The services of Cultures Connection were again on show at an edition of the most important event for the petrochemical sector in Latin America.
Cultures Connection were called upon to aid the most important leaders of the petrochemical and refinery industry in Latin America when they met in Chile for their discussion of job prospects on the continent. The agency organized for the Latin American Refining and Petrochemicals Conference (LARTC) a simultaneous interpretation service on October 16, 17 and 18, which connected Spanish and English speaking businessmen in this key industry for the region.
Cultures Connection has been working for the past two years, helping to set up these conferences held in different Latin American cities. The event in this case was in the Intercontinental Hotel in Santiago, Chile, with more than 200 business leaders from the United States, Latin America and Europe.
Four professional interpreters attended the conferences, the panels and roundtables that were planned, and were available for those presentations that needed them. The work consisted of English-Spanish and Spanish-English interpretation of very particular technical content. For that, the agency also provided the client with two soundproof cabins, 150 receivers of simultaneous interpretation, two assistants for the delivery and reception of interpretation devices, and two monitoring technicians.
“The assembly of the work team was professional. Everything was at a very high standard and we received very positive feedback from participants, which is always pleasant for the interpreters,” Amandine commented, a representative from Cultures Connection who travelled specifically from the agency’s offices in Buenos Aires to supervise the operation of the interpretation services. The leaders of the sector in Latin America agreed on the potential of this market, aware of the diverse landscape that exists in different countries, and the lack of general optimization of resources and sensitivity to the international situation. They stressed the need to increase the level of investments and to do so efficiently, with the aim of being productive and sustainable.
In one of the most popular exhibitions, top executives from ENAP (National Petroleum Company), YPF, Petrobras, Axion, Braskem and Exopetrol talked about the search to promote global competitiveness in downstream, in view of the imbalance that exists between import and export of petrochemical products or the advancement of electric vehicles. Ricardo Irarrázabal Sánchez, undersecretary of Energy of the Ministry of Energy in Chile gave a speech about plans of investment that the Government has within its framework to boost the energy industry.
There were a great number of talks for all tastes. The World Bank reflected on how to best use investment in order to transition to cleaner energy. Shell management focused on the issue of security to explain operational problems that obsolete equipment produced in one of their refineries. Emerson Automation Solutions pointed out the advantages of the use of technical development in the sector. Cultures Connection’s interpreters were able to adapt themselves skilfully to many different situations that the issues and specific vocabulary from the most prominent figures in the sector offered.
“The talks lasted 35 minutes each, the majority at a very rapid pace. Seeing as the speakers were not assigned a huge amount of time, the interpretations also had to be very quick”, Gonzalo expressed, one of the professionals who participated in the conference.
Copyright: Cultures Connection.
Efficiency in large-scale events
A common course of events for this type of event that hosts a great number of clients is the concentration of various activities in a short time and space. The last day presented a problematic situation that Cultures Connection were able to solve with aplomb: two conference rooms for three roundtable discussions that were held simultaneously.
In the first room there was only one talk for which interpretation was requested, so some of the hired professionals stayed just in case they were needed unexpectedly. Meanwhile, in the other room, two meets requesting interpretation services were held at the same time.
As the cabins that they had been using up to this moment were not a viable option, the agency proposed to the interpreters, the listeners and the audience a whispered interpretation where the adapted version of the original is relayed directly to the few people that need it. All those present agreed and finally they were able to actively participate without any problems.
“Both the agenda and the organisation of the event were very good. The times of the programme were respected. What I would like to highlight is that Amandine always made sure to let us know about programme changes and to check that we did not need anything” Gonzalo recounted, a professional in technical fields such as petrochemicals, medicine and finance for more than 5 years.
For Amandine, “Everything was perfect. The cabins were assembled in advance and, when they had to divide the rooms and assemble and disassemble the cabins, everything was done calmly. The client was very impressed.”
Translation into English: William Steel
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