Training for Translators

Classes for translators and interpreters


Corinne McKay

Where do you keep your money?

One of my business goals for this year (because the new year should really start with the school year, don’t you think?) is to do better with managing my business finances. I already pay myself a regular salary but there are definitely areas for improvement. Specifically, I feel like I’m drowning in bank accounts, but I’m having trouble seeing how I could eliminate any of them; I’ll list my account system here and please feel free to contribute ideas about how you manage your business finances. The accounts I currently have are:

  • Personal checking and savings accounts: Because I am incorporated and keep my business and personal finances completely separate, I don’t envision getting rid of these. However, I have both accounts at a bank in my neighborhood, partially because it’s convenient and partially because I’ve never taken the time to research better options. Lately my savings account has been getting an eye-popping 0.05% interest (yes, that’s five one-hundredths…) and I would like to look into options like an online savings account with a better interest rate, or possibly short-term CDs through a local credit union. Because I sometimes do translations that have to be notarized, I do find it convenient to use a local bank that offers free notary services.
  • Business checking and money market accounts: Again, both of these seem necessary. The business checking account has really low fees (no service fee regardless of the balance and very low fees for incoming wire transfers, of which I receive a fair number) and I like having the money market account because I put 40% of everything I earn into it, then use that money to pay my taxes. However (here’s where it starts to get complicated), this particular bank does not accept foreign currency checks of any kind, so then we have the…
  • Alternate business checking account: This is at a different bank, and I only use it to deposit checks in euros. It’s also a no-fee, no minimum balance account, so theoretically I guess I could just make it my main business account. My only barrier here is inertia; switching accounts would involve switching the auto-pays that come out of my business account (Internet service, web hosting, etc.) and providing the new information to my clients.
  • PayPal account: PayPal has its issues, and the fees are especially crushing if the sender funds your payment through their credit card. However, I like the fact that I can have individual (non-corporate) clients pay in advance using PayPal, and that if I really have to chase a client for money, I can offer the option of taking the payment by credit card.
  • Mutual fund brokerage account: This is the account I use for general savings, which I mostly hold in low-risk mutual funds and bond funds. I have an automatic transfer from my personal checking account every month (the old “pay yourself first and you don’t miss it” rule really works for me) and overall I am happy with this account.
  • Two retirement accounts from previous jobs: Here’s another big area for improvement. In addition to my current Individual 401K (see below), I have two retirement accounts with two different companies, both from salaried jobs I had in the 1990s. I think that I should either consolidate these, or better yet (and if it’s allowable), roll them both over into my current retirement account.
  • Individual 401K account: Someone in the local freelancers’ group I’m in tipped me off to this, and it’s been a great financial product for me. An Individual 401K operates like a 401K run by a big company, but is for one or two-person corporations. The advantage over traditional retirement savings plans for the self-employed (or at least this is my understanding), is that the contribution limits on an Individual 401K are very high, up to $49,000 per person per year. The only thing I don’t like about my particular account is that my fund company does not allow electronic transfers into Individual 401K accounts, so I have to send a paper check. I’m not so much against the paper check idea, but because it’s not automatic, I sometimes forget to send it in.

Does anyone else have ideas for organizing your financial life?


Corinne McKay

Some thoughts from Translate in the Catskills

This past weekend, I had the good fortune to attend Translate in the Catskills, a conference on target language writing skills for translators. Where to start? This conference made me think more about the actual quality and style of my translations than I have in a long time, and made me realize that there are concrete techniques that all of us can use to make our translations sound less like translations.

The presenters for the Catskills conference were really top-notch (you can read their bios on the site linked to above) and we literally talked translation from dawn to dusk. Although it bothers me when people complain that the ATA conference sessions focus too much on general information for beginners, I have to admit that it was really invigorating to get into the nuances of higher-level translation topics in a group of experienced translators. Here are a few snippets of what I learned at this conference:

  • Most of us focus too much on the “hard” words in our translations, while it’s the “easy” words that make something sound smooth or sound like a translation. We’re so intent on making sure that our subject-specific terminology is correct that then we write things like “the decision of management” instead of “management’s decision,” and wonder why our translations sound so clunky.
  • Every language has its pitfalls. Once you learn to identify these, it’s a lot easier to write around them. For example, French writers, especially attorneys and corporate writers, use a lot of passive voice. Also (and like many other languages), French uses “of” for possessives as in the example above. How we translate these constructions makes a big difference in the readability of our translations.
  • It helps to say it in your own words. When you’re stuck on how to translate something but you understand the concept, think of how you would explain that concept to someone in your own language, then start your translation from there. Don’t get so fixated on remaining faithful to the original that you write something convoluted where something simple and clear would do.
  • If you use a translation environment tool, always proofread larger chunks of text, not one segment at a time. Personally I am a big fan of TenTs, and I use OmegaT or Wordfast for pretty much every document I translate unless it is a non-OCRable PDF. I find that I can work about 10% faster by using a TenT, and I think that I am much less likely to skip a word or sentence if I’m looking at one segment at a time. However, from the text flow point of view, TenTs make the job harder; you’re probably much less likely to notice words that you use too often, conflicting verb tenses, etc. when you’re only looking at a few words at a time.

    • This is the first language-specific conference I’ve attended and I definitely came away hungry for more. Partially, I think that many of us are attracted to translation because we really like to write, but we often lose sight of that aspect of the job. Also, I think it’s really, really rare that we sit down with a bunch of colleagues for two or three hours and talk about how we would translate a set of example sentences. I’ll probably write some additional blog posts about this conference, and I’m definitely hoping that there will be another one like it in the future.


Corinne McKay

The importance of scripts

I’m a big believer in writing scripts for important occasions; the first time that I presented at the ATA annual conference (a presentation on free and open source software at the 2004 ATA conference in Toronto), I typed out every single word I was going to say, including a few pre-scripted jokes. When Eve Bodeux and I record our podcast episodes, we write out a fairly complete script for the episode; these days when I do presentations I don’t necessarily write out a full script, but I make a detailed outline of the talking points for each slide I’m going to cover. Rather than making me feel constrained, I find that scripts free me up because I’m no longer afraid of forgetting a really important point or of saying something weird or incorrect while searching for what I really want to say.

Lately I’ve realized that I use scripts a lot with my clients too. I find that if I think ahead of time about how to answer some frequently asked questions that have the potential to be contentious, I’m much less anxious about negotiating. Here are some ways that I use scripts, and please feel free to add your own ideas.

When a client is pushing the deadline on a project. My goal: to show the client that I’m not being lazy, I’m just asking for what I need in order to do my job well.
Client: We have 20,000 words and we need it translated in 6 working days.
Me: In order to do the kind of job I want to do for you, I would need 10 working days. Or In order to produce quality work, I really try to limit myself to 2,000 words per day.

When a client is pushing for a discount. My goal: to bow out while allowing the client to save face. If the client is offering a ridiculously low rate, I’m not concerned with allowing them to save face and I might respond, “To be honest, I don’t know any professional translators who work for that rate.”
Client: Your rate is not in our budget, can you give a discount?
Me: Because I am very busy at my standard rates, unfortunately I can’t give a discount at this time. If you have a project with a larger budget in the future, please keep me in mind.

When I am bidding on a project that I really want, and I would be willing to offer a discount. My goal: to win the project at the highest rate possible.
Client: What would you charge to translate this?
Me: At my standard rate, I would charge X. If that is not within your budget, just let me know and I’ll see what I can do. I feel that with this type of response, I’m not undermining my bid by outright offering a discount, I’m just offering to “do something” which could take the form of offering a lower rate with a longer deadline, offering to have the document edited at my expense, etc.

When a client client brings up vague quality issues with a translation. My goal: to calm the client’s anxiety and get some more specific feedback.
Client: The end client wasn’t happy with the translation. It wasn’t what they wanted, can you fix it?
Me: I’m really sorry to hear that, because happy clients are always my ultimate goal. At the same time, it’s hard to know what to change unless I can see some specific comments and preferably an edited version of the translation with the changes tracked. If they can send that over, I’ll make time to look at it right away. If necessary, I sometimes find it helpful to offer the client an analogy, such as “For example, you wouldn’t call your mechanic and say ‘My car isn’t running right, what’s wrong with it?’ In the same way, I really need some specific feedback about the translation in order to make it fit the client’s specifications.”


Corinne McKay

Link: living on an irregular income

Get Rich Slowly has a great post on How to budget for an irregular income; it’s definitely worth a read on your coffee break. Two of J.D.’s tips that I particularly agree with are:

  • Use separate business and personal accounts and pay yourself from the business account as if you were an employee. I started doing this about three years ago and it made a huge difference in my financial life. I pay myself equal amounts on the 5th, the 15th and the 25th of each month regardless of how much I’m earning. I’m not really given to overspending, but sometimes when I have a large “windfall” project, I give myself 10% of the money to spend on something I want but don’t really need. Otherwise I stick with the “salary” that I’ve set for myself and at the end of the year, I evaluate what amount I should pay myself for the upcoming year. If I have a big surplus in my business account, I take it as corporate profit (because I have an S-corporation) and pay that month’s personal credit card bill with it (and as we talked about in last winter’s post on Freelance frugality, I think that the number one principle of personal finance is to never, ever carry a credit card balance).
  • If you have a spouse/partner, live off one income. The Thoughts on Translation household lives off one income and banks the other, which gives us a great deal of financial flexibility. If I have a very slow month, instead of putting the groceries on credit we just don’t save as much of my husband’s salary as we otherwise would have. I feel that an additional benefit of this strategy is that I can avoid taking low-paying work out of desperation, and inevitably the higher-paying work comes back. Granted, in order to do this we have made some choices that other people probably can’t or don’t want to make. One car (used, paid for in cash), prepaid cell phone, no cable TV, no household service providers (lawn, cleaning, child care etc.), maybe one meal out per month, virtually all clothing and household items purchased used or on mega-sale, lots of homegrown food, etc. However, all of these steps have allowed us to live pretty comfortably on one (sometimes irregular!) income.


Corinne McKay

Guest post: project manager pet peeves

The recent guest post on Translator pet peeves generated so much interest that I thought it would be interesting to let other players in the industry vent, I mean share their thoughts as well. The following guest post is by Paula Dieli; her bio appears after the post.

These pet peeves include my own project management experiences as well as those of a fellow PM who prefers to remain anonymous.
1. The #1 complaint — Translators who don’t read instructions.
Some examples:
– You ask for the translations to be in the same format as the source files and the format comes back different.
– You ask for highlights in yellow and you get them in green.
– You get only a cleaned file from the translator when you have specifically asked for him/her to return both the cleaned and uncleaned file.
– You specifically state that the files should not be renamed and they all come back renamed with the translator’s initials appended to each filename.

2. Translators who never confirm that they have started a job.
It would be great if you could just quickly reply to confirm receipt of the source files and/or PO and indicate to the PM that the work is underway.

3. Translators who never ask questions.
We begin to worry when we don’t hear anything from you. We appreciate even a little communication during the project (“Just checking in to say that everything is going fine…”) to know that the project is on track.

4. “You mean you wanted the footnotes translated too?”
Everything should be translated unless otherwise specified by the PM and if you’re not sure, don’t hesitate to ask your PM!

5. “I know the translation is due today but I just wasn’t able to get it finished.”
We know that estimating how long a translation will take is not a perfect science. That said, numerous other people (editors, proofreaders, graphic designers and of course the end client) are lined up and waiting for your completed translation so if you can give us a little notice, it really helps!

6. “I wasn’t able to find this term so I’ve left it in the source language, hoping you’ll be able to figure it out.”
If you are stuck on a term, consider asking your colleagues or posting to a forum. If you are still stuck, please consider asking us before you deliver the final translation and we’ll be happy to consult with other translators in your language pair for guidance.

7. A client asks for a detailed plan for handling a large volume of work but hasn’t specified exactly when the work will be handed off or how large it will be.
It’s difficult (read impossible) to provide exact estimates for a project whose specifications are vague. Give us the project details and we’ll be happy to provide you with a detailed plan.

8. Clients who tell you they “absolutely need something done on Tuesday.”
You deliver the project and you get an out of office response! Enough said.

9. You deliver a translation and the client never confirms receipt.
We’re not expecting a thank you (or we would have quit this job long ago) but just a simple email confirmation so we’ll sleep better at night.

10. Clients who ask you and your team “to work this weekend so you can deliver on Monday morning.”
PM’s have many great skills but groveling is one we prefer not to use so if you can give us a little notice, even a day, it would be much appreciated!

Paula Dieli is a Localization Project Manager at Adobe Systems Inc., managing the localization of a large and complex software project into 15 languages. She also works as a French to English freelance translator specializing in information technology and business. Paula holds an M.A. in Translation from Kent State University and a B.A. in Computer Science and French from the State University of New York at Potsdam. Her previous experience includes project management at a language service provider and software engineering and program management at several software companies. She is the author of Essential Project Management, a blog on translation/localization project management.