Keep It Short

As entrepreneurs, the only resource we have is our time. We know this is not the first time you've heard this, but it's important that we use our time efficiently. One of our favorite -- yet very simple -- strategies is to write short business e-mails. Whenever we can, we try to keep them to no more than three paragraphs, and we use pre-written templates whenever we can. Think about it: with the amount of e-mail that gets sent these days, we could spend all day just answering e-mail, and that wouldn't be very good for our business. Dagy...

A ♥ for Language Blogs

We've been thinking about how we find new blogs, especially language blogs, and in particular those written by fellow translators and interpreters. We hear about them at conferences, read about them on Lexiophiles, and find them via Twitter.  New blog owners also e-mail us to let us know they've launched a blog. Sometimes they ask us to add their blog to our blogroll, which we gladly do after a few months of following...

Dancing Translators

The most fun Judy has had on a dancefloor in quite a while took place during the ITI Scottish Network's wonderful three-day summer meeting in Stirling, Scotland, where she was lucky enough to be the guest speaker. The program included a Scottish ceilidh, which is much more than a dance. Judy had been a tiny bit afraid of the ceilidh -- yes, there's some anxiety when one must perform unknown dances -- that turned out to be completely unfounded. The very fun and talented live band gave easy instructions, and one needs...

What Time Is It in Montevideo?

As our readers might know, we unfortunately live in different countries (but see each other all the time) and have clients on three continents. While we can certainly easily figure out what time it is in Vienna -- currently Pacific + 9 -- things get complicated when we collaborate with a client who's in neither one of our time zones. While it's simple math, time zones can be difficult to figure out, and we've received plenty of late (or early) phone calls from folks who don't do their math right. As services providers, we want...

Interpret This!

Have you seen EU interpreters at work? We love to hear and see them in action online (all sessions of the European Parliament are available live and as a video stream), and they are incredibly impressive, especially given the speed of most speakers. Our hats are off to these highly qualified colleagues (accredited freelance interpreters or staff interpreters) who ensure that communication between the 27 member states is as smooth and efficient as it can be. Curious about how to become an EU interpreter? Not surprisingly,...

Protect Your Vision

If you are like us, you probably spend way too much time glued to your computer screen. As our optometrists constantly tell us, it's not good for your eyes, and we should take frequent breaks (which we don't, we will admit it). Luckily, our web guru just found this nifty tool that should help us take care of our precious eyes a bit better. It's a simple and free online tool that will black out the screen at pre-defined intervals. You can either set up a custom break rule, meaning that you tell the system how long of a break...