Sarah's Archives

my online archive

New beginnings: personal and professional

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Well hello there! It’s been some time, as you may (or may not) have noticed.

Either way I’m back, a little wiser and a lot more refreshed, and I’ll be around for a while.

If you’ve been following me on Twitter or via my other business, you’ll know that I’ve been working on a Very Important Personal Project of late:

Baby Translator

Sarah’s Very Important Personal Project

Needless to say, this has been a period of a huge transition in my personal life, with a significant impact on my professional life too.

Transitional periods invariably make us re-examine our priorities. I’ve had to think long and hard about whether blogging is where I want to spend my precious time these days.

But blogging has never been a purely business exercise for me, and I’m keen to have a go at returning to a regular publishing schedule.

I’m curious to see how I’ll re-find my voice and re-negotiate a position for myself in what is now a very crowded space. With so many outstanding translation bloggers nowadays, it feels more intimidating than it ever did.

So I’ve decided to ditch all my expectations and just do what I enjoy most – write, and see what happens.

I’d be very interested to hear from other translators and interpreters: how have you handled transitional periods in your personal life, and specifically the impact they’ve had on your professional life?

**Apologies if you’ve noticed some funny goings-on with my website and blog this week. I’ve moved host and it’s revealed some interesting gremlins in the system**

Website Building 101

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e-commerce sketching

It’s fair to say that the online world has changed a lot since I built my first website. The demise of GeoCities is only one such change (and oh my, what a sorry change that was).

My first website was on the unmissable touristic delights of Ireland’s Shannon Region. As my geographical horizons expanded, so too did my website, and this was gradually replaced with hard-won advice from the study-abroad trenches in France, Germany and Spain: this bar in Jena hires casual student workers, that dorm building is to be avoided at the Université de Franche-Comté, and here’s another way around this pesky bureaucratic requirement at the Universidad de Granada. [Read more…]

Getting over the hump. Or: long-term career development for translators

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spring
One of the best things about being a freelance translator is that it is entirely up to you how your career develops. I’ve always found that very empowering. But of course, one of the worst things about being a freelance translator is that it is entirely up to you how your career develops. It’s not always easy to handle that degree of choice.

Jed Schmidt, the original globe-trotting translator, says that translators have three options when it comes to developing long-term careers in translation. They can go deep, and immerse themselves so thoroughly in a particular area they become the go-to translator for that niche. They can go wide, and expand into providing other translation-related services. Or they can go fish: leave translation itself behind but move into a job that is still part of the wider translation industry. [Read more…]

Hello AUSIT Queensland members

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Hello to fellow AUSIT members who are dropping by after yesterday’s professional development session on building a strong professional presence online.

I will upload my slides, along with some additional resources, by the end of the day today. In the meantime you might find the following posts interesting:

  • A 5-minute video on how I use WordPress for this blog. This is the same system I use for my website.
  • Some 5-minute videos with demonstrations of how I use LinkedIn and Google Reader for professional purposes.
  • A half-hour presentation on social media for translators, which looks at Tweetdeck (co-presented with Philippa Hammond – check out her blog for a great guest post on search engine marketing (SEO) too).
  • Finally, here is a list of 107 blogs by (mainly) freelance translators. (There are also plenty of blogs by interpreters, but these can be a starting point for finding them if you wish). If you’re thinking of starting a blog, it’s a good idea to know what’s out there already. If blogging is not for you, that’s fine too: but you might be interested in keeping up-to-date with what other professionals are writing.

Thank you very much to everyone who attended last night, and for your interesting and insightful questions.

Hello to ITI Bulletin readers

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ITI Bulletin cover, July - August 2009

ITI Bulletin cover, July - August 2009

A big hello to readers who have found their way here from my recent article in the ITI Bulletin. You might find these posts of particular interest:

  1. Twitter: this director’s cut – screencasts of Twitter in action, including examples of professionals who are doing it right and a live demo of another kind of Twitter tool called TwitKit.
  2. ITI Conference round-up: a social media perspective – a full write-up of a side to the conference you may not even know existed (the Bulletin article was an extract of this).
  3. The royal we: why small is the new big – a perspective on why setting our sights low as freelancers can reap rewards.
  4. The value of professional organisations: another view – ideas on the value of professional organisations to newly-established translators.
  5. If you’ve had enough of hearing how essential social media is, try these posts for a slightly different perspective: A healthy dose of scepticism and 7 ways NOT to use Twitter for business purposes.
  6. Finally, see what you think of my series of short interviews with professionals in the translation world: 5 Qs.

Enjoy!

Work in progress!

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Excuse to shabby décor. I’m busy refurbishing today this week. In the meantime, feel free to enjoy the content, it’s just the cover that looks bad 🙂

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