Sarah's Archives

an archive of content from ≈ 2005 - 2015, relating to international business, translation, freelancing, and working online.

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Week 2 Update: Where did I go?!

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Post a challenge every day in October, she said! So what happened this week?!

A quick update: what happened, why it doesn’t matter, and the three things I’m doing to fix it.

Roll on next week… 🙂

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A Social Media Challenge!

Your mission, should you chose to accept it, is to do one thing each day in October that will have an impact on your social presence in the longer term.

Each weekday in October, I’m going to suggest a task to work on for whatever pocket of time you can carve out that day. You can choose to follow my suggestion, adjust it to suit your circumstances, or come up with an alternative – whatever makes most sense for you. Or just dip in and out as it suits.

Follow along on Twitter, Facebook, or here on the blog. Let me know how you’re getting on by using the hashtag #socialtranslator (so I can find you!). If you find it helpful, please give me a thumbs up, a like or a share – that’s how I’ll know you’re finding it useful, and it’ll help other translators join in too.

The most fun translation job of 2010?

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This book gets my vote as what I imagine must have been the most fun translation job of 2010. It’s called Schnittmengen, and is the German version of Jessica Hagy’s English-language book Indexed, based on her blog of the same name.

I’ve been a big fan of Jessica Hagy for a couple of years now, and featured her work on my blog as far back as 2007. So I was pretty excited to see her book translated into German, with a nifty little set of cultural notes for the German reader here.

Some careful sleuthing revealed the translator was Vivian Cullis (*I think*?)… but it’s a shame she doesn’t get a listing on Amazon, or even on the copyright pages of the book itself. So sadly, it’s a boo hiss on that score for the publisher, Goldmann Verlag (Random House).

But that aside: Can you imagine being tasked with this translation job? Cultural references abound, and as the very nature of this work involves comparing random things and finding an unexpected common point, the context wouldn’t offer very many clues to meaning either. Plus, it’s surprising and insightful in itself. Could this be the most fun translation job of 2010?

Mobile translating at its best

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This has nothing at all to do with translation. Except that, much like my profession of choice, it too is utterly, impossibly cool.

I’ve decided to divert our house-deposit fund towards this instead – a steal at US$129,000. Can’t you just see me translating away in the front passenger seat?!

HT to Bridgette over at Unclutterer for the link.

Friday funnies: Home office fiction vs reality

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There’s a funny post over at new media producer Ian MacKenzie’s blog, contrasting what home office workers want you to think they are doing with what they are actually doing. Strangely enough, it reminds me more of my experiences working in a call centre than a home office. Much like working in the food industry, you really cannot imagine what goes on behind the scenes until you’ve worked in one yourself 🙂

Friday funnies: Hey, who transmogrified our office?!

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Office jargon is one of those topics that’s so commonplace and overdone, at times it can seem like it’s just not funny anymore. But the following gem really made me laugh – a combination of the offending term itself and the amusing reaction of the “whistleblower”:

17. “I work in one of those humble call centres for a bank. Apparently, what we’re doing at the moment is sprinkling our magic along the way. It’s a call centre, not Hogwarts.”
Caroline Garlick, Ayrshire

Definitely time for the weekend when it comes to that!

This is from the BBC’s list of the 50 best worst examples of office speak, gleaned in response to Lucy Kelleher’s campaign against office jargon.

Big hat tip to Percy Baleman over at Translating is an Art for the BBC link.

Yes, but will it do my ironing?

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I’m interested in new technologies and I enjoy jumping in and giving something a try. But I’m definitely not a techie and I often get bored by the trumped-up buzz around the latest virtual bells and whistles. So I had to chuckle when I saw Robin Blandford’s plea to would-be inventors last week:

Go get a hobby off your computer and solve a real problem…

If your idea is technology for technologists it probably won’t go anywhere. Go find a real problem that real people have and solve that.

Makes me think of something else I read recently, which said we should divide software manufacturers’ claims by ten to get a remotely realistic idea of what an application might actually offer us.

Gotta love those straight-talking Irish bloggers.

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Beware the dreaded office-worker disease :)

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… and no, it’s not RSI. How many of these do you find yourself suffering from?!


I’m not sure I agree with the diagnosis, mind you – I suspect they’re ailments common to all office workers in this day and age!

H/T to an anonymous comment on Rowan Manahan’s excellent Fortify Your Oasis blog.

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