Here's How…

by Sarah VileceSeptember 19, 2009

Looking to change your location, if only for a short time? Anyone can take a working vacation and here’s how…
This past week I have been writing about my recent working vacation to London. I’ve already covered the most important and realistic advantages and disadvantages to a working vacation. But don’t let the disadvantages discourage you. [...]

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Some Vacations are for Working: Part 3

by Sarah VileceSeptember 16, 2009

I apologize that this post is a few days late, which brings us to today’s topic: disadvantages of a working vacation.
I just returned from my working vacation. And of course, working vacations are ripe with advantages for the freelancer, as I covered in my last post. But there is also a host of disadvantages you [...]

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Some Vacations are for Working: Part 2

by Sarah VileceSeptember 11, 2009

So many freelancer writers and translators rave about the freedom the lifestyle provides, including the freedom to work from anywhere – read anywhere with computer and Internet access. But how many of us actually take advantage of our freedom? And how many of us continue to sit in a home office at the same desk [...]

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Some Vacations are for Working

by Sarah VileceSeptember 10, 2009

Translating Berlin is on a working vacation in London. Now, a ‘working vacation’ should not be confused with ‘a vacation spent working’. Allow me to clarify: the latter is perhaps a planned family vacation in which mom brings her laptop. She does not leave the hotel room because she is too busy working. The little [...]

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McDonald's Loses the Linguistic Battle

by Sarah VileceSeptember 8, 2009

A Federal Court in Malaysia decided today that “McDonald’s does not have a monopoly on the prefix ‘Mc’”.
After reading on the NPR website that McDonald’s had lost their lawsuit against McCurry in Malaysia, I could not help but think about all of the ‘Mc’ businesses in Berlin. I wonder, for instance, what McDonald’s would have [...]

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Tax Nation

by Sarah VileceSeptember 3, 2009

The tax officer at my local Finanzamt in Berlin recently confirmed what many freelancer translators in Germany already know to be true: even tax officers working for the Finanzamt (as well as private tax consultants) are often  unfamiliar with the tax laws that apply to freelance translators in Germany.
Small businesses and freelancers registered in Germany [...]

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The untranslatable now available in translation

by Sarah VileceAugust 24, 2009

Half-a-million words, 1600 pages, 6 years and  50,000 euros later the impossible has been done. The untranslatable has been translated. Wait- that doesn’t sound like very much money for 6 years of full-time labor!
Without some side translation jobs from the financial sector, 2 stipends and an allowance from Dad, it would have never been possible [...]

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Freitag Fun: Why not just plain "water"?

by Sarah VileceAugust 21, 2009

One of the coffee shop chains in Berlin has put out water for their patrons since all that coffee makes everyone so thirsty. They are also nice enough to put a label on it: “tab water”.
Some people think that the only thing required to complete a translation is a dictionary. In other cases -like this [...]

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Enter the VIPs

by Sarah VileceAugust 20, 2009

At first I thought it was a practical joke. I thought, that cannot possibly be a word in German. Or in Denglish, I should say. But I hear it more and more often in Berlin and each and every time it is said with a straight face as if it were the most natural thing [...]

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Freitag Fun: Spot the Translation Mistake

by Sarah VileceAugust 14, 2009

Can you spot the translation mistake? I took this photo a few days ago on Bernauerstrasse in Berlin. This ice-cream truck is often parked in front of the Bernauerstrasse Documentation Center, where an original piece of the Berlin Wall also stands. You can buy ice-cream here by the ‘Kugel’ or, in the English translation, by [...]

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