Come in, we’ve put the kettle on!

Welcome to our first SATI blog! With about four billion people connected to the internet and social media at an all time high, blogging seems to be everywhere. You may be asking: do we really need another blog? Well, yes. Kick off your shoes, let me tell you why:

Our mission at SATI is to be a home for all language professionals. “Home” suggests that we all choose to live together, and people who live together, talk. They discuss, question, share fears, laugh together – perhaps even gossip a little…

The SATI blog is the living room of our SATI home. It is the space where we can talk freely, the place we can go when life in the world of language gets a bit lonely and we crave the company of others. And we have much to talk about!

The SATI home houses a colourful bunch! Our membership is multiracial, multilingual, and multinational. We do a wide variety of different things linked to the language world. We are brought together by a passion for language and the language industry, but what we also share is that each one of us has felt rather lonely at some point or another. Our blog can help us get to know each other. Our diversity is such a beautiful thing, we have the potential to inspire each other and to break the solitude. So, let me get you some coffee, tell me about yourself…

Our industry is developing and changing at what sometimes feels like a harrowing pace. Some of us feel overwhelmed by the mere idea of keeping up! But it doesn’t have to be this way, we can learn from each other and share our skills. We can get to know new fields by talking with those who are further down the road. We can exchange notes on whatever is new. In this way, our home can be our greatest strength.

A strong home means we can share our fears. Our blog is a place where we can call our problems by name and search for solutions together. We are a community, a family of like-minded people. Whatever your niche, you can guarantee there’ll be someone at the SATI home waiting to embrace you.

So, how do you take your coffee? Tell us about yourself, your world, we want to hear. Something new, something old, something puzzling, something solved. The SATI blog is for all our members. We invite you to send us blog posts in any South African language on any topic related to our industry, the practicalities of our members’ work lives, debates in the language world, whatever you want to discuss here at home.

Christien Terblanche is the executive director of SATI. She has spent all of her professional life working in the language industry. Apart from her work for SATI, she is a freelancer who understands the joys and woes of being your own boss.