Training for Translators

Classes for translators and interpreters


Corinne McKay

The best and worst of working from home

This fall marks my six year freelance-iversary, and I’ve been thinking about the pluses and minuses of the past six years in order to plan for the future. Before becoming a translator, I was a high school French teacher, which is about as far from the home office environment as one can get (think screaming seventh graders hanging off you all day!). In general, I really enjoy working from home and I also think that it has a lot of benefits for the environment and the community. I’m interested to hear people’s thoughts on the ups and downs of the home office, here are a few of mine:

The best:

  • Flexibility. This is probably my favorite thing about working from home. If I want to go for a bike ride or to the grocery store or library during the day when most people are at work, it’s rarely a problem. If I want to work for 4-5 hours during the day and then 2-3 hours at night, again it almost always works out well.
  • Being available. When I was a teacher, scheduling an appointment with my dentist, financial planner, etc. was a serious logistical challenge. Now, it doesn’t require taking a personal day to let the furnace repairman in or wait for the new door to be delivered.
  • Improved quality of life for the family. Because of the flexibility of my work situation, we don’t use any after school programs or child care outside of school hours, which I think is a big benefit for my daughter.
  • No commute. Although I don’t mind the occasional commute by bus (a good chance to catch up on reading or pay bills), commuting by car is something that I now find intensely frustrating from the standpoint of wasting time and resources.
  • It builds community. I’ve gotten to know a lot of people in my neighborhood and other parents at my daughter’s school because I’m around a lot, which really adds to my (already high) enjoyment of where I live.
  • Resource conservation. Working from home maximizes the resources that already exist in your house. Even if you’re gone 12 hours a day at the office, you still have to heat/air condition the house, run the hot water heater, have a phone line, leave the digital clocks plugged in, etc. When you work from home, at least you’re using these resources rather than leaving the house standing empty while you use similar resources at the office.

    • The worst:

  • Flexibility. To me, flexibility is both a plus and a minus. When a friend asks me to do a favor during the day (watch a sick kid, let the plumber in, go out to lunch), it’s harder to say no than it would be if I worked at an office and was clearly “at work.” I find this especially hard when we have friends or relatives visiting; if I had an office job, I wouldn’t feel guilty about going to work, but the same is not always true when you work at home.
  • Social isolation. Even if you have an active social network, it’s still a little odd being completely alone for 5-10 hours a day. Sometimes I find myself making an excessive amount of conversation with the bank teller or supermarket checker, and I know it’s time to plan a date with a friend! Lately I’ve started seeing more press about “co-working environments” such as The Hive and have thought of those as an additional option.
  • The feeling of always being at work. Since I’ve been freelancing, I’ve found that I don’t really feel like I’m “out of the office” unless I’m away from home. Admittedly, this is a good excuse to plan lots of ski weekends and camping trips, but I do sometimes envy people who shut the office door on Friday afternoon and don’t think about work until Monday.

Any other best and worst out there?


Corinne McKay

Since Santa's on his way…

…and since you might be looking to use some money from your business account before the year ends, here are some items that have caught my eye lately.

A little computer. It seems that the Asus Eee PC (from $329 on Amazon) is one of this year’s hottest devices; at 2.5 pounds and with 7 hours of battery life off one charge, it’s definitely tempting. But wait… there’s also the XO laptop “give one, get one” program through which you can donate an XO laptop to a the One Laptop per Child program and get one for yourself too. My daughter has one of these laptops and it’s an amazing piece of machinery; water-resistant, shock-resistant, built-in WiFi, although the keyboard is really small for an adult unless you have very tiny hands. Or, if you’re looking for a way to actually get some work done (imagine!), how about the AlphaSmart distraction-free word processor which is also 2 pounds but has a full size keyboard, runs for 700 hours on 3 AA batteries (not a typo) and is 100% free of celebrity gossip websites and Facebook.

A digital voice recorder. We translators do so much reading and writing, sometimes it’s good to use a different sensory mode. With a digital voice recorder (from $31 on Amazon), you could take a walk during the day and dictate your thoughts about your business goals for 2009, or your to-do list for the next week.

An MP3 player with WiFi. The iPod touch is running at $229 on Amazon, and you can use it to check your e-mail anywhere there’s a WiFi hotspot. This could be useful even around the house, if you have your main computer turned off, or you could combine this type of device with a tiny computer to make a little mobile office. It seems to me that the size of the iPod touch’s screen would dramatically reduce the appeal of browsing the web unnecessarily.

A portable hard drive. Admittedly this lacks the glam factor of a laptop that fits in your pocket, but a portable hard drive (you can get a 320 gig USB drive for about $100 from outlets such as NewEgg) is a good way to back up your laptop, take large amounts of data on the road or create an off-site backup system for your main computer (by storing the drive outside your house).


Corinne McKay

What I learned about translators while on vacation

For everyone who celebrated U.S. Thanksgiving, welcome back to work! I always find that a vacation is a good chance to develop some new insights into work and life in general, and this one was no different. My family and I spent the week on a mountain biking and hiking vacation with another family, and on this trip I was confronted with a new realization about translators: we know a lot about a lot. This isn’t to say that translators are more intelligent than mechanical engineers, energy consultants, systems administrators, etc. (to name a few of the people on this trip!), but because of the documents that we read for work all day, we learn a lot of specialized facts about a wide variety of topics.

Personally I think this is a really appealing part of the profession, and one that hasn’t often occurred to me. For example on our trip, the subject of Native Americans’ use of horses came up, which prompted me to comment that horses were actually introduced by the Spanish in the 16th century, before which time many Native American tribes used dogs to pull their belongings around on sled-type devices called travois (I learned that while translating an atlas about Native Americans). Not that people’s eyes didn’t glaze over when I got to the intricacies of how a travois can be pulled either by hand or with a harness on a human, but it was still a fun moment! I also learned that translators know a lot of the answers to the Discovery Channel quiz show Cash Cab (maybe I never realized his before because we don’t have TV at home!).

In sum,  although it sounds trite to say, translation is a great job because we’re always learning; and as compared to people who are always learning about a very narrow subject area, our knowledge allows us to be familiar with a wide variety of subjects that sometimes come in handy. Have fun with it!


Corinne McKay

Quick start marketing strategies for translators

There are numerous ways to get your freelance translation business up and running, or revive it when you’ve taken time off or haven’t had much work. These range from the unexciting but effective (i.e. applying to every agency in the ATA or a similar association) to the creative and pricey (i.e. preparing slick marketing materials and attending trade fairs for your target industries).

So far (I always feel obligated to write that in case the bottom falls out of the industry at some point!) the global economic meltdown seems to have left most freelance translators relatively unaffected. At the ATA conference, many people I spoke with commented that they have never been busier. But, let’s say that you really want to ramp up your marketing efforts; I’ll offer a few suggestions and I’m sure that other people have great tips too.

  • Write articles for trade publications. I think that writing for translation industry publications is really worthwhile too, but if you want to find clients, offer to write for publications that serve your target industries. A simple “best practices for purchasing translations for the (financial, legal, automotive, pharmaceutical, you name it) industry” could position you as the expert in that field. And don’t try to make the excuse that there aren’t any good publications in your areas of specialization; if the worldwide dredging industry has a magazine (and a very nice website!), I’m guessing that your target industries do too!
  • Ask potential clients in your area for an informational interview. This could include local agencies, direct clients, association presidents, etc. Don’t be high pressure; just ask if the potential client would like to have coffee so that you can “learn more about their business and how translation fits in” or something similar. Don’t depend on meeting these decision-makers at networking events; go to them and get a one on one meeting…and of course you pick up the tab for their coffee or lunch.
  • Work when no one else is working. Whether it’s nights, weekends or the week between Christmas and New Years, the flow of international business rarely stops. Market yourself specifically as the go-to person for those times, the person who takes over when the client’s office closes down.
  • Take a marketing trip to your source language country(ies). As I mentioned in a previous post, Payment Practices and similar services can help you find highly-rated clients overseas. Payment Practices lists two pages of agencies in Paris that are rated 4.0/5.0 or higher by translators who have worked for them. In addition, the post-holiday season is a great time to find cheap airfares. So, enlist the help of a trusted colleague who is a native speaker of your source language(s); compose an e-mail asking these highly rated agencies for an informational interview (coffee or lunch at your expense; see above!). Arrive in your nice business outfit with your resumé and cover letter in the client’s language (see trusted colleague) and network away. In any major city, I think that a freelancer with some experience could easily have in-person meetings with 10 or more potential clients during a five day trip.

Some of these strategies are free, some cost money; some are for introverts and others demand a lot of smiling and shaking of hands. The point is, if you’d like your business to be better than it is, try something new; try something that everyone else isn’t doing, and reap the benefits!