On Monday evening, Eve Bodeux, Riccardo Schiaffino and I presented a professional development session on “Social Media: Web 2.0 for Translators” for the Colorado Translators Association. I covered LinkedIn and Facebook, Riccardo handled Blogging 101 (you can download Riccardo’s excellent presentation from his website link above) and Eve wrapped things up with Twitter. Given that [...]
Archive for the ‘Technology’ Category
Reader survey: the best and worst things about your CAT tools
Posted in Reader survey, Technology on January 25, 2010 | 6 Comments »
In preparation for the second edition of How to Succeed as a Freelance Translator, I’m revising the chapter on translation technology. I’d like to include some “best and worst” observations from translators who use various translation environment tools, so if you are interested in having your comments included (anonymously) in this chapter, please submit them. [...]
Using image searches for translation research
Posted in Technology, tagged Google Images, image search, images on January 7, 2010 | 4 Comments »
When you’re doing research for a translation, don’t restrict yourself to searching only on text sites. Image searches are really useful as well, and sometimes more so than text searches. Following are a couple of examples I’ve come across lately. I recently translated a list of advertising keywords for a fashion company. I always find [...]
Why you need your own domain name
Posted in Marketing, Technology on November 13, 2009 | 17 Comments »
What’s in a domain name (corny, I know, but too obvious to pass up…)? A lot, as it turns out. As freelancers who are dependent on e-mail to keep our businesses running, domain names are very, very important. The three basic options when it comes to e-mail are: Use a domain name provided by your [...]
Personal software training: a niche waiting to be filled?
Posted in Money, Technology on July 15, 2009 | 8 Comments »
Last weekend, I had the pleasure of giving a seminar on “Beyond the Basics of Freelancing” for the Northern California Translators Association. At the end of the seminar, I did a short overview of ways to diversify your freelance income stream. All of us are familiar with the basics such as editing, proofreading, voiceover, copywriting, [...]
Netbooks
Posted in Technology on June 16, 2009 | 14 Comments »
Thoughts on Translation is back from vacation (Costa Rica was amazing, thanks for asking!) and ready to attack some new projects. Summer always seems to be a challenging work time; I’m in and out of the office a lot doing fun things with the family and we also travel for several weeks, so I’m usually [...]
Running Wordfast Pro on Linux
Posted in Technology on May 11, 2009 | 6 Comments »
Like many other open source software-using translators, I was really excited when Wordfast announced that it was releasing a platform-independent translation environment tool, Wordfast Pro. OmegaT is my tool of choice, but when a client wants Trados-style uncleaned files, I often find it easier to work in Wordfast than to create the uncleaned files from [...]
Resources for free and open source software users
Posted in Technology on April 9, 2009 | 9 Comments »
As I’ve mentioned before, I run my translation business using free and open source software almost exclusively. I say “almost” because I have in the past run Microsoft Office and Wordfast using CrossOver Linux, a tool that allows you to run Windows software on Linux without a Windows license. In addition, although my primary computer [...]
Speaking of Translation: translation blogs
Posted in Nubbin, Technology, Translation industry news on March 5, 2009 | 6 Comments »
The third episode of Speaking of Translation is live! Speaking of Translation is a podcast (I think that you can guess the general topic…) hosted by Eve Bodeux and myself, and in each episode we focus on a different aspect of the translation industry. This time, we reviewed a number of translation and language-related blogs [...]
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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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