Blog Archive

An outtage doesn't have to leave you down and out

I love thinking of different ways to be more mobile (or “location independent“) as a translator. One of the ways I do this is by trialling different web-based applications to see which best suit my needs. For example, I’m currently using Backpack, an organiser with a calendar, to do lists, notes, etc. to help me stay on top of both work and personal tasks.

So you can imagine how I felt last Friday when I logged in see to this (read from the bottom up):

Thankfully, I hadn’t been left high and dry. I’ve been using Backpack with PackRat, an application which works with Backpack, but which stores all your information on your computer like any other application. This meant I was able to access my information as usual, with no excuse not to get cracking on my to-do list. Phew.

So why is this remotely blog-worthy? This experience probably confirms the worst fears of a whole lot of people, but it hasn’t put me off using web-based tools and I’m convinced that it shouldn’t deter anyone else either.

Even before Friday, I was never seriously worried about my data being irretrievably lost. I’ve carried out my due diligence and I figure that the makers of Backpack are no more likely to lose my data than I am (and even less likely than the UK government, by all accounts). Nor am I excessively concerned about my personal data being “held” and potentially used for sinister commercial reasons – I don’t particularly like the idea, but I don’t buy the misinformed conspiracy theories either. I view it the same way I do my accounts with eBay, Amazon, Hotmail, or any other wonder of the internet age. Anything that important, or that confidential, is backed up and/or not uploaded in the first place. (I’m not using Backpack to store translations or client documents, for example.)

Most of all, there really is no excuse for not backing up regularly, especially as a professional with responsibility to your clients. Backpack’s outtage just emphazises that moving data server-side doesn’t relieve us of this responsibility. We can’t control when the technology is going to fail, we only know that it will; so shame on us if we’re caught out. It’s an oldie, but a goodie.

Why being your own boss is not as hard as you think

by Sarah Dillon

I often hear people comment that they are not motivated enough to work for themselves.

They imply the temptations of tellie, tea and comfy slippers would be too great. As if, somehow, the kind of willpower and discipline required to resist these delights are the preserve of a lucky, very motivated few.

This idea seemed to be re-enforced during a discussion following an interesting but unrelated post over at Employee Evolution. An artist aspiring to self-employment asked:

…since you are working for yourself how do you avoid the temptation to sleep in on rainy days and get daily motivation? … I fear the “oh I’ll do it later” mentality and being secluded, which I feel would get lonely…

To which another commenter suggested that working for a small company might better suit this person’s “mindset”.

It’s good to see people offering suggestions and support to others within an encouraging environment. But I’m concerned that comments like this lack vision.

Mindsets are just that – minds which have been set in a certain way. But it does not mean they are set in stone.

I don’t consider myself to have a lot of willpower. I’m not especially disciplined either, and, as I’ve explained before, I sometimes have to work hard to motivate myself to work. I’d bet these factors alone would see me fail many of the ubiquitous online quizzes offering to assess my suitability to be my own boss.

So how have I done it?

I suggest aspiring freelancers turn their fears around and ask themselves, “what do I need to do to ensure that I don’t feel secluded / lack motivation / [insert any other concerns here]?”. This technique really helped me when I was starting out, and still does today.

Greg Hollings over at Location Independent Living did a great job of showing how he overcame his freelancing fears in an excellent post called Three Fears I Had About Leaving The Rat Race That Came True (And How I Overcame Them). Best of all, he prompted some really useful and empowering suggestions from other freelancers in the comments section.

Properly thinking through the answers to these kinds of questions will offer you a more realistic insight into whether self-employment is a step you are truly willing and able to take.

Ultimately, it’s about creating new habits and a new mindset for yourself.

I’m not for a minute underestimating the skills required to work for yourself, or the complex combination of other internal and external factors. But I can’t help thinking that if I can work for myself, then there’s a lot more people out there who could too – if they really wanted to.

All of this shows that if you’re seriously considering whether you can cut it on your own, feeling afraid and unsure of yourself should not be reasons in themselves to deter you.

Instead, you can use your fear as fuel to feed your likelihood of success.

What fears do you have about freelancing? How can you turn them around?

The grand scheme of things and the translator place in it

by Sarah Dillon

I like to keep an eye on the Global Watchtower, the blog of the Common Sense Advisory. I enjoy their strong business-analytical approach to the language services industry, but I also relish their use of management speak which would occasionally give even Martin Lukes a run for his money.

Advisory analyst Donald A. De Palma has conducted some research into consolidation in the language services industry, with the aim of establishing what the industry might look like over the coming years. This data was used to extrapolate pretty wildly in a post earlier this week on the Global Watchtower, and I wasn’t especially surprised at today’s post which comments on some of the feedback they received from language service providers (LSPs) as a result.

I’ve been following all this with interest. Not because there’s anything especially life changing in there for me just yet – I don’t tend to work for the global companies covered in the study, as their business models don’t tend to fit mine. They often work to tighter deadlines than I can comfortably manage, with weekend work and low margins the norm. (I’m not saying that they are all like this or that I would not consider working with them in the future, of course. Just that it doesn’t suit me right now.) I’ve been following all this because I spied a couple of interesting nuggets that do a good job of placing the language services industry within the wider context of the business market. Here’s what I got from it:

A contradiction, well put: translation is an essential part of global business, yet translators, localisers, and other service suppliers are not very visible on the corporate scene. Until they make an expensive or embarrassing mistake, of course.

“Information asymmetry”: what a great term. De Palma says it exists when information relevant to a negotiation, business practice, or technology is unevenly distributed amongst the relevant parties. He concludes that this may lead to to inefficiencies as not everyone has enough data to make properly informed decisions. To me, this also sums up the situation between would-be freelance translators, their more experienced counterparts and potential work providers. (Hint: joining a professional body is a good way to address this imbalance!)

For translators who aspire to owning their own language services business, the report itself claims to offer an insight into what buyers may be looking for in the future. Now, I would think you’d need to have pretty concrete aspirations to purchase the full report for this reason alone, as Common Sense Advisory reports are generally only available to subscribers, with the price of subscription available on application. However, if you are interested in reading about the needs of the buyers of tomorrow, then it’s certainly worth keeping an eye out for future blog posts addressing this particular aspects of this research.

I gave a little whoop of joy when I saw De Palma also predicts an increasing interest in open-source content and collaboration from translation buyers. I’m sure there will be plenty of translators who will see this in terms of threats to the copyright of their work, translation memories, etc., but I see it as good news as it should increase the demand for, and hopefully availability of, open-source translation tools. It’s even better news for the developers of the excellent open-source translation memory OmegaT, who deserve to see their application being used more widely.

DePalma’s point about the language services industry experiencing an absence of direct comparables is an interesting one. He suggests accountancy and payroll services as potentials. Taking this down to the level of the freelance translator, accountants have already been compared to translators in terms of their status as portfolio workers. I’ve recently been thinking about how graphic designers would also make a useful comparable. And although not a direct comparison, Philippa Hammond over at the Blogging Translator sparked off a thought-provoking discussion when she drew a parallel between the career transitions of EFT teachers and translators. So I’ll be very interested to see what The Global Watchtower comes up with in this area.

Some characteristics of the language services industry include:

it has very few publicly-traded firms
LSPs can be categorised as Human-Delivered Services Companies
services are typically delivered “through a combination of wetware (that is, human power) plus automation” (wetware?! Is that’s what we translators have been reduced to?! 😉 )

All in all, useful information for any translator interested in learning more about the wider industry in which they practice.

Are professional bodies worth the effort?

by Sarah Dillon

Most would-be translators find online translation communities such as Proz or Translators Café pretty early on in their career. They fill out the necessary forms, create the relevant profiles and spend hours lurking on the discussion boards.

But I’m always surprised at how few students and career starters join a proper association for professional translators, such as the American Translators Association, or the UK’s Institute of Translation and Interpreting. (See here for a lengthy list of options worldwide.)

I appreciate that the application process is decidedly offline compared to the online communities, and I know it’s not easy to contact colleagues for references. But really, nothing worth having is easy.

These associations are in a league of their own when it comes to honing your craft and engaging with the profession. They usually do a pretty good job of outlining the key benefits of membership for themselves (see examples here, here and here), but there are other benefits which are not quite as obvious. For example:

Being accepted for membership gives you a sense of validation. This is because professional bodies often (and quite rightly) have demanding membership requirements. When you meet them, it can give your confidence a well-deserved and very welcome boost. Also, while the extra letters after your name won’t necessarily impress your clients (see proviso below), they may give you a little extra kudos among family and friends who don’t really believe that working from home is real work at all.

Membership is valued by exactly the kind of clients you want – that is, those who are aware of what it means to be a translator, and are therefore more likely to be prepared to pay a fair rate for your services.

It’s a great way to build relationships with other translators. There’s a lot more value in this than you might think. After word of mouth, my second most important source of work has been other translators. It’s a welcome surprise to see how willing others are to pass work your way and give you a chance to prove yourself. Even more satisfying is the feeling you get when you are in a position to pay it back and do the same for other translators.

You have instant access to a vast body of experts. No matter what translation, business or freelance-related problem you are facing, chances are you have access to someone who has already been through it and is more than happy to offer advice. Even better, it is often country and/ or language specific – invaluable when it comes to sorting out your tax or banking issues, for example. And as membership is restricted, information shared is likely to be a lot more reliable and transparent than you might find in a public forum.

Professional bodies can be good for your social life. Freelance translation is a pretty solitary pursuit. If meeting people is a top priority for you, then joining a translation association probably isn’t the only thing you should do to help with this. You may have to travel long distances to attend events, some associations are more active than others, and each group is will be as different as the people in it. Saying that, I often see recently established translators quickly absorbed into the social scene of their local networks. Over time, these connections can be invaluable.

If you’re serious about being a translator, joining a proper professional association is a must.

My Personal Productivity Nirvana

by Sarah Dillon

One of the biggest problems I face as a home-working freelancer is maintaining my motivation levels. I’ve found that one of the best ways to do this is to ensure I feel organised, productive and ultimately, on top of things. But believe it or not(!), this is something I have to work very, very hard at. Flagging energy is probably something all workers face, but there’s nothing like having your income based on your output to ensure that it’s not something that gets swept under the carpet for too long.

I’m certain that my situation is not helped by a natural tendency towards ill-discipline and blissful chaos 🙂 However, given the proliferation of personal productivity blogs maintained by home-working marketeers, writers and techies of every programming persuasion, I’m inclined to think that dips in output are common to many home-workers.

Luckily, I learned ways of keeping my scattered side more or less in check long before I went freelance. Working part-time while also studying part-time for my Masters was a great exercise in self-management. Once I got into the swing of things, I found I thrived on the demands of these very different environments. (In fact, I consider this to be one of the most productive portfolio periods of my life.)

But I have the short-term memory of a goldfish, and if I don’t record it, I don’t remember it. That’s a lot of recording, and it’s probably why I’m such a sucker for anything promising personal-productivity nirvana. And if the stairs to heaven are paved with a limited number of easy-to-follow steps, then all the better. So, here’s my list of some of the personal productivity tools I have tried and discarded, either wholly or partially, over the last year alone.*

Electronic tools

Microsoft Office Outlook: my default organisation system for some time now, a legacy from my office-working days. Undoubtedly a one-stop-shop, but long overdue a change, not least because I’m tired of looking at its dull interface and overflowing inbox. More cubicle-dweller than freelancer, I’m afraid.

37 Signal’s Backpack: a free web-based information manager. I’m enjoying this a lot at the moment. I use it with InfiniteNIL’s Packrat for offline working too. Nice to look at, which is always a bonus, but you need a system of some kind to get the most from it.

MindjetMindManager: a mind-mapping application. I loved the idea of this, but my mind just doesn’t work in this way so it never felt intuitive. And I really don’t need another excuse for not being organised – one for the more visually-stimulated amongst us.

Blackberry Pearl 8100: I normally prefer my phone without the whistles and bells, but I really like getting my emails on my phone. It means I can go about my day without worrying about missing a job offer if I’m not in front of the computer. This year I set up filters so I only receive my clients’ work-offer emails (everything else I check from my regular email programme), and it’s even better!

Tiddlywiki: a free, non-linear personal web notebook. This is an amazing tool and I’m sure it will be perfect for something I do, some day. For now though, it’s just not what I’m looking for – again, I just don’t seem to organise my thoughts in this way. But I had some pretty geeky fun playing around with it for a couple of days! It’s true what they say, the best things in life are free.

Omni Group’s OmniOutliner: this application came free with my Mac. It’s offers what the outline view of Microsoft Word offers, only more features, more easily organisable and more pleasing to the eye. Guess what – this does seem to suit the way my mind works, and I’m hooked.

Paper-based tools

Russell and Hazel‘s 3-ring binder planner system: a stationary marvel, really and truly, and a joy to use, but it’s just too bulky to carry around with me. I need to have my info to hand if I’m working out of office. Plus, I prefer something a little further along the electronic spectrum for easy updating.

Moleskin 18 month pocket-sized calendar: currently my favourite calendar. Can’t beat it for portability AND ease of use. And I’m a sucker for the soft covers, mmmm.

Black’n’Red A5 wirebound notebooks: I started using these in a former office job and they’re still my favourite for general notes and lists. They’re just the right size, the wire means the cover folds back neatly and I like the paper quality too.

And for variety, here’s a selection of some of the books I’ve read on the topic.

Do It Tomorrow and Other Secrets of Time Management, by Mark Forster: This gets my productivity book of 2007 award, and it was the best value too at only £2.97 on Amazon. It has some very realistic but thought-provoking ideas on effectively managing your workload, including how to decide what kind of tasks to take on in the first place. Most of these ideas are particularly suited to being freelance. Best of all, it’s the ONLY book I’ve read that clearly states that there is only finite number of hours in the day, and if you’re not getting everything done then you may just be doing too much. Revolutionary!!

Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-free Productivity, by David Allen: I’d heard a lot about this book before I actually read it. It’s essential reading in the sphere of life hacks and personal productivity, but I’m suspicious of systems with as many fanatical followers as this. The full GTD system is not for me, but there are some useful techniques in there, all the same. If nothing else, you’ll at least understand the lengths people are prepared to go to get organised.

Organizing from the Inside Out: The Foolproof System for Organizing Your Home, Your Office and Your Life, by Julie Morgenstern: Lots of common sense, of course, but I really liked some of the ideas. For example, the idea of organising your spaces into specific work or task-based zones, rather than trying to make your tasks fit your space. This one is definitely a case of not judging a book by its cover.

The Simplicity Survival Handbook: 32 Ways to Do Less and Accomplish More, by Bill Jensen: I bought this on a recommendation I saw on another blog, but it wasn’t for me. The author is a strong proponent of keeping things simple (which we like), but this book verged very heavily on the side of complete dumbing down. I found the whacky use of different font sizes really annoying, and it’s clearly aimed at people building their careers in hierarchical, corporate companies. I’d say give it a miss.

Cut to the Chase: And 99 Other Rules to Liberate Yourself and Gain Back the Gift of Time, by Stuart R. Levine: I guess this might be useful if you had a system
you were happy with and were just looking for a few tweaks, or were happy to dip and and out of a selection of tips. Otherwise, nothing very special here.

Finally, some blogs on personal productivity from my RSS reader. These are especially relevant to freelance workers.

43 Folders: based around David Allen’s GTD system

David Seah: has developed his own productivity system called the Printable CEO System. Oh yes, forgot to mention I’ve dabbled with this too 😉

GoogleTutor: productivity 101 – ensure you are using your most frequently referred-to tools as efficiently as possible.

Lifehacker: making computers more productive. Because let’s face it, they’re not really.

Pimp Your Work: mostly, I love the name, but it has some fun tips too.

Adventures in home working: even I find productivity boring after a while, but this blogger keeps me coming back for more as he covers that and so much more. Plus, he’s based on this side of the pond, which is always refreshing.

Tim Ferriss’s blog: this guy is a bit of a productivity ninja, the ultimate portfolio worker and the author of a book called The Four-Hour Workweek. His book has a lot of buzz about at it the moment (inciting controversy and compliments in not-so-equal measure). Love him or hate him, he seems to be doing something right.

WebWorkerDaily: good for a heads-up on new (and often free) bits of software, which are often relevant to freelance workers.

Contract Worker: The blurb sums it up nicely and is also pretty funny: “A lot of people still have a wrong impression of contract work or freelancing, thinking it only involves selling your skills to the highest bidder; in short, turning your expertise into a prostitute for money (thus the F-word). I’ll show why this isn’t so, by presenting freelancing as a legitimately lucrative career option that allows improvement and growth.”

Who knows, one day I may stumble across the holy grail of personal productivity (you’ll be the first to hear about it if I do). Until then, I’ll continue to spend more time revving up my motivation levels by testing the latest hair-brained tools than actually Getting Anything Done.

*disclaimer: I receive no incentives for any of these links

There's Something About Translation: 2007 in review

by Sarah Dillon

I’m going to do a more in-depth review of my experience of blogging after March 2008, the 12 month anniversary of when I started to regularly blog. In the meantime, here’s a quick’n’dirty review of 2007, based on Google Analytics stats from the entire year:

Top 10 most popular posts

Top 10 keywords entered into search engines to find this blog

chand lakhwani proz (by a LONG shot – not sure why or how, either!)
naked translator
freelance translat english to portuguese blog (again, not sure why this exact search string is so popular, or why it finds me…)
grindhopper
the naked translator
nakedtranslator something
about translation
jed schmidt (yay to the original mobile translator!)
harry potter translations (still going strong. If it was traffic pure and simple I was after, I’d build an entire blog around this. Too easy… )
naked translation

Top sites referring visitors to this blog

I’m pleased with how the year has gone in blogging terms. I only started to blog regularly from March, but posted a total of 100 times. I’ve experimented with different kinds of posts (lists, reports, quick link referrals, humourous posts, opinion pieces, etc.) and I hope I’ve started to find a more consistent voice for myself too. I’m looking forward to taking full stock of the experience later in the year!

For 2008, I’d like to continue to blog at an average of 2 – 3 posts per week, but hopefully concentrate a little more on opinion and reporting-style pieces. No doubt the blogosphere will have its own opinion, but I find I get more out of it when I take the time to craft an article of sorts about whatever has caught my attention at the time.

Onwards and upwards for us all, then!

Read it and weep – THIS is why I read blogs

by Sarah Dillon

Penelope Trunk just got fired from Yahoo Finance and her post about it reminds me of 2 important things:

1. why I read blogs
2. how to successfully walk the tricky line between being truthful, while still maintaining professional face

In laying herself bare and admitting something I’ve never seen articulated anywhere else, Penelope manages to sound wise, clever and strong. Read this:

People ask me all the time how can they get this life that I have where I do something I love, get to make my own hours, and support a family. Seems great, right? But that life also comes with this: having no idea how I’ll get paid next. And it happens all the time.

[…] I am worried, and I think about not telling people that I feel worried because everyone who is negotiating with me now knows that money is super important to me, and I’m probably not going to walk away from an offer.

But more important than preserving an edge negotiating money is somehow documenting how hard it is to be true to yourself, how hard it is to be at risk all the time. It’s a tradeoff. Sometimes my life looks glamorous. Sometimes it doesn’t. It’s all the same life though.

Wow. This kind of honesty is refreshing, and more thought-provoking (and therefore inspiring, in my books) than a million career advice or management books.

Penelope has been one of my favourite bloggers from way back*, so I think it’s fitting that this, my 100th post, is about her. Here’s to being inspired for a hundred more!

* late 2006/ early 2007, i.e. a long time in blog years 🙂

These are a few of my favourite things

by Sarah Dillon

Lucy Kellaway speaks about the joys of fresh stationary, gossip and lattees in her FT.com management podcast dated 7.10.07. I thought it was funny because in listing the small but important pleasures of office life, she mentions many of the things I consciously try to recreate here in my home office – to varying degrees of success. Sure, the coffee’s better here at home, but the thrill of playing a bit part in a mini soap-opera is just not the same when the only other actors are Pat the Postman, Ed the Electricity Meter Reader and Chu the local Shop Keeper.

Lucy’s full list includes:

* enjoying lattees with lids and eating danish pastries at your desk
* doing email in the morning before anyone gets into the office
* a really comfortable chair at just the right angle and height
* a new packet of paper for the printer
* a fully stocked stationary cupboard, with just the kind of pens and battery sizes you need
* playing a bit part in your very own office soap-opera
* air conditioning in summer
* IT helpdesks
* doing the supermarket shop during work (much more satisfying than on the computer at home)
* ego boosters from colleagues, including generally being noticed by other people

I think it’s a great idea to make a list of the little things that bring pleasure to your working day. Mainly because it’s good to know what you like in life, generally. But also because these small pleasures are often transferrable, so can be re-created or maintained should you ever face of period of transition. After all, why throw the baby out with the bathwater, or indeed waste your energy re-inventing the wheel?

But if you find your morning routine includes getting fully suited and booted before kissing your partner and/or cat goodbye, only to take a walk around the block and return to work at your home office or kitchen table, I’d suggest you re-consider whether homeworking is really the thing for you.

Knowing your worth

by Sarah Dillon

Pamela Slim over at Escape from Cubicle Nation has an interesting post about pricing, with tips for freelancers to ensure they are pitching themselves just right. I especially like point number 5. It shows value pricing in action and offers some interesting food for thought.

As you are discussing the project with your client, define success metrics. Ask them “How will you know that our work together was effective?” They should say things like “I will get more clients” or “I will deliver better presentations” or “I will improve my credit score” or “I will capture more names on my mailing list from my website visitors.”…

Translators may feel they don’t have much flexibility to manoeuvre in this area, but do you always know what, exactly, your client is aiming to achieve with your translation?

The Fighting Irish

by Sarah Dillon

The latest issue of the Chartered Institute of Linguist’s magazine has an article about the renaissance in Irish language learning amongst those with no roots or connections to Ireland. It’s great to see that word getting out that Irish is very much alive and kicking. Journalist Siofra Brennan also does a good job of outlining the way in which these adult learners have acquired a good degree of fluency in the language, despite living in the UK.

However, for me, this article missed the point. As a linguist, I’m not surprised at why these people chose to learn Irish. It’s a fascinating language, with a complex grammar that makes it very different to the other languages most Europeans learn at school. It also has a fascinating (and often highly romanticised) history as the oldest spoken literary language in Europe.

I’m not even surprised about the where. There’s a wealth of beginners Irish language-learning material to be found both online and offline, especially in north London. I would even argue that there are more resources available outside of Ireland than there are in, but that’s a post for another day.

What I am curious to know is how hundreds of thousands of Irish adults at home and abroad, having learnt Irish throughout their compulsory education and possibly beyond, can ensure they maintain or even further build on their existing language skills.

Beyond beginners

I suppose I found this article particularly timely as I’ve grown increasingly frustrated over the years in my own attempts to maintain my Irish. I actually dropped into the offices of Gael Linn, an organisation which claims to support Irish language learners, during a recent trip to Dublin. I quizzed them on the options available for people like me, who have more than a beginners level of Irish but who are unwilling or unable to spend weeks at a time living in one of the Gaeltachtaí. Incredibly, for anyone unable to commute into the centre of Dublin for classes three hours, two evenings a week (so, quite a few Irish people, then…), there is nothing. No suitable books, worksheets, online classes or distance learning materials. Nada. Zilch.

(Please don’t email me to tell me about the embarrassingly gammy “multimedia language course” (i.e. DVD) called Turas Teanga, which features a blonde woman driving around Ireland in what’s supposed to be a sexy car, having unlikely and inane conversations in Irish along the way. Not even the most committed Gaelophile could find something to love there.)

I acknowledge that there is a range of Irish-language broadcast media which is the envy of minority language promoters the world over, with plenty of freely available TV, radio and internet content (I can especially recommend this podcast and this website). But not everyone has the skills or motivation levels to base their entire language exposure on reading and/or listening, especially when it doesn’t form part of a broader learning experience.

How can an organisation like Gael Linn claim to promote the language when they have completely ignored a huge tract of learners, people who have already acquired the basics but just want to brush up or maintain what’s already there?

Having said all this, I can certainly understand the need to divert resources towards beginner language learners. In a country where the percentage of immigration has risen faster in 10 years than over a half century in Britain, the Irish language could offer an exciting point of national unity on the changing face of the Irish Republic.

But I’m not asking for national funding. This is a service I’m willing to pay for and I’d bet I’m not the only one, which surely denotes a real gap in the market.

And this is where I think the real problem lies with the Irish language today. It would seem that to the Irish government, it’s not about how well you speak the language or the confidence with which you use it, it’s about increasing the number of people who claim an undefined level of “competence” in the language. But that’s just not good enough.

Anyone who has been through the Irish education system will have achieved a reasonably good level of competence in Irish. The chances are though, these skills will have fallen quite quickly into a state of rusty disrepair as attentions turn to developing other more marketable skills on leaving school. Fair enough.

Yet once further education has been taken care of, jobs have been secured, and the humdrum of daily life takes over, many of us remember Irish very fondly and with great pride, and – I believe – would gladly return to using it more regularly. But aside from the small numbers of speakers living in the Gaeltachtaí, there are very few structured learning opportunities to help us achieve the confidence required to whip out the cúpla focail once again.

We’re not talking about an insignificant number of people either. We’re basically looking at most Irish adults living in the Republic outside the Gaeltachtaí. Plus, a potentially significant number of the over 1.2 million Irish-born immigrants worldwide, who arguably may be even more motivated to re-learn a language that reminds them of “home” and of their childhood.

Attitudes towards Irish among Irish people

One of the learners featured in Brennan’s article spoke about the apathy she sensed towards the Irish language, especially among young people in Ireland. I would argue that the situation is a lot more complicated than that.

First, it’s a compulsory part of the education system in the Republic, and these are young people – of course she’ll sense a degree of apathy, especially if the curriculum is anything as dull as what it was when I was in school. (Remember, our education system is similar to the International Baccalaureate in style, with 6 – 7 subjects taken to Leaving Certificate level, i.e. English, Irish, Maths, another foreign language, and two optional subjects.)

Second, and most importantly, Irish people living in the Republic feel a strange mixture of emotions when it comes to the Irish language.

Over 40% of people surveyed in the Republic of Ireland census last year claimed they were competent in the language, and although the reality of this figure is frequently disputed (and indeed ridiculed), it still speaks volumes. Not of our actual language levels but of the pride we feel towards our first national language. Yet even among the most committed of Irish speakers, there is also a sense of unease around the practicality of making Irish an official language of the EU. I would also guess at feelings of guilt (a compulsory component of Irishness, after all :)), and maybe even shame and quiet despair too. The Irish government has spent millions to promote the language and gain it the recognition it deserves, yet those who live in Ireland often have very little confidence in their ability to use it, despite years of education. Surely all the more reason to provide this group with suitable language learning resources.

My call to arms

So to the Irish government, I say: the Irish people have had enough of the Irish language being hijacked for political purposes – give us a break and let us sort out for ourselves what our language means to us, away from all the political posturing.

To volunteer language organisations such as Conradh na Gaeilge, Comhdháil Náisiúnta na Gaeilge, Gael Linn, Coláiste na bhFiann, Glór na nGael and Comhluadar, I say: Don’t forget about the rest of us! We’re waving our wallets at you, if you’d only care to look.

Finally, with a nod to a particular pet peeve of mine, to everyone else (including the Irish) I say: stop referring to the Irish language as “Gaelic”. It’s sloppy and inaccurate. French is a Romance language, but you wouldn’t call it Romance, would you? The same applies to Irish. It’s Irish, Gaeilge, or if you must use generalisations, one of several Goidelic or Gaelic languages.