A couple of years ago I attended an English seminar in the Language Centre of Helsinki University. I write, edit and translate in both Finnish and English, so whenever there is professional training available in English in Finland, I am the first to enroll. Unless it costs a million. There are many of us doing similar work in Finland, both native and non-native speakers, but because there was no organization dedicated to those working with English, we haven’t known about each other.

I really enjoyed the Language Centre seminar in 2012, blogged about it, and what’s best, learned to know the organizers. It was love at first sight, at least on my part, and Julie & co. quickly introduced me to an idea of an organization for those working professionally with the English language in Finland. And why not the rest of the Nordic countries. Editing, revising, translating; I’d like to add writing on the list, too. Because there has not been much networking or affordable further education available in English in Finland, at least not on an adequately professional level.

In short: if you are a professional working with the English language in the Nordic countries, join us. It’ll be fun and very good for you.

The first thing to do was to join MET, the Mediterranean Editors and Translators organization doing an excellent job on the cause in Spain, France, and Italy, for benchmarking. We attended the METMeeting seminar in 2013 and got lots of support for the idea and ideas for our own organization. MET only charges 30 euro per year, and they are inclusive with the memberships in order to expand the educative network – even Scandinavians are accepted as members. Despite the low cost, their lectures and workshops are excellent.

The wheels started rolling. In Finland, we gathered a group of revisers and translators interested in founding NEaT, Nordic Editors and Translators. I’ll skip the boring part about several discussions, meetings, writing the constitution, getting it passed through the Finnish authority, opening a bank account, planning a website… The main thing is that we are now here and in full speed: we’ve had two seminars, one with the Finnish Association of Translators and Interpreters, one mini seminar with our guru Andrew Chesterman, we have a website, a Twitter account @NordicEdiT, a Facebook page. In short: if you are a professional working with the English language in the Nordic countries, join us. It’ll be fun and very good for you.