One of the many highlights of this year's ATA conference in Orlando, FL, was the bloggers' lunch that Jill Sommer and Corinne McKay organized. There are a few very active bloggers in the ATA, and as blogging for the translation world is a somewhat recent phenomenon, we wanted to meet other bloggers in person (although many of us had already met) and exchange ideas. In addition, blogging guru Corinne also presented a very well-attended session titled "Blogging: How and Why" during the conference.The bloggers were represented by the technically very savy Michael Wahlster from Translate This!, the very specialized niche translator Abigail Dahlman from Environmental Translation, Jill Sommer from Musings from an overworked translator, Corinne McKay from Thoughts on Translation and yours truly, Judy Jenner, from Translation Times (my twin, Dagy, couldn't make it all the way from Vienna). Our lunch was also attended by non-blogging translators -- we don't discriminate. One of our colleagues, Susanne Aldridge, came to our lunch, and as of last weekend (we inspired her?), she also joined our blogging world with In-House Translators: A Dying Breed. Yes, you are a dying breed indeed: I was an in-house translator for five years, and I was definitely the exception, not the rule. Welcome Susanne! I would have loved to meet the author of one of my favorite blogs, Sarah Dillon from There's Something About Translation, but it's a far way from Brisbane, Australia.
We chatted about our blogs (Blogger vs. Wordpress), commenting etiquette (pet peeve: people promoting their services by leaving comments on our blogs) and microblogging (Twitter -- Michael is the expert). Good suggestions came up, and we briefly talked about the topics that we feature in our blogs and the time commitments required to maintain a blog. In general, we all post on translation and self-employment topics, with the occasional hilarious translation mistake or other fun stuff that's too good not to share.
We also talked about one of our favorite blogs by the anonymous Masked Translator. Of course, we have no idea who he/she is (we suspect it is a guy), but we want to tell you that we really like your blog. MT's unfiltered insight into our industry is priceless and very entertaining. As our own blogs are not anonymous, we mostly resist the temptation to vent and voice our frustrations. We are glad that MT has found a safe forum to do so, and we applaud his efforts. While we really want to know who he is (there was a lot of speculation going on), we understand that his blog would come to a crashing halt if MT's identity were revealed. So, MT, you are probably reading this, so thanks for your blog! Just tell us one thing: were you at the ATA conference or not? The curiosity is killing us.
11 comments:
Speak for yourself. I happen to think MT is a woman :-)
Ah, true. I spoke for everyone else who thought it's a man, but I now remember that you think MT is female. There's only one person who really knows...:)
The blog lunch was a lot of fun, I agree! Great photo!
Great photo, Judy. I'm looking forward to next year already.
It was an interesting lunch. Next time, let's have a place setting for MT.
Now, how do you know that I'm not in that picture?? :-)
Argh, you are killing us. Of course we don't know for sure... Not a hint, at least?
How I know that MT was not among us? None of the colleagues has, to my knowlege, a smaller-diffusion language as a main language, nor does any, as far as I know, literary translations. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
Hope to be there next time in New York, Judy! (fingers crossed...) :D
PS I think the MT is more than one person... and I have my theories on which posts were written by a male and which were written by a female :D (But I don't spend THAT much time thinking about this, honestly :))
You are right, Michael -- none of us at that table translate into or from a low-diffusion language, so I am also fairly certain MT was not among us. However, that might be a tactic to confuse us...
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