A Translation Bloggers Community

During my further reading on marketing strategies I came across the advice to create a two-tiered website: one section would be aimed at potential clients, the other would be for peers.That seems to me makes a lot of sense. On the one hand, we want to attract potential clients, on the other hand, we are also looking for referrals from other translators. Besides, working by ourselves in our home offices, we need the cross-fertilization that comes with talking to others in the same profession.

This blog is already mostly about working as a translator and seems to be mostly read by others in the profession, or entering the field. So it will become the "peer section" of my website. To that end, I've added on the right-hand side a list of links to other translators' blogs and compilations of blogs. My website, then, while retaining a link to this blog (and vice versa) will become even more of a(n attempted) client-acquisition vehicle.

There are, of course, any number of translators' blogs out there. The American Translators' Association lists some of these in its "Blog Trekker" section, but that is only a small number of the available blogs. To turn all of these individual blogs into a conversation we need a common platform on which to exchange our ideas. Sure, we can read and comment on some of the posts, maybe subscribe to several better-known blogs, but none of us has the time to read everything that's being posted by colleagues.

I'm not talking about Watercooler or some of the other fee-based groups that exist. I also don't think creating yet another proprietary platform would be helpful. Instead, we need to find a way to connect all our existing blogs into some sort of network-- preferably one that can be searched by topic, in combination with posting language(s). So, if I'm interested in how other translators have handled non-payment issues from agencies in Eastern Europe, for example, I can check one location rather than having to search various forums and blogs. Since by definition we all speak more than one language -- but none of us speak all the languages in which such information may be available -- it would be helpful if such a search could then be limited to certain languages.

Is this a pipe dream? Would it be helpful? Could it be done? What do you think?

Maybe this is not feasible.