Graciela and I met recently on LinkedIn and, especially as we haven’t discussed the translation of legal and immigration documents on the podcast before, we decided to make an episode together.

Graciela Darritchon is a certified public translator based in Buenos Aires, specialising in immigration, legal and academic documentation. Through her work with high-stakes, formal texts, she brings a real-world perspective on how professionals use English when clarity, tone and cultural awareness truly matter. Her work focuses on helping people communicate accurately and appropriately across systems and cultures, especially in emotionally charged and high-pressure situations.We talked about:

🎧 Graciela’s story and how she came to be working in her current field of translation
🎧 Bridging legal systems during major life transitions: communication, empathy and cross-cultural navigation
🎧 Finding your authentic professional voice in formal contexts: sounding confident and natural while meeting strict legal requirements
🎧 Graciela’s advice for anyone who is interested in working in this field.

Find out more on the show notes page - https://www.englishwithkirsty.com/podcast/episode298

2 additional events in January 2026 and how they can help you

I’m busy preparing some new interview and group episodes, but I wanted to quickly share the additional events that are happening this month.

You can check all of the current events any time on my events page. This includes the free networking for language professionals, the language meet-up, and the paid memberships for the club and cafe: https://www.englishwithkirsty.com/events

Here are two more events that are happening this month.

Event for translators who want to reactivate their spoken English
It’s not just about doing the work. It’s about building relationships, finding clients, explaining our services…

Some freelancers have been doing this from the beginning. Others are doing more of it these days – maybe because they’re shifting to more direct client work or maybe because they’re offering additional services so that they’re less dependent on one source of income.

It’s one of the topics that comes up at the reactivate your English – English speaking skills for translators sessions too. If the end clients want to communicate in English, it’s important to feel prepared for these conversations in English too. We give some of the time during the 10-week programme so that each participant can explore what this means for them. Thinking about your words, your delivery, and your pitch in advance makes it easier when the real time comes to talk without hesitation and hunting around. You can’t prepare for every question, but you can have a plan and be clear on how you add value …. in English!

Our next groups are starting soon and I’m having an introduction meeting for anyone who wants to find out more:
https://www.linkedin.com/events/7397589043645157376/

This is the link for the event. If you don’t want your contacts to know that you’re coming, just copy the Zoom link and join us on the day. Also, if you can’t make this meeting but you’re interested in the programme, let me know and we can arrange a separate time to chat. You can find out more about the programme here: https://englishwithkirsty.com/english-speaking-skills-for-freelance-translators/


Interactive workshop – how podcasts can help you to learn a language
It’s back – for anyone who missed it the first time or who wasn’t available to attend during the daytime, I’m running this interactive workshop again!

This workshop is for you if you’d like to find the right podcasts to meet your learning needs and then use those podcasts to develop a wide range of language skills – it’s not just about listening!

I work with multilingual professionals who want to develop their English, but these learning strategies will work for other languages too.

Date – 29th January
Time – 18:00 UK/Portugal/19:00 CET
Find out more or buy your ticket here: https://englishwithkirsty.com/podcast-workshop/

The idea for this episode came from a conversation that I had on LinkedIn.

Have you ever written something fairly quickly and then took forever deciding whether you actually want to post it? Do people want to read that? Will they understand what you’re trying to get across? If it’s in an additional language, do you check and recheck it, change bits, put it back to how it was, and still wonder whether it’s ready to go?

It’s frustrating!

It’s not about not having ideas or not knowing how to get them down. That’s a different situation. It’s knowing that you’re giving too much time to this thing that should actually not be taking up so much head space.

That’s our topic for today and I’ve got 7 tips for you to stop the procrastination or perfectionism loop and finally get the thing posted!

Find out more on the show notes page: https://www.englishwithkirsty.com/podcast/episode296

Well, this year has been exciting! I’ve met lots of amazing people! I’m becoming better-known for the things on which I want to concentrate! I did most of the things on my 2025-to-do-list and some things that hadn’t even crossed my mind at the beginning of the year!

This episode is a reflection on

• What happened this year
• What’s coming up on the podcast
• What’s happening with the 7 main topics that I mentioned at the beginning of the year – spoiler, they’re all still relevant!
• 5 lessons that I’ve learned this year

Is there anything you’d like to share about what you’ve learned this year? What are you grateful for?

Find out more on the show notes page - https://englishwithkirsty.com/podcast/episode295/

I met Katharina online last year and we decided to have a conversation on the podcast about something that’s important to both of us … networking!

Ok, it’s something you hear me talking about a lot, but I thought it would be really interesting to get another perspective, especially from someone who hasn’t always been the biggest fan of the activity and who has learned that its definition goes far beyond some of the common stereotypes.

We talked about

• Some of the different forms that networking can take
• Why networking is important for us as independent professionals
• What we enjoy about networking
• Some of the challenges around attending events in our source or additional languages and some strategies to make life easier for ourselves

Click through to the show notes page to get the links that we mentioned including Katharina's newsletter and my events schedule: https://englishwithkirsty.com/podcast/episode294/

I came across Sarah’s work when a friend recommended her book. Since then, I’ve been receiving her marketing tips in her newsletter – and it’s worth subscribing to if you haven’t already!

A few weeks ago, I saw Sarah giving tips on a subject that often comes up in my conversations with clients and networking sessions – the transition from working solely with agencies to approaching potential direct clients for the first time. So I thought it would be good to do an episode on this topic with someone who could bring marketing experience and practical, implementable tips.

We talked about:

• Sarah’s books for translators and why she decided to write them
• Tips to consider when you’re planning to contact potential direct clients, especially if you’ve previously only worked with agencies
• Some common mistakes when it comes to pitching translation services to direct clients and what you can do instead
• Why having a portfolio can be helpful and what else you can do in addition/instead
• Why it’s important to feel confident about presenting yourself and your services in the customer’s language.

You can find out more on the show notes page, where I've also listed all the links to the books and other resources that we mentioned: https://englishwithkirsty.com/podcast/episode293/

I’ve been wanting to talk about this topic for a while and to bring you a conversation with people who are in more of a position to explain, give examples, and help others to either start thinking or learn more about the topic of inclusive language.

In this episode we talked about:

• What is inclusive language?
• What are some general tips that we can implement to make our texts and speech more inclusive?
• Are there any language-specific aspects, approaches, or challenges that we should be aware of in terms of the languages represented on the panel?
• Different experiences of speaking with clients about making their texts more inclusive or pointing out where the original text was not?
• Inclusive language resources that would be useful for translators.

Thanks Renata, Marina, Alicja, Inès, and Charlotte for making this content with me and I look forward to exploring these topics further with you and others in the future.

To find out more about my guests and to see the resource list for this episode, visit the show notes page: https://www.englishwithkirsty.com/podcast/episode292

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.

The final part of the series is about learning through Volunteering. I had a number of people who wanted to be involved, so in the end I decided to split this into three conversations. The third and final part is with Colette Myler, whom I met back in 2021 when we were attending some of the same international networking events together.

What did we talk about?

I really wanted to show some of the different ways in which people can be volunteers, so I spoke with people doing very different roles. We talked about:

• Colette’s story – why she decided to volunteer and which organisations she chose.
• The skills and knowledge that Colette brings to her volunteering roles and some of the new skills that she’s gained over the years
• Some of the things that Colette has learned through her volunteering experiences – as well as some of the people whom she’s met along the way.
• How volunteering and being part of the community are part of the balance we need – and how this balance has more components than just our work and the rest of our life
• Tips for getting started.

Find out more on the show notes page: https://englishwithkirsty.com/podcast/episode291/