Welcome to the LEaF Newsletter
With less than one week to go until Christmas, things are starting to feel very festive. In our final newsletter of the year, we share news of our Instagram Christmas Countdown and of our annual Forest of Thanks – where we plant a mini forest of trees on behalf of our clients and colleagues. We are also thrilled to be able to support an amazing local charity this year – find out more below.
2021 has been a strange year for all of us. We will be taking some time off to reflect and recharge over the next couple of weeks. We hope that you can too and that you have a very Merry Christmas. See you in 2022!
Lucy – Founder of LEaF Translations
A Forest of Thanks 2.0
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As a company committed to keeping our impact on the environment to a minimum, we operate as a paper-free company (except for certified translations) and so we won’t be sending Christmas cards. Instead, we have donated £150 to a local charity, Spirit of Christmas, and we have added 500 trees to our Ecologi forest, which will be planted in Madagascar. We couldn’t have done this without your support and so we would like to say a huge thank you to our clients, the translators we work with, and you. Find out more here.
Word of the Month
The Christmas countdown has officially begun and we’re sure everyone will experience the ‘voorpret’ feeling throughout the next week.
Although the festive season can bring some stress and worry, don’t forget to let yourself enjoy the ‘pre-fun’ of Christmas.
LATEST NEWS
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- If you haven’t already seen, our Christmas Countdown series on Instagram has begun. Each day we are bringing you untranslatable festive words, native Christmas traditions and, our favourite, the gift of grammar! Follow us @leaftranslations so you don’t miss out!
- If you’re considering translating your marketing materials, make sure to check out our latest blog first. This can be an excellent way to grow your business but could do more harm than good if you get it wrong (as you can see from the funny examples).
- The City of York Council recently launched its Business Growth Voucher – giving local businesses up to £1000 to spend on York-based business services. We are really proud to have been named as an approved supplier for the scheme. Apply for the voucher here.
What do you think?
In last month’s poll, we asked you:
Where would you place the commas in this sentence:
A) “I want to thank my parents, John, and Lisa” or
B) “I want to thank my parents, John and Lisa”
Once again a huge proportion of you (90%, in fact) voted for option B. This was, however, a bit of a trick question since both options are correct. Though the comma placement could change the meaning of the sentence.
Option A demonstrates the Oxford (or serial) comma, which is the final comma in a list of things. However this is not necessary in AP Style writing (the style a newspaper writes in). In this example it is quite important as option B suggests that John and Lisa are the parents, whereas option A suggests they are being thanked as well as the parents.
Head to our Instagram Highlights and LinkedIn for this month’s poll:
Christmas is the time of year where many families and friends reunite to celebrate the festive season. For some, this means travelling to another country to meet up with their loved ones. Others, however, use the cold (in Britain) Christmas season as the perfect excuse to go on a sunny holiday, maybe even to avoid the madness of Christmas (if you haven’t seen the hilarious Christmas film Four Christmases, I would definitely recommend it)! So…
Would you spend Christmas abroad?
Yes | No
We are curious to know how many of you would travel away from your home country over the festive season. Let us know where you would go and why you want to travel.
Introducing: Tidy Tot
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Tidy Tot are one of the lovely clients that we are currently working with. They are an independent UK business who sell baby bibs and other similar products. Over the last year, we have been helping them with their translations. These include Amazon listings and packaging translations in several languages – German, French, Portuguese, Chinese, and more.
