 |
| Book signing at the InTrans booth in Denver, 2010. |
Every outstanding translator and interpreter we know is quite proud of his or her dictionary collection. We've never really met a serious linguist who is not passionate about acquiring as many top-notch resources as possible, but unfortunately, in the US, it is sometimes quite challenging to find a place to purchase dictionaries that are not widely available. Enter our friend Freek Lankhof from InTrans Book Service. While Freek is a fantastic friend of ours and also sells our book, we've been filling our bookshelves with books bought on his website and at the many conferences he atttends before he even knew that there are two of us.
 |
| Judy and Freek after the AAIT in suburban Atlanta, 2011. |
In Europe, Dagy is in the enviable position of having several good bookstores at which to buy materials, but in the US, we only purchase from Freek. Imagine this: without InTrans, you might be hunting for that difficult-to-find book on random websites that might or might not ship it to you within a reasonable amount of time, and most dictionaries you won't find at all. Luckily for us, Freek has excellent relationships with publishers around the globe, and he's sure to have the most recent book or dictionary that you just need as reference material. Unfortunately, the book selling business is a low-margin business, and while Freek is very passionate about sharing his books with linguists (mainly for Spanish and German), it's also a tough job: imagine traveling 3,000 miles with hundreds of books to display them at a conference. However, for more than 25 years, he's done precisely that, and he hasn't missed an ATA conference or the 10 or so other, smaller conferences he attends, in years. He's a staple at the conferences, and we'd say, a staple of our profession. We are truly lucky to have him, but if you decide to purchase a relatively-easy-to-find book on Amazon for $3 less than what it would cost on InTrans, you know what might happen. Let's support small businesses, particularly those that sell us somethign we really, really need.
InTrans and Freek Lankhof will once again be an exhibitor at the ATA conference in San Diego, CA, this coming October. We will both attend the conference, and as always, our first stop in the exhibit hall will be Freek's booth, where we get our hands on new dictionaries (we can never have too many). If you are looking for us, try the InTrans booth first, where you will be most likely to find us. Then try the NITA table and the hotel bar, where we might be enjoying a fruity cocktail with friends and colleagues, dictionaries in tow.
0 comments:
Post a Comment