Training for Translators

Classes for translators and interpreters


Corinne McKay

Self-publishing with Lulu

Thanks to Andrew Bell for suggesting this post idea!

Years ago, becoming a published author was a really big deal; one had to write up a book proposal, find an agent, shop the book around to various publishing houses and hope that one of them would sign on to publish the book. In the traditional publishing model, the author also relinquishes a good deal of control over the manuscript, may be expected to do most of his/her own marketing and may receive a royalty in the range of 5-10% of the cover price for each book sold (this information is based on anecdotal evidence from people I know who have worked with traditional publishers). I hate to look at the glass half empty, but to me, earning $1-$2 per copy of a $20 book is a tough way to make a living.

Recently, the self-publishing industry has really been revolutionized by the advent of high-quality Print on demand (POD) services. POD, previously derided as one cut above a photocopied manuscript, is now in widespread use. As its name suggests, POD books are printed one at a time when someone orders a copy; thus there’s no inventory, no waste, no storage issues, etc. Many traditional publishers, especially academic publishers, are now using POD to keep their backlist of books “in print” pretty much indefinitely. POD books have also come a long way in terms of quality and appearance; I’ve even had people comment that the paper and printing in my book look superior to what some traditional publishers produce. POD also offers authors the option to update their manuscripts at any time and start distributing the new edition immediately since there is no backlog of books that have to be sold or destroyed.

I used the POD service Lulu to publish my book
How to Succeed as a Freelance Translator in 2006, and I’ve been thrilled with the process (I don’t have any affiliate deal with Lulu, I just love them). The book has since sold over 2,800 copies and has risen to #59 on Lulu’s all-time bestseller list. I estimate that I’ve made about $15,000 in book royalties; all of this isn’t to brag, but to say that if I can do it, you can do it! POD royalties vary, but seem to fall in the range of 25-50% of the cover price depending on how expensive the book is.

I really wonder why more translators don’t self-publish using POD services. Translators love to write and translators consume a lot of information. Why aren’t people publishing subject-specific glossaries, or manuals to all of the software applications that we battle with on a daily basis, or their own literary translations (after securing copyright permission of course)?

Self-publishing on Lulu is easy, and getting easier all the time. You can have your book for sale only through Lulu (you can then order whatever quantities of the book you want and sell it yourself, or people can buy it off the Lulu website) or you can purchase an ISBN and have the book for sale through major retail outlets (Amazon, Barnes&Noble, by special order from bookstores, etc.). If your book is for sale only through Lulu, you pay nothing up front and Lulu takes a commission on each book that you sell; their “Published by You” service which includes an ISBN costs $99.95. You can also make an e-book or an audio CD of your book and Lulu will sell that too. In addition, Lulu offers a wide array of service levels, from DIY (the option I selected) to their “publishing packs” ($369-$1,369) which get you phone and e-mail support, a cover design, editorial support, formatting services, etc. In addition, you set the price of your book, so you determine how much royalty you earn off each copy. And unless you specifically want to handle the distribution and sales yourself, Lulu does it for you, then deposits the revenue in your PayPal account.

Basically, Lulu will publish anything that you can upload as a PDF or Word document; then you can pick whether you want your book to be hardcover, paperback, spiral bound, etc. If you want your book to be distributed through major retail channels, it must meet certain requirements (these are imposed by wholesale book distributors, not by Lulu). Lulu offers templates to help you meet these requirements, so in theory you could just write your book in Word or OpenOffice, upload it, and Lulu will create a suitable PDF of it. For my book, my husband served as the editor and designer, so he did the layout using a free program called LyX, which I think produces a book that looks much more professional (much more “like a traditional book”) than one that is generated from a Word or OpenOffice document.

If you’re interested in self-publishing on Lulu, the easiest first step is to browse their Publish section and check out the options. Then you can decide what you feel comfortable handling yourself and what you need to hire someone to do for you. I think that a nice cover design goes a long way toward making your book look professional; for my book, we were able to find an image from an illuminated manuscript that showed a Medieval translator and that happened to be in the public domain. Before you use a piece of artwork for your cover, make sure that you are in compliance with fair use and copyright law; some online stock art sites specifically require you to purchase an extended license if you want to use an image for a POD product.

Now, all that is left is to write your book! Feel free to post your book ideas in the comments, I would love to see what other people have in mind.


Corinne McKay

Some interesting links

If you’re looking for some coffee break reading, you might want to check out:


Corinne McKay

Personal software training: a niche waiting to be filled?

Last weekend, I had the pleasure of giving a seminar on “Beyond the Basics of Freelancing” for the Northern California Translators Association. At the end of the seminar, I did a short overview of ways to diversify your freelance income stream. All of us are familiar with the basics such as editing, proofreading, voiceover, copywriting, but I wanted to generate a few new ideas. I’ll write more about these in the coming weeks, but one sideline business that really jumped out at me is personal software training for other freelance translators (i.e. going to people’s houses and helping them learn a new piece of software or improve their computer skills).

This idea first came to me when a fellow freelancer in Colorado told me that she had recently hired a bookkeeper to come to her house and set up QuickBooks. This freelancer was an instant convert to the personal software trainer model; in just a few hours, she had her entire accounting system set up and was also able to ask exactly the questions that she wanted to ask. In my own case, I recently battled with setting up Wordfast Pro on my Linux computer; in that case I couldn’t get the software to work properly for other reasons, but I also looked at Wordfast’s new standalone model and thought “Can’t I just pay someone to come to my house and teach me how to use this?”

Partially, I think that there is a big and untapped market for this type of service because as freelancers become more successful, our time is more valuable. Personally, I would rather pay someone $200 to come to my house for a couple of hours and teach me exactly what I want to know (and not repeat what I already know) than sit through an all-day seminar that covers some topics I want to hear about and some that I don’t. Likewise, I’d prefer one-on-one attention to a webinar where I can’t really ask questions until a defined time if at all.

It seems to me that there are a lot of pieces of software that would lend themselves to the personal training approach. Obviously any of the big translation environment tools, Dragon Naturally Speaking, accounting software, etc.  In addition, I think that this approach could win more freelancers over to some of the less well-known translation environment tools; whenever I evangelize about OmegaT, the free (as in doesn’t cost anything) and open source translation tool that I use and love, people seem excited by the idea but intimidated by the idea of installing it and learning how to use it.

An additional benefit of a personal software trainer who comes to your house (or works over the phone and uses a VNC system to see your desktop) is that you’re seeing how the software works and looks on your computer and how it interacts with your file system. It seems to me that this system could be a win-win deal; good extra income for tech-savvy translators and a great service for busy freelancers who want to learn new applications or polish their skills.

Finally, not to send everyone rushing to the domain name registrars, but my random sample research shows that the domain name “personalxyztrainer.com” is available for all of the translation-specific software that I searched, where “xyz” is the name of the software (yes, including the market leader!). If you decide to start this type of business, let Thoughts on Translation know how it goes!


Corinne McKay

Keeping statistics about your freelance business

It would be hard to top the buzz (furor?) generated by the guest post on translator pet peeves, so I’m going to stick with a dry topic for today!

Statistics and performance metrics are important keys to tracking the success of your freelance business. Hopefully you at least track your income and expenses, but there are many other tracking possibilities out there. I’m not a great statistics user, but I do find it extremely helpful to keep a running total of my outstanding invoices. I do this using a simple OpenOffice spreadsheet. Whenever I issue an invoice, I put the invoice details into the spreadsheet and set the spreadsheet to total up the column that includes the invoice amounts. Then, if I’m on the fence about whether to take on a project or take some extra time off, I can look at the running total and see how it compares to the amount that I want to earn in a month. If the total is substantially more than my monthly target income, I know that I’m not under any pressure to take on extra work. If it’s less, I know that I have to keep my nose to the grindstone until the total increases.

I also use my accounting software to compare my year-over-year income at various points in time. I find this to be a good sanity check; this year, although I feel as if my business volume has decreased, a quick look at last year’s income data tells me that I’ve actually earned about 20% more money because more of my work is coming from higher-paying direct clients.

Other business statistics that you might want to keep (and feel free to add your own):

  • Income by client. Use this to determine who to thank profusely at the end of the year (!) and what types of clients to market to.
  • Hourly rate for various translation jobs. Forget about the word count and divide the amount you made by how long the job took. This will tell show you which projects are more or less lucrative than others regardless of the per-word rate.
  • Time spent on non-translation tasks. This could help you figure out whether outsourcing some tasks such as OCRing, accounting, putting stamps on postcards, etc. could help improve your bottom line.
  • Average translation speed under various circumstances. If you want to know whether you work faster, and thus make more money using translation memory software,using speech recognition software, working on your laptop at a cafe instead of at home, measure it. Calculate how many finished words per hour you produce using these techniques. This might help you decide whether it’s worth investing in new software, hardware or training, whether it might be worth dictating your translations and hiring a transcriptionist to type them out, etc.

    • Feel free to add your own suggestions for things that other freelancers might like to track!


Corinne McKay

Guest post: translator pet peeves

This is a guest post by Interpres incognitus, a US-based freelance translator who prefers to remain anonymous.

“The client doesn’t want a translation, he just wants to know what it says.”

This is a direct quote from a project manager at a translation agency and the perfect way to introduce my guest post. We were discussing translator pet peeves at a recent networking lunch of the Colorado Translators Association and Corinne invited me to write a post for her blog. Here are some of the things that drive me crazy about working with agencies:

Remember, I am not on staff at your company.
I was recently asked by an agency to do a translation sample for free because they were trying to win a new client and wanted to provide the sample to them at no charge. I am always amazed at these kinds of requests, the expectation that the translator should bear all the risk. It’s not like the project manager or the sales manager at the agency will be donating the time they spend working on this project, putting fewer hours on their timesheet that day because they are handling a sample job, but they routinely expect the translator to be willing to do so.

Don’t expect me to bear the brunt of fixing your mistakes.
If you have failed to properly assess the scope of the job, it’s not my responsibility to pick up the slack. I was once asked to work on site because no time had been allowed for file conversions from an unusual file format. They decided the solution to their dilemma would be my working from their facility in the original file format, being paid by the hour rather than by the word, and commuting one hour each way to their office, unpaid of course. Thanks, but no thanks.

I don’t give discounts for numbers and common words.
A couple of times in my career I have been challenged about charging for numbers because they are not really words. My response to that is “I’ll leave them out and you can insert them where you think they go.” I have also had agencies complain about ifs, ands or buts being included in the word count. Again, I’ll be happy to leave them out.

Don’t provide misleading information about the scope of the job.
Don’t tell me the document is 140 pages and then expect me not to notice that it is actually 290 when I get it. And no, under these conditions, I can’t be expected to meet the original deadline.

All translators are not created equal.
Sending a query about a job to “Undisclosed recipients” or “Dear vendor” is basically a “first come, first served” approach to assigning a job. This tells me as a translator a lot about how your company operates. If you were hiring a new employee to work in your office would you really hire the first person who answered your ad sight unseen without checking to see if they had the requisite experience?

Common courtesy.
I have received queries about my availability and when I respond, I never hear back again. How hard would it be to give the translator the illusion of respect by sending a quick e-mail that says, “Sorry, we placed the job elsewhere” or “Thanks, but no thanks.” Are you actually so busy that you can’t write back or so sure that you will never need to contact me again in the future?

This list is by no means meant to be comprehensive 😉