Posted in Buying translations on May 14, 2008 | 3 Comments »
When asked how their work load is these days, most translators I know and work with will respond, “Never busier.” This seems, not surprisingly, to have led to a situation where translation buyers are having an increasingly difficult time recruiting qualified translators, so I’ve put together a few pieces of advice on best practices for [...]
Posted in Freelancing on May 12, 2008 | 5 Comments »
When a translator and a translation client are located in different countries, the usual issues that have to be resolved with payments (rate, payment terms, etc.) are joined by an additional question, that of the payment method. From the perspective of a U.S.-based translator, here are a few international payment method options and some of [...]
Posted in Technology on May 9, 2008 | No Comments »
I will go back to writing translation-specific posts, but here’s an update on the treadmill desk based on my (admittedly still limited!) experiences this week.
So far I still really like it, the adjustment has actually been much easier than I thought. I had planned to start by using it a few hours at a time, [...]
Posted in Technology on May 7, 2008 | 13 Comments »
As one of those translators who’s always said, “I love everything about my job except sitting at a desk all day,” I’ve been intrigued for a while by the idea of the treadmill desk. Exercising while you work has been in the news of late, ever since Dr. James Levine, an obesity researcher at the [...]
Posted in Translation technique on May 7, 2008 | 4 Comments »
It’s interesting how some linguistic issues seem to get solved and then are up for solution again, as seems to be the case with gendered pronouns in English. The first wave of gender-neutral language was inspired by the realization that many professions that had traditionally been all male (fireman, mailman) were now becoming more gender [...]
Posted in Links, Nubbin, Translation quality on May 6, 2008 | No Comments »
Here is an interesting post from the blog “Working Languages” about the EU’s shortage of qualified into-English interpreters. The EU blames the candidates’ poor English skills, characterized by overuse of the word “like,” while the blogger argues that a larger culprit is the lack of financial incentives for qualified interpreters.
Posted in Freelancing, Marketing on May 5, 2008 | 3 Comments »
What with the U.S. economy on a downward slide and the euro continuing its climb above U.S. $1.50, many translators are marketing these days. Following are some tips on writing a translation-targeted résumé that will pass muster with potential clients.
Let’s start with the obvious but often overlooked: prominently state your language pair(s). It sounds crazy, [...]
Posted in Freelancing, Marketing, Technology on May 1, 2008 | 4 Comments »
The issue of translation memory discounts, whereby a translator charges a lower rate for words that appear as repetitions or fuzzy matches in a translation environment/CAT/TM tool, is a contentious one. On the one hand, a client might reasonably argue that changing “press the green button” to “press the red button” doesn’t involve translating four [...]
