Training for Translators

Classes for translators and interpreters


Corinne McKay

In praise of podcasts

I’m an enthusiastic podcast listener. I find that after reading all day at work, it’s nice to switch to some audio media for some down time. I listen to podcasts while I’m exercising, when I need a mental break during the work day, while I’m keeping my daughter company during homework time, when I’m lying around before bed and sometimes even while doing mindless household chores like folding the laundry. I also find that listening to French podcasts is a good way to keep up with French current events and to work on my French listening comprehension. Here are a few of my favorite podcasts, and I’d love to learn about yours! I subscribe to all of these on my iPod using iTunes, but I’ll give you their websites n case you just want to listen to them online!

  • I’m only slightly obsessed with This American Life, a public radio show that features weird and wonderful stories on a different theme each week. The show is professionally produced but focuses on regular people and their interesting experiences. For example this week’s episode is entitled “The Right to Remain Silent,” and profiles people who had the right to remain silent, but didn’t.
  • When I feel like something a little more cerebral but still fun, I listen to Freakonomics Radio. This podcast is hosted by the authors of the Freakonomics books, who look at “the hidden side of everything,” but in a very engaging way. The most recent episode asks what would happen (in economic and social terms) if the 50 wealthiest Americans each gave $50,000 to 50 low-income families.
  • Another good one in the “nerdy but fun” department is NPR’s Wait Wait…don’t tell me news quiz podcast.

I also subscribe to a few French podcasts. If you’re learning French (or any other language), there are lots of great language-learning podcasts out there. One that I would particularly recommend for intermediate French learners is The News in Slow French.  If you’re fluent in French, this podcast will drive you crazy (because…it’s…very…slow), but if you’re somewhere between beginner and fluent, I think it would be great. The hosts cover one important news story, then discuss a few grammar points.

For those proficient in French and wanting to keep it up, I recommend:

  • RFI’s Le journal en français facile. Despite the name, the French in this podcast is pretty normal, but just read at a slightly slower speed than the regular news. In addition, RFI provides the script for each show, so that you can read along if you want to. A very good podcast for improving your listening skills.
  • My favorite French podcast is probably France Inter’s Le téléphone sonne. It’s very similar to NPR’s now-defunct “Talk of the Nation.” The host picks a topic, invites various commentators into the studio and then takes live phone calls. I love this podcast because it combines a current event with the challenge of listening to a lot of different voices and accents. For example yesterday’s show focused on the new school schedule in France: moving from four days to four and a half, and adding extra-curricular activities to the week. Various parents and teachers called in on the pro and con sides, and then the commentators responded.
  • I also subscribe to France Inter’s La revue de presse. I like it because it’s short (under 10 minutes) and covers a lot of material in that time. However because it’s so fast-paced, it’s often challenging to follow if you don’t know the background to all of the stories. But definitely worth a listen!

Anyone else have favorite podcasts that you’d recommend? Language-related or otherwise?


Corinne McKay

Speaking of Translation recordings: now downloadable

Speaking of Translation is a little sideline venture that my friend and colleague Eve Bodeux and I launched a number of years ago. In Internet terms, we’ve been around for about a century, since one of our fist podcasts was a wrapup of the 2008 ATA conference. We started out with a podcast and produced six episodes, then moved to conference calls and we’ve now produced six of those, which you can listen to on our website. In each call, we interview someone interesting in the translation industry, and we don’t use these calls to promote anything other than the fact that we like to talk. The recorded conference call topics are:

  • An overview of international payment methods
  • Finding direct clients at industry conferences
  • Freelance sabbaticals abroad, part I and II
  • Jost Zetzsche answers (almost) all your translation technology questions
  • Insider tips for a successful freelance business

The exciting new development is that in addition to streaming the recordings off our site, you can now download them as well (in mp3 format). So wherever you go, you can take Speaking of Translation with you! If you have ideas of future topics you’d like us to cover, please e-mail us at speakingoftranslation@gmail.com


Corinne McKay

A co-working update

Inspired by Judy Jenner’s post about her first three months of co-working, here’s an update on my own co-working situation.

Brief background: about this time last year, I came to a few realizations.

  • Next year (now this year), my daughter would be starting middle school and would be getting more independent.
  • My husband, who used to work at home, now works at an office.
  • A lot of my longtime friends who used to work part time or be home full time are now working full time or are busy with other things. Of course I still see them, but they aren’t around as much during the day.
  • After 10 years of working at home, I needed a change. What used to seem peaceful and blessedly quiet started to seem isolating and lonely. I realized that I had to take action when I saw a really cute outfit in a store (second hand, naturally!) and then thought “Where would I ever wear that? It’s not like I see anyone during the work day.”

And well, I’m a doer. So I decided to do something about this situation and find myself an office outside the house. Fortuitously, Boulder has no shortage of co-working spaces for all flavors of freelancers, and after touring four or five of them, I found “the one,” in a beautifully renovated old building right in downtown Boulder. I’ve been happily working there/here for the past nine months, so here’s a quick FAQ about the experience.

Q: How do you like co-working in general?
A: Three words: I love it. It gets me out of the house, it gives me some semblance of a boundary between home and work life, it forces me to get my work done in a defined period of time, it gives me an excuse to wear something other than workout clothes and it gives me interesting people to talk to. When I get up in the morning, I feel like I have some place I need to be, which is a feeling I enjoy. I ride my bike to my office, which is also nice: it’s a 20 minute, not too strenuous ride, just enough to get the blood pumping in the morning and the afternoon. When I get home in the afternoon, I feel like something happened during the day; I feel like I have something to talk about, other than “I sat in the office/guest room, then I washed some dishes, then I sat in the office/guest room some more.” Admittedly, a lot of these factors probably have more to do with me than with the objective realities of freelancing, but there you go. Those are my reasons!

Q: How much does the office cost and what do you get?
A: I pay $350 a month for my own desk, and I keep all of my work stuff there. I also get use of the building’s conference rooms, unlimited coffee and tea (plus they wash the cups…that alone is worth $350 a month) and I can eat in the building’s social club for an extra fee.

Q: Who else works there, and did you know them ahead of time?
A: My building has private office suites and a group work room. I have a desk in the group work room; there aren’t any other translators here, and I didn’t know anyone else in the building ahead of time. I really like both of those aspects: it’s interesting to work around people who do totally different jobs than I do (IT, PR, law, corporate writing, etc.) and it’s just enough social interaction. I have something in common with a lot of the people in the building, but I can also get work done without feeling like I have to socialize.

Q: Are there any negatives?
A: So far, not really. I feel that the improvement in my enjoyment of the work day and my increased productivity are well worth $4,000 a year. In fact, this year is on track to be my highest-earning year ever, despite the fact that I took a month off this summer. So I think that my perception that I’m getting more done in the same amount of time is probably accurate.

Q: Any advice for other people considering co-working?
A: Make sure you find the right spot, because all offices are not created equal. The first place I went to look at was everything I *didn’t* want in a co-working space: in a basement with no natural light, empty vodka bottles in the kitchen (seriously) and more of a tech-startup vibe than a word nerd vibe. The office where I ended up has the feel of a really, really nice library with a great garden and a lot of nice art. So the physical space has a lot to do with it; at least more than I thought at the outset.

Other co-workers, any thoughts??


Corinne McKay

Upcoming Speaking of Translation call: international payment methods

On Tuesday, September 24 at 12:00 noon New York time, Eve Bodeux and I will host the next in our series of free Speaking of Translation conference calls. This edition’s topic is International payments: an overview, and if you send or receive payments across borders, you should definitely listen in! The call will last 30-45 minutes, it’s totally free other than any phone call charges (and no sales pitches for any of our services), and you can even submit questions for Eve to answer. Here’s the full description:

Call description: It costs money to make money, but in this call we’ll help you figure out how to spend as little as possible on international payments while keeping as much as possible in your pocket. Eve Bodeux, a frequent speaker on the topic of international payments, discussed this with Speaking of Translation back in 2009 and there have been some (good and bad) changes since then. She will fill us in on the pros and cons of current options including ACH, wire transfers, foreign bank accounts, checks, international currency transfer services and PayPal. She’ll also discuss some considerations related to exchange rates and taxes. If time allows, we’ll take questions from the audience.

As an added bonus, Eve and Corinne will preview the upcoming American Translators Association annual conference, which will be held from November 6-9 in San Antonio, Texas.

To join the call: A few minutes before 12:00 noon New York time, dial 209-647-1600, then enter access code 178865 and press pound (#). If you live outside the U.S. or if you pay by the minute for long-distance calling, the least expensive option is probably to purchase Skype credits and use the Skype “Call Phones” function. This should cost less than 3 US cents per minute.

In addition, you can listen to the archives of our Speaking of Translation podcast and conference calls for free at any time. No charge, no sales pitches, just fun discussions about translation industry topics!


Corinne McKay

Conference report: Translate in Quebec City

Last week, I attended Translate in Quebec City, a conference for premium-market French<>English translators. It’s the latest in a series of conferences that began with Chris Durban’s Translate in the Catskills back in 2009. This was my third time attending this master class series (I missed last year’s “Translate in the Townships,” but heard it was excellent!); the instructors are some of the most dynamic translators in the industry and it’s always a good chance to talk shop with other French to English translators. Thanks to Grant Hamilton of Anglocom for organizing this edition!

I live-Tweeted during many of the sessions under the hashtag #TIQC, so if you want the whole shebang, you can read the TIQC hashtag stream. In this post, I’ll focus on some of the overall takeaways from this conference: I had to leave before the Saturday sessions, but I attended:

  • Chris Durban and Ros Schwartz’s translation slam (two translations of the same French text)
  • Grant Hamilton‘s “One size doesn’t fit all” (how to avoid knee-jerk translations)
  • Chris Durban’s “Ringing in the New Year in translation” (translating holiday cards and messages)
  • David Jemielity’s “Deixis: the sequel” (using correct expressions for time and space in translations)
  • Grant Hamilton and François Lavallée’s “Two exercises, two languages, twice as much to learn” (translating in the opposite direction)
  • Chris Durban’s “Working with constraints: reconciling words and images” (translating animations and dynamic content)
  • Grant Hamilton’s “Style to the rescue of technical texts” (finding a role for good writing in informational documents)
  • Ros Schwartz’s “Literary translation: a hands-on workshop translating two stories by Quebec author Gilles Pellerin” (literary translation workshop with the author in attendance)

First of all, this conference reminded me that every freelancer should be spending at least 5% of his/her income on professional development. I made that number up, but you get the point: I’m guessing that most freelancers spend much less than that. And if you’re not growing professionally, you’re stagnating. So how about this: by what percentage would you like to increase your income next year? Spend that percentage of *this* year’s income on professional development, and I bet that you’ll reach your goal.

Second, mixing things up is a really valuable exercise. At this conference, I did lots of linguistic exercises (translating into French, translating fiction, thinking about philosophy) that I almost never do in my daily work. And no surprise, it really gets the neurons working in new ways, which can lead to some cognitive breakthroughs.

Third, this conference reinforced Chris Durban’s oft-repeated truth that “the gap between the bulk and the premium markets is growing.” The premium market requires a very different mindset. For example, Chris noted that many bulk-market translators spend a lot of their time ranting about clients (clients are idiots, clients don’t respect or understand translators, clients are out to squeeze every last drop of blood out of a translator and then leave them to die in a gutter, and so on). Two problems: this fosters a negative mindset about clients in general (so that you assume *every* client is an idiot), and this takes time and energy away from finding clients who get it, are willing to pay well or even very well, and value your work. And they’re out there, probably looking for someone like you!

Fourth, conferences are tons of fun, assuming that you pick the right ones. They’re as close as we freelancers get to paid vacation, so take advantage of them. Also, don’t skip the social events. I know, when you’re paying a fair bit of money for the registration fee, plane ticket and hotel, it’s tempting to skip the optional stuff. But that’s where you really get to talk to people, instead of just saying hello and goodbye between sessions.

And on that note, don’t forget that the early bird deadline for this year’s ATA conference (November 6-9 in San Antonio, Texas) is October 1! Here’s the information on that.