No matter how meticulous you are about a) your translations and b) your business practices, you can’t work as a freelancer without dealing with disgruntled clients from time to time. First, let’s say this: unless you love interpersonal conflict, dealing with unhappy clients is awful. Running your own business means caring very deeply about your [...]
Archive for the ‘Translation quality’ Category
When a client is dissatisfied
Posted in Clients, Translation quality on October 10, 2011 | 19 Comments »
Happy 2011: Are bad habits a form of self-protection?
Posted in Freelancing, Marketing, Productivity, Translation quality, Working from home on January 5, 2011 | 4 Comments »
Happy 2011 to everyone out there in the translation blogosphere! To start the year off, here’s a very interesting interview I came across: sports writer Bill Simmons interviewing New Yorker writer Malcolm Gladwell. Both Simmons and Gladwell draw some interesting parallels between sports and the rest of life, but my favorite is Gladwell’s take on [...]
ATA conference wrapup
Posted in Professional associations, Professional development, Translation industry news, Translation quality on November 5, 2010 | 2 Comments »
I know that this post will show my local bias, but this year’s ATA conference in Denver was just fantastic. I didn’t actually take any photos, but you can see a few on Jill Sommer’s blog and look at the daily conference slide show on the ATA website. Thanks to Jeff Sanfacon of ATA for [...]
Spicing up your translations with little-used expressions
Posted in Translation quality on August 23, 2010 | 14 Comments »
At last summer’s Translate in the Catskills conference (I know, I talk about this conference all the time…it was great!), instructor Grant Hamilton commented that he had never seen a translator use the expressions “giving short shrift” or “paying little heed.” Grant’s point was that most translators stick to the path of least resistance, the [...]
How to be a better proofreader
Posted in Translation quality on June 28, 2010 | 9 Comments »
If you’re looking to move up in the translation market, more effective proofreading is critical. If you’re the type of person who cringes at the sight of an error in print, make sure that your translations aren’t contributing to the problem, and give your clients that extra quality step that marks your service as above [...]
Misspelled words I’m tired of seeing
Posted in Translation quality, Translation technique on May 4, 2010 | 32 Comments »
Like many translators and other word people, I have a low tolerance for spelling, grammar and punctuation errors in print. Thankfully it’s not just me; when I took a series of editing classes with Alice Levine a couple of years ago, she opened the class with a New Yorker cartoon (you don’t even need the [...]
Some thoughts on feedback and the translation process
Posted in Freelancing, Translation quality on March 30, 2009 | 4 Comments »
Sorry for the unannounced week of silence here at Thoughts on Translation; I went on vacation for a week and suddenly became violently allergic to using my laptop… but it seems that the bad reaction has now passed and Thoughts on Translation is back at the treadmill and ready to open up some new topics. [...]
Improving the quality of your translations
Posted in Translation quality on January 15, 2009 | 4 Comments »
If one of your goals for 2009 is to market your translation services to a more discriminating client base, you’ll certainly want to step up your marketing efforts. At the same time, it’s important to focus on the quality of the product you’re offering; don’t try to sell a Yugo at Mercedes prices. The latest [...]
Link: an interesting take on translation quality
Posted in Links, Nubbin, Translation quality on December 12, 2008 | 6 Comments »
Ryan Ginstrom has a really interesting post (that links to yet another post) on translation quality. Besides learning the helpful term “chokuyaku” (apparently Japanese for “literal translation”), you can find out about one translator’s novel take on the “you get what you pay for” issue; this translator spends as much time on the project as [...]
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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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