Training for Translators

Classes for translators and interpreters


Corinne McKay

A few LinkedIn tips

On Monday evening, Eve Bodeux, Riccardo Schiaffino and I presented a professional development session on “Social Media: Web 2.0 for Translators” for the Colorado Translators Association. I covered LinkedIn and Facebook, Riccardo handled Blogging 101 (you can download Riccardo’s excellent presentation from his website link above) and Eve wrapped things up with Twitter. Given that we covered all of this in an hour and a half, it was a very brief introduction to these topics. However, as one attendee commented, “I feel like for now I can get away without using these technologies but I can’t get away without knowing what they are,  and now I know,” which I thought was a good observation.

My overview of LinkedIn was just that (an overview) without any power-user tips, but I thought I’d share a few suggestions for sprucing up your LinkedIn profile and controlling who can view your information. Feel free to add your own tips too!

-To create a customized link for your LinkedIn public profile (the view of your profile that other people see), click “Profile” and then in the blue shaded box
at the top, look for the line that says “Public Profile.” Then click the “Edit” link at the end of that line. This allows you to change your profile URL from www.linkedin.com/pub/abunchofrandomcode to www.linkedin.com/in/yourname , for example.

-To see how many people have viewed your LinkedIn profile and how many times you have appeared in LinkedIn search results, click “Home” and then look down the
right sidebar for the blue “Who’s viewed my profile” box. If you have the basic (free) LinkedIn account, you can’t see much information about the people who viewed your profile but it is interesting to see how your profile views increase or decrease over time. On a side note, Viadeo (a LinkedIn-esque site directed at Europeans) shows you the identity of everyone who views your profile even if you have a free account.

-To control who can see your profile photo, click “Settings” (this is not in the main navigation bar, it’s in the small grey type in the upper right hand corner
next to where it says “Welcome, Your Name”. Once you are in “Settings,” click “My Profile Photo” and then select either “My Connections,” “My Network” or
“Everyone.” A few people at the session were concerned about the general public being able to see their photo. If this applies to you, I would either restrict your photo to only your connections or upload something other than your photo (i.e. make a .jpg of your company name or create a professional-looking avatar of yourself).

-To control who can see your status updates, do as above but click “Status Visibility” and then select an option. Personally, if you are using LI for networking/marketing purposes, I would recommend making your status visible to everyone on the site. I do this, and I am just careful never to say anything that I would not want the whole world to know, such as my physical whereabouts, client gripes, etc. In my experience, more people view your profile if they can read your status updates (and of course if your status updates are interesting).

-To add various outside elements  such as your blog, presentations, travel schedule, etc.  click “Profile” and then scroll down until you see “Applications.” Click that link and you will see a bunch of options; I use the WordPress application to feed my blog into my LinkedIn profile. I think that this keeps my profile looking fresh without much effort on my part.


Corinne McKay

A freelance best practices checklist

I’ll be honest; I love self-evaluation tools. When I presented a seminar on “Beyond the Basics of Freelancing” for the Northern California Translators Association last summer, I decided to create a self-evaluation tool for the attendees and we also used this checklist at a meeting of the Colorado Translators Association. People seemed to find this tool useful and helpful, so I decided to post it here as well; of course some of the associations (ATA, CTA, etc.) don’t apply if you don’t live in the US or Colorado, so feel free to substitute a professional association of your choice.  The list includes some best practices and some indicators of freelance success; feel free to contribute your own suggestions too!

_____ I have a marketing plan for my freelance business
_____ I am satisfied with my income as compared with how much I work
_____ My business comes mostly from repeat clients
_____ I have three or more regular clients
_____ I keep my rates by the phone/computer
_____ I always have an updated version of my resume ready to send out
_____ I usually have as much work as I want
_____ I ask my clients for feedback on my translations
_____ I ask to see the edited versions of my translations
_____ I track my income on an ongoing basis
_____ I proofread a hard copy of my translations before submitting them
_____ I have a profile on LinkedIn or a similar website
_____ I regularly update my profiles on the CTA, ATA etc. websites
_____ I participate in online discussion groups such as the CTA listserve, ATA division listserves, ProZ forums, etc.
_____ I write articles for trade publications such as the ATA Chronicle, Multilingual or local newsletters
_____ I have a website and/or a blog
_____ I gather objective data about translation rates by reading the ATA Compensation Survey, talking to colleagues about their rates, etc.
_____ I calculate my hourly rate for different types of translation assignments
_____ I read the local, national and/or international business news
_____ I network and/or market myself in industries related to my specialization(s)
_____ I actively try to improve my target language writing skills
_____ I actively try to improve my knowledge of terminology in my specialization(s)
_____ I do pro bono translations
_____ I offer additional services other than translation, such as editing, proofreading, interpreting, voiceover, transcription, teaching, copywriting, etc.
_____ I ask for my name to be included on my translations whenever possible
_____ When I am too busy to take on a project, I offer the client a referral to another translator
_____ I accept a variety of payment methods such as credit cards, wire transfers, foreign currency checks, etc.
_____ I continue marketing even when I have a lot of work
_____ I regularly keep in touch with clients I haven’t heard from in a while
_____ I send tokens of appreciation (card, gift, etc) to clients and colleagues
_____ I ask clients for testimonials to put on my website, brochure, etc.


Corinne McKay

Translating official documents

Over the years, I’ve observed that many translators are somewhere between lukewarm and downright scornful of translating individual clients’ official documents: birth certificates, educational transcripts, diplomas, drivers’ licenses, you get the picture. I think that a lot of experienced translators view this as “beginner’s work” or not worth their time, so they take it off their range of services. Official documents are not a huge component of my freelance business, but they do total a few thousand dollars of income every year for me and the work is painless and gratifying. Here are a few reasons I think it’s worth including official documents  in your range of services, and a few tips on how to do it successfully.

Translating official documents is appealing because:

  • It’s lucrative. Admittedly, translating birth certificates is not a lot of things: it’s not creative, it doesn’t cry out for stylistic greatness… but it can pay up to a dollar a word and nearly always pays at least 50 cents a word because the standard billing unit is per page. In addition, official documents are a market that agencies really don’t want because the size of the projects does not justify their overhead, so freelancers are most individual clients’ best option.
  • It’s gratifying. People who are applying for green cards, graduate school, marriage licenses etc. are really, really grateful to find someone who is experienced and professional to work on their documents.
  • It’s easy to schedule. When you’re translating a driver’s license, it’s not as if you’re juggling other commitments  in order to fit in 10,000 words. Most official document translations take less than an hour to complete, so they’re easy to schedule.
  • The clients pay in advance, so you have no follow-up or collections hassles. I require all individual clients to pay in advance by PayPal or by check, so that I do not have to deal with any after-the-fact invoicing.

    • And a few tips for setting your official document translations up for success:

  • Set a per-page fee and a notarized certification fee; it makes your life and your clients’ lives easier. Because of the time it takes to format official documents (especially diplomas and any kind of official certificate), I think that the per-page rate is important. In addition, if you get a lot of inquiries from people who want quotes, it can be helpful to put up a web page (here is mine) with your standard rates, turnaround time and procedures.
  • Require advance payment. I cannot stress this enough; you do not want to be chasing after someone for $50, and most official document projects are small enough that your clients should not object to paying in advance. I know that a lot of people complain about PayPal, but I really like it. You receive your money immediately, any difficulties with the actual payment process are between your client and PayPal, and you can use PayPal’s free invoicing tool to set up an invoice template that looks professional and does all of the calculations for you.
  • Use a screenshot or graphics program to enhance your translations. Many official documents include stamps, university logos, seals, etc. If you use a screenshot or image manipulation program, you can copy these over onto your translation for a truly official-looking translation.
  • Find a free or low-cost notary. My bank provides free notary services to anyone who has accounts there, so my fee for the notarized certification simply reflects the time it takes to go obtain the certification.

    • In closing, I also think that there are a lot of opportunities to market your official document translation services. International credentials evaluation services, consulates, language schools, international exchange programs and other similar organizations could probably use your services. Thoughts?


Corinne McKay

Maybe it's not all about the design

I need to update the look of my website and marketing materials; it’s a task I really struggle with because I’m just not a very visual person. Read me a sentence and I can tell you right away if I like it or not, but show me an array of colors, shapes and layouts and I’m paralyzed. After listening to me obsess over various design decisions (“New professional photograph: smiling or not smiling; if smiling, teeth showing or not showing? New marketing postcard for local clients: Colorado theme, French theme or neither; if French theme, classic or edgy?”), my husband showed me this for perspective. It’s from BoingBoing, and features the late designer Paul Rand’s own business card. While Rand designed some of the most iconic logos of our time (IBM, ABC, UPS, Westinghouse to name a few), his own business cards are exuberantly unremarkable. So maybe the marketing material design is less important if you’re really good at what you do!


Corinne McKay

When to throw in the towel on a task

At the end of 2008, I wrote a post about post about outsourcing that generated quite a bit of interest, so I thought it was worth raising this topic again. After years of battling with my business payroll taxes (I have an S-Corp and thus have to file quarterly payroll taxes and a separate year-end tax return for the business), I decided to hand that task over to my accountant and so far I’m really pleased with how it’s going. For $40 per month, my accountant will run payroll (I’m the business’ only employee, so this isn’t a monumental task), automatically withhold the appropriate tax amounts from my gross pay, file my quarterly payroll taxes and issue my own W-2 at the end of the year, along with 1099-MISCs for anyone to whom I subcontract more than $600 worth of work.

I decided to throw in the proverbial towel on this task for a variety of reasons: most of all, I just hate accounting. In addition, the paperwork burden associated with corporate taxes increases as you make more money. If you have an S-Corp and you owe more than $2,500 per quarter in federal income tax, you have to electronically deposit your payments every month, rather than sending a check in once per quarter. Then if you have subcontractors earning more than $600 per year, you have to collect W-9s from all of those people, calculate who you paid more than $600 and issue 1099s to them. Although I write all of the appropriate deadlines on my calendar, on a couple of occasions I’ve forgotten to initiate the electronic tax deposit soon enough; the deposit takes a couple of business days to process, so if the due date is on a Monday, you have to initiate the deposit by the morning of the Thursday before. The IRS no longer offers printable 1099-MISC forms on its website, so you have to order the forms by phone and they take 3-5 weeks to arrive…do you have a headache yet?

I decided to outsource this task because it passes the two main outsourcing-qualification tests: I don’t enjoy the task and the outsourcing will pay for itself immediately. It’s gotten me thinking about other tasks to outsource, but for now I feel that at least I made the right decision by admitting defeat on this one! Readers, any tasks you’re thinking of outsourcing in 2010?