I met Marina online in 2024 when I attended one of her LocLunch networking events. Since then I've been following her content and I started noticing some posts about age-inclusive language. This isn't something that I'd thought much about previously, but I wanted to look a bit deeper into the topic - firstly because I think it's important, but also because it's relevant to what I'm trying to do here with the podcast.

We all use language. Many of us are working in multiple languages, but every day we have choices about the language that we use, the way we express ourselves, which words make it into our own vocabulary and which ones we choose to avoid. If we are more intentional about the way we speak, we will not only communicate better, but we also have a chance to be more inclusive and contribute to the changes that many of us want to see.

I have plans for content on other aspects of inclusivity, but today we're focusing on age-inclusive language.

Marina provided a lot of links and further reading. The text on the show notes page is not a transcript, but it gives some context to the links and how they fit into our discussion. We covered other topics too though , so access the episode for the full benefits and find all the extra information here: https://www.englishwithkirsty.com/podcast/episode284

To celebrate 10 years of the English with Kirsty podcast, I’m creating a 10-part series to celebrate 10 different forms that learning can take.

Part seven of the series is about learning through mentoring.

I’m not an expert on this topic, but I’ve read about many official or unofficial programmes which match mentors and mentees to promote growth and learning. I also knew that Women in Localization has a mentoring programme, so I decided to try and find out more about it and discover what people have learned through the experience of being a mentor or a mentee.

Tamara Tirjak and Teresa Toronjo are my guests in this episode. Whilst they are currently working together as a mentor/mentee, they both have experience of both roles.

We talked about:
• Tamara and Theresa’s stories, including their links to the topic of mentoring
• The Women in Localization mentoring programme and how it works
• The difference between mentoring and coaching
• What both of my guests have learned and enjoyed through their involvement in mentoring programmes
• How lerning through mentoring has helped both of my guests, personally and professionally
• Some of the myths around mentoring and how things are in real life
• What makes a good mentor or a good mentee?

You can find out more and access our links on the show notes page: https://www.englishwithkirsty.com/podcast/episode283

If you are eligible and you’d like to sign up for the Women in Localization mentorship programme, you can find out more about it here: 
https://womeninlocalization.com/resources/mentorship-program/

Thank you Tamara and Teresa for sharing your stories and insights with us and exploring this topic of learning through mentoring.

Have you been a mentor or a mentee? What did you learn from the experience?

6/10 Learning through music

To celebrate 10 years of the English with Kirsty podcast, I’m creating a 10-part series to celebrate 10 different forms that learning can take.

Part six of the series is about learning through music and how we can encorporate music into our language learning journeys.

Who would be a good person to talk with me about this? It had to be someone who is not only passionate about music, but who could bring together mucic and language learning with real-life experiences and a story that demonstrates how powerful this combination can be! So I invited my friend Rita Prazeres Gonçalves back to do another episode with me.

We talked about – among other things:

🗣 Rita’s story and the relationship between her love of music and her interest in learning English
🗣 How we can use music to improve our language skills – in terms of vocabulary, pronunciation, and deepening our understanding of the language
🗣 How doing our own transcriptions can be a valuable way to learn (listening comprehension, spelling, conjugating verbs etc)
🗣 How we can make informed choices about which types of music to work with
🗣 Getting to know different parts of our personalities in our different languages

Let us know if you would be interested in a workshop to explore this topic further.#

Are there any songs in your additional languages that have helped you in some way or that are important to you?

Find out more on the show notes page: https://englishwithkirsty.com/podcast/episode282/
And check out Rita's podcast, The Language Worker,  here: https://www.youtube.com/@thelanguageworker1616 

When I saw that the podcast's 10th birthday was coming up, I wanted to do something. But what? It would have to be online because my podcast, my friends, my clients, my guests, and my listeners are spread out across the globe. But what should the event look like? I wasn't sure!

But I did know that, as well as having the podcast in common, my guests and listeners share a common interest in language and learning. That's a good start!

One of my ideas was to record a mini episode while we were together. A couple of people came with prepared questions, but when we opened it up, there were more questions than I'd expected, which was great! I knew about the first four, but the rest of the episode was my spontaneous reactions to questions about what it's like to have a podcast, some of the things that have happened, what having a podcast means for my business, how it feels to be a guest, and my plans for the future - among other topics!

I couldn't answer the question about my favourite episode because I really don't have one - but this was one of my favourites. It reminds me of the time that a group of lovely people came together to celebrate the podcast turning 10. In fact, a couple of people commented privately about what a nice group I'd brought together and I hope that new connections, collaborations, and maybe friendships will come from it.

Thanks to those who helped me with the event, to those who contributed to this episode, and to everyone who came along last week! 

Let me know if you have any ideas or topic suggestions for future episodes - I have the calendar for the next 10 years to fill 😀

You can check out the show notes page here: https://englishwithkirsty.com/podcast/episode281/
This is where you can find me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kirsty-wolf-a8478235/
This is my home on the internet: https://www.englishwithkirsty.com
And you can email me here: [email protected] 

I believe that learning to be yourself, in your first or any other language, is a process! It's a life-long journey of self-discovery!

But it's true that, when we're using additional languages, we sometimes don't show the full extent of who we are. Maybe we don't have the words or maybe we use strategies that make life easier in the short-term, but don't allow our unique personalities or ideas to shine.

I'm talking about five of those strategies today. My clients use them, but I've used all of them too at some point. I explain why they can be a problem and what we can do to challenge ourselves to move past them.

I also mention my mentoring programme - Discover your voice in English: https://englishwithkirsty.com/discover-your-voice-in-english 
Send me a message if you'd like to arrange a call where we can discuss whether the programme is what you're looking for so that you can discover and use your voice in English - effectively and in a way that feels natural.

Do you have any language coping strategies that you want to rely on less in the future?

Find out more on the show notes page: https://www.englishwithkirsty.com/podcast/episode280

Send me an email if you have any questions or suggestions about the English with Kirsty podcast: [email protected]
or come and find me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kirsty-wolf-a8478235/

If you've been following along with the 10 episodes on 10 forms that learning can take, you'll know that I'm creating them as part of the podcast's 10th birthday celebration.

In July 2025, the English with Kirsty podcast will be 10 years old. A lot has happened since July 2015. I've learned a lot. I've changed a lot, both personally and professionally. 

In this episode, I'm sharing with you 10 of the things that I've learned along the way. Maybe you can relate to some of them. Maybe they'll encourage you to finally start that podcast/blog/YouTube channel, or to keep going with a project that you've started recently. Let me know if you've been in similar situations or if you'd like to share any of your learning experiences too.

Also, if you're reading this before 10th July 2025, I'd like to invite you to the podcast's 10th birthday celebration, which will be an online event to celebrate the role of languages and learning in our lives.

You'll meet new people, discover new podcasts, learn something new, and hopefully have fun 😉

The last 10 years have been amazing! ! I've learned a lot and the platform has given me the chance to speak with all kinds of knowledgeable and interesting people, discovering their stories and what they have to share! I've enjoyed sharing those conversations with others and hearing feedback about what people have enjoyed or which content has helped them.

A podcast is nothing without its listeners and the people who have contributed to all the fascinating conversations. I would love to see you there so that we can celebrate the last 10 years and maybe get some inspiration and ideas for the next 10!

Find out more and sign up for the event on the show notes page: https://www.englishwithkirsty.com/podcast/episode279

 | I first discovered Kimberly Martinez from Bright translation on LinkedIn – where else! I signed up for her newsletter because I thought it would be useful for me to learn some new things about the translation industry and, after reading some of Kimberly’s posts on LinkedIn too, I thought she’d be an interesting guest for a conversation on the podcast.
 
 We hadn’t spoken before our podcast conversation, so this was also our chance to get to know one another better.
 
 We talked about:
 
  🗣 How Kimberly became interested in languages and how she works with them today
 🗣 Why Kimberly started her translation business and how it has changed over time
 🗣 What actions we can take as business owners that will help us to grow
 🗣 Tips for going out of our comfort zone, especially in relation to useing additional languages
 🗣 Why Kimberly decided to start her newsletter and some of the good things that have come from it so far.
 
 You can find te show noteshere: https://www.englishwithkirsty.com/podcast/episode278/
 And if you haven't already, sign up for Kimberly's newsletter here: https://kimberlymartinez.substack.com/

To celebrate 10 years of the English with Kirsty podcast, I’m creating a 10-part series to celebrate 10 different forms that learning can take. There will also be an online networking event for guests and listeners to come together on the podcast’s birthday in July 2025.

Part five of the series is about the kind of practical learning that comes from taking action, saying “yes” to new opportunities, bringing about change in our life or business, or putting into practice skills that we’ve been learning.

I brought back some of my good friends, Patrícia, Maria, and Marta,  whom you first met in an episode last year. We have all experienced change – whether that’s the career change that led to us starting our businesses, decisions to offer new services, ways to step out of our comfort zones and become more visible as business owners, or moving through the stages that bring life to new ideas.

We talked about – among other things:

Thanks everyone for being so honest and generous with your insights.

Do you have any tips or comments to add?


Visit the show notes page here: https://englishwithkirsty.com/episode277/

I wanted to give some more time to the topic of audio description so that we can explore it, both as an important way to make films, series, and live events accesible to visually impaired people, and as a new area of work for language professionals to explore.

I got together with a group of language professionals from my network with different types of experience, different working languages (English, German, Italian, and Spanish), to talk about both the role of the audio description script writer and the voice artist.

During our discussion, we covered topics such as:

Practical tips for people who want to find out more or get into either of these areas of work.

Thanks Sion, Francesca, Philipp, Dolores, and Zayda for sharing your experience with us – I think we all learned something!

We had some minor technical difficulties towards the end. It was important to me that we got all of the points into the episode, so I have added in a couple that were rerecorded so that none of the information was lost.

Do you have any tips or comments to add?

You can find the show notes page and further links here: https://englishwithkirsty.com/podcast/episode276/

To celebrate 10 years of the English with Kirsty podcast, I’m creating a 10-part series to celebrate 10 different forms that learning can take.

There will also be an online networking event for guests and listeners to come together on the podcast’s birthday in July. Use the contact form further down if you want to be one of the first to receive more information about the event!

Part four of the series is about how we can learn through business adventures – or intentional travel to help ourselves and our businesses.

I decided to have a conversation with Jane Eggers about this because it’s something that we’ve both done recently. Actually she inspired me!

Jane is a German to English translator who lives in /Germany. For the last 3 years, she’s been coming to England to attend the LinkedIn Live conference and meet up with business friends and contacts.

I’m an English trainer who started off working only with German-speaking clients. This is no longer the case as my business has grown and evolved, but a lot of my work still comes from Germany. I use German for communication with some of my clients and as a bridge language in some of my language training sessions. I had the chance to go to Berlin and I took the opportunity to meet up with some of my clients and friends. I also attended my first in-person LocLunch event.

Jane and I talked about what our trips taught us, how they helped us in terms of our businesses, the value of setting the agenda on your terms (it doesn’t have to be a big event if that’s not your thing), some practical tips, and what we plan to do now – both in terms of new ideas and new travel plans! For Jane, it was good to come back to the UK to be surrounded by English for a while. I really have to hunt for opportunities to speak German, so this emersion in the language was a great experience for me. Both of us enjoyed having the opportunity to participate in events where we could discuss business topics in a different language for a change!

I also mentioned the German version of my networking for language professionals events – the first one will be this month! Check my LinkedIn profile or sign up to the newsletter from the show notes page so that you won’t miss any new events!

Have you been on a business adventure like this? What did you learn? Would you like to go on one?

Visit the show notes page here: https://englishwithkirsty.com/episode275/