Michelle Vranizan Rafter’s blog, WordCount, has an excellent post about ways to promote your freelance writing, most of which are applicable to translation as well. When it comes to things like blogs, e-newsletters, podcasts and even websites, part of the appeal for translators is that the market is quite open. While some demographic groups (moms, [...]
Archive for April, 2008
Tips for promoting your freelance services
Posted in Freelancing, Links, Marketing on April 30, 2008 | 1 Comment »
Why we love our specializations
Posted in Freelancing, Translation technique on April 30, 2008 | 1 Comment »
Over at Yndigo, Glenn Cain has a wonderful post entitled Make mine plain, about, among other things, the push for plain language in legal writing and the resulting effect on legal translators. As I read this post, I found myself thinking, “but I love legalese,” and I’m actually not kidding here. To me, there are [...]
An interesting translation specialization
Posted in Freelancing, Technology on April 24, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
As promised a few posts back, here’s some information about David Russi, an English>Spanish translator here in Colorado, who after many years of freelancing, has gone in-house as a translator for COMET (Cooperative Program for Operational Meteorology, Education and Training) and loves it. COMET’s outreach efforts including Spanish translation have clearly paid off, as their [...]
Open up
Posted in Freelancing, Technology on April 23, 2008 | 1 Comment »
Free and Open Source Software (FOSS), according to my unscientific observations, seems to be gaining some traction in the translation industry. FOSS, software for which the source code is publicly available, is often (though not always) cost-free, and is often localized into more languages than is proprietary software. Now that I’m going steady with OmegaT, [...]
The environmental benefits of freelancing
Posted in Freelancing, Links on April 23, 2008 | 1 Comment »
Here is an interesting post from the blog “Masked Translator,” focusing on the ways in which home-based translation is an exceedingly environmentally-friendly job. Masked Translator makes a number of great points, including a separation between true home-based workers and “home-based” workers whose carbon footprint is actually quite large because they travel from home to work-related [...]
Dispute resolution in the translation industry
Posted in Freelancing, Translation quality on April 21, 2008 | 4 Comments »
For better or for worse, the translation industry does not currently have a standard procedure or body for resolving disputes between translators and clients. So, clients who feel that a translator has delivered substandard work and translators who feel that they’ve been unfairly treated by clients do not have a standard avenue of recourse and [...]
The cost of inadequate language services
Posted in Links, Nubbin, Translation quality on April 18, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Here is an interesting post from Nataly Kelly’s blog “From Our Lips to Your Ears,” about the real costs of using unqualified or incompetent interpreters.
Twin Translations: A passion for languages, squared
Posted in Freelancing on April 18, 2008 | 3 Comments »
If you’re a freelancer, chances are you’ve worked on “one of those projects” (or maybe more than one!) where you wished you had another one of you to take on some of the work. And if you’re Judy or Dagy (short for Dagmar) Jenner of Las Vegas and Vienna-based Twin Translations, you picked up the [...]
Machine translation has its uses, but…
Posted in Humor, Links, Nubbin on April 16, 2008 | 3 Comments »
Thanks to reader (and outstanding colleague!) Jill Sommer for sending the link to this post from the blog “Resumé Hell” (amusing takes on job searching, written by a recruiter), featuring a cover letter produced by an online translation tool.
An interesting new translation blog
Posted in Links, Nubbin on April 16, 2008 | 6 Comments »
Translator and translation agency owner Glenn Cain recently started a blog on his Yndigo translations site. It’s a great read and covers topics ranging from the use of sic to translator certification to how to select an interpreter. Give it a look, especially if you’re inside on a snowy day like the one we’re having [...]
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If you enjoy Corinne’s blog, check out her book!
Corinne McKay is an ATA-certified French to English translator specializing in international development, law and non-fiction books. She launched Thoughts on Translation in February, 2008 as a way to connect and share ideas with freelance translators around the world.
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