Dear translators

Thank you so much for reading, sharing, following, liking, commenting on, blogging about and recommending the Translator’s Teacup and my various articles over the past year. It has been quite a year!

A great end to the year was receiving the finished version of a collective masterpiece: “MOX: Illustrated Guide to Freelance Translation”. I am so honoured to have been a part of it! I will publish my contribution, “The Crados Conspiracy”, on my blog at some point later this year, but for now you will have to get the book to read it. But that is no penance! It’s filled with excellent contributions from Sarah M. Dillon, Alex Eames, Céline Graciet, Judy Jenner, Laurent Laget, Benny Lewis, Kevin Lossner, Corinne McKay, Pablo Muñoz, Jill Sommer, Ramón Somoza, Steve Vitek, and of course myself. Not to mention Alejandro’s amazing translation-related cartoons!

In June I also had the “honor” of a personal approach from the editor of the ATA Chronicle, produced by the American Translators Association. They requested to publish a “regionalized” and slightly shortened version of my popular post, “The Ethics of Proofreading”, and of course, I happily obliged. As a result, you will now find my blog listed among many other greats on the ATA’s useful list of translation-related blogs, the Blog Trekker.

The year in Google Analytics

According to this, I’ve had just over 9,200* unique visitors. Quite an achievement! It also appears that around 35%** of my visitors keep coming back! I’m so proud!

* …Not including those that have opted out or disallowed the various things required for Google Analytics to collect information, and including some crawlers and spam-bots.
** …This will also include some crawlers and spam-bots.

The most popular posts

I try and I try, people, but it seems people are still more concerned with success than quality, or even, worryingly, their own happiness! ;)

Other popular posts included:

The future…?

What lies in store in 2012 for the Translator’s Teacup and its writer? As some of you will have noticed, I am now quite busy with university, and in the coming months will begin work on my thesis. The tone of this blog has always been on the technical side, but is now likely to lean more and more in this direction since my time for actual translation (and blogging!) is limited by my studies. I am however very much still a geeky, blogging translator, and promise to keep you inspired and amused with the occasional blog post over the next twelve months. To all of you, I wish you a good, successful and happy 2012!

…And last but not least, the very best of the rest

That heading sounds a little arrogant, as if my blog is the best. I am indeed very proud of it, but I thought it would be nice to include some of my favourite blog posts of the past year by other translation, language, marketing and technology bloggers, of which I would also be immensely proud had I written them myself.

Chrome extensions for Translators
A handy techy post for Chrome users by the wonderful Italian to English translator David Turnbull, better known as @Lega11ySpeaking on Twitter.

8 weird opinions on translators and how to educate the public
Another hilarious, helpful and well-structured post from English to Polish translator, Marta Stelmaszak.

The Accidental Linguist
An interesting discussion of how Japanese to English translator Matt Young came into his current profession, despite his strong focus on sciences at school and university.

Translation of official documents: What does it really mean?
This is an excellent post from English to Polish translator Aga Gordon, which is handy reference when clients ask for a “certified” translation.

Custom Captcha”
Adam is my highly-talented, over-worked web guy. I mentioned I had a problem with spam on my website – and within 15 minutes, I had my very own colour-matched captcha. Check it out!
(Adam: You know I’d like the the cat version soon, though. But with pigs. Lingocode-pink piggies.)

The wonder of you
This fantastic post from French to English translator, Charlie Bavington, goes into the issues of implied gender and translation. You’ll have to read it for details, but it is a very interesting and important discussion.

If you are lost in translation – find a way out!
English to Spanish translator and games localiser Curri Barceló wrote these fantastic tips on how to deal with a dodgy source text.

Five tips for dealing with criticism or differences of opinion in translation
French, Italian and Spanish to English translator Kate Larkin (a.k.a. Lingo Woman) wrote this excellent set of tips for dealing with criticism or differences of opinion in translation, but I think they apply to life in general, too!

5 myths about direct clients
Polyglot translating sisters Judy and Dagmar Jenner are prolific bloggers and inspirational translators, and their book The Entrepreneurial Linguist helped me a lot. They advocate translators working directly with their end-clients, and in this post smash some of the common misconceptions about working with direct clients.

6 ways to get more clients
A great post by English to Polish translator, Ewa Erdmann, with everyday tips to find more clients.

South Africa Truth and Reconciliation Commission and Translation
An interesting perspective from Spanish to English translator Rebekka Wellmanns on trauma experienced through translation.

Switching from a PC to a Mac: Practical Tips
You’d never get me to do it, but Spanish, French and Portugese to English translator Philippa Hammond has some great tips for making this switch.

An Apple a day… (aka: my ITI’s Computing in Nick’s attic article: my gears)
Another Apple/Mac-themed post, this time from Valeria Aliperta – all about her various Apple choices, as well as some handy tricks of the trade at the bottom. These two still won’t get me to abandon Windows and Linux, though.

Defense techniques against evil clients
This is one of many hilarious posts from Alejandro Moreno-Ramos. It was so hard to choose a favourite!

10 things to do before attending a conference
A great set of tips from English, French and German to Greek translator Catherine Christaki, which apply not just to conferences, but any formal event where you might meet potential or existing business partners and contacts.

Get more traffic from Twitter with these 6 great headline tips
Jim is a marketing whiz – I follow his blog for some excellent, snappy, quickfire marketing tips. I recommend you do the same!

Personalities of poor email signatures
I found this one pretty randomly – but I found it quite amusing, simple and insightful.

I wish you all the best, indeed – a good, successful, and happy 2012. Keep translating![/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]