Training for Translators

Classes for translators and interpreters


Corinne McKay

Translate in the Catskills 2011

Translate in the Catskills 2011 is open for registration! This is a niche conference focused on style and writing skills for translators, and the main tracks are French to English and English to French, although translators in other language combinations are welcome. I’ve been raving about the first edition of Translate in the Catskills since 2009; it’s like a master class, think tank and sleepaway camp rolled into one.

The main organizer is Chris Durban: author of The Prosperous Translator, winner of ATA’s Gode Medal, former President of the French Translators’ Association…let’s just call her the Michael Jordan of French to English translators! This year she’ll be joined by a superstar lineup of instructors including Ros Schwartz (translator of the new edition of The Little Prince), Grant Hamilton (President of Quebec-based Anglocom and author of the newly released Les trucs d’anglais qu’on a oublié de vous enseigner), noted Belgian financial translator Dominique Jonkers, David Jemielity of the Banque Cantonale Vaudoise in Switzerland, Nicolas Froeliger of the Université Diderot in Paris and the ever-popular François Lavallée of the Quebec-based continuing education school Magistrad).

Translate in the Catskills 2011 will be held from August 12-14 in the scenic hamlet of Maplecrest, NY. You can access Maplecrest from Albany, New York City, Hartford and other nearby cities. The location is really stunning: a restored arts colony in the heart of the Catskill Mountains where you can truly clear your mind of everything except natural beauty and beautiful translations! The 2009 edition was one of the best professional investments I’ve ever made (and no, I’m not on commission!) so I’ll hope to see some readers there!


Corinne McKay

What about TM discounts?

During the recent discussion on volume discounts, a number of readers brought up the (very valid) issue of translation memory discounts. I feel a can of worms about to open here, but I’ll inject some of my thoughts on TM discounts.

First caveat: I am neither a huge fan of nor a heavy user of TM. I own and use both OmegaT and Wordfast, and I really like both of them for different reasons. However because my favorite kind of work is translation that requires excellent writing, I only use TM when necessary. I find that because of the “chunked” nature of working in a TM tool, the flow of my writing really suffers when I use one. I do gain a pretty significant speed advantage when using TM, but I find that if the document needs to sound really natural in English, the extra editing time eats up the time I saved during the translation.

That being said, there are some projects where it would be suicidal not to use a TM. I work on several recurring projects for international development entities. These might involve multiple countries submitting funding applications using the same template, so it would be a huge waste of time to start each application from scratch. In those cases, I’m all about TM leverage.

There are two basic sides to the TM discount debate:

  • Agency says: if some of the content in this document is recycled from a TM that we provide, why should we pay the translator’s full rate for the recycled portion? The TM is the result of work that we paid for originally, so we want to realize the benefit of it.
  • Translator says: I purchased the TM tool and used my own time to learn to use it. I pay for the upgrades and for the computer system that runs the TM. The time that I save by using the TM is a result of this investment, and I want to realize the benefit of it.

Over the years, I’ve struggled with the issue of TM discounts. In some specializations (i.e. software and documentation), the situation may be different from what I experience. But I find that editing fuzzy matches (i.e. anything below 100%) takes at least as long and sometimes longer than just translating the segment from scratch. Therefore, the only TM discount that I offer is that if the client is extremely confident in the reliability of the TM that they provide, I will not charge for 100% matches if I accept them without proofreading them. Meaning that in Wordfast Classic, if a segment shows up green (Wordfast’s color code for a 100% match), I just click Alt-down (Wordfast’s command for accepting a segment) without reading it. I feel that for clients who put in the work to maintain a reliable TM, this is a fair compromise. But because I’ve run the numbers on the time it takes to edit fuzzy matches, I don’t offer TM discounts other than this.

Other thoughts?


Corinne McKay

Some of my favorite non-translation business books

A little note before we get started: none of the links in this post are affiliate links, nor do I get a commission from any of the authors mentioned. I love reading (and writing!) books about translation; some of my new and recent favorites are Chris Durban’s The Prosperous Translator and Judy and Dagmar Jenner’s The Entrepreneurial Linguist. I really enjoy getting insider tips from people who do the same job that I do, and I think that no matter how long one has been in the business, books like these always have some great suggestions for improvement!

I also think that getting perspectives from outside the translation industry is really important. For example, I think that lots of translators spend most or all of their networking time hanging out with other translators and translation company owners, then complain that they cannot find any direct clients. Reading some non-translation business books is a good first step in expanding your perspective. I’ll give you a few of my favorites and I’m sure that some readers have other suggestions!

  • C.J. Hayden’s Get Clients Now is one of my top picks. It’s an ultra-practical guide for freelancers and consultants of all flavors. The book helps you analyze where in the sales and marketing cycle you are stuck: do you not have enough prospective clients? do you get lots of inquiries but too few sales? do you have lots of one-time clients and too few regulars?, etc. You then pick two or three major marketing projects that you want to work on, and ten daily actions that will help you complete those projects. For example, I purchased Hayden’s book a few months ago when I decided that I absolutely had to finish the second edition of my book and get Eve Bodeux’s and my webinar series off the ground. I identified some daily actions such as planning ahead for every day, doing half an hour of research three times a week, spending half an hour a day on the webinar series’ website, identifying two potential sales channels for the book every day, and so on. And hey, one of my major projects is completed and the other is almost there! This book will appeal to people who like concrete action plans and are good at executing them; definitely indispensable if you have a major marketing goal you want to achieve. Just for the record, the second edition of my book had been hanging over my head for two years, and I finally finished it with the help of this book.
  • John Kremer’s 1001 Ways to Market Your Books was my bible when I published the first edition of my book: I’ve written this thing, now I need some people to read it! With about 700 pages (seriously) of tips, there is something for every self-published author in this book. Kremer breaks his ideas down into manageable chunks: how to write a book that people want to read, how to market it online, how to sell to libraries as a self-published author, and so on. With 1001 ideas, obviously not all of them will appeal to everyone, but this book is a fantastic resource.
  • During my “aspiring freelancer” days, one of my first business reads was Peter Bowerman’s The Well-Fed Writer, and I also really like his new book The Well-Fed Self-Publisher. I don’t agree with all of Bowerman’s advice. He’s a huge proponent of cold-calling and I think it just doesn’t fit with most translators’ personalities or those of our clients, but I love Bowerman’s “If I can do it, you can do it” attitude and his emphasis on simple, repeatable actions that you integrate into your marketing plan. In addition, Bowerman gets big points for his willingness to share his own examples: he started out as a salesman for a video dating service (again: seriously) and repackaged himself as a six-figure copywriter within a few years. He also really advocates charging high rates for your services and setting high but achievable income goals. Excellent inspiration here, and his book on self-publishing is well worth a read if you’re an author.

Readers, what’s on your business bookshelves these days?


Corinne McKay

Some thoughts on volume discounts

I get lots of questions from beginning and experienced translators about volume discounts (charging a lower per-word or hourly rate for larger projects). I actually think that after “how much should I charge?”, “should I offer a volume discount” might be the second most frequently-asked question that I see. Here are a few thoughts, and feel free to add your own.

When I first started translating, I enthusiastically offered volume discounts. During my first year as a freelancer I worked about 10 hours a week and made $9,000. Seriously- there’s no zero missing! Out of that $9,000, $2,000 came from just one project on which I gave a substantial volume discount. Why? Because I didn’t have much work, and working for less than my standard rate was a lot more appealing than not working at all. Flash forward nine years, and I recently realized that not only do I not offer a volume discount any more, but sometimes I actually impose what might be considered a volume surcharge. Why? Because I have enough work at my standard rates and a volume discount would put me in the position of turning down other projects at my standard rate. However, I will sometimes do a small project at a lower rate as a favor to one of my regular clients. It helps them out, it doesn’t tie up too much of my time at a lower rate and it shows the client that I’m willing to show some flexibility within reasonable limits.

Volume discounts have their place. I think that the principle of volume discounts is fair: if a client guarantees you a week or two of work, you get to spend all of that time on the clock. Your administrative overhead is a lot lower, because you’re dealing with one client and one invoice rather than 10 clients and 10 invoices. You will probably work faster as you “ramp up” on the project rather than switching gears twice a day. You don’t have to stress out about juggling multiple projects because you’re just plugging away on The Big One. But when your client base grows, you have less of an incentive to offer a volume discount: you’re not desperate for the work, you’re busy most or all of the time anyway, and if you’re too busy, it’s time to raise your rates!