Good-bye, 2020. Welcome, 2021!

Happy New Year, my dear readers!

If I say that 2020 was a rollercoaster, it won't be a surprise. But there were quite a few good things that I am grateful for.

1. In February, my daughter went on a school trip to Germany. The journey went very well, the kids saw Berlin and Dresden and visited a national park near Dresden. They loved it.

2. We started renovating our apartment — that's a big job that will continue in 2021. So far everything is going well.

3. I had enough translation and editing work all throughout the year. There was a little break in March and April, but things went back to normal pretty fast.

4. In May 2020, the LinguaContact translation school had its second conference. We had to move it online and make some alterations in the program, but everything went very well. Our third conference is going to be online as well. It is scheduled for 21-22 May. It is aimed primarily at Russian speaking translators and interpreters, just like the previous two conferences. We have started working on the program. Since it's our third year, we already have some excellent speakers who can't wait to share their experience. But there are going to be quite a few new people. Never a dull moment and I love it. :-)

5. In the fall, we had our first international translation course in a language pair that didn't involve Russian. And 6 brave students from USA, Spain and a couple other countries who believed in a Russian translation school they hadn't previously heard of. Thank you guys! It was a blast! We are going to prepare more great courses for international audience, just follow me on Facebook to know all the details. April is going to be a very special month for translators who don't speak Russian. ;-)

6. In the middle of October my mother got sick with Covid and developed pneumonia. Thank God, she recovered. It took a lot of effort and even more prayers, but she is doing well now. Then in December I got sick, too. I am recovering now and I am really thankful that everybody else in my family is healthy and doing well.

What are my wishes, hopes and dreams for 2021?

I just want my family and myself, my dear friends and colleagues all over the world to be healthy and safe. I hope and pray the pandemic is stopped in 2021. And I am thankful for the reminder that life is not just about work. It's about family, about community, about love and care.

Happy 2021! I wish you love, joy and blessings in abundance.

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 :)

15 interesting facts about the English language

I prepared this list for one of my English classes. And then it dawned on me that I can share it with you, too! So here are 15 facts about the English language that I find very interesting. Hope you do, too ;) Rudyard Kipling was fired as a reporter for the San Francisco Examiner. His dismissal letter said, "I'm sorry, Mr. Kipling, but you just don't know how to use the English language. This isn't a kindergarten for amateur writers." No language has more synonyms than English.

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.

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