Thank you, World!

Since it is an international day in my world (International Translation Day), I would like to thank everyone who has visited my blog in the four months since I migrated to WordPress.

I love looking at the map on my Stats page, if only to know just how much of our planet has Internet connectivity. I also get Summer Olympics déjà vu: you know, the part in the opening ceremony when you think the country procession is almost over, only to discover that your little pea brain has forgotten about the existence of at least twenty countries beginning in English with the letters S to Z?

Here is my All Time view:

USA leads by far in the visitor count.  Every time I type the word “flavour” or “organisation”, I toy with the idea of choosing the US spelling, but cannot bring myself to do so. I have nothing against US spelling. It is just that I was brought up with UK spelling and I am aware that it is not only spelling differences, but lexical choices and even some sentence constructions  which contribute to the difference between the two language variants. For this reason, I shall stick to the variant I know, and trust that general intelligibility of my posts is not diminished as a result!

I had to fiddle with the zoom to capture the list of countries from which I have received the occasional visitor:

The fact that I am a translator, and connected to people I have never met in real life all over the world might well account for the apparently wide coverage. While I have a pretty good idea who is accessing my site from Japan (and that is about as cheeky as I am going to get! 🙂 ), as well as a couple of other less well-represented countries, I cannot pretend to guess who might be visiting from many of the other countries on the list. This does not matter; I am glad you have read at least something here, no matter where you are stationed on this Earth.

It did occur to me, however, that some readers may not be commenting because they do not feel confident enough to write in English. If that is the case, you are welcome to comment in German, French, or Portuguese, which I will understand fine. I will also partially understand anything written in Afrikaans, Dutch, Spanish, and to a lesser extent, Italian. I cannot promise perfect replies in any of these languages, but will do my best! I should also say that I will not judge your use of language in English, particularly since people in my country of residence – Portugal – are so forgiving of the errors I still make with daily regularity.

Allison