A ♥ for Language Blogs

Welcome to any readers visiting by way of Translation Tribulations! Judy and Dagmar Jenner from Translation Times, who I have had the good fortune to meet at ATA conferences, suggested last week that translation bloggers write a post listing their favourite language-related blogs. I noticed this evening that traffic to my blog had picked up today and soon realised that most hits had come from Kevin Lossner's blog, Translation Tribulations. In order to raise the profile of some of my favourite blogs that have not yet been mentioned, I will endeavour to follow Kevin's example. To avoid reinventing the wheel, I will not list any blogs that I have found in similarly titled posts. Here are the Exceptional Eight (in no particular order).

1. As a German-English translator one of my absolute hands-down favourite blogs is False Friends, Good and Bad Translation, Denglisch, Tipps für Übersetzer. Don't let the lengthy title put you off. Written mainly in German by Martin Crellin and his team at Martin Crellin Copywriting and Translation, this delightful blog looks at mistranslations and offers some great ideas about how to tackle false friends and tricky terms that would trip up inexperienced translators. Impressum and Prokurist, anyone?

2. Not a language blog per se, but Craig Morris does occasionally foray into translation-related issues in his blog, Always Greener. The blog takes an in-depth look at developments in green energy policy. It also includes posts about German-American relations and reflects Craig's experiences as an American living in Germany. Craig specialises in translating texts relating to renewable energies and is director of Petite Planète Translations.

3. Next up are a couple of UK-based translators. Philippa Hammond's blog, Blogging Translator, was one of the first blogs by British translators that I came across before I started writing The Greener Word. I really enjoy the clean graphics of her blog that allow the reader to focus on the content of her posts with no distractions. She writes a lot about freelancing and provides reviews of translation events that she attends, something that I appreciate as an expat who can make it to translation conferences in the UK only on a sporadic basis. Philippa is an MITI and translates from French, Spanish and Portuguese into English.

4. Betti Moser, a fellow German translator, recently launched her new blog . Betti is also a copywriter and editor, and her first few posts show of promising things to come.

5. Another new blog comes from Ana Iaria, an English-Brazilian Portuguese translator specialising in legal translation. I first met Ana at the ATA Conference's bloggers lunch, grew to appreciate her points of view more in her postings on the ATA Business Practice's Division mailing list and bumped into her again at the ITI Conference this year. Hopefully our paths will cross again this autumn in Boston. She pulls no punches in her posts on trends and quality in translation.

7. Another legal translator with a more established blog is Margaret Marks. Transblawg is a must-read for any German translator. Her insightful posts are often interspersed with photos of her surroundings. She also has an extensive selection of links that you could lose an entire afternoon following. (I speak from experience).

8. Last, but by no means least, is the ATA Science and Technology division's blog. You will find the whole gamut here from software localisation to phototonics and patent terminology. A new post is published every month or so, and the blog's editors are always seeking submissions from translators involved in the technical and scientific fields.

So there's my eight. Feel free to comment with a link to any blogs that I didn't mention here.