April was completely overshadowed by my female greyhound, Lara, being ill from start to finish. We noticed she was limping badly and had a swollen back leg with a strange lump on her foot over the Easter weekend. The vet thought she had an abscess, so she lanced it, but instead it turned out to be a strange case of blood vessels that had somehow clumped together and risen to the surface. As it wouldn’t stop bleeding (she’d cut an artery), we had to take her to the Queen Mother Hospital in north London where she stayed for a couple of days.
Today’s guest post is by Émilie Barbier and it is part of the 
When I was teaching English in France after my undergraduate degree, I did some translation work for a university and consequently decided that I wanted to pursue a career in the field. The MA in translating and interpreting at the University of Salford* really appealed to me due to its practical nature.
Receiving a translation back covered in tracked changes and comments is never a nice experience because it mainly signals that the client is unhappy with your work. A mistake is a mistake and has to be owned up to and corrected. It’s something you have to learn from to improve your skills and ensure you don’t repeat. And you have to hope that the consequences won’t be too serious and that you don’t lose the client as a result.
My name is Pierre. I graduated from the 
A recent argument with an agency about the word count for a job handed in weeks previously has driven home just how sordid this practice of counting words really is. Thankfully, this type of situation doesn’t rear its ugly head that often, and this particular client is not one of my main sources of income. But when an agency forgets I charge by the source word because their arrangements with other translators differ, and they then send a series of short documents as they arrive from the end client with embedded text that the counter in Word doesn’t recognise, problems and tetchy emails can ensue. And I do so loathe any suspicion that I might be trying to pull a fast one by adding more words to the invoice than I am entitled to, especially when the difference we’re squabbling about is a laughably small amount.
The TSM Master’s programme was created about 10 years ago in Lille in northern France. Even though it is quite new in the French academic landscape, this dynamic programme has gradually been making a name for itself.
Tranix Translation & Editing Services 