2024 review
In 2009, and for several years after I started offering my services as scientific and technical translator and author’s editor, my annual review reflected a pretty even split between translation and editing. Over the last 15 years, I have trained and listened to feedback from my clients. As a result, I have adapted my services to meet their needs, including with things that they didn’t know they needed! My activity is now much more diversified activity. In 2024, translation barely represented 10% of what I did, editing was still close to 50% (including 39 academic articles) and the rest was teaching and writing or talking about writing. Teaching, talking in general and writing would not have been things that I imagined myself doing with pleasure when I switched careers 15 years ago, the years change us in surprising ways!
For 2025, I already have several dates lined up for this type of activity:
- At the end of January, I’ll be talking about writing to junior researchers interested in glycosylation.
- In April, I’ll be talking about the path between my PhD and my current job to PhD students considering non-academic careers.
- In February and May, I’ll be co-presenting two courses on academic writing.
- In June, I’ll be facilitating a 3-day writing retreat.
- Throughout the year, I’ll be facilitating my monthly one-day writing retreats for all (Vendredis de la Rédaction), as well as a series of half-day retreats for PhD students.
- The 1-hour per day writing challenge will be back in January and I’m looking at other dates during the year.
That still leaves me plenty of room for editing and translating, and there are some signs that translation will be a bigger part of my work in 2025. Whether these signs are confirmed or not, it is very unlikely that I will return to 50/50 translating and editing. Writing for myself and helping other people to write are now important, and very fulfilling, parts of what I do.