Desktop PCs are generally intended to last two to five years, so when my desktop turned seven I started to worry. It’s a great computer (home-built using D.J. Bernstein’s standard workstation specifications), but it’s getting a little slow, it sounds like a 747 taking off when it boots up, the front USB ports have fallen [...]
Archive for April, 2010
Switching to a nettop
Posted in Technology on April 27, 2010 | 5 Comments »
Hot off the press…
Posted in Translation industry news on April 23, 2010 | 1 Comment »
Two pieces of breaking news from the translation trenches: Judy and Dagmar Jenner’s book The Entrepreneurial Linguist is now available for purchase. Judy is not only a very successful freelance translator but also has an MBA in marketing, and this book offers “the business school approach to freelance translation.” Many of us in the industry [...]
Some interesting links
Posted in Links on April 21, 2010 | 1 Comment »
Some coffee break reading from the translation/word industry blogosphere: Paula Dieli over at Essential Project Management has a great post on creative ways to save money in times of crisis. Paula reports that her local translators’ association is saving $1,000 and a lot of paper by using electronic voting for their annual elections! You’re welcome [...]
Test drive: the Personal Efficiency Program
Posted in Book reviews, Productivity on April 20, 2010 | 9 Comments »
I’m not generally a fan of time management literature, but during a recent trip to the local library, Kerry Gleeson’s The Personal Efficiency Program: How to stop feeling overwhelmed and win back control of your work caught my eye (published 2009 by John Wiley and Sons, 4th edition). Lately I’ve been feeling like I’m working [...]
The tyranny of the sub-goal
Posted in Marketing, Productivity on April 13, 2010 | 9 Comments »
I learned the expression “the tyranny of the sub-goal” from my husband, who most frequently applies it to chores around the house, as in “We need to paint the living room but before that we have to fix the hole in the sheetrock where we smashed the corner of the washing machine into the wall.” [...]
Interview on Love Your Job
Posted in Interviews, Nubbin on April 8, 2010 | 2 Comments »
Spanish to English translator Nicole Lisa recently interviewed me for the Love Your Job blog, and the interview is now online here. You can also read the earlier interviews in Love Your Job’s “5 questions for…” series, with posts about an actor, an architect and a voice teacher who all love their jobs.
Potential clients and sticker shock
Posted in Marketing, Money on April 7, 2010 | 17 Comments »
Wiktionary defines sticker shock as “Disgust, shock or fright upon learning the price of an item offered for sale,” and this roughly describes the reaction of many would-be translation buyers when they learn the price of a professional translation. This leaves the professional translator with a dilemma: how to handle a sticker-shocked client. In my [...]
A positive and a negative
Posted in Links, Translation industry news on April 5, 2010 | 5 Comments »
Happy Monday! To start the week off, here’s some positive and negative news from the language world: Positive: I was just listening to NPR‘s Talk of the Nation while eating lunch, and today’s segment featured an interview with NPR’s longtime (and now retiring) war correspondent, Anne Garrels. Garrels started her career reporting in the former [...]
Next session of “Getting started as a freelance translator” starts April 12
Posted in Announcements on April 1, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
The next session of my online course Getting Started as a Freelance Translator starts April 12 and registration is open on my website. I’ve been running this course for about four years to help beginning translators launch successful freelance businesses. During the course, we cover topics such as how to write your translation-targeted résumé and [...]
