A toe in the water

Nearly three years after having been forced to set up a blog in order to leave a comment somewhere, I re-discovered it when I decided to take advantage of the medium as a tool for exchanging ideas. I wonder what else I may have forgotten out in cyberspace....

The title of the blog is perhaps a bit misleading; though there are many days when I feel worn down from keeping up with a business that so far refuses to stop growing and the bad writing that I encounter in many of my source texts drives me up a wall, I love translating and the many challenges it offers as well as the opportunity to apply a lifetime of experience in different fields to my activities as a translator. Whining about the "state of the market" and the "difficulty" of survival is a popular pastime in some online forums, but I see the profession in a rather different light and prefer to approach the difficulties encountered with the same spirit of inquiry that gave me such delight in an earlier career in science. There is something useful to be learned from even the most awful situations, and a difficult translation job usually leaves me with ideas for how to do something better in the future.

There are, fortunately, many others who have a similar approach, and I am grateful for all the useful advice I've gleaned from posts in the ProZ.com forums, newsletters, blogs, etc. I hope that in sticking my toe into the waters of blogging that I can contribute to and encourage further useful exchanges of ideas.