The Linguist

22 The Linguist Vol/61 No/1 2022 thelinguist.uberflip.com REVIEWS Top picks Why you should check out these five translator blogs Blogs can teach a lot about a profession. About its highlights and its issues. They offer a space for experts to go deep into niche topics, with no limits on word count or style. They spread by word of mouth rather than by algorithmic suggestion. Over time, through the comments section, RSS feed readers and links to related blogs, communities start to develop. Their popularity has waned in recent years as the social platforms continue to silo off communication between groups, but blogs should still be celebrated as decentralised and dedicated outposts for long-form writing. Tapping into the zeitgeist of our industry in this way is still very much possible, with colleagues continuing to show why publishing and hosting one's own content is valuable for the community as well as for their own business. It's important that any blogs I recommend keep their sites well stocked with industry-insider knowledge and updates, and that they are up to date, with a post made in the last three months. Elisabeth Hippe-Heisler has run the Minimalist Translator since 2007, covering productivity and ethical matters in our industry, as well as the technicalities and daily issues a freelance translator faces. With around one post a month since 2014, there is a good volume of experience and interest to peruse at hippe-heisler.blogspot.com. A masterclass on how to run a blog, linguagreca.com/blog by Catherine and Christos is an almanac of in-depth posts, events and industry news round-ups. Catherine's 10,000 followers on Twitter are testament to her ability to consistently produce and collate information that the community is looking for. At www.at-it-translator.com/blog, Anthony Teixeira blogs about the benefits and business of translation, as might be expected, but also about gaming and IT- related subjects, all tied in to the industry. Posts stretch back to 2015 and make for good reading on breaks between translations. Tim Barton is an academic, financial and sports translator based in Barcelona/Namibia. His blog www.anglopremier.com/blog runs the gamut, covering technical guides for CAT tools and productivity, CPD and various courses, and most of the business issues we face as freelancers. Posts date right back to 2006, making this one of the most established blogs recommended here. Featuring some five posts a month going back to 2012, www.thelinguafile.com, hosted by freelancer Joseph Andrew Philipson, is a very generous offering. It is guest-post heavy, giving great variety and perspectives. With 3,800 Twitter followers, it is also one to watch to keep abreast of the industry's latest developments. So what is the future for blogs? Updates seem to be coming fewer and further between – a trend, perhaps, linked to the boom of short-form posting on social media, where brief points that a majority can relate to are favoured over deeper dives into more niche topics. There should always be a place for long-form content online, particularly where it doesn't rely on a single platform, gives you a search engine boost and is completely algorithm free – meaning that what you post is what readers get, in that order, and not some jarring amalgamation of things other people liked, mixed with deceptive ads. Luke Spear MCIL; lukespear.co.uk/blog UÄÉzá The Atlas of Unusual Languages is a repository of the most intriguing facts. I have rarely come across a book which provides such a pleasant evening's browsing. One moment I am reading about whether Burushaski might be spoken by the descendants of Alexander the Great's Army (probably not), the next I am wondering how a Venetian dialect is to be found in parts of Mexico and even more widely in Brazil. The answer seems to lie in the concepts of Language Islands (where a language is surrounded by another more significant language) and Language Isolates (where the language has no obvious connection to any other language or recognised language family). Ainu is still spoken in the northern island of Hokkaido, and to a lesser extent further north into Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands (which have long been a matter of dispute with Russia). The language would almost certainly have died out as a result of forced assimilation, and has only been revived in recent years, with recognition as recently as 2019. Population movements of course are not always forced. Razihi and Faifi are fading away as young people move away from the remoter parts of South Arabia in search of work and a modern way of life, and to avoid regional conflict. Hachijō has survived as workers were moved to remote islands south of Okinawa in the 19th century, creating a local and isolated environment which has ensured its survival and allowed it to develop in its own The Atlas of Unusual Languages Zoran Nikolić Collins, 2021 240pp; ISBN 9780008469597 Paperback £14.99 UÉÉ~á

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