A ♥ for Language Blogs: My Favorites

Judy and Dagmar Jenner had a nice idea a couple of weeks back for bloggers to cite their favorite translation blogs under the A ♥ for Language Blogs title. They would then award one copy of their book, The Entrepreneurial Linguist, to one of these bloggers. I already own a copy (and I intend to review it as soon as I have a chance), but I thought this was a good a chance as any to give you an idea of the translation blogs I visit regularly:

Kevin Lossner’s Translation Tribulations. Kevin is a German-English translator who claims that I’m crazier than he is. High praise indeed!

Jill Sommer’s Musings of an Overworked Translator. The title pretty much says it all. Jill is slogging through the Valley of Multilingualism like the rest of us and her blog provides a lively view from the trenches.

Steve Vitek’s Patenttranslator’s Blog. Every week, Steve publishes a 1,500-word piece on his views of the profession and the business of translation. There is always some nugget of wisdom to take away from here.

Fabio Said’s Fidus Interpres is often useful. The only thing is that he mainly publishes pieces in Portuguese and only seldom in English.

Corinne McKay’s blog, Thoughts on Translation, has a lot of useful advice on being a freelancer. She is also the author of How to Succeed as a Freelance Translator.

Alejandro Moreno-Ramos is the translation world’s cartoonist. He publishes his strips in blog form via Mox’s Blog.

This final recommendation is not a blog but an email newsletter. However, it is a must-have on your radar: Jost Zetzsche’s Translator Toolkit. There is a free version and also a premium edition for a small subscription fee. Get all the dope on the latest in TM, MT and HT from the point of view of the freelancer. Also, along the lines of business skills for freelancers, check out Alex Eames’s blog. Sadly, it has not been updated this year, but hopefully Alex will get back in the game eventually.

My Favorite Spanish-Language Blogs

The Spanish translation blogosphere has three distinguishing features. The first is it seems to be dominated by people who are less than 30 years old, whereas the English-language bloggers tend to be older on average. The second feature is that the bloggers who publish most frequently tend to be—probably because of age and because blogging will appeal first of all to techies—translators specialized in the localization of videogames, software or phone apps. The third feature is that many don’t post very often and when they do post the entries are very (very) long.

Probably the widest-read blog in this niche is Pablo Muñoz’s Algo más que traducir. It also has the distinction of having been updated frequently for several years. Pablo is a 24-year-old videogame specialist who is very active in the industry. Even if this is not your specialization, a peek into another field is always interesting, especially if, like me, you occasionally play a videogame (or two).

Localización y testeo is written by Curri Barceló, an EN>CAT-SPA translator who lives in London. As you can probably tell from the title, the blog tilts more toward the techie side of translation, but is interesting for the casual observer. Curri is also waging a one-woman crusade against bad grammar and anyone who dares stray from the diktats of proper Spanish (kidding!).

Jordi Balcells is the author of Méteteme. He is a self-described friki, fansubber and scourge of the publishing industry who is based in Asturias but hails originally from Benidorm. My favorite post of his was a description of how he came to decide upon the city in Spain where he would live. It involved spreadsheets, cost-of-living estimates, train schedules and distances to and from airports. There is method in his madness. He has been very helpful to me by spotting the frequent mistakes and typos I make, so if you like this blog, some of the merit goes to him.

Martine Fernández Castaner’s Mar Traducciones blog is written by a Spanish translator who focuses on the entrepreneurial aspects of working as a freelancer.

Begoña Martínez’s blog is written by a translator, teacher, entrepreneur and mommy based in Murcia. While she blogs about running a business and obviously doesn’t have much time to update regularly (given the amount of roles she juggles—I’m exhausted just from enumerating them), she has a literary knack for the short, suggestive post that gives you an oblique glimpse of daily life, whether it is a box of books bought from Amazon.com or a post about stuff she hasn’t written.

Two blogs I started to read recently are Letras de sastre and El traductor en la sombra, which provide an on-the-ground view of the freelancing field. Another techie translation blog is Oliver Carreira’s La paradoja de Chomsky blog. It hasn’t been updated in a while, but perhaps it will spring back to life some time later. I also like Malapartiana (a.k.a. ¿Negra o detectivesca? on my Google reader) by David Paradela López, a literary translator who is based in Barcelona.

Miguel Llorens is a freelance financial translator based in Madrid who works from Spanish into English. He is specialized in equity research, economics, accounting, and investment strategy. He has worked as a translator for Goldman Sachs, the US Government's Open Source Center, several small-and-medium-sized brokerages, asset management institutions based in Spain, and H.B.O. International. To contact him, visit his website and write to the address listed there. You can also join his LinkedIn network or follow him on Twitter.