Recent events + some blogs I recommend

Wow, I can't believe it's almost September already. September has always been a very special month for me: its the start of a new academic year in Russia, so besides New Year resolutions I often make September resolutions. This past month has been full of events. That's what I love about life most of all: it is full of surprises, and even if you have lived a hundred years you can't say you know it completely, because everything can change in a blink of an eye.

I have met several new good clients and I hope our collaboration will be long-lasting and very, very fruitful. I was very glad to get messages and new projects from my "old" clients. Some have even found me in FB, and I am so glad they did!

This past week has been particularly busy, full of big decisions and therefore intense emotions.

I am also continuing the process of learning more, because this is one of the keys to becoming and staying an excellent professional.

Those are some of the blogs I regularly read and gladly recommend:

Thoughts on translation

About translation

Translation Guy Blog

Blogging with Swedish Translation Services

I learn a lot of things from them. Hope you enjoy them, too.

Have a wonderful weekend! See you soon! =)

Comments

Clients vs translators: how do we show that we're honest?

This is a personal post, and I'd really like to hear the opinion of my colleagues about such situations and how to deal with them. My situation is kind of like the one described in Mox's blog . In December a new prospective client wrote to me asking about my availabiility for a new project. When I read the overall description of the project, I got really interested in it. But the client needed to know exactly how much time it would take and how much it would cost. No problem, just send me the text to look through or a part of it so I could get the gist of the style, level of complexity etc. In the reply that person just stated the wordcount, but there was no sample. I thought, maybe they didn't understand me. English is not my native language after all. In my reply, I stated the estimated time and cost based on the client's wordcount, but I repeated the request to see a part of the text. And then the person thanked me and ... disappeared.

How to Reply To a Negative Feedback About Your Translation

We are humans and we screw up many times! And receiving a negative feedback about your translation work if one of them. As translation professionals, we work daily with people from different cultures and backgrounds. So, it is quite important to keep a level of etiquette while we do our business communication. Whatever your years of experience or your educational background, there are times when daily life affects our business badly. It is how we react to these situations what makes a big difference between professional translation service providers and those who are not. I was lucky enough when I started my translation career back in 2004 to read about the “ A Complaint Is a Gift ” business book and receive my training by a true professional Arabic translator. My colleague taught me the tactics of a professional’s reply to a negative feedback and the book mentions the bright side of receiving a complaint about your work. If the client does not like your work, he can just m

10 interesting facts about the Russian language

In my previous post I promised to follow with the interesting info about some other languages. So here are 10 facts about the Russian language which might be of interest to those who are studying it. If you would like to have this list in Russian, please contact me and I will send it to you by email. So, what do I find interesting about my native language? 1. Russian has about 500,000 words, but only 2,000-2,500 of them are used frequently. 100 most frequently used words make 20% of all written and oral speech. A high school graduate's vocabulary usually has 1,500 to 4,000 words. Those who have graduated from a higher educational institution normally have a richer vocabulary consisting of approximately 8,000 words. 2. It's compulsory for all astronauts in the international space station to learn Russian, so we can call it an international language of space :)

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