2022 review

It’s nearly the end of January – high time for my annual review blog post! I always like to take some time at the beginning of the year to review and reflect on the past twelve months, which helps me to see more clearly what I’ve actually accomplished over the stretch of a year.

Personal

2022 was a year of big personal change as it saw my husband and me move from the UK, where we had lived since 2003, back to Germany. I’ve written about the experience in more detail here. Although we had planned the move for some time, when it finally happened it was still a tremendous upheaval and took up a huge amount of time and energy, both in terms of preparing and then in terms of settling in and getting ourselves organised once we’d arrived in our new home. Despite this, we have not regretted our decision for a single second!

Projects

I was very pleased to be able to work on a number of projects for clients in my new hometown of Regensburg – scholars from Regensburg University, the tourism association, and (a particular pleasure for a music lover!) a local record label. In fact, a lot of my work this year was musical in focus, although I still had quite a few projects in my other usual fields of law, history, and cultural studies. I love this variety – for me, the best thing about my job is that after all these years as a translator and editor, I still get to learn new things every day!

Only one “big” project of mine was published this year, The Making of Meaning, the translation of a collection of Niklas Luhmann’s essays on social structure and semantics. I wrote about the experience of translating Luhmann here. The publication dates of some other projects were delayed, so keep an eye on the blog for news of those!

CPD

This year finally saw a return to in-person CPD! In my excitement over being able to meet colleagues face to face again at last, I booked no fewer than three long weekends of CPD – first, an academic translation workshop run by the BDÜ; second, the annual “Workshopwochenende” of the Texttreff network; and third, the “Anglophoner Tag” in Münster, organised by ATICOM. Although spending a stretch of several days with lots of people took some getting used to after two years of pandemic-induced solitude, I came away from all three events motivated and inspired. Online workshops are certainly convenient, but nothing beats being able to share the same space with colleagues!

What’s in store for 2023?

I’m currently working on a big project in the field of legal history that will keep me busy for much of the first half of the year, and have a couple of music-related jobs coming up too. After last year’s excesses, I’ve decided that I probably won’t take part in any weekend-long CPD workshops until later in the year, but will make the most of the regional offer available to me here – for example, I’ve signed up for a day workshop in Munich on the history of German grammar, a true language nerd’s dream! The Regensburg group of the BDÜ also meets regularly, with members giving talks and presentations, so I’m looking forward to lots of local networking!