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Hi! Hope your week went well. I liked mine: it was busy, but interesting and well-paid. And now I have another wonderful long-term client. So I am tired, but content =) In order to work with this new client, I am going to study as much about contemporary art as possible, specifically about constructivism. Last week I also found out that Proz.com now has a blog! Here it is . It already has some posts which can be quite useful to freelancers. And now I have a question for those who work as freelancers: do you feel your character has changed since you started working for yourself? I feel I have changed. Here are a couple things that I noticed: 1) Being my own boss, I now see things that could be improved in the way some organizations work. For example, I've learnt to value time, because for me time really means money most of the time. I'm constantly learning to work fast and well. So now it gets on my nerves when I see people wasting their time at work doing noth...

I promised some weeks ago to my Facebook readers that I will translate or post a summary of that article about Santa Claus and Father Frost. So since I am not too busy now I decided to fulfill my promise and so here is the summary + a couple added little details found in Wikipedia (as usual, I couldn't just translate the story, I had to make my own little investigation). Here's how the figures of Ded Moroz and Santa Claus might have appeared. Version 1: Ded Moroz (=Father Frost) appeared long-long ago. At that time Russia was still a pagan country, and the people believed that the spirits of the dead kept them safe, made the weather nicer and also made sure their animals had healthy babies. So every winter people would dress in weird clothes and give sacrifices/presents to the spirits. One of those people would be the most scary one, and he also wouldn't be allowed to speak. Everybody would call him "Ded" (=Grandfather). He might be a type of Ded Moroz...

December and January are my time for reviewing my life and setting big and small goals for next year. Do you remember my post from July 20 ? So let's watch if I made any progress. I have to admit that I haven't achieved my targets for 2010 that I set to myself, but I am far from being disappointed. I wanted to attract 100 people to by blog. Well, I don't have 100 readers. But my FB fans read it, I know. That makes 62 people. Plus I know of 1 or 2 more people who regularly check out my blog for new posts. That makes 64. Not bad for the first half a year of blogging! =) And I don't want to just attract anybody, I want my blog to be interesting for people who have something to do with translation! So I am not disappointed. =) My second goal was to earn enough money to be able to help my husband support our family. Well, I can say that I've been doing better at that, too, though I haven't reached my target monthly income yet. But, what's more imp...

You might think I am being a bit late with the Christmas greetings. But I am not, for the Russian, Serbian, Georgian orthodox Christians as well as those in Jerusalem Church celebrate it tonight! So MERRY CHRISTMAS! C РОЖДЕСТВОМ! May the Lord bless you and keep you. Wishing you peace and happiness that can only come from above.

Happy New Year, my dear readers! I wish you lots of luck, joy, good health and many blessings. Yours, Olga Arakelyan

I am so sorry I didn't send my best wishes for Christmas to the readers of my blog! Please forgive me!!!!! Since most of you also read my FB page I congratulated everybody there, but I still feel guilty. =( My only excuse is that in Russia we celebrate Christmas on January 7th. So my Christmas post is still to follow! ;-) We are rapidly approaching the New Year. It's amazing how time seems to fly faster and faster as it gets closer to December 31st. New Year is a big holiday here. Everybody has their own family traditions on this day. Some traditional foods include the Russian salad, tangerines and red caviar. Kids are looking forward to Father Frost (Russian version of Santa Claus) to bring them presents. It's a special holiday for many children because on December 31st they get to stay up late, like grown-ups! My daughter loves that, and she always wants to see how Father Frost puts her presents under the Christmas tree exactly at midnight, but he somehow managers to ...

Sorry I've been kind of silent recently. Last week was really busy. Now I'm more or less free and looking for new projects. So far my season specials have brought some new clients to me. I do hope we'll have a chance to cooperate again =) Meanwhile, since I've had some spare time, I decided to work on my portfolio . Right now I'm updating the one on free-lance.ru (the biggest Russian portal for freelancers in different fields). Have been working on it all weekend and almost all day yesterday. It looks somewhat prettier, but definitely needs more work. After I'm done with it, I'll need to update the one on ProZ.com. These are two major translation portals where I find work (or where the work finds me), so I need to keep my prospective and existing clients up to date about my experience and projects I've done recently. What I like about free-lance.ru is that it allows me not just to enter text, but to attach screen shots with samples and logos. That...