Looking back on 2015
Looking back on the past year has become almost a tradition. This year, we were so busy in the run-up to Christmas that there was no time to stop and think. But now that the last of the year’s projects have been managed and Christmas has given me some time to clear my head, it is time to look back on 2015.
2015 saw quite a few personnel changes: After Andrea Unkelbach went on maternity leave at the end of 2014, Marie Crossland also left to have her second child in the spring. We are delighted at the two new would-be translators!
In the summer, both Katherina Polig and Emily Orlowski left Freiburg for the beautiful English city of Bath. It was hard for us to let them go, but there is some consolation in the fact that they both do a lot of freelance work for us, so we’re still in close contact. Emily even came to our Christmas party!
Lynn Kalic, who joined us as project manager to fill in for Andrea during her parental leave, has settled in very well indeed. To be frank, it is hard to believe that she has only been part of the team for a year, and we are extremely pleased that she is going to stay on after Andrea returns in the spring of 2016. This will give Verena Brunner the chance to spend more time translating – her project management duties will then be limited to holiday replacements.
In September, we welcomed the first ever native speaker of American English to work for us in-house. Marnie Christensen hails from Wisconsin and has had the opportunity to become familiar with different varieties of the German language during time spent in the Austrian city of Graz and in Berlin.
Once again, we have had the privilege to work with some great interns: Gesa Rosebrock, Kevin Herschbach, Sina Burgert and Alex Smith, as well as Helena Triesch and Charley Hinds, who are both going to be with us until the spring.
A request to give a lecture at the University of Heidelberg and the induction of a new project manager inspired my personal research focus of the year: “translation project management”. My article on the topic was published in the magazine MDÜ, a publication for translators and interpreters.
Another of the year’s highlights was our visit to another translation company with the objective of sharing opinions and experience. This – very open and honest – exchange was immensely rewarding and reinforced our view that sharing is worth so much more (and creates so much more value) than competing.
In terms of translation projects, this past year offered several opportunities to test the limits of our capacities. Towards the end of the year in particular, we were snowed under thanks to several very large (and very urgent) translations. We were able to deliver everything on time – and felt that we truly deserved our Christmas break.
We would like to take this opportunity to thank all of our clients for the trust they have put in us and our freelance translators for their help in maintaining this trust.
