Onlangs ontving ik de 'Fluister Award', een glazen beeldje voor het beste luisterboek van 2025 volgens audioboekaanbieder Fluister. Hartstikke leuk! Ik dacht, nu zal de zilvervloot wel binnenvaren, dus ik vroeg hoeveel Fluister mij afgelopen jaar had opgeleverd.

The main character in the book I'm translating uses the microwave to make tea. There should be a warning about this on the cover of the book.

When you think the wordplay in the source text works in your translation and then you remember the source text is American, not British, changing the meaning, so you have to come up with a completely different solution. That whole thought process is why you need a human translator.

A recent cartoon for @theguardian.com

Nieuw op VertaalVerhaal: het dankwoord van Lourens Reedijk bij de aanvaarding van de Aleida Schot-prijs 1989. vertaalverhaal.nl/project/dank...

Amazing sob story: "ChatGPT deleted all the work I hadn't done" www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Tikfout van de dag: robots die in teams twerken

RT if you don't even know how the hell to open a ChatGPT tab

Goed nieuws over de #petitie Stop Amerikaanse Overname #Digid! www.met-k.com/2026/01/21/g... #blog #solvinity #kyndryl

🤬 (I can't actually read the article because first I'm flooded with ads and pop-ups and then it switches to a machine-translated Dutch version which I refuse to read. Perfect example of enshittification of a simple news article.)

Yesterday it was cows using tools, today its penguins using satellite imagery.

"AI companies will fail. We can salvage something from the wreckage" by Cory Doctorow Or "How to be a critic whose criticism inflicts maximum damage on the parts of AI that are doing the most harm." www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-i...

New blog post: Leave translation (technology) to translators www.pb-translations.com/portfolio5-1...

My books cartoon for this week’s @theguardian.com

Petitie: stop de Amerikaanse overname van DigiD actie.degoedezaak.org/petitions/st...

ELIS 2026 is currently open, have your say! ELIS is one of the most important annual surveys tracking trends, expectations, and challenges in the European language industry. 👉 Take part here: elis-survey.org The deadline is midnight (CET), Saturday, 31 January 2026. #FITEurope #ELIS2026

I still think translators should be given samples of the products they translate about. Currently translating some marketing texts about hot tubs...

Are you a gamedev who's not using any GenAI in your pipeline? I'm currently compiling a list of such statements, either in the press, social media, or directly through your credit roll. Feel free to add more examples below.

"They drag people out of their houses at any hour of the day and night…families are torn apart. Men, women, & children separated…children come home from school to find that their parents have disappeared.” - Anne Frank, 1942

Hi everyone, If you are a literary translator, please fill our survey ! It only takes a few minutes and we need your feedback to get a clearer picture 😊 www.ceatl.eu/ceatls-ai-su...

Over de grens: 6 nieuwe vertalingen om naar uit te kijken

Please stop using Google's AI overview as your source for ANYTHING. It is GenAI. It is making shit up. Boycott it like you boycott ChatGPT and all other LLMs.

Is Apple AI Translate in AirPods Good Enough To Replace Human Professionals? Let's Test It (Spoiler alert: no, it isn't.) www.linkedin.com/pulse/apple-...

Met een stuk van een vertaler die een door hem vertaald boek uit de puinhopen van een gebombardeerd gebouw ziet steken: www.boekvertalers.nl/2026/01/07/v...

😉 @onzetaal.bsky.social #Ruggespraak

One guy tried, unsuccessfully, to blow up a plane with a bomb in his sneakers, and everybody had to take off their shoes at the airport for the next 20 years. Chatbots have a collective body count equal to Richard "The Night Stalker" Ramirez, and they're trying to put them in schools.

The Utrecht morning rush hour in the snow did not disappoint!

Deleted a repost of a thread. Looking closer, the person is comfortable sharing AI images & video. Was the thread also AI? Was it accurate? I’d rather not take the chance and share it. Journalists, keep this in mind. “Fun” AI videos & images undercut your credibility.

Jump Into 2026 I love the secret feature at Nine Elms London Underground station that reveals itself during a sunny day. If you arrive at the perfect moment, the roundel logo is beautifully projected onto the floor. So I took Dancer Andreya with me to interact with the scene.

E-books are reading. Comics are reading. Genre is reading. Fanfic is reading. Text-based games are reading. Audiobooks are reading. Braille books are reading. Non-fiction is reading. Picture books are reading. There is no single way to read, nor is any reading style more worthy than another.

"translation was never just a technical challenge. It is an act of witnessing. An interpreter does not merely convert words from one language to another. They carry meaning across the chasm between us." #xl8 #translation

I'm re-re-posting this because it's such a good essay. "...writers should also never forget these two secrets of using LLMs to help your writing: - First drafts are where the thinking begins. - If you become dependent upon a tool, that tool can be taken away."

Happy New Year, everyone! This is a @theguardian.com books cartoon from a few years ago.

I take no leave of you, 2025. I send no compliments to your mother. You deserve no such attention. I am most seriously displeased.

Last job of the year delivered, last invoices of the year sent. Hoping 2026 will be a good year for everyone!

Just saw an ad for an AI tool to help me with my New Year's resolutions. If my algorithm still doesn't know I will never use AI I definitely won't trust it with my New Year's resolutions. 🚮

3148 words until the end of the year... 😉 #IAmTranslating

These visits by ghostes koude have been three emayles.

Definitie in Van Dale van ai: drievingerige luiaard. Dat vind ik eigenlijk ook wel een goede omschrijving van AI: "deze tekst ziet eruit alsof hij door een drievingerige luiaard is gegenereerd".

Some of you have forgotten that only three years ago you were perfectly capable of writing a text, writing an email, telling a bedtime story to a child, and it should worry you that powerful companies have convinced us we can’t do things we’ve been doing since the dawn of time.

Every (translator) knows this, the problem may be trying to convince editors and publishers

A gentle reminder if you've received an invoice from a Freelancer/Self employed person which is due before Christmas. Be a love, and pay it today.

Just fancy that! Time Person of the Year. From the new Private Eye, out now.

Typografie ist wichtig!

Not just the English-speaking world. A lot of people think translation is just replacing words. They don't have a clue how difficult it is to recreate the subtleties of language, idiom, cultural differences, etc. into another language. That applies even to non-fiction/business translations.

Misschien alsnog een tolkenopleiding gaan volgen zodat ik als tolk Mestreechs aan de slag kan? www.l1nieuws.nl/nieuws/30641...

Thoughts and prayers for the prompt engineers whose prompts, that they put SO MUCH work in to steal other people’s art, were stolen.

"We krijgen ook vaak de vraag van klanten om hen naar een specifieke tulpenweide te brengen. Ze tonen een foto van een tulpenweide met in de achtergrond bergen of verschillende windmolens." Dommificatie ten top: toeristen op zoek naar bergen in Nederland want "dat hebben ze op internet gezien"...

Nieuw op VertaalVerhaal: Marthe Elzinga en Mark Leenhouts over de eerste zin van Victor Segalens Brieven uit China. vertaalverhaal.nl/project/de-e...