cApStAn BVBA/SPRL - Linguistic Quality Control

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cApStAn Team

ANDREA FERRARI

Senior Associate, Director R&D

Andrea Ferrari, born 1957, is one of the founders and co-directors of cApStAn. He was exposed to a multicultural environment from early on, living and studying in a variety of countries (Canada, Italy, Australia, Greece). He earned his degree in business engineering from the Solvay Business School, Free University of Brussels in 1981, with a "Grande distinction" (top 10% of class) and a dissertation that was presented to the Belgian annual Operations Research Conference in 1982. He then pursued a career in marketing management with the Procter & Gamble corporation, first in Belgium and then in Canada. He was self-employed since 1987 as a professional freelance translator. In 1999 he participated in the first cycle of the OECD/PISA project as language expert for the Italian version, and quickly acquired a taste for the management of linguistic aspects of international surveys. In 2000 he joined Steve Dept to found cApStAn, and has since co-directed linguistic quality control assignments, particularly in the area of educational testing. He was closely involved with procedures for monitoring French-English equivalence within the framework of producing a second source version for PISA assessment materials, with procedures to ensure psychometric equivalence in educational achievement and adult literacy surveys, with verification workflows. He has produced a methodology to report and quantify verifier's interventions on national versions of assessment materials.

 STEVE DEPT

Senior Associate, Operations Director

Steve Dept, born 1963, is one of the founders of cApStAn. He grew up in South Africa, Belgium and Germany and received his primary and secondary education in four different languages (English, Dutch, French, German). He studied Classical Philology but is essentially an autodidact. Steve worked as a free-lance translator, editor and shadow-writer since 1988 and set up his first proprietary translation and proofreading agency in 1993. In 1998, he participated in developing a second source version of the OECD/PISA item pool under the supervision of researcher Aletta Grisay. He was commissioned by the University of Liège (ULg) to organise the translation/adaptation verification of PISA instruments in 24 languages for the Field Trial in 1999; and by the PISA Consortium for the Main Study in 2000. Steve founded cApStAn Linguistic Quality Control (LQC) with Andrea Ferrari with a view to specializing in LQC for multilingual projects. Within cApStAn, he has organised and coordinated translation verification in PISA 2000, 2003, 2006, 2009 and 2012, in TIMSS 2003, 2007 and 2011, in PIRLS 2006 and 2011, in OECD/TALIS and OECD/PIAAC, and of the European Social Survey (ESS) and UNESCO/LAMP survey instruments. In particular, he is closely involved with the development of training modules for verifiers and for project managers, and with broader issues involving linguistic aspects in multinational data collection projects.
 

BEN MEESSEN

Junior Associate, Marketing & Communications Manager

Ben Meessen was born in Senegal in 1966 and spent his childhood years in the US. He graduated as a translator from the University of Mons-Hainaut in 1989. He subsequently took a post-graduate degree in Business Administration at the Université Catholique de Louvain. After working as a translator for the Spanish Delegation to NATO, he was appointed Secretary General of the International Christian Union of Business Executives (UNIAPAC) and later became Secretary General of the British Chamber of Commerce in Belgium. He joined cApStAn in August 2004. He is a Junior Associate and the company’s Marketing & Communications Manager and Managing Director of BranTra.

 

LAURA WÄYRYNEN

Verifier (Finnish), Project Manager

Laura Wäyrynen was born in Finland in 1972. She studied German and Spanish in the Centre of Translation and Interpretation of University of Turku (Finland) and graduated in 1999. She first worked as a Project Manager in AAC Global, a Finnish translation agency, then held the position of UI Localization Design Engineer at Nokia. She has lived and worked in Austria, Germany and France, and has been a self-employed translator since the beginning of 2005. Laura Wäyrynen first joined cApStAn in 2001 as a language specialist for the Finnish version of PISA. Since 2005 she has been extensively involved in the coordination of translation verification and equivalence checks of OECD/PISA, IEA/TIMSS, IEA/PIRLS, OECD/TALIS, IEA/TEDS-M. She is currently in charge of instructions and guidance to verifiers and she reviews their feedback. In particular, she is involved in testing open-source CAT-tools for use in verification and develops user guides on an ad-hoc basis.

 

RAPHAËL CHOPPINET

Project Manager

Raphaël Choppinet was born in Belgium in 1982. He started focusing on multilingualism and multiculturalism as of an early age. After a year of post-secondary non-tertiary education in Berlin (Germany) and Salamanca (Spain), he studied German and Russian at the Institut Supérieur des Traducteurs et Interprètes (ISTI)  (Higher Institute for Translators and Interpreters) and earned his degree in 2007. He joined cApStAn in 2007. As project manager, he participated in the verification of OECD/PISA, PIAAC, ERA, TALIS and IEA/PIRLS, TIMSS and ICCS. He also coordinated the International Coding Review (ICR) of PISA 2009 Main Study test materials - which aimed to estimate potential biases in the coding standards applied in participating countries - and participated to the production of ERA 2009 and PISA 2012 French source version. Raphaël Choppinet is dedicated project coordinator in verification of Computer-Based instruments (e.g. ERA Main Survey instruments, OECD/PISA 2012 Computer-Based instruments, among other). He is now preparing the ground for the verification of PISA 2012 Main Study computer-based instruments and of ICILS Field Trial instruments.

 

SHINOH LEE

Verifier (Korean), Project Manager

Shinoh Lee was born and raised in a little town in South Korea. After having finished her studies in English Language and Literature at Sung Kyun Kwan University in Seoul, she moved to Belgium where she obtained a MA in Germanic Philology from the Catholic University of Leuven (KU Leuven) with specialisation in English and Dutch linguistics. She speaks Korean, English, Dutch, French and has some notions of Turkish and Chinese. The posts she previously held include administrative assistant, language instructor and high school teacher. Shinoh has been working for cApStAn as language specialist of Korean language since 2000. Since her joining cApStAn as a full-time employee in 2009, she has been playing an active role in overall day-to-day management and coordination of various projects.

 

ROBERTA LIZZI

Verifier (Italian), Project Manager

Born in Milan (Italy) in 1965, Roberta Lizzi graduated at the Translation and Interpretation School of Milan with English and German as foreign languages. In 1992, her passion for languages and multiculturalism brought her to Brussels, the very heart of Europe, where she initially worked as Senior Italian Language Specialist in a translation company. In 1997, she decided to continue in the profession as a freelancer and rapidly added French, Dutch, and Spanish to her language combinations. After 13 years of activity as freelance translator, proofreader and instructor, and then as a cApStAn Italian verifier, Roberta wanted to experience the work behind the scenes. In 2010, she accepted cApStAn’s offer to join the team as Project Manager and has been in charge of coordination of IEA/TIMSS and PIRLS verification.

 

ELICA KRAJČEVA

Verifier (Macedonian), Project Manager

Elica KRAJČEVA was born in Former Yugoslavia and thus had her education in Macedonian and Serbo-Croatian. She graduated at Ss. Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje and received MA equivalence in Belgium. She translated from English to Serbo-Croatian in Libya, taught English in Macedonia and worked on ethnic conflict prevention and resolution as a translator and a Project Manager in a rich multicultural professional environment in Skopje. Living in Brussels, Bucharest and Prague was an occasion to have contact with and learn new languages. Teaching English in Belgian and foreign schools in Brussels added a complementary understanding to the PISA, PIRLS and TIMSS surveys on which she has been verifying the Macedonian, Serbian and Montenegrin versions since 2000. The participation at the PIAAC survey as a verifier for Serbo-Croatian and a Junior Assistant preceded her joining the cApStAn team of Project Managers which enriches her work experience and passion for multicultural, multilingual as well as highly professional but above all human working environment.

 

MANUEL SOUTO PICO

Terminologist, Verifier (Galician), CAT consultant

Manuel Souto Pico grew up in Galiza and so became familiar with diglossia and the relation between power and language from an early age. He has lived in the UK, France, Brazil and Finland, and is now established in Barcelona. He is a keen language learner and, apart from this native tongues (Galizan and Spanish), he speaks also French, English, Portuguese and Catalan. His current endeavour is learning Arabic without dying in the attempt. He studied translation/interpreting in Vigo and applied linguistics at IULA (UPF), and has worked as a translator, simultaneous interpreter, reviewer, testing engineer, linguist and terminologist, and has gained a fair amount of experience as a provider of technical assistance and training about Transit/TermStar at STAR Spain. After a strenuous interview in a smoky bar in 2005, he is been collaborating with cApStAn as a verifier for Galician for projects PISA, TALIS, ICCS, PIAAC, and as a linguist-consultant to generate DTRS (Dynamic Text Rule Spreadsheets) for web-based surveys. He is currently working on a State of the Art review of existing CAT tools and automated reviewing tools with the cApStAn R&D team.
 

 

IRENE LIBERATI

Verifier (Italian, French), Project Manager

Irene Liberati was born in Italy in 1980, and grew up in France in a multilingual and multicultural context.  After graduating from high school at the International Center of Valbonne (France), she went to back to Italy to continue her studies in Modern Languages and entered the Translation and Interpretation School of Trieste. She studied Italian, French, Spanish and English and acquired some notions of Catalan and Portuguese.  While studying she started working as a translator for cApStAn. After many years working as a free-lance translator she expressed a desire to get more involved in the company and started to lend a hand on some project management procedures. This year Irene was the “official dispatcher” for TIMSS/PIRLS projects and got a first experience as reviewer of TIMSS/PIRLS verified materials, while also verifying and carrying out final checks on PISA materials.

 

 

 Musab Hayatli

Business Relations Manager

Musab Hayatli, born in 1971, is the business relations manager for cApStAn. He is also an all-round manager with special focus on issues specific to the Middle East. He grew up in Syria where he read English and followed it by a post-graduate degree in Linguistics. He then did an MPhil and Dphil in Linguistics at Oxford University. He is a certified translator in the UK and a member of the Institute of Translation & Interpreting there. Musab joined us in 2011 after a two-year stint as a senior translator and language consultant in Good Harbor Consulting in the UAE. Prior to that, he was the editor of the Arabic version of Forced Migration Review, a journal published by the University of Oxford and focuses on refugees’ issues. Musab has more than 10 years of experience in translation business. In addition to his duties in cApStAn, Musab also acts a Senior Manager in cApStAn’s sister company BranTra Translation. Musab is the driving force and facilitator behind the group's expansion plans.