Want to read a review of the "Translator as Strategic Partner" conference? Philippa Hammond has kindly written an in-depth review on her Blogging Translator blog.

And Philippa was not the only translator at the conference to post live reports on Twitter. There were two or three of us posting ... what? Twits? Tweets? Here are my tweets from the translator conference.

In years gone by, we had to wait weeks to read a review of conferences like this in specialist translation journals or trade magazines. Now we can read people's personal impressions of a conference within a few days. And with Twitter, for example, we can even follow a conference live, as it happens. It never fails to amaze me how technology can have a positive impact on our lives.

Raising the bar for translation conferences: My thanks to Michael Benis for organising the excellent "The Translator as Strategic Partner" conference in London last weekend. I gave a short presentation on the impact of Content Management Systems on the translation world (or should that be, on the isolated world of the translator?), and I took part in a couple of panel discussions.

But above all, I had fun. Thank you, Michael.

And Michael practiced what he preached, too, by forming strategic partnerships with ProZ, with the Institute of Translation and Interpreting, and with the Chartered Institute of Linguists. This paid off handsomely, with almost 300 head of cattle ... um... I mean, with almost 300 translation professionals at the conference. And they came from all over! There were plenty of British translators there, but there were also plenty of translators from across Europe, and a couple from the USA as well.

We even had fun weather: On the Sunday morning there was an almost-romantic snow flurry. And as I headed home, I noticed a very confused, solitary snowdrop peeping through the grass in a churchyard opposite Euston station. Snowdrops in November... whatever next?

Tomorrow I am off to London for the Translator as Strategic Partner conference. I am hugely looking forward to it - a conference about translation, organised for translators, by translators. I am shocked to realise that it is now 20 years since I first attended a translation conference - but I must find them enjoyable, because I keep going back for more! I look forward to seeing lots of old friends in London, and to meeting lots of new translators as well.

Oh, and trains..... I seem to have a curse that follows me whenever I travel to London by train. This weekend, we may have snow in Britain. Hopefully, my cunning plan to travel home on Monday morning (rather than Sunday evening) will mean this is not a problem. Stay tuned

Dry, British humour at its very best: Earlier this week I was in Munich for the excellent DITA Europe conference. Over lunch, I had the pleasure of excellent company, and during a lively, varied and very enjoyable discussion, I mentioned a British parliamentary exchange that I remember hearing on the radio some years ago. I'm delighted to have tracked it down on Hansard online. It features an exchange between two MP's, Messrs. Foulkes and Hogg, and a delightful example of an apology that is not quite an apology. To see it, click here and then search the page for the word "arrogant". And my thanks to Andrzej and to Richard for giving me cause to track it down!

Even in these turbulent credit-crunch times, there are days when running a translation business is a real pleasure.

Today, I received a charming note from a really happy client. He'd taken the time and trouble to send us a lovely handwritten thank-you note, and even sent us a couple of delightful gifts to show his appreciation of the care our team had taken when translating some complex materials into Dutch. Jeff, thank y'all - Texan manners at their very best, sir!

More on machine translation: Somebody asked me this week why I am so critical of automated translation systems. The answer, of course, is that I am not. I think machine translation offers great potential, and I know of some systems that work well. My concern is simpler. Most people who feed their text through a machine translation system on the web are not really in a position to assess what comes out of the other end of the process.

So here's a quick sample, from German into English, that a friend of mine recently mentioned.

German: Bei der Übertragung der Kassenführung auf einen anderen Mitarbeiter wird hinsichtlich der Verantwortlichkeit des LD/RD für die Richtigkeit der Abrechnung auf Ziff. 1.2 hingewiesen.

English: In the transmission of the cash register leadership on another colleague becomes with respect to the responsibility of the LD/RD for the correctness of the statement on Ziff. 1.2 referred.

Now, can YOU understand what that is supposed to mean? I'll confess that I can only understand it by reading the German text. The English "translation" is totally meaningless.

So where are the good machine translation systems? Well, there is a Canadian weather forecasting system that makes good use of automated translation. And a friend of mine who must remain nameless has done really good work with a Dutch to English machine translation system. Both of these work in specific fields of application.

For most commercial translation, for materials that you want your clients to be able to understand, there's nothing to beat a good, professionally qualified human translator.