New adventures

Well, it’s Friday (in Australia, anyway) and here’s my news.

I’m excited to report that I’ve joined Lucy Brooks as a shareholder and director at eCPD, the webinar provider to professional linguists. I’ll be taking over as Communications Director from Anne de Freyman, one of the company founders, who has done fantastic work in getting eCPD to where it it is today. I’ve closely followed the company since it was founded last year, and I feel incredibly grateful to both Anne and Lucy for the opportunity to work in such an exciting area.

It’s no surprise to regular readers that continuing professional development (CPD) is something that interests me. It’s been an ongoing theme on my blog for many years and particularly over the past year or so. I even interviewed Lucy for this blog last week, something that funnily enough was arranged before any of this came up. So combine CPD with the location-independent format of an online seminar, and of course it’s going to be right up my street!

Now, I don’t believe that CPD is a panacea for all the woes of a translator’s world. But we can get bigger, stronger, better. We don’t have to accept low rates, we don’t have to tolerate unacceptable conditions, and we certainly don’t have to take the underdog position because of our size. The playing field is already level, and good training is simply part of how we learn to play on it.

I spent a some time lately thinking carefully about what it was about translation that so fascinated me. (The Something about translation, if you will). There are lots of things that are interesting, but I found I kept coming back to the translators themselves.

Let’s face it, we’re a pretty amazing bunch: who we are, what we do, how we came into translation and the choices we make everyday as professionals. Not to mention hobbies. Have you ever asked a translator about their hobbies? Fascinating! I’ve never yet met a translator I didn’t immediately want to ask a hundred questions.

So I’m excited to be part of a team that brings to the fore the most interesting people in our industry, from whom we have a lot of learn. I’m also keen to work with people from outside our industry: people who have valuable information to share but maybe don’t know how to package it in a way that’s immediately accessible to us as linguists. But most of all, I’m looking forward to working with and for other translators.

Bring it on!