Summer team day 2015

With the British summer very much upon us, it was time for our next team day and we decided on the topic “style” for this session. While we have focussed on the translation process itself in previous team days, we thought it would be highly beneficial to look at English writing style. People often forget that translators are writers in their own right, so perfecting our English language skills is just as important as perfecting our foreign language skills. As a team, we thought about examples of good writing style that we see in our day-to-day lives and how we can apply them to our work, with examples from publications including The Economist, National Geographic and The Radio Times.

We all agreed that, as a translator, you never switch off and it’s amazing how much you can pick up from reading in your source language. Siobhan Gorrie and Catherine Entwistle led the discussions and provided a wide range of exercises and examples, which we worked on in small groups. These even brought out the competitive side of certain team members! An LKT team day isn’t complete without a delicious lunch – Subway was the outlet of choice this time and one of our regular subcontractors even popped in to join us. These days give us a great opportunity to work together as a team and we are already excited about what the next one will bring.