Are We Missing Something?

Have you been receiving strange, unsolicited job applications, even if you are just a one-person business and are not looking to hire? We've received a large amount of these lately, and we are curious to hear whether our dear fellow linguists have also received these messages. We've been getting junk mail/spam by supposed translators who supposedly want to collaborate with us. These messages are all quite unprofessional, come from free e-mail addresses and are full of grammar and spelling mistakes. All these message do have...

A ♥ for Language Blogs: Thank You!

Last month, we encouraged fellow bloggers to share lists of their favorite blogs and asked them to title the blog post "A ♥ for Language Blogs." The idea was to discover new blogs to add to all our RSS feeds. On Twitter, this is called Follow Friday, but on the blogging side, we don't really have a similar tool. Hence our little initiative.We were overwhelmed by the response. Our techie guru made a graphic...

Certificate Program in Localization: University of Washington

 We recently reserved this information about a certificate program in localization at the University of Washington. It looks interesting, so if you have been thinking about obtaining formal localization training, read on! For any questions about the program, please contact the University of Washington.  The University of Washington Professional & Continuing Education is offering a Certificate program in Localization which provides an overview of and practical experience with this rapidly growing field through a...

Summer Book Discount: Entrepreneurial Linguist

We hope everyone is having a great summer! We've been spending time together in Vienna. We are working hard, but the year's hottest days sure are a distraction. We are tempted to head to the pool with a good book, but we have resisted (at least this week). Speaking of books -- we just received a 20% discount code on our book, The Entrepreneurial Linguist: The Business-School Approach to Freelance Translation and we wanted to pass it along to our wonderful readers. The book has been very-well received by readers and reviewers...

The Complaint Club

We recently hired a contractor for a professional service (not related to translation). This person happened to be an acquaintance of ours and we were familiar with his work -- let's just say he's a graphic designer (he's not). Last week, we received a phone call from him that made us decide that we wouldn't work with him again. Why? Ready for some tough love? Read on.  He called during our workday to ask us to help him with some profession-specific problems that we cannot solve. Still, we took time out of our...

Oddball Scam

The e-mail that we received this week has scam written all over it.  The tell-tale signs include the Hotmail address of the sender, lack of e-mail signature, vague details about the actual project, grammar and punctuation mistakes, etc. We saw the red flags immediately, including some funny stuff, like the sender wanting us to print, bind and deliver thousands of pamphlets to Germany -- hilarious, right? Here's the e-mail: Hello, My name is Charles B whittaker, an executive Managing Director and the Western Region Leader...

Upcoming Fall Conferences and Webinars

Time flies - it's already July! That means that the conference season is almost upon us. Time for a short list of U.S.-based events that you might or might not have heard about. XIX FIT (International Federation of Translators) World Congress in San Francisco, CA. This international federation of translators and interpreters has more than 100 member associations around the world. This congress is rarely held in the U.S., so this is a fantastic opportunity. Dates: August 1-4, 2011. Translate in the Catskills in Maplecrest,...