TLC, Warsaw 2017

It was the first time that Jensen Localization took part at the Translation and Localization Conference in Warsaw, Poland.

There were a lot of interesting workshops, conferences and a lot of great people willing to make new contacts and networks.

At Jensen Localization we are happy to support events of this kind. This is why I contacted Mr. Agenor Hofmann-Delbor to get the history behind the TLC Warsaw.

Agenor Hofmann-Delbor :…“When I was still only a few years in the industry, I attended two conferences: ProZ international conference and Localization World (it wasn’t called LocWorld back then). They absolutely changed my perspective on everything. I’ve learned a lot, and I felt this feeling of community.  That is what is really missing the Polish translation market. Obviously, we had some associations, but none of them were really able to create a broad and open community. Then it became clear to me. If we want a community around an event, user forum or anything similar, we need to be sure everyone feels comfortable with it. I started creating the initial vision for a large conference shortly after. It was 2007 and pretty much nothing was going on in our market; the only option was to go abroad where each conference was extremely expensive (800 EUR per day seems very expensive still today). As you can see at this point my story refers to the Polish market. My initial plan was to build a strong local conference and then slowly introduce international elements to it. To some degree, it worked for several years, but then when I founded Localize.pl in 2011, I thought it was time to really chase the dream about the international conference. I invited Maria Szpor from Textem to help me and co-organize the event and we started from the scratch.

We were aware that participants from other countries would first need to recognize the event, so we started with a mixed conference: two rooms with English sessions, and one with Polish presentations. Another assumption was that we need to make this event affordable, no matter what. And I am proud to say TLC is still the most affordable conference within the translation industry while being one of the most interesting ones with regard to the program. But enough with the advertising break. Each year we made significant improvements, dozens of small things that seemed to work well ever since. Actually, it worked so well that even some other organizers visited our event and took a lot of notes on the organizational side.

We put a lot of effort to make this event run smoothly, without any delays, and yet giving the participants a great networking space. From the beginning, our main goal was to bring everyone to the table. Not just freelancers and LSPs, but also corporations, organizations, and universities. That is why we position our conference as an industry platform, not as a freelance or LSP conference. And this is actually the difficult part as we need to have a program for everyone. Trust me; three simultaneous sessions are sometimes not enough.”…

Mr. Agenor also explained why he selected Warsaw to be the conference location.

…“I live in Szczecin, a city near the western border of Poland, around 100 km from Berlin, so this is definitely not my preferred location. However, I made a simple assumption, if 80% of the attendees need to travel, let’s choose a city with the best flight and train connections. A capital city is an obvious choice. Also, if a large number of participants and speakers are flying in, let’s choose a venue close to the airport (time schedule of each speaker is limited and saving them an hour of getting to and from the conference is sometimes crucial).”…

I asked Mr. Agenor if it was hard to start up the conference idea. His answer was that…

…”It still is. Our work on each edition starts around 8 months before. We have to plan a theme, a vision, fixing dozens of tiny issues. At the beginning, we had to build our own know-how from the scratch. Luckily I had my experience with large local translation conferences, so we could base on them. We keep learning and each year we listen to comments, read the surveys, etc. It is really an ongoing process. Each edition needs to be different; no one wants to hear the same stuff all over again. That is why we generally avoid any presentations, which were already delivered on other conferences. I need to highlight: TLC works because we have a great team – Maria, Anna, Marta, Jacek and I. Together we are able to conquer the world. Perhaps we should someday”…

We really appreciate the words from Mr. Agenor, because these are the type of stories that make our industry grow stronger.

From Jensen Localization, we want to recommend this conference to all our readers. We also want to remind you that if you ever need a partner for translation and localization we are here to help.

We are expanding our horizons by networking and increasing alliances in between all the organizations related to the translation business. Contact us to know how we can help you to reach your objectives.