When it comes to raising your translation rates, what's the correct strategy: ask or tell? A colleague and I talked about this at length today, and it struck me as good food for thought. In one sense, other professional service providers don't phone you up and ask if it's OK with you if they raise … [Read more...] about Supplier or demander?
Paper dictionary to the rescue
Web-based terminology databases are a wonderful thing for translators. As compared to the research tools of times gone by, we now have access to resources that are vast, free, and easily updated when new terms arrive on the scene. A few of my favorites are: Le Grand Dictionnaire … [Read more...] about Paper dictionary to the rescue
Join a list, check it twice
Especially in uncertain economic times, it's critical to find out what other translators are saying about prospective clients before you take on work from them. In addition, even those of us who make a standard practice of checking an agency's payment ratings before accepting work need to add an … [Read more...] about Join a list, check it twice
Some thoughts on financial solvency
Beth Hayden's blog on blogging recently led me to a fantastic blog on personal finance, Get Rich Slowly (isn't that a great title?). Although this blog is obviously not related to translation or even specifically to self-employment, it's loaded with great advice for people in all types of financial … [Read more...] about Some thoughts on financial solvency
Hire yourself
An excellent piece of advice that I've seen in various places (such as the Business Smarts column in the ATA Chronicle) is for self-employed freelance translators to "think of yourself as your own employee." Taking a third-person look at your business, as if you're the boss and some other person is … [Read more...] about Hire yourself