This month’s Training for Translators master class is coming up on Thursday (March 27). Guest instructor Nora Díaz is back, with Beyond the basics of AI for translators and interpreters.

Registration is $75 and includes the recording! Following her rave-reviewed Intro to AI master class, Nora will cover:
-AI deep research techniques for terminology, fact-checking, and information-gathering
-Custom GPTs for translation and interpreting purposes
-Integrating Microsoft and Google AI tools into other software that you’re using

Full description/registration here!

This month’s master class is Beyond the basics of AI for translators and interpreters, taught by guest instructor Nora Díaz. The live class is on March 27, and registration ($75) includes the recording.

Nora’s Intro to AI class was the largest master class that Training for Translators has ever held, so I’m excited that Nora is back for Part II, covering:

• Deep research using AI: terminology, fact-checking, information-gathering
• Custom GPTs for translation and interpreting purposes
• Integrating Microsoft and Google AI tools into other pieces of software you’re already using

Because this is not an intro class, participants need to either purchase and watch the recording of Nora’s Intro class, or have a solid understanding of the fundamentals of ChatGPT. We hope to see you there!

Trying new things can be intimidating, especially if you’re trying new things under pressure (realizing that you need more work NOW), or if you’ve been running your business in the same way for a long time. As I wrote about in 2024’s final newsletter, I honestly think that most people never even know what they’re capable of, because they lack the courage to try. But how do we muster the courage to try?? We’re all on that path (I include myself in that effort), but here are four questions that might help you move in that direction:

1. What’s the worst thing that can happen if I try something new? As translators and interpreters, our work is important, but we’re not organ transplant surgeons or fighter jet pilots. If you go to your first-ever client-side event and it’s a disaster, I promise you that no one will die. If potential clients don’t respond to your e-mail outreach, the world will continue turning. It’s really OK to try and to not have it go perfectly. 
2. What’s the best thing that can happen? We tend to dwell on the negatives. But what benefits could you derive from trying new things in your business? More fulfilling work? Higher income? Clients who appreciate you more? A service you’re interested in (interpreting, subtitling, copywriting, voiceover) but have never tried? 
3. What skills or experience do I already have, that could help me with this? It’s in our nature to look at the parts of the “new thing” that we’ve never done before. But if you’ve worked with even one client, you’ve sold your services. If you’ve done editing for agencies for a long time, why not look for business executives who have to write articles in their non-native language and need that same service? Focus on the transferable skills that you already have and that you can apply in a different way. 
4. What’s the consequence of not trying something new? I’m a risk-averse person, and I think that risk aversion is generally a good thing. Risk aversion got me and my husband to live debt-free, and it’s saved me from a lot of bad decisions. But in our businesses, we often underestimate the impact of staying stuck. As the saying goes, if you do what you’ve always done, you’re going to get what you’ve always gotten, and if you want different results in your business, you probably have to try at least a tiny new thing!
   
   I hope these tips are helpful! Have a great week!

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Here’s a quick but hopefully useful tip, because we all find ourselves in this situation… When there’s a task that you’re truly dreading, try a productivity ritual to get it done. 

It’s amazing how much you can get done when you just *focus on one thing* for a set period of time. But that’s weirdly hard to do in our modern work environment. My solution: the productivity ritual. 

Case in point: For a couple of weeks, I had been putting off an administrative task that I estimated would take four hours. “I don’t have four hours! So I just won’t work on it at all!” Illogical, I know, but that’s where I was stuck.

I decided to just attack it, using my personal productivity ritual:
🛑Physically flipping my phone over. I find that even if I silence the notifications, I still look at the screen, so I turn the phone face-down
🛑Shutting off all notifications on my computer (I use the web version of WhatsApp, so it still pings even if my phone is silenced)
🛑Silently acknowledging that the world can keep spinning without me for an hour
🎶Putting on some productivity music. I use wordless background music (Jazz for Study, Lofi Girl), but yours might be something totally different. If AC/DC works for you, listen to that. 

You can guess the ending. After an hour, I had completely polished off the “four-hour” task, and I was relieved of both the task itself, and the mental burden of worrying about the task. If you’re struggling to complete an unpleasant task, try even a 15 or 20-minute productivity burst. 

The key here is that the ritual has to be something special. If you wear your noise-canceling headphones all the time, you can’t simply put them on and tell yourself, “But THIS time I’m going to be productive!” You need to save your ritual for those tasks you truly dread and avoid; it also helps to impose a time limit, and reward yourself at the end. In my case, I told myself that I would work on the dreaded task for an hour, then go get a mocha at my favorite coffee shop. Done! It’s off the to-do list! 

Let me know how this works if you try it!

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Here’s a question: Is LinkedIn Premium worth paying for? Executive summary: Probably not in the long term, unless you’re looking for an in-house job, but in the short term, it may be worthwhile. Let’s take a deeper look. 

Ordinarily, I don’t think LinkedIn Premium is extremely valuable for us as freelancers. LinkedIn is the place to be for networking, but its job search features are really geared toward people looking for, or hiring for, in-house positions. Maybe that’s what you want. But for a freelancer, LinkedIn Premium’s features have not, historically, been very necessary or appealing. I’m just not that convinced of the value of seeing who viewed your profile, or being the “featured applicant” for a job, or “assessing your standing in the job market” through the Competitive Insights feature. Just not that crucial for a freelancer, although I’ve heard good things about the LinkedIn Learning classes that are included with Premium. But I would not have really recommended paying for Premium…

Until…a few months ago, when LinkedIn drastically limited the quantity and length of “connection notes” that you can send from the free account. 

What’s the value of connection notes? 

When you connect with someone on LinkedIn, you’ll then get a pop-up, asking you if you’d like to “Add a note” to the connection request. You definitely want to do this, for two reasons:

• Almost no one does this, so it makes your connection request stand out
• It’s a must, if you’re connecting with people who don’t know you. This is particularly important if you’re marketing to direct clients. Envision an international marketing manager, wondering why a translator or interpreter is contacting them? It may seem obvious to you, but perhaps not so much to them. 

Enter, the connection note; a brief message that you can send along with your connection request. Back in the day (until October 2023), LinkedIn had no strict monthly cap on connection notes. They had some “undisclosed limits” based on your usage, but in October 2023, the connection note limit entered the room, capping most free account users at 10 notes per month, 300 characters each, which recently dropped to five per month, 200 characters each. 

LinkedIn is allowed to earn money. And LinkedIn, like most social media platforms, is cracking down on what you can do with the free account. This is, after all, capitalism. But what does this mean in practice for us, as freelancers who need or want to market our businesses? 

Steps to take

First, make sure that you’re at least using your five free notes. You can’t carry them over; it’s five notes per month, use it or lose it, so make sure you use them. 

Second, if you’re actively marketing, especially to direct clients (which is a lot of freelancers right now, given the past year’s shifts in the agency market), do the LinkedIn Premium free trial, send out as many personalized connection requests as it will allow, then assess whether you want to continue. 

The LinkedIn Premium free trial is easy to sign up for, and easy to cancel. You have to enter a credit card, but just set a reminder the second you activate the trial, and then cancel it at least one full day before you’re going to get charged. I got a free trial offer just by clicking the Premium link in my left-hand sidebar, or you could follow these instructions.

Whether to continue

As freelancers, we tend to be frugal, or even cheap, about paying for online services. But particularly if you want to work primarily in the direct client market, it’s going to cost at least some money to make money. I now spend almost $6,000 a year on these types of subscriptions (Zoom Pro with extra storage, Thinkific, Gusto, QuickBooks Online, Happy Scribe (a video captioning tool), Payment Practices, Carbonite, Google Workspace, Text Aloud, AnyCount, and probably more that I’m forgetting about). But without them, I would have no business at all. You really have to think of these tools in terms of ROI: how much work do you have to land or retain in order to pay for them? In most cases, not that much! 

Even if you purchased Premium Business, LinkedIn’s mid-level Premium tier, it would cost $575 if you paid for the full year at once, and this would give you access to a lot of messaging capability on LinkedIn. In the grand scheme of things, $600 isn’t a ton of work to earn; if you landed just one medium-sized freelance project, it would be worthwhile. 

So here’s what I would do: sign up for the Premium free trial for a month, do a lot of LinkedIn-based marketing during that month, and then re-evaluate. I start with a short note (ChatGPT is good at tweaking the tone and complying with the character count), like “Hello [name], I hope you’re doing well! I’m a [describe what you do] and I’d love to connect.” After someone accepts that, you can send them something like you’d write in a normal prospecting e-mail (Here’s a potential crossover between your needs and my skills, would you be the right person to speak with about whether my services might be helpful?). 

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