In-house translation – outside the box

Tag: reading

  • Summer Reading for 2025 – enlivening commutes

    Summer Reading for 2025 – enlivening commutes

    It is high summer in Vienna.The school holidays have started and my commute moves slightly earlier than during term-time. At the same time, less frequent bus services means slightly longer commutes (e.g. 35-40 minutes instead of 25-30 minutes).

    If I don’t bump into someone (parents from my children’s school/kindergarten, work colleagues), I read on my Kindle. This list also contains some physical books rather than eBooks. A couple of the books are re-reads, or ones that have been sitting patiently on my bookshelf!

    The current batch of summer reading is as follows:

    • Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna: The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech’s Hype and Create the Future We Want
    • John Carrington: Our Greatest Writers
    • Elizabeth Carter: The Language of Romance Crimes
    • Stephen King: On Writing: A Memoir Of The Craft (25th anniversary re-release)
    • Patrick Leigh Fermor: A Time of Gifts; Between the Woods and the Water: On Foot to Constantinople from the Hook of Holland: The Middle Danube to the Iron Gates; The Broken Road: From the Iron Gates to Mount Athos
    • Joachim Lépine: AI resilient
    • Jonathan Miles: Once Upon a Time World: The Dark and Sparkling Story of the French Riviera
    • Cal Newport: Digital Minimism
    • Publications Office of the European Union: Joint practical guide of the European Parliament, the Council and the Commission for persons involved in the drafting of European Union legislation
    • Publications Office of the European Union: AI-based solutions for legislative drafting in the EU
    • Christian Rudder: Dataclysm
    • Harry Thompson: Penguins stopped play
    • Marcus Trescothick: Coming back to me
  • Winter reading – trying to escape short-termism

    Winter reading – trying to escape short-termism

    I’ve found that I tend to often read new books – ones that have been typically released in the last year – especially in relation to the activity of translators. I thought I would try to break out of this habit slightly this quarter and have a look at some books that have been around longer – to see whether they have stood the test of time, as well as also to start a concerted approach to read more pre-Internet literature. As always there are some translation-related books – which can serve to gauge whether some of the current problems faced by the profession are new or in fact resurfacing.

    • Anat Admati and Martin Hellwig, The Bankers’ New Clothes
    • Chris Durban (Ed.), The Prosperous Translator: Advice from Fire Ant & Worker Bee
    • Michael Farrell, A Guide to Machine Translation for today’s Professional Translator
    • Rainer Fleckl and Sebastian Reinhart, Inside Signa: Aufstieg und Fall des René Benko. Ein Blick hinter die Kulissen und neue Fakten über groteske Deals, Politnetzwerke und den Zerfall eines Imperiums.
    • Ian Fraser, Shredded: inside RBS, the bank that broke Britain
    • Klaus Grubelnik, Die rote Krake: eine Bank erobert Österreich
    • Martin Prinz, Der Räuber
    • Carmen M. Reinhart and Kenneth S. Rogoff, This Time is Different
    • Nina Sattler-Hovdar, Get Fit for the Future of Transcreation: a handbook on how to succeed in an undervalued market
    • Avraham Tashach, The Farthest Place on Earth: North Korea – Truths and Myths From the Most Isolated Country in the World

  • Autumn reading – healthier than doom scrolling

    Autumn reading – healthier than doom scrolling

    I woke up earlier this month to a deluge of alerts on my phone about the news that a milestone of the Trump 2.0 administration was the appointment of Elon Musk to the “Department of Government Efficiency”. Which will be abbreviated to DOGE. Nice one Space Karen. I am currently actively in the eXit process, after discontinuing my active involvement on Musk’s toXic platform in the summer. It was part of a bid to stop doom scrolling. Doom scrolling had resulted in me learning about the tragic circumstances and aftermath of a friend’s untimely death.

    I therefore sought solace by retreating more to the pages of books, either as physical editions or Kindle editions. Reading books help you learn – both for and about yourself. They also make you think, whereas much of social media seems to serve little cognitively enriching purpose. Possibly social media remains my vice at the moment (after stopping drinking over a year ago). I’ve not yet extracted myself fully from its clutches, and I am present on bluesky post-eXit.

    With my focus on reading, I am now compiling regular posts about my reading list for the respective season. This is my list for the autumn – the summer list is still available here.

    And in addition to reading, I am starting journaling – there will be a future post about that too!

    Autumn Reading List

    • Serghei Sadohin, Hiding in Plain Sight: what Language says about being Human
    • Chip Heath / Dan Heath, Switch (the German book was part of a goodie bag for involvement in a transformation programme)
    • Eddie Izzard, Believe Me
    • Sarah Townsend, Confusables Vol. 2
    • David Graeber, Bullshit Jobs
    • Tom Albrighton, AI can’t write, but you can
    • Eddie Shleyner, Very Good Copy
    • Rod Judkins, The art of creative thinking
    • Brian Merchant, Blood in the Machine
    • Dustin Staiger, Blame this book
  • Summer Reading – time away from the office

    Summer Reading – time away from the office

    I’ve just powered down my work laptop ahead of my summer holiday. Before turning off, I finished my timesheets and backed up files that needed to be. It’s a good routine to come down a cognitive notch after a final working day with various translations and revision jobs to finish and turn around.

    Part of the packing routine is also sorting out my reading material for the trip. With not being sure whether we might need to share rooms with the children en route, I have taken to ensuring that I have some books to read on my Kindle (as well as also trying to read a physical book). The following are the books that I am taking with me for the next fortnight. Some I might only dip into if I wake up early, or am not quite ready to fall asleep.

    I used to ingest first time, digest second time.

    It’s a mixed bag – although with certain thematic groupings. Some books I am starting for the first time, others I am going back to, and others are re-reading. As I commented to a former tutor of mine from university, who remarked about rereading books, “I used to ingest first time, digest second time.” His attention was piqued by my re-reading a book that had been part of my primary reading during first year at university (28 years ago!).

    I’ve deliberately left out any books about translation and languages, There are plenty of books I want to read, but for restorative purposes, I need to give my ever-curious brain some down time from language and law and to read something unrelated.

    There are some self-improvement titles – a couple of which are recommendations from the coach I had sessions with earlier in the year. The sessions with him really paid off. I’m sure I will return to the “wordface” in September relaxed and reinvigorated.

    Summer Holiday Reading List

    • Diccon Bewes, Swisswatching
    • Urs Birchler, Das Einmaleins des Geldes
    • Bill Browder, Freezing Order and Red Notice
    • James Clear, Atomic Habits
    • Gunter de Bruyn, Märkische Forschungen
    • Katja Hoyer, Beyond the Wall
    • Cal Newport, Deep Work
    • David Omand, How spies think
    • Fiona Rintoul, The Leipzig Affair
    • Rebecca Seal, Solo: how to work alone
    • John Sillitoe, The loneliness of the long distance runner
    • John Sweeney, Killer in the Kremlin
    • Louis Theroux, Gotta get Theroux this.