Well hello and happy July, Training for Translators subscribers! As the “school year” wraps up, I have two classes on tap for you before I take a break in August

Upcoming direct client marketing classes

This Thursday, July 3, I’m offering a free, one-hour webinar: The fundamentals of direct client marketing.

If you’d like to go deeper on that topic, Direct client marketing launch pad starts on Monday, July 7 and runs through August 1. Praised by past participants (“I liked the methodical organization of the class, starting with gathering information on clients who may need your services, and then moving on to contacting them”), this four-week program combines self-paced video lessons, weekly tasks, and Q&A sessions with me. Registration is $250 (American Translators Association members, use coupon code ATA for $30 off!) and you have access to the course materials for six months.

This week’s topic: The first half of 2025!

It’s July 1, so the data is in for the first half of 2025, a truly tumultuous time in the freelance world. With these summaries, I don’t mean to blather on about my life as if I’m particularly important (I’m not!); I just hope that my data and insights can help you gather data and insights on your own business in this rollercoaster of a moment.

The numbers

In my business, the numbers are good. After paying subcontractors (guest instructors for Training for Translators classes), I earned $75K, finally on track with the income goal I set back in 2021 and that I’ve been inconsistently grinding toward ever since. Better yet, my goal for this year was to divide my income evenly between direct language work (translating and interpreting) and teaching/writing/consulting/book royalties, and I’m pretty much there, with $40K coming from direct language work and $35K coming from “other.”

Why the increase? A few things: working with a business coach pushed me to take more of my own advice. I negotiated some higher guest speaking/presenting fees, and I’ve been more assertive about marketing Training for Translators. For anyone interested in online course sales data, this uptick in marketing led to more unsubscribes at first, but my open rate actually increased slightly (43% to 45%) and my list has grown by about 500, now totaling about 4,800 people.

Also, translation work has been up. Mostly in “fluke” ways, to be honest. A couple of occasional direct clients popped up with large projects, I did a large project for a one-off direct client (filling in for a translator on medical leave), and I’ve had a steady stream of official document translations.

My income flow has also smoothed out as compared to last year. I wrote about this in my 2024 wrapup, setting a goal of one or two sub-$10K months rather than four. So far, so good. I’ve had only one sub-$10K month so far ($6,700 in April), partially due to a late payment for a large translation, and I had my highest-grossing month ever, $26K in March, due to lots of translation and interpreting work and the T4T March Marketing Madness challenge.

The work

Work is good, with some ups and downs! Despite the general craziness in the freelance world, I landed a new, interesting, and ongoing interpreting client in healthcare technology, a totally new area for me. One of my favorite interpreting clients sent me on a really fun travel assignment to Las Vegas, and I’ve enjoyed all of the translation work that I’ve done. And my new book, Getting Started as a Freelance Interpreter, is here, and the reviews are positive so far!

Of course, it’s not all positive. I had been doing a lot of remote court interpreting for a state without any local French interpreters, but it looks like they’ve now found someone nearby. A promising translation direct client (large, interesting projects) fell through because we couldn’t agree on the editing process. Ultimately I felt good about this because I declined to work with them if they wouldn’t pay for a secondary editor, but it was still a bummer to lose a client after a test project that went really well.  

Life

Life rolls on as it always does; I’m not a fundamentally anxious person, but ever since the U.S. election, I’ve had more of a feeling that the world may just end. I know that sounds dramatic, but I mean that if DOGE fires the entire staff of the Department of Energy and the American nuclear arsenal goes haywire (not as crazy as it sounds), I don’t want to be standing in my yard, watching the incoming nuclear missiles and thinking, geez, I should have taken that trip to Fiji.

So I’ve taken a bunch of time off lately, which will be the source of some upcoming off-topic blog posts. I did in fact go to Fiji for a week with my best friend from high school (amazing), my husband and I did the Grand Canyon Rim-to-Rim-to-Rim hike for our 25th anniversary (equal parts exhausting and exhilarating), and I took last week off to go to cello camp in San Rafael, California (basically the best week ever).

The disruptions in the freelance world are a lot to deal with right now, and I’m honestly not sure that AI is even the worst of it. I’ve talked to a number of translators and interpreters whose businesses have been decimated by the U.S. federal government budget cuts (USAID-funded NGOs basically disappearing, federal courts pre-emptively cutting budgets). Pretty much every day I’m hearing, or reading on LinkedIn, stories like, “My 15-year freelance business has basically evaporated in the past 15 months,” “Worst quarter since 2019,” “Lost two of my three anchor clients in the past six months.”

I try to remind myself that these stories are scary to hear, that they’re not my story (right now at least), and that mainly I need to maintain the kind of business I tell other people to pursue: a diverse business, for clients who care. I’m fortunate to have that, and it’s a goal I think we all need to keep top-of-mind right now.

I hope these insights are helpful! Just drop a comment if there’s anything you want to ask me or tell me.

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For a while, I’ve been meaning to make a PDF compilation of the previous year’s blog posts, so that you can read them on the go and so that they’re searchable. I finally got around to doing this for 2024, and it took so long that I also included the posts from the first quarter of 2025. Here it is! This is every single post that appeared during that time frame, all in one juicy 321-page PDF!

The PDF costs US $10, and the download link will be on your confirmation page.

Before I dive into this week’s topic (How to stay relevant in this very tumultuous moment), I very much recommend Joachim Lépine’s new book on a similar topic: it’s AI Resilient: How freelancers and entrepreneurs can thrive, charge more, and stay irreplaceable in the age of AI. I just finished it and really enjoyed the practical approach. Unlike many books that stay stuck in theory, this one offers real-world advice, including scripts you can use with clients. It’s all about using your human skills as a competitive edge rather than seeing AI as a threat. Plus, the e-book is currently on sale for just 99 cents!

Upcoming class: Direct client marketing launch pad

The T4T “school year” wraps up with a four-week class on the fundamentals of direct client marketing, starting July 7. Direct client marketing launch pad is self-paced, includes weekly Q&A sessions, and costs $250 (American Translators Association members, use coupon code ATA for $30 off) with access to the course materials for six months. You’ll finish with a clear plan to find and market to potential clients. If you’ve been meaning (and meaning and meaning) to get going with some direct client marketing, come join us!

This week’s topic: Ways to stay relevant in these crazy times

Lately, I’ve talked to a lot of freelancers with “relevance anxiety.” If AI can draft an article, translate a document (well or poorly…), or summarize a report in a couple of seconds, it’s easy to stress out: What do clients still need me for? Personally, I’d say: lots of things! But let’s look at some specifics:

• First, your clients might not care about AI at all. You could be stressing over something that’s irrelevant to them. Maybe they don’t care how you do the translation—they just want it done well. Think about how you might feel about your accountant: I pay mine so I don’t have to think about accounting. Does he use tools more advanced than TurboTax? Probably. AI? Maybe. I don’t know or care, I just want my taxes done accurately—and some of my best clients seem to feel the same way about translation: just give us a good result.
• Next, you can stay relevant by doing excellent work for clients who value quality above other factors. It may sound counterintuitive, but many clients are happy to trade some quality for speed or lower cost. Your goal is to find the ones who aren’t. This point is encapsulated in German-English translator Michael Schubert’s recent LinkedIn Article on the value of human translation. I particularly love that Michael leads with, “I’m a technophile,” and proceeds to give examples of how his work beats AI!
• You can also embrace what Ed Gandia calls your “meta-talents.” You should definitely listen to Ed’s latest podcast episode, in which he explores this concept. Ed’s take is that too many freelancers waste energy trying to either a) protect their markets from AI (his view: you can’t—if clients think it works, they’ll use it), or b) outdo AI at its own game. Instead, he says we should treat AI as a complement, not a competitor: “AI excels at narrow, pattern-based tasks. But it lacks judgment, taste, empathy, and original thought. That’s your domain.”
• Yet another option is to focus on work that AI just can’t do. The obstacles might be technical: official documents with handwritten text and tons of stamps and seals, or files that a computer just can’t read. Many of the documents I receive from my law firm clients are a scan of a fax of a photocopy; I can’t even OCR them, much less machine translate them even if I wanted to. The obstacles might also be substantive: I’ve heard from a number of high-level medical and life science translators that AI just isn’t there yet when it comes to those kinds of translations, and I’m sure there are other examples.

Whatever the case, I’ll continue to maintain that you need two things:

1. A diverse business (doing one thing for one type of client is just too risky right now
2. …for clients who care (because the clients who don’t care, have lots of options that are cheaper and faster than you!)

Have a great week!

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I’m excited to report that my new book, Getting Started as a Freelance Interpreter, is here! It’s out now from Tilt Publishing, and you can purchase it right here on my website (the best way to support any indie author!), or on the online platform of your choice (Amazon, Barnes&Noble, Apple Books, etc.), or special-order it from your favorite local bookstore.

GSFI (my name for this book!) is a career how-to guide for beginning and aspiring spoken-language (not sign language) interpreters. Here’s the cover blurb!

Getting Started as a Freelance Interpreter is the essential guide for anyone looking to build a successful career as a spoken-language interpreter. Written by Corinne McKay, author of How to Succeed as a Freelance Translator (15,000 copies sold across three editions), this book walks you through everything you need to know to launch and grow your interpreting business. As a certified French court interpreter with a Master of Conference Interpreting degree from Glendon College, Corinne shares insights from her 20+ years in the language industry. She breaks down key steps, including how to decide if interpreting is right for you, set up your business, pursue certification, find your first clients, set your rates, and improve your interpreting skills. Strong language skills alone won’t make you a successful interpreter—business and marketing know-how are just as crucial. Many aspiring freelancers struggle to get started because they don’t know how to attract clients or run a sustainable business. Getting Started as a Freelance Interpreter helps you avoid common mistakes and build a thriving career on your own terms. Whether you’re completely new to the field or looking to transition into freelancing, this book gives you the tools and confidence to succeed.

Here are some recent reviews!

“This is a must-have for those curious about the interpreting profession or those getting started as an interpreter! Corinne shares practical and honest advice on taking your first steps on the interpreting journey, working on the interpreting skills, preparing for and taking interpreting certification exams, working with different types of clients, setting your rates, marketing your services and much more. The book is such a fun and easy read, and you’ll want to keep it close by and refer to it often. It is very well-structured, clear, and engaging, and it has answers to all of the most common questions freelance interpreters have when they’re starting and growing their business—plus tips on where to find more information. As a freelancer, you often have questions or encounter situations when you wish you could phone a friend who gets it. This book makes you feel like you’re having a friendly chat with a lovely colleague who sincerely wants to help, encourage, and lift you up. You’ll feel more confident, re-energized, and have a clear idea of what steps to take next.” -Veronika Demichelis

“If you are competently bilingual (and this book explains how to know), Corinne McKay can help you get started as an interpreter. She aims her book at those you have never been professional language mediators (translators and interpreters) as well as translators considering moving into interpreting.
I read her book on succeeding as a freelance translator. This book is just as good, but in a different way. She has developed a more personal writing style, like listening to one of her presentations (which I have also done). She makes the subject approachable without underplaying the challenges.
Even if you don’t decide to try interpreting, you will be glad you read this book, and I bet that you will enjoy it. Considering how misunderstood interpreters are in general, you will be much smarter for having read it. Enjoy!” -JT Hine

“Beautiful writing with lots of practical advice! This step-by-step guide is a must-read for anybody curious about a career in freelance interpreting. Enjoy!” -Athena Matilsky

It took me a loooong time to write this book, and I’m really happy that it’s finally out in the world!

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Episode 15 of the Training for Translators podcast is up! In this episode, I focus on ways to self-publish your writing or translations, including a minimum viable product (instant-download PDF), a basic “real” book (Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing), or a book that’s indistinguishable from a traditionally published book (which I just did with Tilt Publishing).

The best way to listen to Training for Translators is in your favorite podcast app, but you can also listen right here!