform Standing Committee, which I have had the honour of chairing, has been carrying out a great deal of work on the Federation’s key governance documents. This is a long-term process and cannot be completed in a mere few months. We have only just finished the first ‘clean-up’ phase, and we will now turn our attention to more strategic aspects.
Over the coming weeks, you will be receiving a number of proposals reflecting our collective wish to develop a more modern FIT that operates more transparently and which is better suited to the demands of today’s professional environment. A strong, well-structured international federation is not an end in itself. Above all, it is crucial for providing better support to member organisations, building on the Regional Centres’ impact and defending our profession more effectively in an ever-changing landscape marked by countless challenges.
This work has been done entirely remotely, as we decided not to hold any in-person Council meetings this year. This approach has clear advantages, particularly in terms of cost and accessibility, but it also has its limitations when it comes to handling complex issues involving colleagues based around the world and across several time zones. Despite these constraints, the teams have done a remarkable job, with great diligence and a strong sense of commitment. I would like to extend my warmest thanks to everyone who has devoted their valuable time to this vital project. I will be coming back to this in more detail soon.
The documents being sent out to you soon will be put to the AGM on 19 September for approval. I suggest you read them carefully as soon as possible. I also urge you to attend this meeting, which will mark an important milestone for our Federation. It will be our first in this format. Although a virtual meeting can never match the quality of interaction found at an in-person Statutory Congress, I am convinced that, with our good will and team spirit, we will manage to rise to this challenge together.
Finally, this issue also features the poster for International Translation Day 2026, which has the theme ‘Language diversity and language rights: The power of being understood’. I would like to sincerely thank the External Partnerships Standing Committee for coordinating this, and our Saudi colleagues at the Saudi Arabian Translation Association (SATA) for kindly offering their assistance in designing the poster.
Until we meet online in September for our AGM, I wish you all the very best for the coming months, wherever you may be.