Don't worry, I am not going to deal with the 'creepy things' that David Letterman did and which he admitted to having done in his show.

However, what caught my attention while reading (or rather watching) his statement on his show was this part:

This morning I did something I've never done in my life. I had to go downtown and testify before a grand jury.

Now, that appeared strange to me. I do know that in US jurisdiction, juries are involved in court proceedings, though I don't know all the particularities of when they appear and when not.

What I felt was strange about this is that a grand jury was involved before the trial even started. There is a detailed explanation on wikipedia. In short - and for those, who do not want to read the whole WP article - grand juries are used to determine whether there is enough evidence to start a trial.

Over the years I've come across many blogs but I have stopped reading most of them. Of course, interests change and so have mine. But the main reason is that day after day, I have come to realize that many bloggers see blogging as a way „to vent the fume“ or to rant about anything that just bothers them.

Not that ranting per se is something bad - I do it myself every now and then. However, especially blogs that deal with culture or language seem to have employed some strange form of blog-ranting that have recently made me reconsider if blogging is the right way to deal with issues in and around the profession.

What can I say? I am actually quite exhausted by this way of blogging and have decided that I myself am not going to employ it anymore. In fact, I would say that entries regarding language, culture translation and the profession will not appear anymore. There are many things to rant about but in the end, the rant only shows one's own blind spots. Instead of ranting, I will rather spend more time investigating what is wrong with how I see things or why I consider them to be good, bad or ugly.

Margaret Marks' Transblawg entry on Eurozonetranslations (a sarcastic approach to deal with today's business attitude in the translation industry) has actually got me thinking on how to keep up with the times in this industry.

Especially Rumpelstiltskin (what a strange way to spell Rumpelstilzchen) was very inspiring. Even if the whole appearance is sarcastic (or even cynical), it's true that most companies are simply looking for the cheapest service to get away with.

But what about this part?

We will turn sloppily-written, unintelligible and incomprehensible text into translations much better than the original. But it will cost you. Our services are much cheaper than defending against a product liability lawsuit.

What if there really was a translation company that would offer to redo bad translations in order to avoid lawsuits, to comply with local laws and regulations, or to improve the overall image? Would that really hurt the business?

After many years in translation I have finally settled down with OmegaT as my CAT tool of choice.

For many years, I've battled Trados mainly because I felt that the price did not reflect the usefulness of the tool. I sticked with Wordfast therefore and was more than happy with it.

I still use Wordfast from time to time but since the unclean file format that was originally introduced by Trados is no longer popular (and clients no longer expect me to deliver them), Wordfast has become less important for me.

I also own a copy of DéjàVu X Standard but as I no longer use Windows I cannot work with it. (Which is a shame, I know. It's been quite expensive and is sitting there on my shelf catching dust.)

Over the last two or three years, OmegaT has turned out to be the perfect tool for me. This is certainly not due to the fact that OmegaT is free or that I have formerly been a member of the team that runs OmegaT. The fact that it is very simple and minimalistic in some ways, allows for a lot of manual manipulation and lacks [sic!] certain functionalities that other tools have make it perfect for me.

I've recently had an interesting discussion with somebody who studied translation and interpretation and actually graduated with a German Diplom (roughly a master's degree).

I had no formal translation training when I took the plunge in this business. I was in the middle of becoming a physician, lacking motivation to finish my degree and eager to finally earn money and so I decided to pursue my other passion in life: languages.

After some years in business, I decided to obtain a certificate in translation. I think that this was a good decision, the course helped me to polish my style and to learn what I am capable of and what I should rather stay away from. But there are things that you just can't learn from academics and these have mostly do to with the business side of the profession.

Now that my friend has become a freelancer some of her experiences remind me of the time when I had just started out. And while I always thought that I should have studied translation in the first place (rather than trying to finish my degree in medicine although I knew that I would probably not work as a doctor), today I can really see the benefit of not having pursued a degree in translation.

There are a lot of things that I don't have to research, that I don't have to learn. I don't have to prove to anyone what kind of experience I have in translating in my area of expertise. I don't have to build a portfolio of previous translations just to convince clients of my abilities.