我在8年的博客生涯中学到了什么
这篇文章最初发表于 那个翻译博客. 经许可转载.
当我2012年开始写这个博客的时候, 我在考虑申请研究生院, and a friend told me that I should start to develop an online presence to give myself an edge over other applicants. 他告诉我一个简单的方法就是写博客. 容易! Ha.
我不确定它是否给了我申请研究生院的优势, 但我确实知道这并不那么容易, 如果你做对了, 博客可以以你从未想过的方式为你工作. 我的博客是我非常珍视的东西. It’s something I created from nothing, that I can share and use to connect with others. 它伴随着我经历了许多起起落落. Here, I’m sharing with you the highlights of what I’ve learned in 8 years of blogging.
你的声音就是那样你的. 这就是为什么它很有价值.
嗯哼, 我在看着你, colleagues who’ve thought a million times about starting a blog, but then talked 你的elf out of it because it’s scary to put your ideas and your experience in front of other colleagues. 有时候我还是会想, 哦,我应该严肃一点, 或者更学术一些, 或者更像个专家, 或者任何我不是的东西. But what I’ve found is that the things that make me different are what makes the writing valuable to others.
这很容易想到, Oh once I’ve reached X milestone and checked everything off my professional to-do list, I’ll start blogging because then I’ll really know what I’m talking about. No! 价值在于分享你的经验, 当你在体验的时候. 现在, 我并不是在贬低专家写博客的价值, but I personally love reading about other interpreters learning as they go along, and given the comments on my posts and the messages I’ve received from readers over the years, 我不是唯一一个.
做你需要做的评论吗.
让自己和自己的工作受到批评是很可怕的. Not everyone follows the “praise in public, correct in private” thinking. I am super sensitive and take everything personally (I’m working on it), 所以我觉得如果我能做到, 任何人都可以. You could blog and close your posts for comments, but really, what’s the point of that? (虽然我最喜欢的博客, 穿过河流, does just that so it’s not like a hard-and-fast rule or anything). To me blogging has been all about creating a community and sharing and exchanging ideas. I have my comments set so that I have to approve them before they’re published. 你猜怎么着? There are some that will sit in the “unapproved” bin forever and ever. There are some that I published that didn’t make me feel warm and fuzzy, 也许有一天它们会被取消出版. 关键是, 这是我在网络空间的小角落, 就像我的现实生活一样, 我可以决定跟谁交往,不跟谁交往.
Have some kind of plan, and don’t publish just for the sake of publishing.
Bear in mind that the way I’ve lived my life has been this: The only plan is, there is no plan. I exist very comfortably in the space where I can make it up as I go along. And that’s not how everyone does it, so this advice may be limited in terms of its reach. My initial plan was just to publish once a month, and to speak to my colleagues. 问问自己谁是你的听众,然后写信给他们. 我花了很长时间 to ask myself what I wanted to accomplish with my blog, because its fundamental purpose has always been to simply process are share my experience in a creative way. 如果你写博客的目的是让自己成为一个专家, 或者获得客户, that’s a different approach and you’ll want to read about that and think about it a bit in advance. 你不会看到我在这里给出任何关于策略或SEO的建议.
请记住,写博客需要时间. 我花了很长时间, and lots of weekends reading FAQs and help articles to figure out even the basics, 最终它消耗的时间更少了. And this might be a personality thing, but it takes me many drafts to publish anything. I was posting once a month until 2015, when I finished my first year of grad school. 在那段时间里, I was totally overwhelmed and didn’t have much energy to put into blogging, though in retrospect I wish that I had written more and documented my experiences publicly while I was in grad school. 叹息. 这也是一种接受的练习.
一个月发布一次是一个合理的目标. 如果你觉得有创意, sit down and write as much as you can and save those posts in your drafts to be lined up to be published. 记下你想到的话题的想法. 不要因为你说过你会每月出版. This is your work with your name on it, and you want it to be good and useful and thoughtful. 随着时间的推移,它将成长为一个更大的工作体.
随着时间的推移,事物发生变化是可以的.
我早期的一些作品对我来说几乎是畏首畏尾的. 有时过于多愁善感. But I resist the urge to edit or delete stuff and I appreciate the evolution of my writing style. At some point, I switched from writing long narratives to more bullet point-y stuff (like this post). 在过去几年里, I’ve branched out beyond interpreting and written about some tangential things, 比如语言流利. Your blog doesn’t have to be a uniform piece of work, unless that’s what you want, of course.
随着时间的推移,与你的博客一起工作和成长. 倾向于它. 确保链接正常工作. Respond as fast as you can to comments (the ones you want to publish, anyway). Thank people for taking the time to read and to share their thoughts.
在你准备好之前就开始.
Your to-do list can seem daunting, and there are so many choices in the beginning. 我首先要做什么? 我使用哪个平台? 我需要一个更好的大头照吗? 我的博客需要一个电子邮件地址吗? 我需要一个标志和调色板第一? 如果我不确定名字怎么办? 如果能让你好受点的话, I started blogging under a totally different name than I ended up with, 在不同的平台上. After several months of writing, I came up with the name That 翻译, and changed to WordPress. 直到2015年,我才有了自己的商标? 主页上的照片也过时了, but I just haven’t had time to adjust the size of my current photo. It helps me to remember that nobody is standing over my shoulder waiting for that next post, 或者更新头像. 至少我希望不是. 那会很奇怪.
我的最后一条建议是把写博客看作一个过程, and we’d all do well to see our growth interpreters in the same way. 这是一种不完美的练习,对我来说很重要.
这真是出乎意料的有趣. 非常非常有趣. 我无法告诉你我通过博客认识了多少人. 它被重新发布并在互联网上分享. Nothing is more fun than meeting someone at a conference and hearing them say, “嘿, 你就是那个翻译。”! 最后, it’s been an exercise in expressing my thoughts and feelings clearly on sometimes difficult topics, 哪一个是口译员真正重要的练习.
我希望你能从中找到一些有用的建议. 但自私地说,我只想看到更多的翻译博客! 你有一个,或者有一个最喜欢的吗? 你刚刚在你的第一篇文章中点击了“发布”吗? 在评论中与大家分享吧!
作者简介
莉斯本文 worked as a Spanish interpreter and interpreter trainer for two decades before pivoting to clinical social work. 她目前是休斯顿的一名治疗师.
你最喜欢的博客链接到一个垃圾网站.