The response to our presentation has been really positive, with many people wanting to learn more or see the slides again, so we decided to take our little 2 person roadshow online for the big wide world to see. We are now pleased to unveil a stripped down, re-recorded version of our presentation available at Slideshare.net. You can view the show within this post (below) or by following this link to Slideshare if you have problems hearing or viewing the embed.

I’ve just returned from a short holiday in the Devon countryside. Living in London I tend to lust after the peace and quiet of remote countryside. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to be quite as ‘remote’ from my work as I’d hoped. I hadn’t quite managed to complete all of my translation jobs before going away, so I had to face the grim reality of backing my trusty laptop and allocating precious fun and relaxation time to work whilst away.

I actually didn’t mind this too much, and was in some weird way treating it as an experiment in remote working. By the way, when I say remote working I mean working that takes place outside of my normal office (even though my normal office is basically our spare room). I personally see being able to work remotely with, hopefully, no discernable compromise to work quality and efficiency as one of the major bonuses of being freelance. Until now, I’ve been too afraid to put this into practice. I still feel relatively new to the whole freelance lifestyle and have felt more secure chained to my home office, as if my whole business would collapse if I left it even for a minute. I’m pleased to say, however, I managed to let go of these fears and the ‘experiment’ was successful. With the powers of my laptop and Blackberry combined, I was able to remain contactable and reliable in the same way as I would if I was in my home office.

Of course, before I decided to do this, I had to check whether the cottage we were staying in had wireless internet available. Yes, even in deepest darkest Devon it is still possible to access the internet if your laptop has a wireless card.  Long-term, I’m also looking into the possibility of a dongle so that I can work remotely more often without having to worry about finding wireless internet access. In the city, however, I am lucky to have access to several free Wi-fi networks in cafes, libraries, and public spaces.

The future of Wi-fi and what it spells for our working practices featured recently in an article by the Western Mail on WalesOnline, with reference to the city of Cardiff (incidentally the seat of my old university):

Microsoft’s experts, working with the Future Laboratory, say that traditional fixed-location workplaces will move to a mosaic pattern of working as 70% of UK office workers say that work in the 21st century is increasingly about work/life balance and the death of nine-to-five.

I’m still not sure if work/life balance can truly exist when you’re freelance, or whether it’s just that your life and your work become intertwined, but this article paints a very different vision of the future of the way we work. The futurologists cited in the article also apparently claim that remote working encourages greater creativity – I’m not convinced of this but having a beautiful view to look out on certainly helps

True enough, there are many examples of poor grammar and spelling around, enough for many eagle-eyed writers to write entire books about them. I enjoy spotting these mistakes and chuckling about them as much as the next person; I am a massive fan of Lynne Truss and have read and re-read her books like old friends, and I applaud anyone who heightens awareness of language and grammar amongst the general public. As Truss demonstrates in the title of her book Eats, Shoots and Leaves, a wrongly placed comma can completely mislead a reader. This is amusing for native speakers, but a major comprehension problem for a non-native reader of English, and it is of course something translators must always be careful to avoid.

However, there is a difference between the language we use in official publications and translations, and the language we use to communicate via instant, informal methods such as text messages, social networking sites and emails. Think about it: in speaking on the phone to friends and relatives, only the proudest people would claim to be able to hold conversations free from mistakes in word order, use of the possessive, tense etc., every single time they pick up the phone.  We must all accept that we are human, that instant communication methods require us to think on our feet; our brains simply don’t have time to focus on the message of what we’re saying and the grammar within it. We have moved far beyond the era of telegrams and communicating solely by posted letter and we have adapted accordingly, as humans are so adept at doing.

Whilst in spoken language we have recourse to intonation, volume and tone, to ensure the clarity of our message in place of grammar, you might argue that is what we’re attempting to do in emails and text messages as well. We use emoticons, capital letters, italics, amongst other tools, to try to express what it is we’re saying when we don’t have a lot of time in which to do it. I happen to think that this is not a bad thing; we are unable to claw back much time these days, we’re all terribly busy, that’s a given, so we are adapting to that with time-saving methods.

My favourite linguist, David Crystal, recently wrote a fascinating article for The Guardian on text speak, in which he argues that it actually represents a highly creative use of an evolving language. Moreover, he makes the important point that writers such as Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, Walter Scott, DH Lawrence all used ‘deviant’ spelling in their novels, so it’s not something entirely new. A bit of trivia for you: ‘cos’ was first entered into the Oxford English Dictionary in 1828, and ‘wot’ in 1829.

Doom-mongers will be horrified to learn that there is now even a ‘text laureate’, but perhaps surprised that last year’s winner was in fact in her late 60s.

This may all sound like a horrific scenario for some people who delight at shutting down their email service when they log off their computers every evening, content that this will mean nobody will be able to ‘get them’.  But for those of us who show Generation Y tendencies towards non-stop communication and to having annoying short attention spans this is simply neat way of using ‘dead time’ effectively. Having got used to texting from a relatively young age, the impatient young upstarts that make up Generation Y are used to being contactable at most times and via multiple mediums. They are adept at organizing their time effectively in order to get the most out of their days; not content to just stand and wait like a lemon for another delayed train, or waste time on endless emails when they’re back in the office and have so many other things they need to do. They use ‘dead time’ as an opportunity to check their emails for anything that they could respond to now, rather than later.

Many people will also see Blackberries as inducing obsessive, addicted behaviour in their owners. But their owners/users can always, always choose when to use them; Blackberries can be set so that you don’t receive an irritating beep on receipt of a new email (and you therefore have to actually look at the thing to know about it), plus you can use filters to select the types of messages you DON’T want to receive when you’re out of the office.  Moreover, remember that you can turn them off.  Repeat after me “you – can – turn – them – off – you – have – the – power”.

More than that though, it’s about the user prioritizing their lives, and knowing when and when isn’t a good time to be engaging in a little cheeky email checking. A conversation with a loved one in which they are telling you something vitally important or highly personal is probably a good example of non-good time.

Penelope Trunk discussed self-discipline and Blackberries the other day. Actually, in doing so she called into question the idea of of work-life balance. This is a very interesting, and probably 100% accurate, view of 21st century careers. Speaking as a freelancer, ‘work-life balance’ is nothing but a myth. I don’t mean that to sound negative, far from it. Although the intersection between work and ‘life’ has become blurred, I see it more as being that my career is synced in with my life. My non-work life is busy and full too, but I don’t think of it as entirely separate to my career. There is a point in every day and weekend when I ignore my Blackberry altogether or turn it off; we all need a little down time. However, my career is inextricably part of my life, and vice versa. I don’t see how it could work any other way, and I don’t want it to. Rather than running my life, my Blackberry helps me control and manage the two intertwining strands of life and work as if they were one and allows me to maximize my time in order to spend it doing the things I love, rather than spending vital time at my desk checking emails.

The other challenge I’m facing at the moment is how to juggle my two jobs. My mind is literally awash with a mix of my English students’ grammar problems and my own translation deadlines. I currently teach English every afternoon, and on one day of the week I’m more or less out of the office all day teaching. I’m glad to have a bit of financial security at this stage, but the extra work is clearly compromising my availability as a freelance translator, and to be honest is a little more than I’d like to be away from my little home office. As such I plan to reduce my teaching time substantially by the summer. I read this post by Susan Johnston last month, and really identified with it. She is coming from the perspective of a full-time copywriter who writes in the evenings, so the issues are slightly different, but she some excellent suggestions which could be useful for anyone who faces the challenge of having commitments to one job whilst striving to maintain a professional image in another.

So, you may ask, is all the extra stress worth it? The simple answer is, most definitely, yes. To be honest, I just haven’t looked back. Now, I’m not someone who believes that hard work is the route to happiness, but there is definitely something to be said for being in a job which stretches you and provides clear career goals.

I’ve decided to spend much of this week (when I’m not teaching) taking stock, and catching up with myself. Now that I’m my own boss, I have a lot of paperwork and accounts to get in order…

In particular, the ‘mee timer’ is a neat little tool which will track the percentage of time you waste every day…just don’t waste too much time reading about it

Over the past couple of months my life has mostly been like the above. The reason? I’ve been doing a Teaching English as a Foreign Language course at Saint George International and oh what a busy time it’s been. Anyone who has done one of these courses will know just how crazily intensive they can be, not mention the sheer exhaustion of meeting deadlines for both the course and your daytime job (as I have been).

Anyway, something which has both hindered and helped me is the sheer extent of teaching resources available on the web. True to form, the internet has opened up a plethora of suggestions, lesson plans, authentic material, even TEFL blogs, for me to browse and use as my own. However, I find it very difficult to know when to stop searching and clicking and just ‘get on with it’.

Progams such as Netvibes and del.icio.us are genius tools for customizing and categorizing our browsing, in just one manageable and portable viewing platform, but in the age of Web 2.0 are we letting the internet overwhelm us? I personally am conscious of becoming a bit of a ‘click-a-holic’, without ever really concentrating on any of the many sites I click through.

This is an issue I’d like to explore further in later posts, when I have time of course……….!