Training for Translators

Classes for translators and interpreters


Corinne McKay

Links: for your reading pleasure

If the summer weather has you looking for some inspiration, here are some recent blog posts I’ve enjoyed reading. These are in no particular order:

  • Escape from Cubicle Nation (don’t you love the title?) Get Rich Slowly linked to this blog, which has some excellent tips on entrepreneurial topics. Check out the “open source coaching” posts where readers weigh in on an entrepreneur’s dilemma.
  • Various blogs have been chronicling LinkedIn’s recruitment of volunteer translators for its website. Here is a particularly interesting post from the Masked Translator on the topic.
  • Jill Sommer’s excellent post on Arabic linguist Lt. Dan Choi’s dismissal from the U.S. military because of his sexual orientation. On yesterday’s installment of the public radio show The World, reporter Kate Clark interviewed Lt. Choi about his experiences, and about the fact that the U.S. military has dismissed over 300 linguists solely because they are gay, despite the fact State Department, CIA and NSA have a critical shortage of employees with foreign language skills. You can read a transcript of The World’s interview with Choi here.
  • The Wealthy Freelancer on Why you should charge more. Make sure to read the part about the throat surgeon!
  • Translation Times on how to market your services every time you flip open your laptop by using a customized laptop skin. I have to admit, I’m not much of a splashy marketer but I’m considering getting one of these since I often use my laptop when I’m out and about. And while we’re at it, a happy belated birthday to the proprietors of Twin Translations themselves!

Happy reading!


Corinne McKay

It's personal

As a freelancer, it’s always difficult to decide how much personal information your clients need or want to know about you. In one sense, Americans in general are relatively disinclined to share personal information with employers. Unlike in much of Europe, where it’s customary to include your birth date, marital status and a photograph on your resumé, standard practice in the US is to omit almost all personal information, even down to the dates you graduated from college or held a certain job. On the other hand, we all want to appear “real” and approachable to our clients, and part of this involves allowing our clients to know a bit about us.

As translators, we have some specific considerations. For example, we have to decide whether to mention (overtly or casually) that our spouse is a native speaker of our source language, or our sister-in-law is an intellectual property attorney and occasionally proofreads our translations.

Recently, I’ve talked to a couple of new translators who are faced with a dilemma; say nothing about their personal lives and let the client guess what they’ve been up to for the past 10 years, or risk providing too much information. For example, if a freelancer has been technically unemployed for the past decade but in reality has been raising a disabled child, running a homeowners association, serving as the general contractor for large-scale home renovations etc., does this show the person’s dedication, energy and ability to multi-task, or provide information that the client really doesn’t need to know?

I’ll admit that I normally err on the side of saying too little. Although I’ve combined freelancing and parenting since my daughter was an infant, I take on a standard volume of work and have never missed a deadline, so I feel that my family situation really isn’t the client’s concern. However, I’ve heard other freelancers be a lot more open, even telling clients that they are typically not in the office from 3-8 because they’re getting the kids at school, having dinner and putting the kids to bed.

Readers, what do you think? Is personal information relevant or irrelevant to a freelancer’s clients?


Corinne McKay

Testing the direct client waters

Translators have a variety of reasons for choosing certain types of clients: some prefer agencies for their steady workflow and layer of “insulation” between the translator and the end client, some prefer direct clients for their higher rates and higher degree of autonomy, and still other translators mix up their workflow or work with clients who don’t fit exactly into either one of these categories.

In talking to beginning and experienced translators alike, I’ve noticed that many translators are very intimidated by the idea of working with direct clients. While I think that there are valid reasons to continue working with agencies, I also think that adding some direct client work to your freelance pie is a great way to increase your income and your job satisfaction. If you’re interested in dipping at least one toe in the direct client pool, here are a few tips.

  • Start small and don’t fail out of overambition. In my admittedly unscientific research, I think that many translators aim too high when they enter the direct client market. Don’t think Fortune 500, think of other one-person businesses or businesses with very small projects. As you succeed at these projects, trade up!
  • Start with projects you can translate in your sleep. If you have a targeted specialization, you know what I’m talking about (for me, it’s real estate leases and articles of incorporation). Eventually, you can aim for direct client work that demands creativity and thoughtful turns of phrase. At the outset, look for clients who will have the types of documents you’ve translated hundreds of times. This will raise your confidence level and increase the odds that the clients will be thrilled with your work.
  • Look locally. Especially with direct clients, it’s great to have a contact or introduction. If this isn’t an option, I think that a friendly “I’m a translator in the area and I’d like to offer you my freelance services…” is a good substitute. In addition, I think that despite the globalization of the professional services market, many small businesses still feel more comfortable working with someone local.
  • Track your clients’ preferences. In my experience, direct clients don’t often have style guides and sometimes haven’t really thought about style at all. Do yourself and your clients a big favor by creating a style preferences file for each client. Whenever the client sends you a comment, i.e. “We always refer to our CEO as Chief Executive Officer,” “We use European format for dates even when they’re in English,” etc., record it in the client’s style file.
  • Don’t undersell yourself. One of the obvious draws of working with direct clients is money. My average direct client pays almost double what my average agency client pays, and my direct clients are usually very low-maintenance; it’s a great situation. When you send a quote to a direct client, remember that if the client is a good fit for you, you’re offering them more personal service than they would get from an agency, one point of contact instead of many layers between the client and the translator (if the client can even communicate directly with an agency’s translator) and more consistency than they’re likely to get from an agency. For this, you need to charge real money or you will appear unprofessional.
  • Ask for feedback on every translation. “Let me know if you have any specific questions or comments or if there is anything I can do to better meet your needs…” is one of my standard lines. You could even create a simple online survey that your clients could fill out anonymously. Also, you should ask every satisfied client whether you can use their name in your marketing materials and whether they would be willing to provide a testimonial about your work for them.


Corinne McKay

Paper marketing materials: in or out?

Earlier this week, NPR ran a very interesting segment (reported by Yuki Noguchi) entitled Job Seekers Find New Rules of Recruitment, which focused largely on the role of new technology and social media in the job search process. Many of the points in the segment (have a LinkedIn profile, don’t use an AOL e-mail address or an e-mail address that you share with your spouse) were helpful but not earth-shaking. However, several of the interviewees also went into vivid detail about their hatred of paper resumés, which they described as “passé.”  While I agree with this concept in general (I think that the only time I use paper resumés is at conferences), I wonder if the same is true of other marketing materials such as postcards and brochures.

At various marketing seminars that I’ve attended, the presenters have often advocated *for* sending paper marketing materials as an alternative to electronic ones. I’ve often heard the argument that while most people delete unsolicited e-mails even before reading them, most people will at least glance over a nicely designed postcard, or will take the time to skim a sales pitch letter. Any thoughts on this? Personally I’m a fan of inexpensive business postcards from places like VistaPrint and Overnight Prints. We use these for our local translators association with a great deal of success, and I think that in the flood of bills and ads that most people receive, a nice-looking paper marketing piece or a custom-tailored letter is a nice touch. Readers, any experiences using e-mail or paper materials for your marketing campaigns?


Corinne McKay

Netbooks

Thoughts on Translation is back from vacation (Costa Rica was amazing, thanks for asking!) and ready to attack some new projects. Summer always seems to be a challenging work time; I’m in and out of the office a lot doing fun things with the family and we also travel for several weeks, so I’m usually trying to fit more work into less time than usual. I haven’t yet made the leap to a smartphone, so mobile computing has been on my mind a lot this season.

I feel it’s really important to take at least one real work-free vacation a year, so on our recent two week trip to Costa Rica we took my daughter’s XO laptop to play some games and briefly check e-mail, but otherwise we were computer-free. My warhorse laptop, a factory refurbished IBM ThinkPad that I bought 7+ years ago, is finally on its last legs; first the touch pad stopped working, now the WiFi only works about half of the time, and sometimes when I boot it up it gives scary error messages that are probably its last gasps of usability!

After a lot of hemming and hawing, I decided to get a netbook; I was on the fence between an MCI Wind and an Asus Eee and finally decided to go with the Eee. The model I got, the 1000 series with a solid state drive and Linux OS, isn’t insanely tiny (unlike some netbooks that are approximately the size of the graphing calculator I had to get for 9th grade math!), but since I have pretty big hands and do a lot of word processing, I thought that a model with an almost full-size keyboard was a better bet. So far I’m really happy with the Eee. I replaced the factory-installed Linux OS with Ubuntu’s netbook-specific distribution and it’s really fast and easy to use. The whole package (the computer, cord and my flash drive) zips into a little neoprene case for easy carrying, it’s pretty slick!

Part of my rationale for getting a netbook was that in the age of ever more pervasive WiFi, it seems like a pretty good substitute for a smartphone. If I’m waiting to pick my daughter up somewhere or out doing errands for a few hours, I’m nearly always within range of a WiFi signal and the Eee Linux model uses so little battery power that I can leave it on nearly all day on one battery charge. Also, I wonder if netbooks are going to put a dent in the market for software upgrades. I paid a little under $400 for my Eee; because our office is an all-Linux shop, the cost of software upgrades isn’t an issue, but if I ran Windows, I would certainly look at the option of attaching a netbook to an external monitor and keyboard instead of purchasing OS and office software upgrades for a desktop computer. Any other netbook-using translators out there? If so, what uses have you found for your little tool?