Happily for freelance translators everywhere, Alex Eames has revived his free ezine Tranfree. The current issue (71), features two excellent articles, one on “Getting the balance right: preventing and coping with staleness” by Alex himself, and “Tools that have brought smiles to my face, cheer to my heart and success in the mind-over-matter department (in no particular order)” by ever-popular translation technology guru Jost Zetzsche. I have to say that I love not only Alex’s writing style, but the fact that this ‘zine arrives in one’s inbox just as it did in the pre-RSS feed days. I’m glad to see Tranfree back in action!
Tranfree provides great tips for translators and linguists.
Thanks Corinne. 🙂
I’m trying to cover all preferences as far as distribution goes. Hoping to switch over to HTML email at some point as the email “distro” is a little bit primitive in good old plain text. (It’s surprisingly hard to switch list host for a list over 20,000 subscribers 🙁 )
But we’ve also got the web version, a podcast and PDF nowadays – I’m also blogging it, so it can be RSSed for those who prefer that.
Alex
When I started translating a decade ago, Alex’s book was the most useful, inspiring guide to the profession I found. Although I had done well in various areas of consulting for 12+ years before that and had a reasonable grasp of basic principles, I was uncertain in applying some of these to an area which was relatively new to me and which I had consciously avoided for a very long time in order to avoid crossing swords with a professionally jealous s.o. With all its corny graphics and solid common sense, How to Earn $80,000 as a Freelance Translator gave me a lot of confidence by reinforcing my better habits and braking the less beneficial ones a bit.
I particularly like Alex’s light-hearted, no-nonsense approach to the business and his obvious concern for the people involved with it. And the latest issue of tranfree was a particular treat for me, offering contributions by two of my favorite advice-givers in our profession. I hope those two will team up more often in the future.