Training for Translators

Classes for translators and interpreters


Corinne McKay

News from the ATA TCD Conference

The American Translators Association Translation Company Division held its 9th annual conference in Denver this past weekend. This was a high-quality conference, even for those of us who are technically freelancers and not translation companies; the presentations were very well done and it was a good chance to get an agency’s-eye view of the industry.
I attended sessions on machine translation, international payments, creating a motivating workplace, online communication tools, workflow management software, organizational constraints, and the current state of the TenT (translation environment tool) market.

I came away from this conference with a few (admittedly unscientific) observations:

  • Agencies are frustrated with the current state of the translation software market and are ready (and I mean ready) for some alternatives to the major players. During Jost Zetzsche’s presentation “The Technological Vice Grip: Is it No Way or the Giant’s Way,” audience hostility toward the market leader translation software companies was a major topic. A few agency owners in the audience had invested heavily in Idiom WorldServer just months before Idiom was acquired by SDL, and one even commented that agencies “…are concerned that some of the independent companies may not be viable, but that if they become more viable, they’ll be bought up.” In his presentation, Jost stressed that open source and open standards are the most reliable form of protection against investing in software that either becomes orphaned or is acquired by a competitor. For example at present, none of the market leader TenT companies has signed on to the XLIFF standard that allows the exchange of bilingual files between tools.It seems that agency owners are in a bind when it comes to translation software. The biggest agencies either develop their own tools in-house or purchase a software company and the smallest agencies don’t use translation software at the enterprise level at all, which leaves the medium-sized agencies out in the cold, feeling that they have to choose between having their technological trajectory dictated by a large software company or gambling on a smaller independent company that may or may not still be independent/in business next year. It will be interesting to see if any of these medium-sized agencies invest in their own open source or open standards tools, coming up with funding either individually or as a group.
  • The market is going better for freelancers than for agencies. Again, this is just my gut feeling, but nearly every freelancer I talk to says “I’ve never been busier…I keep raising my rates and I still have more work than I want.” In contrast, I got the feeling that many of the agency owners at the conference are concerned not so much about work volume but about profits, and that agencies maybe cannot make pricing decisions as impulsively as a freelancer can. In addition, I think that many U.S.-based agencies that have traditionally depended on translators in other countries are being hit hard by the falling dollar. Here again, many U.S.-based freelancers are benefiting from the exchange rate situation by seeking new clients abroad, which is a more difficult proposition for agencies.
  • Agencies seem to be taking a new look at the possibility of employing in-house translators. I talked to several agency owners who feel that in language combinations where the agency has large volumes of work, in-house translators can improve customer satisfaction, translation quality and the agency’s bottom line. Some reasons for this? In-house translators can turn around small rush projects very quickly; in-house translators save project management time because they’re right there in the agency’s office; in-house translators allow agencies to respond more quickly to requests for pricing and turnaround time; a preferred client can be given access to their preferred translator again and again, and because in-house translators are on salary, the agency can more easily forecast its costs. Clearly there are downsides too: agencies are under ongoing obligations to in-house translators in a way that they aren’t to freelancers, and unless the in-house translators are highly experienced in a variety of fields (which might price them out of an agency’s salary range), they might not cover all of the specializations that an agency needs. This is another interesting phenomenon that is worth following throughout the second half of the year!


Corinne McKay

Wordfast: seeing other platforms

Today I attended the ATA Translation Company Division conference in Denver. Despite the fact that I’m not a translation company, this conference has been well worth attending due to the quality of the presenters and the opportunity to get some perspectives on the industry from the agency viewpoint.

Wordfast is one of the exhibitors at the conference; over lunch I spoke with Kristyna Marrero, Wordfast’s Director of Sales and Marketing, and she filled me in on the upcoming changes in Wordfast 6.0. Beginning with that release, Wordfast will have two versions, a “classic” version that will work from within Microsoft Word as the software currently does, and a standalone version that will be Java-based and therefore relatively platform independent, meaning that it will run on at least Windows, Mac and Linux/Unix operating systems. This seems like an exciting direction for Wordfast and for tool independence in general. Kristyna said that Wordfast 6.0 will be released later this year, so I’m hoping that it’s available for demo by the time of the ATA conference in Orlando in November.


Corinne McKay

Is Wordfast divorcing Microsoft Word?

During a recent visit to the website of Wordfast, I noticed that Wordfast 6.0 (“Coming Soon!”) promises to be a “Standalone, platform independent translation environment.” There are a few things that pique one’s curiosity here. 1) “Standalone”: does this mean no more having to use Wordfast from within MS Word? 2) “Platform independent”= as in, Linux-friendly?

Up until about two years ago, I ran Wordfast as my exclusive TenT and I loved it. The only stumbling block was that running Wordfast on a Linux computer (mandatory, as our household owns no Windows machines) requires running CrossOver Linux then MS Word then Wordfast. After a while I just got tired of all of those layers of upgrades, and of the fact that I never used the pricey MS Office other than when working in Wordfast. Now I’m eagerly awaiting the release of the trial version of Wordfast 6.0!

Click here for Wordfast’s response to this question.


Corinne McKay

Some thoughts on translation specializations

One of the issues with which beginning translators most frequently struggle is specializing: what to specialize in, how to decide what to specialize in, what the most/least requested specializations are, how important it is to specialize, etc. While there aren’t too many hard and fast rules when it comes to translation specializations, here are a few general guidelines.

  • The larger the language, the greater the need to specialize. Here in the U.S., translators in smaller-diffusion languages like Finnish or Thai often don’t need to specialize at all, because there are so few of them that specializing would be impractical. On the other hand, French, German and Spanish translators must specialize in order to find a niche in a rather large market.
  • Pick a specialization that you enjoy researching. This advice comes from Jill Sommer, who teaches in the graduate translation program at Kent State, and I agree completely. Think about picking up a news magazine; which section are you most likely to read first? Business? Finance? Health? Technology? Any area that you enjoy learning more about is a potential specialization.
  • Realize that for better or for worse, many translators are self-taught in their specializations. Many people seem daunted by the idea of specializing, fearing that they need to go back to school and get a nursing degree to be a medical translator, or become a paralegal to be a legal translator. Certainly, many translators do have a strong background in their areas of specialization, and if you come into the field as a former financial analyst, physician or attorney, you are likely to command a higher income than a translator who learned that terminology on the job. But if you’re entering the market with a general liberal arts background, don’t be intimidated by the idea of selecting a specialization.
  • Oddly enough, specialization can lead to more work rather than less, as clients think of you as the go-to person for documents in your area of expertise. Also, as several people have commented on this blog, one way to make more money as a freelance translator is to work faster, and the better you know the terminology of the documents you work on, the faster you can translate.
  • While it’s theoretically possible to specialize in almost anything (I’ve met translators specializing in horses, philately, and fisheries, to name a few), you’ll probably want to pick an area that you know is in demand. A few such domains would be medicine, medical instrumentation, pharmaceuticals, law, finance, automotive, computer hardware and software, engineering, environmental science, patents, advertising, technology, the hard sciences and general business documents.
  • Consider delving deeper into a specialization that you enjoy. A great way to position yourself ahead of your competition is to take courses in the terminology of your specialization, or to spend a day at a place of business or an industrial facility that works in your specialization, then let your clients know about it!


Corinne McKay

The basics of cold contacting

For beginning and experienced translators alike, there is often no way around the need to cold contact potential clients. Beginners need to find those crucial first few clients, and those of us who are established in the industry may want to look for better-paying work, work with direct clients or work in a new specialization. As in any profession, a warm or hot contact is always the most attractive; a personal referral from a colleague or current client has a much higher success rate than an e-mail, phone call or letter out of the blue. However, there’s no denying that cold contacting works when you want to launch or grow your translation business. Here are a few cold contacting techniques and some tips on how to apply them.

Phone calls are of limited use as a first point of contact with a potential translation client. I think that a phone call is appropriate only in response to a job posting that lists a phone number, or if a potential client’s other contact information (e-mail, mailing address etc.) is not available and you’re simply making the call to get that information. If you make a phone call to a potential client, be like e-mail: introduce yourself, get to the point (“what would be the best way to send you my resumé?”), and then let the client go.

Mass e-mail campaigns are another cold contacting technique that I would discourage. Although it’s tempting to write a “dear agency” e-mail, attach your resumé and blast it off to a few hundred translation companies, this technique may a) be perceived as spam and simply deleted and b) appeal to the type of clients you don’t really want to work for: low payers or clients who do not focus on quality.

Personalized e-mail forms the backbone of most translators’ initial marketing campaigns. Most translation companies have application instructions right on their website (look for a link to “contact,” “freelancers” or “employment”), whereby you use either the agency’s online form or send your application materials to an e-mail address that the agency provides. If you are sending a cover letter by e-mail, keep it very brief. Something along the lines of “To the attention of X translation company: I am a freelance X to X translator, and I am interested in offering my services to your agency. My specializations include X, X and X, and I have X years of experience working with X types of clients. In addition, I (am certified by X translators association, have a PhD in biology, am a CPA, worked in international trade for 10 years, etc.). My resumé is attached for your consideration and I look forward to speaking with you about how we might work together in the future.”

Postal mail is a technique that I think can work well with direct clients. When you’re applying to a translation company, you don’t have to convince the company that they need your services, but with a direct client you may. So, you may want to give the client more information than is appropriate to send in a cold e-mail; for example samples of your work, a brochure about your services, etc. Online printing services have also made it much easier to create professional-looking marketing postcards, and these are fast and inexpensive to create and send out to potential clients.

One element of cold contacting that translators often overlook is requesting a personal interview with local clients, or with clients who are in a city that you will be visiting. Especially if you are just starting your business but present yourself well in person, I think it can work very well to e-mail a potential client and ask if you can “stop in for a few minutes to learn more about their business and how you might fit in.” Take a small gift and treat the meeting as an informational interview, where you are not so much trying to sell yourself as to find out what the client’s needs are.