When it comes to raising your translation rates, what’s the correct strategy: ask or tell? A colleague and I talked about this at length today, and it struck me as good food for thought. In one sense, other professional service providers don’t phone you up and ask if it’s OK with you if they raise [...]
Archive for August, 2008
Supplier or demander?
Posted in Marketing, Rates on August 28, 2008 | 5 Comments »
Paper dictionary to the rescue
Posted in Translation quality, Translation technique on August 26, 2008 | 4 Comments »
Web-based terminology databases are a wonderful thing for translators. As compared to the research tools of times gone by, we now have access to resources that are vast, free, and easily updated when new terms arrive on the scene. A few of my favorites are: Le Grand Dictionnaire Terminologique Inter Active Terminology for Europe (IATE) [...]
Join a list, check it twice
Posted in Freelancing on August 25, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Especially in uncertain economic times, it’s critical to find out what other translators are saying about prospective clients before you take on work from them. In addition, even those of us who make a standard practice of checking an agency’s payment ratings before accepting work need to add an additional step: re-checking the ratings for [...]
Some thoughts on financial solvency
Posted in Freelancing, Money on August 22, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Beth Hayden’s blog on blogging recently led me to a fantastic blog on personal finance, Get Rich Slowly (isn’t that a great title?). Although this blog is obviously not related to translation or even specifically to self-employment, it’s loaded with great advice for people in all types of financial situations; and of course, a big [...]
Hire yourself
Posted in Freelancing on August 22, 2008 | 1 Comment »
An excellent piece of advice that I’ve seen in various places (such as the Business Smarts column in the ATA Chronicle) is for self-employed freelance translators to “think of yourself as your own employee.” Taking a third-person look at your business, as if you’re the boss and some other person is the employee, is a [...]
Online translation income calculator
Posted in Freelancing, Translation industry news on August 20, 2008 | 2 Comments »
Thanks to ATA member Dorothee Racette for sending the link to the new income calculator on the ATA website. This is a helpful tool that allows you to calculate your monthly and annual gross translation income based on how much you work and how much you charge. The income calculator is good food for thought [...]
On vacation
Posted in Announcements on August 5, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Thoughts on Translation will be taking a vacation break until August 18. Thanks for reading and please visit again in mid-August!
Inserting accented characters in OpenOffice.org
Posted in Technology on August 5, 2008 | 9 Comments »
OpenOffice.org is a fantastic office suite for most translators. It’s free, it’s stable, it’s localized into many languages that the proprietary companies will never touch …there’s a lot to love. For a long time, the only feature of OO.o that I’ve found problematic (other than the fact that its macros are not compatible with Microsoft [...]
Google Translation Center
Posted in Technology, Translation industry news on August 5, 2008 | 7 Comments »
Thanks to reader Dierk Seeburg for sending the link to an article from the Washington Post about Google’s new Google Translation Center service (not yet fully launched, login seems not to work using a regular Google account). The Post article has a link to a yet more interesting article on Google Blogoscoped where one can [...]
Happy Swiss National Day
Posted in Announcements on August 1, 2008 | 1 Comment »
Although the thought of a traditional bonfire isn’t particularly appealing when it’s supposed to be 98 degrees, Joyeux Premier Août to all the Swiss out there! As an honorary Swiss (being the wife, daughter-in-law and now mother of Swiss citizens!), one of the things I love about Switzerland is how old everything is, as when [...]
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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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