And a happy Translator's Day to you, too!

The usual mumblings about St. Jerome, and all the rest, tempered by a TechCrunch article on how Facebook is spreading its crowdsourced translations around the world.

It's not all gloom and doom, though...

...unless we're talking about ProZ's First Virtual Translation Conference, which is un-attendable from the perspective of the conference site being slow, slow, slow.

It's certainly not an event to capture and hold one's attention, at least, not in my case.

I just may get a head start on some work due Saturday.

But I'll keep the conference window open, on the side, just in case. :^)

Cheers...

International Translation Day 2009

Translators around the world today observed International Translation Day, which by no happenstance coincides with the feast day of St. Jerome, at least in Western Christianity.

Jerome was, by all accounts, an accomplished translator, and largely responsible for producing parts of the Vulgate translation of the Bible into Latin. By some other accounts, he was also famously opinionated and argumentative, which are characteristics that some believe further contribute to his qualifications to be the patron of translators.

As an aside, it should be noted that, while Jerome was an early Christian, and September 30 is his feast day, the International Federation of Translators is quick to assure everyone, in its promotional PDF on the subject, that International Translation Day "is resolutely secular and non-denominational."

This sure sounds like "proof by assertion" to me, but hey... your mileage may vary.

I put in some extra work time on Monday and yesterday to leave today free enough to "attend" ProZ.com's First Virtual Conference, which apparently coincided with the translation web site's 10th anniversary.

It was a fine idea, but if my experience was any indicator, the execution fell short. Early on, it was clear the conference web site and my Firefox browser did not get along well. By following conference-related posts on Twitter, it was evident I was not the only particpant experiencing trouble.

One "tweet" suggested using Internet Explorer to visit the conference, but when I loaded my copy and tried the site, I was informed that I'd have to ramp down Internet Explorer's security settings for the application to interact with the conference's server, which was not something I was willing to do.

I returned at noon to sit in on a session devoted to negotiation, but the audio and slides ground to a halt after 18 seconds. Fortunately, the organizers promise to have the sessions available for download after the conference ends (which it probably has, by now).

It's back to the grind, tomorrow, with - I might add - renewed passion, commitment, and rigor for my craft.

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The above is the kickoff post of my new, improved "work" blog. I finally gave up on TikiWiki and, lemming that I am, have gone the WordPress route.

Another day, another learning curve.

Cheers...