Moi — Page 2 — Sarah's Archives

Readathon Translator!

I’ve just come across a 24 hour Read-a-thon which is being planned for the 20th October, and I’m all excited about it. “So why not do it?” I’m thinking to myself. But there are plenty of reasons why not:

24 hours of reading is a long time. I’ve done it before out of choice (nothing better when it’s cold outside and Mr D is away) but I’m not sure I could face it just off the bat like that.
I’m busy at weekends, every weekend. Although I’ve nothing in particular planned for the 20th October.
I don’t necessarily enjoy reading the kind of books that other translators read. Why publicise that more than I need to?
I’m precious about my weekends. They’re mine, and I like having the freedom to do whatever I like, and at the very last minute if I so chose.
Do people really want to read about a Read-a-thon on this blog?
Did I mentioned I might decide to be busy that day?!

But then it looks like so much fun that I think I’ll throw caution to the wind, face my issues head on and just go for it. With a few provisos of course – I’ll do it for as long as it’s fun (12 hours is wishful thinking, let alone 24), I’ll read whatever I fancy and then I’ll only review whatever is most relevant here on my blog.

I have reviewed books here before of course, along with articles I’ve read or training sessions I’ve attended – usually those I’ve found interesting and relevant to me and my freelance career (although very few of these address the process of translation itself). So it’s not entirely unprecedented from that point of view.

So any suggestions for books for me to read? Why not use this as a chance to make some headway on your Amazon wishlist? Or if there’s a book that’s been languishing on your I-know-I-should-read-this-to-help-my-career-but-I-just-can’t-bear-to pile, then let me know. Maybe it will interest me enough to add it to my Read-a-thon list, then you’ll have me to do the donkey work and send you the condensed version. How bad?!

And of course, if you fancy participating yourself, then all the better!

Back to work bliss

by Sarah Dillon

Well, I’m back (and in dire need of a holiday to recover 🙂 ) It was a great few weeks, the culmination of an 18 month project I’ve been working on and I can’t quite believe it’s (almost) all over.

I led a group of 3 other adults and 16 teenagers out to Urubamba, Peru, where we worked with a fantastic charity called Kiya Survivors for 2 weeks. We planned and fundraised the whole project ourselves from scratch and as we’re all volunteers, the sense of satisfaction has been enormous. It was a LOT of work and the learning curve was very steep – I reckon I’ve easily spent an average of one working day a week on it, not including the 4 weeks unpaid leave I’ve just had 🙂 (Personally, there’s no way I could have managed it without the freedom and flexibility of being freelance – although there are those that do manage it!).

A girl’s gotta balance her “me-lance”life with something, right?!

Out of office notice

by Sarah Dillon

I’ll be here for the next 3 or so weeks. Blogging will be light to non-existant 🙂

Small wins…

by Sarah Dillon

I’m really excited. I’ve recently had a couple of jobs in from the kind of client I’ve dreamed of having for a long time now – a direct client, an organisation I admire, interesting work, extremely pleasant to deal with so far. It’s early days yet and I won’t make my millions just yet, but it feels great. How did I find them? I got chatting to one of their directors at a networking event and I asked whether they had any use for someone with my skills 🙂 I’d done pro bono work for a similar organisation before and I think that’s what prompted this contact to offer to put me in touch with the right person.

Yipee!

So where am I going with this blog?

by Sarah Dillon

I’ve been pretty busy with work these past few days (and battling a cold, boo hoo!), but have been giving quite a bit of thought to this blog.

It’s been a pretty big leap for me to start posting on a regular basis. Although I’d had this blog set up for a while, I felt crippled by what I didn’t want it to be. What if I messed it up, insulted key opinion leaders in the profession or irritated every buyer of translation in the world?? How would I ever leave the house again?!

From a technical point of view, I knew it would be pretty painless. As a typical twentysomething, I’m already connected in my personal life through my profiles on sites like Bebo, Flickr and del.icio.us. But I didn’t see how I could translate that to my professional life in a way I was comfortable with. After much thought, I eventually decided to suck it and see, to give it a bash, to just do it.

And it’s been great! I’m surprised at how much I’ve enjoyed being able to comment on a range of things relevant to my everyday working life. I’ve been pretty chuffed with the responses too, reflected in the emails, comments and ever-addictive Google stats I’ve received.

So it’s still not perfect, and I’m still not sure I’ve truly found my “professional voice”. But I’m armed with bags of enthusiasm and a couple of ideas to help steer things in the right direction. Which is to produce something I feel proud enough to put my name to.