#T9n: Cool Tweets for Translation Geeks
Translators & linguaphiles you’d love to follow.
To state what may be obvious to some, Twitter is the place to be for language professionals looking to network, share knowledge and experience, or just empathize with fellow translators. Is it the platform’s inherently small character count that draws translators in, or the simplicity of hashtag research? Or, at this point, just the sheer amount of translators, interpreters, localizers and other industry players tweeting away on the daily — especially in lockdown times?
We may never know. What we do know is that Twitter has become a valuable resource for translation geeks, be it for information on the industry, threads on languages and the biz, or the downright fun of online water cooler chit-chat and linguistic fun facts.
So we’ve decided to share a couple of TWLFs (Tweeters We Like To Follow) with our own readers and followers. I’d say there’s something in here for everybody.
The European Society of Translation Studies
The EST, as its name might suggest, is an international society focused on translation studies. Their Twitter profile is one of the most useful ones we’ve come across, as their tweets often contain info on important industry events, such as this year’s FIT World Congress, the first international conference on computer-assisted literary translation, and many others. They also post about job openings and new books on language and translation, as well as announcements for various fellowships and calls for papers. A worthwhile follow, even for those of us who are not in the scholarly field.
TranslationTalk
As its account description suggests, TranslationTalk is a “rotation-curation account for translators and interpreters.” Each week, it’s taken over by a different contributor who posts about topics specific to their specialization or interests. This means that TranslationTalk is a great resource of insights into different spheres of translation, and a great platform for different types of translators to share what their side of the coin is like. This neat account-initiative was established by Alexander Drechsel and Jost Zetzsche, both prominent members of the industry.
Erik Hansson
Erik Hansson is a German-Swedish translator with a great sense of humor and a real passion for the industry. So much so that he actually fathered the Mother of All Translation Groups, Things Translators Never Say (more on the group in a different blog post 😉). His Twitter account is filled with useful and interesting tweets, from industry-specific job offers and conference announcements to articles on various language and culture-related topics from the world at large, spiced with humorous takes. He has also compiled several useful Twitter lists on more language-industry-related accounts you can follow. All in all, Erik’s account is an awesome follow to include in your Twitter-sphere!
Haggard Hawks
We’ll top this post off with a bit of premium linguaphile fun 👌 Haggard Hawks is an account that focuses on etymology and peculiar English words, like opiniastrous and emberlucock. It’s run by linguist Paul Anthony Jones, who also writes the Haggard Hawks blog in which he delves into peculiar phrases in more detail than Twitter’s character count allows. Overall, it’s a super amusing, fun-fact-type of account, which could also come in handy for English translators (or just your regular language geeks and anglophiles, like some of us here at Zing).
That’s (a small part of) our favorite translation and language-based Twitter accounts for ya! We’ll probably get into some more of them in our future blog posts, and if you know of any we might like (and don’t already follow), drop us a link in the comments! We’re always on the lookout for cool new accounts to follow.
Oh, and you can also check out Zingword’s Twitter account! You know, just for the fun of it 😉
