The Translation E-Buzz

Employee of the Month
Sherri Yarbrough

Sherri Yarbrough joined McElroy in June as an assistant in the Translation Department. When we decided to create a new position dedicated to customer service Sherri enthusiastically submitted her application. Her understanding of workflow from an operations perspective helps her assist clients who have questions about their work in progress.

Sherri was born in the nation’s capital but grew up in Philadelphia, PA. She was always passionate about music. Living one hour by train south of New York City, Broadway felt like a second home...as did the Met. She even entertained thoughts of studying opera. As a music major in high school she found multiple ways to drive her mother crazy. Not only was she a member of two school choirs (concert and gospel) and a perennial member of the All-City choir, but she also played tuba in the orchestra and concert band, and sousaphone in the marching band. As if that wasn’t enough, she played the piano in the jazz band, as well. Sherri realized she enjoyed not only performing, but organizing and producing, too. She’d performed in the musical “The King and I” during her high school sophomore year, and as a senior she produced the musical “South Pacific.”

But don’t try to categorize Sherri with any neat and tidy stereotypes. She also is fanatical about sports, claiming sports are a “family obsession.” She was a gymnast and played softball, volleyball, and tennis. A familiar joke is that the WOMEN in her family are generally more fanatical than the men. To this day, she dares not call her mother during an Eagles game. Sherri and her daughter follow basketball with avid interest. They talk stats, teams, defenses, traps...driving her husband insane. She remains an avid tennis player as well as a USTA official. She has served as a roving official for several junior and college events, and had the opportunity to chair a national wheelchair event in Dallas last year. Fond memories in this venue are tied to serving as the Volunteer Coordinator for the yearly Tier-1 WTA Advanta Championships from 1993 to 1995. This event used to serve as the warm-up for the Women’s year-ending Tour Championships when it was an annual event at Madison Square Garden. As the Volunteer Coordinator, she recruited, scheduled and organized volunteers to serve as ushers for the week-long event.

In addition to music and sports, Sherri has always had a love for travel. At 18, she joined the Marine Corps to fulfill this desire. Too smart for her own good, the reward for graduating first in her class at Personnel School (her occupational specialty) was a post at Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps, one block north of the Pentagon. While being located at the nation’s hub was fascinating in many ways, Sherri had already seen DC. It was the rest of the world that awaited her in her dreams. Her flexible attitude and her willingness to be mobile have made ensuing moves pleasant. Sherri has lived in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, California, Tennessee and Texas.

Her hobbies (yes, there’s more!) include cooking, reading fiction, political posting, playing computer games, completing her bimonthly Math & Logic Problems magazine, dragging her husband to the movies, and thus far, some “pathetic attempts at gardening.” As you may have guessed, Sherri has an abundance of energy. She has focused some of that energy into a successful launch of the new Customer Service position at McElroy Translation.

RMTC Covers 2003 ATA Conference

As in years past, RMTC sent several company representatives to the American Translators Association annual national conference, held in Phoenix, AZ, November 6-8, 2003. Attending were Operations Manager Kim Vitray, Chief Editor Mark Ritter, Translator Coordinator Patricia Bown, and Project Manager Tina Wuelfing.

Employing a “divide, conquer, and share” strategy, each RMTC representative had a particular focus and attended those sessions that related to their individual target areas. Since RMTC is a member of the Translation Company Division of the ATA, and Kim is Assistant Administrator of that Division, her focus was on sessions and meetings related to translation companies (rather than freelancers) and Division business. Mark is Deputy Chair of the German language grading committee (which is in charge of testing and grading for German language ATA accreditation), and is an accredited German-to-English translator, so he attended sessions relating to German translation and terminology and meetings of the grading committee. For Patricia, the ATA conference was a tremendous opportunity to spend one-on-one and face-to-face time with our existing translators, and to strengthen and grow our resources by meeting and recruiting new translators. Finally, Tina attended a wealth of project management sessions, such as “Quality-First Management,” “Coping with Project Churn,” and “Meeting the Challenges of Inhouse Localization.”

An exciting decision and announcement during the conference was the election of McElroy Translation as the host company, and Austin the host city, for the Translation Company Division’s 2004 annual conference. Kim will be working closing with Division Administrator Linda Gauthier, of BG Communications International in Montreal, Canada, to organize this leading industry conference.

The “share” part of RMTC’s conference coverage occurs when attendees write and publish a detailed report of their conference experience in RMTC’s twice-monthly company newsletter, Ops Notes. These reports will be featured in the upcoming December 16 issue.

Localization Certification

The Austin Community College (ACC) generalist localization certification program continues to gain momentum and international acclaim, and classes are now at capacity. There is more and more worldwide corporate support for the online courses, and students traveled to Austin from all over the world for last summer’s special sessions.

The Advisory Board recently teleconferenced, and special mention was given the first certified program graduate.....PATRICIA BOWN of McElroy Translation Company. Several more upcoming graduates are in the pipeline.

Dr. Tim Altanero expressed his gratititude to McElroy Translation Company for the role we have played in establishing and growing the program.

• General Manager Shelly Orr Priebe sits on the program Advisory Board
• Chief Editor Dr. Mark Ritter teaches “Translation Memory and Machine Translation” and Translation Coordinator Patricia Bown will join him as an instructor next semester teaching “Introduction to World Languages.”
• Many McElroy employees have taken classes, helping the classes “make” in the early days of the program.
• McElroy continues to offer input on curriculum design.
• We have helped publicize the program.