Coffee hour, December 16th

Grab a coffee with your language-loving colleagues on December 16, 2017, in Roseville, California. I’m hosting another coffee hour for the Northern California Translators Association in the greater Sacramento area just in time for the holidays. Please join us from 10:30am–12:30pm at the Westfield Galleria for some friendly shop talk. Our gatherings typically cover everything from local restaurants to national politics. Whatever is on your mind professionally, you are welcome to share with us!

Details are on NCTA’s events page: http://www.ncta.org/events/event_list.asp

On my #translatorXmas list

In my post Tuesday, I asked you to share what’s on your Christmas list as a translator/interpreter/business owner. These are a few things that have been on my wish-list for a while, but haven’t made it into my professional budget (yet). Feel free to steal ideas to surprise your favorite linguist this holiday season!

Books

• The Language of the Law, by David Mellinkoff

• Hungarian: An Essential Grammar, by Carol H. Rounds

• difficultés expliquées du français . . . for English speakers, by Alain Vercollier et.al.

• Woe is I: The Grammarphobe’s Guide to Better English in Plain English, by Patricia T. O’Conner

Everything Else

• A beautiful not-Rolodex

• Custom-color pens (a pipe dream, really. The closest approximation I can think of is a fountain pen with Sailor New Style Purple ink.)

• Subscriptions to these publications

Did this get you thinking more? Share your ideas here! Use the hashtag #translatorXmas if you answer on Twitter. Just think of the headaches you’ll save your friends, family, and colleagues. The shopping’s practically done for them!

P.S.—The Quack This Way book giveaway is still open for entries. Get a copy as a present from me to you, or to gift to your favorite writer.

Happy holiday season! {with giveaway}

My favorite kind of presents tend to the entertaining and/or edible—tickets to basketball games, boxes of candy, popcorn-and-a-movie passes… not exactly business purchases. However, the longer I’m a freelancer, the longer my list of books and other items I wish I had but never get around to purchasing gets.

I’m sure many of you are the same way, and so in the spirit of the season, I’d like to give one of you a copy of a newly released book on language—Quack This Way, by Bryan A. Garner. In it, the guru of legal language publishes the transcript of his final interview with a modern master of the English language, David Foster Wallace. Could reading about writing get any better?

There are four ways to enter the contest:

1. Leave a comment below with something that’s on your Christmas list this year.
2. Like my company page over on Facebook, or leave a comment if you already like it.
3. Link to this post on Twitter (be sure to include me in the Tweet! @untngldtransl8n).
4. Share your business-related Christmas list on Twitter using the hashtag #translatorXmas.

You can enter once in each of the four ways to increase your chances of winning (so, 4 entries total per person). The contest is officially open from publishing time today (December 3rd) through midnight next Monday (December 9th). I’ll pick the winner at random, notify them in private, and post the results on Tuesday, December 10th.

Good luck, and happy holiday season!