moving on...

it appears that the swedish connection blog is moving on - already. i have used opera for years and found it to be a problem to use firefox or explorer in order to take advantage of the features of blogger (not to mention that whatever shortcut i use to highlight words to the right seems to publish my posts, which is annoying). at any rate, to continue to read about the life and times of a swedish translator with too little time, please visit the new blog here. these earlier posts are already archived, and new posts have been added.

välkommen!

a few of my favorite links: medical

for the medical translator:

all you ever wanted to know about clinical trials at clinicaltrials.gov ; search for clinical trials here.

pubmed database of medical journals

merck medical dictionary powered by dorland's illustrated medical dictionary

rxlist.com: the internet drug index

just to name a few

of totem poles and things

so what's all this about a swedish connection? it would seem that i'm not the only one in the pacific northwest making a swedish connection; cbc news reports:

Native spirits soar as Sweden returns historic B.C. totem pole
Last Updated Tue, 14 Mar 2006 14:35:34 EST
CBC News

A 134-year-old totem pole began a long journey home to British Columbia on Tuesday after being on display for decades at a museum in Sweden.

according to the article, the totem pole mysteriously left british columbia and the Haisla First Nation in the 1920s with a swedish diplomat, who donated it to the Museum of Ethnography in stockholm. the cbc article notes:

In return for the original, the Haisla have carved a replacement totem pole for the museum. Haisla band spokeswoman Louisa Smith said the new pole will serve as a symbolic link between the Haisla and the people of Sweden.

and that's their swedish connection. meanwhile, having lived on the swinomish reservation in western washington for nearly two decades, another totem pole marked our comings and goings every day - and most of all, on those days we returned from sweden, the totem pole represented the culture shift.

and more business...

words of wisdom: do not trust your project manager's word count. count. and count again. and ask. a simple way to increase your income. thank you, anycount - and TO3000 - for making life easier.

the business of translation

interesting food for thought here about language services at the US General Services Administration; click on translation services:

TRANSLATION SERVICES Services include the translation of written, electronic and multi-media material to and from English and native Foreign languages. Materials include but are not limited to: Business, Legal, Medical, Technical, Documents, Braille, Software, Website localization for Internet and Intranet, Video subtitling, captioning, and Transcriptions for Title III Monitoring. Client consultation and Project management services include translation formatting, proofreading, text adaptation, editing, graphic design, and desktop publishing.

then explore the terms of any contractor and find out what we're really worth to the government...

taking a break from translation 

and today's phrase...

is value proposition; move over mission statement - stand back, vision! here comes value proposition:

What is Value Proposition?

Value proposition is a description of the customer problem, the solution that addresses the problem, and the value of this solution from the customer's perspective.

and if there are any swedish translators around, colleague ro suggests this is an ideal solution for the icky erbjudande issue. not bad... and thank you, ro!

...and this is now

so where to go from here? in a post 9/11 world? a blogging world that didn't exist back then? there must be new links to find. other translators, other blogs. the life and times of a translator - translator assistants, feline, canine, or otherwise. and of course, the swedish connection. watch this space...

but meanwhile, today's words await...about a gazillion of them...

that was then...

I was a blogger before I, or anyone else, I suppose, ever heard of blogging. From June, 1999 until February 2002 I authored the Translator's Site du Jour. Each morning I found websites that were of interest to translators. The problem was that in a post 9/11 world, fewer and fewer such websites appeared. At the same time, broadband came to much of the world and translators became savvier surfers, finding their own fascinating destinations. And I became busier. And, quite simply, it became old.

Searching was my other thang; it still is, though once Google stepped on the scene, well, y'all know what happened. For nostalgia's sake, check out the other search engines that jostled for position way back at the turn of the century.

For a translator, there's more to searching than just entering a keyword or three in google; here are some search tips that can be useful and date back to the old search workshops I used to present back in the days before Google and Google's early years - and the days before broadband, when translators didn't have time (and couldn't afford) to surf around.

So that's what I used to do. But, there's a whole new blogging world out there...