Jobbing translator

I've recently written to a number of French and British publishing houses, offering my services as a literary translator! Keeping fingers and toes crossed... However, one piece of encouraging news received yesterday is that i'm being given the opportunity to take part in a USA-based translation project, as a literary translator, so i'm looking forward to receiving the French literature for translation in the near future... More details on the exact nature of this translation enterprise will be given in future postings. I'm looking forward to the challenge and the experience; it is very valuable (invaluable, in fact) translating experience and will hopefully boost the strength of future academic and translational job applications.

One other thing: the article on adaptations which I recently submitted to the online Verne Studies journal Verniana, on children's abridged versions of Verne in English, deals not now with Faraday's Ladybird version of 80 Days (though I do mention it in passing within the article, and will write a separate essay on Faraday in the near future) but rather with John Webber's abridged 1966 translation into English of the above Verne novel. It's based on a chapter of my PhD thesis which I had to delete for word count reasons.

I got my book proposal off to a publisher this morning, based on my PhD thesis, so i'm also waiting to hear about that in due course ...

I was speaking to a friend (and fellow PhD researcher) of mine here in DCU this morning. I was absolutely thrilled and taken by surprise when she mentioned that she has been reading some of my postings and likes them! As this friend is also a blogger, and what's more, a researcher expert on blogging whose thesis I can't wait to read, she was also able to give me some very valuable advice on blogging in general, and on the value of considering keeping separate blogs, if desired, one dealing with professional issues, the other being reserved to more personal matters.

I think this is excellent advice. That is why this blog is principally concerned with all matters related to academia and, especially, Translation Studies.

Merci pour les conseils excellents. A la prochaine, mes chers lecteurs, et n'oubliez pas de me laisser vos commentaires si vous le voulez. J'attends avec impatience vous lire tous.