Training for Translators

Classes for translators and interpreters


Corinne McKay

Some links for your reading pleasure

Thoughts on Translation has been on three continents in the last two weeks, so we’ll let some other translation bloggers do the talking. Fortunately the translation blogosphere has been alive with ideas lately, here are a few that I found interesting:

  • Two posts from Kevin Lossner over at Translation Tribulations: The state of OmegaT and The truth about translation agencies. If you haven’t considered adding OmegaT (a free and open source TM program) to your suite of applications, I highly recommend Kevin’s post, which is an interview with OmegaT team member Marc Prior. Marc mentions some exciting new features in OmegaT; and as always a big thanks to the volunteers (yes!) who keep OmegaT running. Kevin’s post on translation agencies pings back to Wendell Ricketts’ post Ten reasons to hire a translator directly, but make sure to read Kevin’s comments too. I agree with Kevin: I work with both agencies and direct clients and I feel that there are advantages to both models. I also feel that the agency clients I’ve been working with for 7+ years pay me fairly, save me a lot of administrative and client relations hassles and are transparent in their dealings with me. However, I think that there are some grains of truth in Wendell’s original post and also in Kevin’s comments about agencies.
  • Global Watchtower on MT tidal wave makes landfall in the world of LSPs, which is an interesting report from the recent conference of the ATA’s Translation Company Division.
  • If you read French, definitely look at Patricia Lane’s post 5 idées pour booster votre élan marketing, which focuses on how to get your marketing juices flowing when you’re short of inspiration. I agree with Patricia about getting yourself a brand new pen; call me easy to bribe, but with a new roller-ball pen, I feel like I’m ready for anything.
  • Sara Freitas-Maltaverne did a really nice writeup (also in French) of the “Web 2.0 for translators” session that Eve Bodeux and I did in Paris earlier this month. You can find it here.
  • Finally, here’s Jill Sommer’s post on Lionbridge’s plan to require translators to pay to use Logoport. I don’t work with Lionbridge, but I think that this post and the comments on it raise some interesting issues.


Corinne McKay

Want to start a blog? Write 20 posts!

Whenever I give presentations for other translators, I find that I pick up as many tips as I dispense. Last week’s sessions for the Société Française des Traducteurs were no exception and I’ll be describing some of these newly-gleaned tips in some upcoming posts. This one comes courtesy of Sara Freitas-Maltaverne, author of the popular blog (written in French) Les recettes du traducteur; Sara told me that she in turn received this tip from Kelly Rigotti, who blogs at Almost Frugal.

Sara described a simple but brilliant strategy for people who want to launch a blog: first build up an “inventory” of 20 fully-written posts, then take the blog live. Far too many would-be bloggers undermine their credibility and readership by rapidly progressing (as described by Riccardo Schiaffino in his “Blogging 101” presentation) from “I am so excited about my new blog” to “Here’s a preview of the multitude of posts that I’m working on” to “Sorry I haven’t had the time to blog for the past three months” to complete silence. The “blog post inventory” helps avoid this. First, if you can write 20 blog posts, you probably have enough momentum to keep writing even more; the fear of running out of ideas is less of a concern if you’ve already written 20 substantive posts. Second, if you write 20 posts and then put one of them on your blog every week, that’s five months of material. With those 20 posts, you’re way ahead of the three or four posts that many bloggers put up before disappearing into blogging oblivion. I love this tip!


Corinne McKay

SFT presentation links

Eve Bodeux and I will be giving two presentations (Marketing your translation services to clients in the United States and Web 2.0 for translators) for the Société Française des Traducteurs this week. Following are the links to some of the sites I will be mentioning in my sections of these presentations.

Marketing your translation services to clients in the United States

Payment Practices
The American Translators Association
French-American Chamber of Commerce in New York
French-American Chamber of Commerce in Philadelphia
The World Trade Centers Association
Google AdWords
Sales Caffeine
Marketing Minute
The Wealthy Freelancer Blog

Blogging for Translators
Google Reader
Naked Translations blog (version française)
Les recettes du traducteur
Not just another translation blog
Translator in Progress
Intercultural Zone
Services linguistiques Valérie Bélanger blog
Trad Online blog
L’observatoire de la traduction
Ma voisine millionnaire
Langue sauce piquante
Speaking of Translation podcast
Pourquoi bloguer dans un contexte d’affaires
WordPress.com
WordPress.org

LinkedIn and Viadeo
LinkedIn
Viadeo.


Corinne McKay

Translating official documents: continued

Last month, I ran a post on translating official documents which generated a lot of reader interest and comments. I’m back with a correction and an addition to that post:

The correction: In the original post I advised translators of official documents to “Use a screenshot or graphics program to enhance your translations.” For example, I have often copied logos, seals, etc. onto the translation as .jpg images. After reading the comments on the original post and talking off-blog to a translator who was accused of fraud for copying images onto translations, I now recommend that translators of official documents do not copy and paste any images that are associated with private or governmental institutions. The arguments against copying and pasting graphics and logos are pretty much summed up in Tom West’s comment on my original post. Tom is an attorney, translation company owner, past President of the ATA and legal dictionary author, so I’m very inclined to trust him! Tom says “I know of an instance where an American judge asked that translators stop scanning in the seals and logos on official documents (birth certificates, marriage certificates) because it could appear as though they were “counterfeit” – in the judge’s view, it should be clear that the translation is a translation and NOT an original document, and the more fancy logos/scans you add, the more it can appear that the English-language document was issued by the officials in the foreign country. My conclusion is that all this fancy scanning is (1) not necessary and (2) dangerous, because it can make the document look forged and (3) therefore should not be done.”

For what it’s worth, I’ve seen that a number of my agency clients do scan logos and graphics onto their translations, but in light of Tom’s advice and the similar anecdote from a freelancer, I agree that copying and pasting images should not be done.

The addition: I should have included a note about confidentiality as related to official document translations. Official documents tend to be, for lack of a better term, “juicier” than a lot of corporate documents. For example, French divorce documents often give pages and pages of details about what led to the breakdown of the marriage: affairs, lying, mental illness, it’s often all in there.  Many birth certificates produced by former French colonies explicitly state if the child was born out of wedlock. It goes without saying that although you have to translate these intimate details, you should never comment on them to the client or anyone else. Because I don’t want to make clients uncomfortable with the fact that I know some of their personal information, I actually refrain from commenting on anything in the document, even “How interesting, you and I have the same birthday” kinds of things unless I need a factual clarification.

Thanks to everyone who commented on the original official documents post!


Corinne McKay

Some thoughts on business cards

Despite the explosion in online and offline marketing techniques, the lowly business card remains one of the most cost-effective and widely used marketing materials in a freelance translator’s arsenal. Small, inexpensive, customizable, easy to distribute… business cards have a lot of advantages, so it’s worth looking at what makes a good (and bad) business card.

I currently have three sets of business cards: plain, fancy and bilingual:

I use each of these cards for different purposes. The plain cards (on top) are inexpensive (about $50 for 500) to produce and they have my specializations on them, so I put large stacks of them out when I attend a conference or give a presentation. The fancy cards (middle) have an image from the cover of my book; they’re more expensive to produce (about $60 for 250) because of the custom image and because I have them printed on heavy stock. I use these for direct clients and when I mail out official document translations. The bilingual cards (bottom; only the French side is shown) are the most expensive ($80 for 250) because they’re double-sided and I have them printed by a local company instead of ordering them online.

Business card designs are very personal; my tendency is to go for a look that might be termed either classic or boring, depending on your design tastes. I’ve seen a lot of cluttered, illegible business cards but I’ve also seen some non-traditional cards that really work: for example a conference interpreter whose card background is a photograph of him in the booth. Judy Jenner recently wrote a post on this card (a court interpreter’s card that doubles as a guide to the courthouse where he works) which I also thought was clever. If you like something a little on the cute side, I thought this was a neat idea; a literary translator who commissioned an illustration of herself for her business cards.

Most of all, your business cards need to convey the information that they’re meant to convey: make sure that your name and contact information are easy to find and read. Don’t load the card with extraneous information: after receiving exactly one fax last year, I dropped my fax number from my 2010 cards. Don’t make your cards too specific if the specifics might change; for example if you vary your specializations, don’t put them on your cards. And please, please don’t order the free cards that say “Order your free business cards at…” At least be willing to spend $25 on your cards so that they don’t have that imprint on them.

Any other business card tips?