Curtains up for round three!

It’s hard to believe that this is the third time that I am looking back on a whole year of new developments, experiences and projects. And it is also the third time that I will be publicly committing to some lofty goals for a new year… and I can promise you this much: there are some exciting changes on the horizon—but more on that below!

2024: hustle and bustle

One thing that gained huge momentum over the past year was definitely this blog. I had a lot of exciting topics on my list, many of which offered much more material than I had initially anticipated. One of them was my post series on AI in translation and copywriting, which in itself filled five posts instead of the originally planned two! I also greatly enjoyed preparing the articles containing background information about the translation profession and practical advice for working with language professionals. I hope you found them useful too.

2024 was also quite active in terms of events. Among other things, I attended two professional conferences: the ITI Conference in the beautiful Scottish capital of Edinburgh, which was all about translation and interpreting, and the International Astronautical Congress in Italy’s fashion capital Milan. Both were fascinating events that, albeit in very different areas, provided me with new knowledge as well as great opportunities for networking. If you are interested, you can read more about both events in the blog posts linked above.

But a bit of blog writing and attending a couple of conferences does not add up to sufficient CPD (continuing professional development)! That is why I, on top of everything else, also attended numerous training courses. The most fascinating journey I embarked on was a 10-week course on AI, targeted specifically at language specialists and touching on various topics such as data privacy, risk mitigation and creativity and was very inspiring indeed. But that was not the only AI-themed CPD event I attended. My goal for 2024 was to identify ways to better utilise the technology to support my clients and further improve the quality of my work. All these events did strengthen one belief in me though: contrary to the hype around AI as a cure-all, humans are still far from obsolete, whether from an emotional perspective or due to their in-depth expertise in their niche. We therefore still need to do a lot of work to raise awareness and set users’ expectations to a realistic level. This is something I would like to make a long-term priority in my work.

Overall, I must say that 2024 was a very busy but also incredibly productive year. I was able to implement my plans remarkably well and hope to continue this trend with my ambitious goals for 2025.

Plans for 2025

There are some exciting changes coming up this year. And so as to not keep you in suspense for too long, I will tell you about the most important one right away. As of spring 2025, my service offering will be expanded by several new services: consulting services for developing a language strategy for your company, including which tools would help you best, as well as hands-on workshops on how to use modern tools for all language-related matters and which pitfalls to avoid.

Regarding this blog, there are several very informative and interesting topics currently in the pipeline. They include de-risking the use of language services, corporate communication in cases where things didn’t go quite according to plan (or even went catastrophically wrong), why colleagues who speak foreign languages aren’t necessarily good translators, and a small excursion into the practical application and comparison of some machine translation/AI tools. This last topic is one I am particularly looking forward to, as I’m very curious about how the different engines will perform in direct comparison.

The one area where this year will likely be slower than 2024 is events. I am currently not planning to attend any conferences, but will instead focus on more training—among other things of course on gaining more in-depth insights into how AI can be applied in a meaningful way to best serve my clients.

Last but not least, there are a few new collaborations and projects on their way, such as a collaboration with the space research community, building a small client support library with checklists, useful materials and practical resources, and my active return to social media with exciting new content.

All that remains now is to wish all my readers a good, successful, and happy new year. Thank you for your interest and if you have any questions about my expanded service offering, please do not hesitate to contact me!