Join me on December 9 for a two-hour master class for translators and interpreters who would like to aim for an income of US $100,000 or the part-time equivalent, with an emphasis on how to do this in the age of AI and MT. Registration is $75 and includes the recording. We’ll cover:

• Analyzing your current workflow and revenue streams to identify what factors are holding you back from earning a higher income
• Calculating how much you need to charge in order to reach a six-figure income; implementing green, yellow, and red zone rates
• Identifying limiting beliefs that freelancers often have, and mindset shifts that six-figure freelancers have made
• The role of diversification in a high-income freelance business
• The mindset and logistics of reinventing your business in the age of AI and MT, with an emphasis on marketing to direct clients

Registration includes:
-Live master class via Zoom
-Recording provided after the live session

Would you love to translate books, but don’t know where to start? In this one-hour class, you’ll learn the basics: the lifecycle of a book translation, from the idea stage to the rights arrangement, finding a publisher and signing a contract, and marketing the book. We’ll also talk about self-publishing, and about translating books in the public domain.

The live session is on Thursday, December 11 from 12 noon to 1 PM New York time. Register here, and apply the coupon code FREE when you check out!

Greetings, Training for Translators subscribers! A quick tip for this week because I’m taking the week off for U.S. Thanksgiving (wishing a great holiday to those who celebrate!). 

December classes open for registration 

This month’s educational offerings are open for registration! Thanks to everyone who signed up for this month’s session of Breaking into the subtitling market, with guest instructor Molly Yurick. Reply to this e-mail if you’d like to be on the wait list for the next session!

• Master class on December 9: Aiming for six figures, in the age of AI and MT. A two-hour master class for freelancers who want to aim for an income of US $100,000 or the part-time equivalent, with an emphasis on how to do this in the age of AI and MT. Registration is $75 and includes the recording.
• Free webinar on December 11: Getting started as a book translator. A one-hour webinar on the basics of translating fiction and non-fiction books for traditional publishers or for self-published authors. Free! Use coupon code FREE at checkout; everyone who registers will receive the recording. 
• Reply to this e-mail if you’d like to be on the wait list for the December/January session of Direct client research lab, my personalized direct client marketing class. You’ll receive the current price ($160) instead of $170 when regular registration opens. 

This week’s topic: It’s time for a holiday availability nudge!

Particularly if you’re just starting out as a freelancer, or if you need more work, being available over the holidays (in the U.S., we’re primarily talking Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s) can be a really good way to land new clients, or more work from an existing client. It’s a time of year when some clients have no choice but to try a new translator or interpreter, because many of their experienced people are taking time off. Here’s how to do it:

• Prepare a list of every client you’ve worked with (and liked!) in 2025. Send them a message like this:

“Hello [name], I hope you’re doing well! Ahead of the upcoming holiday season, I wanted to let you know my availability for work” [Then tell them when you’re working, with emphasis on times that other people are probably not working] “Thank you for the interesting projects that you’ve sent me in the past, and I hope that you and your loved ones have a wonderful holiday season!”

• Then go back to dormant clients who you liked working with, but who you haven’t heard from in at least three months. Send a similar message, but between the first and second sentence, say something like “In looking over my records, I noticed that we haven’t worked together since [describe the last project]. I really enjoyed working with you on that, and wondered if you might have any similar projects in the pipeline?” Then continue with the holiday availability message. 
• Finally, apply this to any prospective clients who’ve expressed an interest in working with you but who haven’t yet sent you anything. Send a similar message, but between the first and second sentence, say something like, “In looking over my records, I see that [then describe what happened: “We had talked about me potentially translating your annual report.” “You had mentioned that you might need a Japanese interpreter for your upcoming focus groups.”] Then continue with the holiday availability message, but remove the reference to “interesting projects that you’ve sent me in the past.” 

This is a simple technique that has resulted in work for a lot of freelancers I’ve talked to lately! Let me know how it goes if you try it!

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Breaking Into the Subtitling Market: registration closes on Sunday

Registration for guest instructor Molly Yurick’s self-paced class (with live question and answer sessions), Breaking Into the Subtitling Market closes on Sunday (November 23). Registration is $110 and gets you six months of access to the course materials (see the course web page for a full description of all of the modules), plus two opportunities for a live session with Molly to get your questions answered (recordings provided). We have a good group signed up, and there’s room for anyone who is subtitling-curious! 

**The November/December session of Direct client research lab is sold out; reply to this e-mail if you’d like to be on the wait list for the December/January session. 

Bonus blog post: How business Amex points got me a free ticket to London

I’m not a huge miles and points person (I’d usually rather just shop for a deal), but here’s an easy win that you might want to look at. By charging only my normal business expenses on an American Express Blue Business Plus card that I opened in May, I was able to get a free ticket from New York to London for my summer 2026 Europe trip. Here’s how I did it! 

This week’s topic: I marketed even though I was busy…then I had to turn down work. Should we really keep marketing when we’re busy? 

Thanks to a reader for suggesting this topic. Here’s what they wrote to me: 

“In the Spring of this year, I did some targeted marketing, and quite quickly received an inquiry that would have taken about 3 weeks to work on– time that I really did not have, because I was so busy working for other clients. [Aside from Corinne: this reader notes that she joined my March Marketing Madness challenge group and had a couple of clients offer her large, ongoing projects during that group, but “out of the blue,” not because of the marketing she did: interesting!]  So I had to turn that client down, which was unpleasant, but inevitable.

On the one hand, it makes sense to continuously market, but on the other hand I may be unable to accept the work new clients offer. For that reason, in the past, I only marketed in periods in which I did not have enough work (which is suboptimal for the reasons we know and does not ensure continuity/stability in the workflow).” 

The reader asked if I could address this in a future newsletter, and it’s a great topic! There’s no one, single answer (if only, right???) and it really depends on the type of work that you do, your financial resources, and how much it stresses you out to not have work in the pipeline. Let’s dive in! 

First: Why market consistently? 

This reader correctly uses the term “suboptimal” to describe the way most of us market:

• Yikes! I don’t have enough work! I need to do some marketing!
• [Markets like crazy for some period of time, resulting in an influx of work from existing or new clients]
• Yikes! I’m scrambling to keep up because I have so much work!
• [Immediately stops marketing, until…]
• Yikes! I don’t have enough work! I need to do some marketing!

Wash, rinse, repeat, right? Most of us know that avoiding this cycle is the reason we should market consistently. But it’s also not that simple! Because…

A few truths about freelancing 

• As a freelancer, it’s very rare that you have just the right amount of work. Typically you have a little less than you’d like, or a little more than you’d like. Personally, because I hate worrying about money and like to maintain a healthy buffer in my business and personal finances, I’d prefer to have a little too much work, rather than a little too little. 
• If we want to work 40 hours per week, we should set our rates so that we can reach our target income with 25-30 hours of paid work. That leaves some buffer time (are we starting to sense the importance of the word “buffer”??) for non-billable tasks like marketing, accounting, professional development, following up with dormant clients, etc. but it also allows us to take on some extra work without having to work 80 hours week. However, a lot of us aren’t doing this: we’re working for rates that require us to actually generate income 40 (or 60, or 80) hours a week. Personally, I aim for 25 billable hours a week. This means that even if I worked “full overtime” for a week, I could let my non-billable work go and work 50 hours. Not my first choice, but not the end of the world. 
• FOMO is always a factor. You’re never going to have a zero risk of having to turn down a great-sounding project, and being too busy is only one of the reasons that can happen. 
• At the end of the day, the real question about work flow and work volume is, are you earning what you want or need to be earning? If you’re going through busy and not-so-busy business cycles, that’s not necessarily a problem and can even be desirable, as long as your total income adds up to what you want or need to make.

OK, but what do we do?? 

Hah, darn, I was hoping I could get away without answering that! Here’s what I think you should do:

• If, right now, you don’t have enough work and you’re not earning what you want or need to be earning, you should be marketing with every second that you don’t have paying work. Don’t worry, at least right now, about a sudden onslaught of work that results in you turning down the project of the century. Worry about that after you have enough work. 
• Accept that total equilibrium as a freelancer is difficult to impossible to achieve. As referenced above: you’re almost never going to have the perfect amount of work, and you’re almost always at risk of turning down a really good project, unless you have unlimited availability and zero need for sleep or time off. 
• Always be marketing, but not necessarily always actively marketing. Here’s the subtlest but perhaps most important part. I firmly believe that you should always be marketing, because if you’re not putting the word out about your services, you’re at a serious risk of stagnation. But this doesn’t always mean applying to five new clients a day. Back in 2023, I wrote a blog post on this topic, detailing my marketing efforts over a two to three-week period, very few of which were what I’d call active marketing. Right now, I’m not actively marketing for interpreting work, because I’m already turning down my regular interpreting clients more than I’d like. But I’m still doing many of the things I describe in that blog post. 
• All of this also depends on your financial situation. Honestly, the best protection against bad business decisions is a business savings account, in which you leave (and don’t touch) three to six months of expenses. That means that when work slows down, you’re not panicking, because you’re earning the money that pays the bills in three, four, five, or six months, not the money that pays the bills in two weeks. Personally, I enjoy working at a fast pace; I’m easily bored and I love what I do. But if you enjoy working at a slower pace, where you think, if given the choice between working a little too much or working a little too little, I’d pick “a little too little,” then that’s what you do. Beef up your business savings account and dip into it when work slows down and you’re marketing for some new stuff. Instead of thinking of it as your “rainy day/emergency fund” (which is what I do), think of it as your “recharge my batteries” fund! 

I hope these tips are helpful! Have a great week!

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Only somewhat work-related, but fun!

I’m a travel fanatic, but I’m not a big miles and points person; rather than juggling the annual fees and welcome bonuses, eating at restaurants with Z in the name on the sixth Thursday of the month to get 25x points, I’d typically rather just shop for a deal. And deals exist: when I went to Fiji earlier this year, we paid US $1,500 each for roundtrip airfare and four nights at a five-star resort; the whole trip cost me less than $2,000, to fly (literally) halfway around the world and stay at the Marriott Momi Bay, the only five-star resort I’ve ever been to. Plus I’m one of the weirdos who actually loves every aspect of travel (the people-watching, the tiny snacks, the ill-behaved animals) so I don’t particularly care about lounge access or priority boarding, and not only do I never check luggage, I’ve downsized from a standard carry-on to an under-seat bag, so the free checked bag benefits are of zero interest to me.

I should do more with miles and points, because I’m kind of an ideal candidate: I have excellent credit and no debt, and I’ve never carried a credit card balance in my life. I should do more, I just haven’t. I think there’s also a lot of evidence to suggest that, dollar for dollar, you’re better off using a cash-back credit card and just putting that money into your travel fund. But here’s an exception, maybe of interest to anyone in the US who’s self-employed.

Earlier this year I got an American Express Blue Business Plus credit card for business expenses. It’s no annual fee, and to get the welcome bonus (15,000 Amex points) you only have to spend $3,000 in the first three months. With my usual business expenses plus a few work-related trips (most of which were then reimbursed by clients) I ended up with 22,000 Amex points since I opened the card in May.

What to do with 22,000 Amex points, which isn’t really that many? Well, one day I was listening to the Frequent Miler on the Air podcast, and they were highlighting the best deals when you transfer credit card points to airline mileage programs. Their top pick was transferring Amex points to Virgin Atlantic, where you can get a one-way ticket from New York to London for as little as 12,000 points (which, conventional wisdom would have it, are worth only about $120). This coincided nicely with a plan I was hatching with a couple of friends, to go to London this summer, then on to Denmark and Holland.

Following the podcast’s advice, I checked the award ticket availability *before* I transferred the points (because you can’t reverse the transfer), and indeed I could have gotten JFK-Heathrow for 12,000 points, but I’ve been wanting to try Virgin’s daytime transatlantic flight (leaves JFK at 8 AM, arrives in London at 8 PM) for jet lag avoidance reasons, so I got that for 20,000 points and $108 in taxes, then I booked an award ticket for Denver-NYC on Southwest, using some Southwest points that I had on my personal credit card.

I still feel like the blackbelt miles/points thing is more work than I want to put in (switching all my auto-pays between cards, tracking the progress toward the welcome bonus), but this was pretty easy and gratifying!!

Another entry-level tip in that Frequent Miler episode: if you’re a member of a hotel chain’s loyalty program, see if they ever have points sales, or if you can get some perks by booking with points. We’re not luxury hotel people, but on road trips we frequently stay at places owned by Choice Hotels (Quality Inn, Comfort Inn, sometimes Econo Lodge if we’re desperate!) or IHG (Holiday Inn, Holiday Inn Express, and other, higher-end places). Both Choice and IHG run points sales at up to 40% off, which could be especially appealing if you want to stay at a luxury property for less. My family likes to mock my Choice Hotels Elite Platinum status (big spender…not!!) but there are some surprisingly fancy properties in the Choice family.

Along those same lines, some higher-end hotel chains give you some bonuses if you book with points, and it doesn’t matter whether you earn the points or buy them. NerdWallet travel (BTW I also like their Smart Travel podcast) wrote a blog post about this. For example, Hilton and Hyatt both waive the resort fee if you book with points, and Marriott gives you the fifth night free if you book four nights with points.

I got so excited about this that I’m now planning to get an Amex personal card, hoping they keep this very attractive transfer partnership with Virgin Atlantic! And I’ll report back from Stonehenge!

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