Sometimes I affectionately think of myself as the Queen of the Nerds — not because I rule anything in particular, but because I think I could win a nerd election as long as the competition wasn’t too stiff. I even have one single, solitary fan letter from a homeschooler in Australia to prove it.

I was so nerdy growing up, I asked questions in my diary such as “what kind of ice cream do cool kids eat?” and then learned the answer based on silent journalistic observation in a Baskin-Robbins. I saved my gum wrappers and put them over my teeth, pretending they were braces. That’s right: I was so nerdy, I thought braces were the height of fashion. Fortunately for my sense of couture, I did manage to acquire glasses so large they took up most of my face.

The first time I played a video game, I was 18. Prior to me being 18, my entire family was so nerdy we didn’t even have television. You see, being homeschooled until college without technology is basically like growing up in the 1950s. Especially if you’re homeschooled by people who grew up in the 1950s. Basically I just quilted, wrote Star Wars plays for my siblings to enact and read J.R.R. Tolkein books all day — and I am exaggerating only very slightly. So that first time I played a video game, I lost spectacularly. I was too much of a nerd to be any good at video games.

And this is how much of a nerd I am now: I edit texts about linguistics (because I love linguistics) and things like coding. Sometimes I edit texts about video games. Like, the most nerdy parts of video games. The technical, grammar-related parts. And I like it.

This issue, we have several such articles. For all the business-minded nerds who don’t quite know how to get their video game to other markets, we have Andriy Lutsuk’s piece detailing what to put in a localization kit and how to get to the point of sending one to your language service provider. Bill Black and Simone Crosignani, as well as Demid Tishin and Anna Maya Tomala, all contribute to giving advice on game technology and quality. Yasin and Afaf Steiert finish the topic out with their Takeaway.

For the code lovers, we have an introduction to XLIFF 2.0 by Yves Savourel. For the terminologists, Kara Warburton offers some discussion on approaching terminology as a knowledge asset. For the technology junkies, there is a review of SDL Trados 2014 by Richard Sikes and Agelika Zerfaß. We also have stuff on machine translation, cultural stereotypes and more — just in time for me to stereotype myself as possibly the world’s biggest nerd due to my interests, hobbies and the first 18 years of my social awkwardness.

So forgive me for celebrating the nerds among us — I’ve come to the realization that nerds are the coolest kids ever.