Recent content on lukespear.co.uk
Original draft (unedited) 
 Coding agents! 
 I’ve had lots of hands-on experience the last few months with Cursor, Codex CLI, across a few codebases. Generally a really positive and constantly improving experience so far. Even if it often misses the mark, or gets stuck in a loop after building a 750k context window, it just greases the wheels enough to keep momentum up on projects,…
The procrastination project 
 I’ve been putting off updating this site’s theme for years. Not just months - actual years. The kube theme has served me well since around 2018, but it was looking dated and I’d been eyeing some of the more modern Hugo themes floating around. 
 The main blocker was always the same: “something i’ve been putting off for years…
So you’re looking to work with a Swedish speaker with native English for a translation or content project? You’ve come to the right place. 
 Your questions should hopefully be answered by this post, as I’ve been doing this for years (also from French to English) across 1000s of projects and millions of words in many different formats. I’ve been a full-time translator for nearly 20 years and am…
If you’re looking for a quality translation of your French texts in English, but are not sure where to start, then look no further. I’ll set out what you need to look for as quickly as I can, after having been in the industry for 20 years. 
 1. Look for membership of a translation association 
 These are standard for professional translators, with trade magazines, forums, meetups and much…

 
 Need Swedish to English translation? 
 
 
 
I'd be happy to work with you. With over 15 years in translation, I've seen it all. 
I'm a full member of the Chartered Institute of Linguists, with clients in Sweden, Belgium, Switzerland, France and the UK. I'm happy to take a look at your project and let you know whether or not I can help, or refer you to someone who…
The end of January is a good time to put out an update of where the plans for the year have settled. I’ll keep it brief, which, as you’ll see below, is part of ensuring 2022 goals are hit. 
 There are three major projects on at the moment: 
 
 Freelance work, move to direct and better quality clients 
 Trading/productivity Youtube channel 
 LanguageOps the…
A two-storey house extension on a semi-detached property for under £100k 
 We planned to add a new master bedroom with en-suite, extend the box room, update old bathroom, new WC and living space downstairs and new flooring throughout downstairs. 
 We didn’t necessarily plan for the under-floor heating, new patio, kitchen swings and picture window but they were nice-to-haves, and we…
It’s one of those things you put off doing because you don’t want to see the result. But in the spirit of wresting control of my life from dreamer-mode back over to action-mode, I thought it was high-time I found out where I was at. I make a lot of plans to learn various languages, with Irish, Icelandic, Korean, Chinese and Japanese also on the table. Keeping things realistic and…
Problems 
 In my case, my hand was forced. I updated Debian from Buster to Bullseye and VirtualBox no longer worked. I run a Win7 guest for some client work. It usually works fine but there were a few issues with Vbox, meaning I didn’t mind using this excuse to migrate. 
 
 Resources - VirtualBox was quite a drag on my system. 
 Update cycle on Debian - Constant minor version…
There’s a lot of woo around meditation, unfortunately. Even the purportedly scientific studies fall short of the standard in the majority of cases [1]. It’s little wonder there’s no consensus from health organisations at this stage. The minority of studies that are peer-reviewed and include the proper controls however point to a range of health benefits. These include: 
 improvements in…
This isn’t going to be a long one, but I think it’s quite an important idea. It could possibly be one of the most useful productivity/mindful things I do. Definitely one to share, at least. 
 The problem is focus. Some days it is very hard to stay on track with work, becoming frequently derailed if no major deadline is pressing. I also find it hard to make time to meditate.
What’s next? 
 The eternal question. For a solid base to work from, let’s assume that it helps to be clear on what you already know, your goals and what you need to know to reach them. This can sometimes be a lot of information to juggle. Especially for multiple personal and work projects. 
 The simplest way to get this all out of your head and into a clear, useable format is to take…
I’ve translated millions of words in the fields of manufacturing, engineering and production. From pellet hoppers and differential gearing to tunnel boring machines and pipejackers, I’ve covered a wide range of engineering translations in my 15+ years of working with clients directly and through agencies. 
 If you would like to run your text by me I can give you a quote the same…
When your documents need translating professionally, to have the exact same impact, meaning and tone in English as it did in French, the quickest and most reliable method is to work with a professional translator. 
 I’ve been translating for over 15 years and have covered nearly every type of general business document you could imagine, from contracts and agreements to marketing, web…
The full self-build DIY insulated garden office write-up for remote, nomad, home working, music or writing studio, home trading setup on a budget (doubling as garden room, home cinema)
Here are links to 1000s of posts by the translation and language industry’s most experienced minds, on all aspects of the profession and languages. 
 I’ve focused on English language blogs for maximum reach, but a non-English list might well be a useful addition at a later date! 
 I recommend adding these to an RSS reader for automatic alerts on new posts, as well as the…
If you want a French translator to translate your French text to English without any typos or mistakes, you are in the right place! 
 Spelling mistakes and unclear writing can stop readers in their tracks. 
 This can stop them from buying what you’re selling, or understanding what you’re explaining. 
 Our job as translators and (re-)writers is to make sure the finished…
Hiring professional translators and getting your project translated into other languages is not an obvious task to the uninitiated. 
 Any business operating across language borders will eventually cross this bridge. 
 The good news is that it doesn’t have to be complicated if you bear a few key points in mind. 
 If we agree on the assumption that you want your text to be as…
With financial squawk services costing anywhere from $50 to $500 a month, as a small retail trader I thought it had to be possible to knock something similar together myself, especially as they all compete with each other on Twitter nowadays to get the scoop. 
 It took a little while to get the script right, so as not to read out URLs or other events that pop up on the desktop (personal…
Just a quick write-up on a recent “hack” to share your desktop as a webcam, letting you share your screen or specific windows to any number of people in any video conferencing app. 
 You will need: 
 
 OBS 
 [v4l2loopback] ( https://github.com/umlaeute/v4l2loopback ) (Linux) 
 [obs-virtual-cam] ( https://github.com/CatxFish/obs-virtual-cam ) (Windows) 
 
 To…

 
 
 Besoin de traduction du français vers l’anglais ? 
 
 
 
Traducteur professionnel depuis plus de 15 ans, avec des millions de mots traduits à mon actif, je serais ravi de vous aider dans vos projets et campagnes. 
 Membre agréé du Chartered Institute of Linguists de Londres, mes clients sont basés en France, et un peu partout en Europe. Parlez-moi de votre…
This post should help to clear up whether your project needs a French or English translator when looking to translate into English or French. 
 The first rule, to clear up most of the confusion, is for translators to always work into their mother tongue. This guarantees a basic level of fluency in the output, while the understanding, if the translator is qualified, should be as near to fluent…
If you’re planning a project and keen to know how long to give the translation stage in your schedule or Gantt chart, I’ll give you a few pointers here. Starting early is, predictably, ideal, however not so early that you have to keep revising the translations as the source texts are amended. 
 You can expect a single translator in a single language pair to output around 3000 words…
When you realise that your project is going to need a translation into a foreign language, and that you’re going to have to find a translator or translation agency to do the work, the next question naturally is “how much of my budget is this going to cost?”. 
 I can tell you right away that you can expect to pay per word, in most cases. That is, per number of words in your…
Crypto is obviously here to stay. This is great and I fully support the idea, but in terms of where you trade your money, consider the following points on why crypto isn’t the most reliable way to grow your trading pot. Assuming you know how to properly secure your wallet and are careful about where you trade and exchange, you still need to consider: 
 Liquidity 
 Or the size of the…
I’ve looked at and backtested to high-heaven a range of strategies. Nothing against mean-reversion or trend-following, but being consistent in those areas is harder than in momentum for my style of trading. Mean-reverting into the trend is great, but it relies on support/resistance levels working, or candlestick patterns that aren’t statistically proven anywhere. Momentum has its own…
If you’re anything like me, you’ve seen loads of blog posts about people with 7-figure net worth in their 30s. Often high-earners at FAANG companies or in finance. It feels impossible to reach that level, given current income and age. I think it’s sensible to acknowledge that. 
 From there we can move on to setting a realistic goal for ourselves, based on the same principles,…
After having a good clearout and backup of data at third-party services, all thanks to GDPR pressure, along with recently realising the good side to clearing out life’s baggage, I’ve just set up a Twitter bot, called Harold. 
 Harold is the creation of Adam Drake and can be found here , where you need to do the following to set it up: 
 # Have go installed and paths set up, nav…
4 years after the last move from Wordpress to Drupal, I’ve re-rolled this site under Hugo, a static site generator. It’s not that the Drupal site was defective, and it ran rather well, only it had one or two flaws that bugged me. 
 Why not Drupal? 
 Running on Drupal it was of course picked up by the spammers of the world. As such it was constantly facing attempts to log in and…

 
 Need French to English translation? 
 
 
 
I'd be happy to work with you. With over 15 years in translation, I've seen it all. 
I'm a full member of the Chartered Institute of Linguists, with clients in France, Belgium, Switzerland, Sweden and the UK. I'm happy to take a look at your project and let you know whether or not I can help, or refer you to someone who…
Hello world! I'm still about. Just an update as I know it's been quiet here. I've had my head down, working away like a good 'un for the last... while. In that time I've also left a city office, built a home office (3x bigger!), got set up on a new PC, explored a few writing tools, methods and subjects. I've also been exploring the world of the financial markets in a lot more depth and have spent…

 This 2016 film has it all, if you’re anything like me: 
 
 Alien contact 
 Translation + languages 
 Time paradoxes 
 Mind-bending scenes 
 Spine-tingling drama 
 
 I could criticise certain minor aspects, but overall I was really quite taken by this film. I have the usual regret of not hearing about/reading the book first , but the film presented the…
Presented here is a simple technical method the translation community can employ to gum up the works of the spammers’ spam machines. Why the translation community specifically? Well the method does of course apply to anyone, but the particular spam pandemic (resisting saying ‘spamdemic’… not very well) ravaging the inboxes of LSPs with stolen CVs actually seems to…
Vous voyez bien l’intérêt à traduire vos communications en anglais, mais vous n’arrivez pas à trouver le bon moment ? 
 Pour que votre site soit lu par le plus grand nombre de clients prospects en ligne, et bien référencé par tous les moteurs de recherche, l’argument pour les traductions de contenus vers l’anglais n’a jamais été aussi évident. Mais comment…
Ma réponse initiale à cette question est souvent : combien coûterais-t-il à ne pas faire traduire vos textes ? 
 On est parfois trop concerné par les frais des prestations sans réflechir sur les bénéfices multiples qu’ils pourraient nous apporter. Néanmoins vous avez un budget et il faut être réaliste. Donc combien il nous coûte, cette traduction vers l’anglais de notre site,…
Vous avez déjà votre site web, son contenu, ses billets de blog et des déscriptifs de produits. Vous avez dépensé, les heures de travail de votre effectif inclus, dans les milliers d’euros pour atteindre ce point-là. Les bons nouvelles ? Il ne faut dépenser qu’une partie petite de cette somme pour refaire le tout en anglais. Et vous l’aurez sous une semaine, typiquement. Mais…
Assuming you’ve clicked to read this post, I don’t need to sell you on the benefits of using mutt or a similar CLI client to handle your email load. You may be dealing with some minor issues, however, some of which might be detailed below. Take some ideas or just get a jumpstart in your own setup. Everything you see here was of course patched together from many snippets from manuals,…
I wrote a chapter about this in the book . Some said it was ‘too technical’ for translators, but in my eyes that has always been the same as saying remembering your PIN number is too technical for card payers. You have to make some effort with security or you allow unnecessary risk. People are notoriously bad at judging risk (myself included), but most of us are happy with insurance arrangements.…
I like radio. Audiobooks too, of course, but radio is special. The magic of the transmission, from antenna to receiver in an instant. The closeness of it and the memories it can create. It's quite a unique experience, listening to the radio. I then realised at some point that the airwaves are constantly full of people connected across vast distances. Invisibly, with no infrastructure. After…
How much does translation cost? Translation costs vary between agency and freelancer. It is typically priced per word in the UK, per line in Germany and per page elsewhere. Others may price per project, per day or per hour. The simplest way to compare is to divide your total quote by the number of words in the project and you will have a good gauge for what you are being charged. Estimate some…
I've been sitting on this post for a while, aware of the irony of spending any length of time reading or writing about productivity. But this article should be an axe sharpener, particularly for those interested in getting away from third-party or over-engineered software and back to basics. The goal is to take back control of the entire productivity workflow, operate at K, the speed of keyboard,…
The following was written in early May of 2015, with a view to encouraging take up and interest among colleagues. It has languished in a text file for nearly 6 months, mainly because it is such an indulgence of a post. But on the off-chance that there's some usefulness for others in here, it's t ime to unleash the geek-speak! -- It is done. The plunge has been taken, the ship has set sail and the…
The lure of the Psion 5MX , a 16 year old gadget that I've wanted to try for as long, offering 25-40hr battery life (from 2xAA batteries), no distraction writing and a touch-type keyboard, has proved too tempting. Sitting somewhere between phone (much shorter battery life, distractions etc.) and laptop use it ought to be available for longer writing sessions (like the laptop) when not at my desk…
The Ikea Markus chair: sumptuous webbed backing and cradling lumbar support, leather trim headrest and arm covers, easy levers to recline and drop, hyrdraulic suspension. It was the perfect chair for the most recent part of my self-employed career. It held me close all day, every day, for years without creating discomfort. I was comfy. A little too comfy. Some days I would drift into a kind of…
Much has been written about Marta's book over the last year, here , here and here , for instance, but I thought I'd throw my hat into the ring, in case anyone who hangs around this blog remained undecided. So what did I make of the Business Guide for Translators by Marta Stelmaszak? Short answer: pick up a copy. Long answer... Reports about page and wordcount seem to vary between reviews. I'm not…
I'm just releasing the slides to a webinar first presented on June 20th, 2013. The subject is as per the title above, based on the Translation sales handbook, now available to read in its entirety on this site (see sidebar). The webinar recording itself can be purchased and watched from ecpdwebinars , now at a reduced price of £21, with no VAT to pay since January 1st onwards . All proceeds go to…
Un offre simple : -- Votre texte traduit en anglais courant et professionnel, sous 5 jours, seulement 499 € TTC (*) -- Quels types de texte sont considérés ? Presque tout, des textes marketing, sites web, guides utilisateur aux rapports et communiqués de presse. Contactez-moi par mail avec votre demande et je vous envoie un devis immédiatement. Et si je ne suis pas content du résultat ?
A new translation business book is about to be has been released, and I had the chance to read a preview copy TRANSLATION MARKETING is a subject I like to pay close attention to. It is the fascinating, ever-changing experiment that keeps new business coming through the door, offering up exciting and sometimes nervewracking ways to shape our jobs. Even our careers. So it was with eager anticipation…
Having quite a broad range of technical interests, Luke is much at ease translating manufacturing documents, plans, schematics, CAD drawings (in native file formats using his translation tools) and marketing materials for a variety of industries. From heavy plant to construction and public works, Luke can translate these types of texts from French and Swedish to English. His previous work in this…
Luke takes great pleasure in finding the perfect word or phrase that encapsulates a product or service's message. Targeting the ideal market through words that appeal directly to both the emotional and rational sides of the reader or viewer's minds. The creative translation aspect has been worked over many years of translating over 100 Franco-Belgian comics, bandes dessinées, ensuring each…