September is my favourite month of the year. It’s like a new beginning; I’m always super excited about doing new things after the holiday period. Plus, I love autumn. So, I’ll pretend the year is just starting (it is, in a way,) and go through 2016, reviewing all the great exciting things it brought.
January
I created tagsweekly and published my first article Why don’t companies invest in translation?, which earned a review in Taus Magazine and was nominated for the ProZ.com community choice awards, in the Blog Post category. Apart from that, I spent my 5th wedding anniversary in beautiful São Miguel island, in the Azores.
February
2016 was the year I decided to attend as many industry events as I could. It was a way of networking, meeting lots of new people but, most importantly, of seeing which of these events were actually more interesting to attend. I started with Elia Together, in Barcelona. That month, I also concluded the first edition of APTRAD’s Mentoring Programme, with lovely Sara Reis, who ended up developing a really interesting brand and keeps working towards success as a freelance translator.
March
I went to TLC, in Warsaw. CPD (continuous professional development) is something I truly value and appreciate so I keep enrolling in short training courses or workshops. In March, I attended a workshop about tips and tricks for LinkedIn, which I adapted to my work as a freelance translator and implemented in my LinkedIn profile, which turned out to be quite fruitful. Also, I met my good friend and WordPress geek, Pedro Fonseca, who later designed my new website and still helps me with social media and general marketing. I still had the time to squeeze in two short but extremely interesting webinars: Fashionable Translations: From Designer Labels to Clothing Labels, by lovely Percy Balemans and SEO in tourism translation, by Sara Colombo.
April
Together with Rui Sousa and Luísa Matos, I designed and presented a webinar about Project Management for Translators for the eCPD platform.
May
I was a speaker at the beautiful University of Coimbra, where I delivered a presentation about Quahill Basic, a project management tool for freelance translators.
June
Well, this was a very busy month. Besides turning 34 (my birthday is on 11 June), this was the month for APTRAD’s 1st International Conference, where we had the chance to present our e-book, Beginning, Middle and End and give a few autographs (!!).
This was also the first time I visited Brussels, far from imagining I would be living here a year later.
July
Time for holidays and I headed to Morocco for a week of relaxation (or maybe not).
August
Our eBook was considered “the best book published (print or digital format) from January 2015 to date” at the ProZ.com community choice awards.
September
In September, I had an addition to my crew: my husband started working with me as a freelance translator for a short but sweet period of time, until he was “stolen” by the European Commission.
Also, I had the chance to speak at the ProZ.com 2016 virtual conference for International Translation Day, on the subject of translation project management.
October
And since I hadn’t traveled in almost two months, I decided to go to London for the Translation and the Creative Industries International Conference at the University of Westminster.
November
Another trip, another industry event: this time in Stuttgart, where I attended the tcworld conference 2016 and still had time for a quick visit to the Mercedes-Benz Museum.
Second trip to Brussels: starting to suspect I might be moving here soon…
December
Before the end of the year, I still had time for two last training courses: How to Develop a Content Marketing Strategy and Personal Branding. The year ended with big changes: I moved (check out my super cool brand new home office) to the countryside and planned on living a quiet life working with my life and business partner, until he was offered a position in Brussels.
So, New Year’s Eve was spent with mixed feelings: excited about what was in the offing, anxious about all the preparations and sad to leave family and friends.
2016 in words and numbers: I had 787 translation projects, consisting of nearly 800,000 words for 43 different clients, 11 of whom were new clients.
Boy, am I looking forward to the 2017 review!
