I wanted to give some more time to the topic of audio description so that we can explore it, both as an important way to make films, series, and live events accesible to visually impaired people, and as a new area of work for language professionals to explore.

I got together with a group of language professionals from my network with different types of experience, different working languages (English, German, Italian, and Spanish), to talk about both the role of the audio description script writer and the voice artist.

During our discussion, we covered topics such as:

• The guests’ stories and how they became involved with audio description
• The process of creating scrips and recording the voice-over tracks
• Challenges and points to consider when thinking about creating content in different languages
• Different types of information that the audience needs, depending on the type of content
• Training available for those interested in this kind of work
• The interaction between scrip writers, voice-over artists, and end users

Practical tips for people who want to find out more or get into either of these areas of work.

Thanks Sion, Francesca, Philipp, Dolores, and Zayda for sharing your experience with us – I think we all learned something!

We had some minor technical difficulties towards the end. It was important to me that we got all of the points into the episode, so I have added in a couple that were rerecorded so that none of the information was lost.

Do you have any tips or comments to add?

You can find the show notes page and further links here: https://englishwithkirsty.com/podcast/episode276/

To celebrate 10 years of the English with Kirsty podcast, I’m creating a 10-part series to celebrate 10 different forms that learning can take.

There will also be an online networking event for guests and listeners to come together on the podcast’s birthday in July. Use the contact form further down if you want to be one of the first to receive more information about the event!

Part four of the series is about how we can learn through business adventures – or intentional travel to help ourselves and our businesses.

I decided to have a conversation with Jane Eggers about this because it’s something that we’ve both done recently. Actually she inspired me!

Jane is a German to English translator who lives in /Germany. For the last 3 years, she’s been coming to England to attend the LinkedIn Live conference and meet up with business friends and contacts.

I’m an English trainer who started off working only with German-speaking clients. This is no longer the case as my business has grown and evolved, but a lot of my work still comes from Germany. I use German for communication with some of my clients and as a bridge language in some of my language training sessions. I had the chance to go to Berlin and I took the opportunity to meet up with some of my clients and friends. I also attended my first in-person LocLunch event.

Jane and I talked about what our trips taught us, how they helped us in terms of our businesses, the value of setting the agenda on your terms (it doesn’t have to be a big event if that’s not your thing), some practical tips, and what we plan to do now – both in terms of new ideas and new travel plans! For Jane, it was good to come back to the UK to be surrounded by English for a while. I really have to hunt for opportunities to speak German, so this emersion in the language was a great experience for me. Both of us enjoyed having the opportunity to participate in events where we could discuss business topics in a different language for a change!

I also mentioned the German version of my networking for language professionals events – the first one will be this month! Check my LinkedIn profile or sign up to the newsletter from the show notes page so that you won’t miss any new events!

Have you been on a business adventure like this? What did you learn? Would you like to go on one?

Visit the show notes page here: https://englishwithkirsty.com/episode275/

To celebrate 10 years of the English with Kirsty podcast, I'm creating a 10-part series to celebrate 10 different forms that learning can take.

There will also be an online networking event for guests and listeners to come together on the podcast's birthday in July.

Part three of the series is about how we can learn through community. The first people who came to my mind to talk about community were Kelsey and Anikó from Team Translator - and fortunately for us, they said "yes"!

Whether you call yourself a freelancer, a business owner, a self-employed professional - community is so important for all of us working on our own.

Kelsey Frick and Anikó Pető-Mordovski set up Team Translator to provide a community for those working in translation. We talked about what the community is, how it works, why it's important, and what Anikó and Kelsey have learned through leading and being part of it. We also discussed the importance of building meaningful connections, LinkedIn strategies, the need to be yourself, and how connection can take different forms, such as the Team Translator Slack community.

If you are a translator and you don't know about the community, you can find out more on the Team Translator website: https://www.team-translator.com

If you're not, are there other communities where you could find support, colleagues, potential clients or friends? It doesn't just have to be one. Our own personal community is the support system that we build around ourselves and might involve several professional communities. The main thing is that they are a great source of support and opportunities to learn.

Find out more on the show notes page: https://englishwithkirsty.com/podcast/episode274/