Leeds Centre for Translation Studies meet with the World Intellectual Property Organization

Meeting participants discussed the terminology project collaboration.

On 19 November 2020, officials from the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), Geoffrey Westgate (Head of the Support Section of PCT Translation Division) and Cristina Valentini (Head of the Terminology Unit of PCT Translation Division) organised a meeting with the Centre for Translation Studies (CTS) at Leeds. Binhua Wang (Director of CTS), Callum Walker (Programme manager of MA/PGDip Applied Translation Studies), Sara Ramos Pinto (Programme manager of MA Audiovisual Translation Studies) and Faruk Maierdan attended the meeting.

In the meeting the two sides had a very productive discussion exploring the WIPO terminology project collaboration. Geoffrey and Cristina mentioned that they have taken on most new ‘fellows’ (new staff and interns) from Leeds in recent years and that they have been impressed by Leeds CTS graduates working in WIPO.

The aim of the collaboration between WIPO-PCT and University of Leeds is to allow an exchange of knowledge in the field of terminology and patents and to offer students of terminology and translation the chance to carry out assignments for WIPO with the prospect of having their work published in WIPO Pearl, the multilingual terminology database of scientific and technical terms extracted from patents on WIPO website.

Initial agreement has been reached in the meeting on terminology project collaboration between WIPO-PCT and Leeds. As Leeds CTS students from both Applied Translation Studies and Audiovisual Translation Studies have dedicated sessions for terminology management, term extraction and corpus building, such collaboration will not only bring great opportunities to our students in employability by putting what they learn into professional practice, but also boosting the impact of Leeds translation and interpreting programmes through partnership and links with international organisations.

The University of Leeds is a member of the University Contact Group (UCG) of international organisations.