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Work/life balance

Mental Decluttering

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I was recently felled by acute hearing loss and tinnitus, coming at the end of a busy year. The doctors I went to really advised me to try to avoid noise as part of the recovery process. It meant that while off on sick leave I read a lot on my Kindle and avoided noise where possible (easier said than done with three lively children aged three to five). As part of the noise avoidance, I went to the supermarket in noise cancelling headphones, avoided public transport except for going to the doctors. I struggled most on the U-Bahn, particularly with the sound when a train comes out of a tunnel and goes into a station. Masked and with a hood up, I probably looked to all intents and purposes like I was definitely up to no good.

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Work/life balance

Please forgive me for not being a TWaT.

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As we returned to presence working in July 2021, there was a major change from 2020. The previous summer, we were in in split shifts, meaning a week in the office, and then a week working from home in two fixed teams. The latter option, while it meant less setting up and putting away of computers had the inflexibility that you only saw one half of your department, and if saw there were two people working on a topic, you only ever saw each other virtually, as one would be in one team and the other person in the other.

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Lockdown

Lockdown Learning: How to Excel as a translator

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One tip from a friend gleaned during the first lockdown (March/April 2020) was to try to learn something new every day to help your work.

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Personal

Where did you learn German?

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In September 1990, aged 13 I took the decision as I started at Taunton School (having previously been at its then boys only preparatory school (Taunton Junior Boys School)) to take German as a second modern language.

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Work/life balance

Set your alarm clock to go to sleep…

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As a child I learned that an alarm clock was used to wake you up. But it took me a lot longer to realise that an alarm clock was a tool to send you to sleep and sleep more.

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Talks, Lectures and Presentations

Talk given to students at the University of Graz

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I turned 44 on 24 June 2021. The momentous realisation was that I was halfway between graduating (23) and retirement (65), and fortunately I had an excellent opportunity to take stock of things, giving a talk to a class of MA course Translation students at the Department of Translation Studies at the University of Graz at the invitation of Hendrik Bower.

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Lockdown

Back to the “normal” Office

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After having worked from home for sixteen weeks, last week I was back in my “normal” office, in the room that I have worked in since 2014, since I joined my employer.

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Lockdown

Copying the in-office setup at home

When I turned off the light in my office on the evening of 13 March 2020, I hadn’t anticipated that three months later I would be still working from home. Fortunately, we had always kept a home office “just in case” although it was planning to be repurposed to become a room for our twins. Then COVID-19 became an issue in Austria.

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AtoZFMST

#AtoZFMST

This year I have decided to try and take one term each week in German and the following week one in English for each letter of the alphabet to illustrate the diverse nature of my work as a Financial Markets Supervision Translator. I’m using the hashtag #AtoZFMST to do so.

The intention behind it is to introduce some of the key concepts of the job of an embedded translator in the supervisory setting. One reason behind this was because from talking to other people at recent conferences a number asked about the kinds of documents that are handled within the job, as it can be a somewhat arcane field of specialisation that seems impenetrable to an outsider.

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Abstracts Talks, Lectures and Presentations

Abstract of Presentation on “The market for legal translation in Austria: the financial markets supervision perspective” presented at EULITA Conference, in Sofia, March 2018

Two primary reasons exist for the burgeoning demand for translation in financial market supervision. Firstly, increasing Europeanisation of financial market supervision, following the advent of the Single Supervisory Mechanism in banking supervision, the establishment of European Supervisory Authorities in banking, insurance and occupational pensions, and securities and markets supervision, and bank resolution within the Single Resolution Mechanism, and their language regimes have created increased demand in the national language to English combination. Secondly, the cross-border nature of activities of supervised entities, particularly those whose cross-border activities are not restricted only to other EU Member States, also presents particular challenges with regard to legal translation in relation to ongoing supervisory activities. In addition, the constantly evolving language services market also presents considerable challenges for both translators and consumers of legal translation services. Finally, while technology increases productivity, its use also affects charging models, which can in turn complicate the procurement of legal translation.

Keywords: Europeanisation, cross-border supervision, Austria, language services, procurement, productivity