Training for Translators

Classes for translators and interpreters


Corinne McKay

Translator, unplugged

Credit for the new header image: “Cambodian Sanskrit in the temples of Angkor” by iStock member Yangshuo.

Michelle Rafter has a great post this morning called Time Out, on the merits of unplugging from your computer. In the post, Michelle references another blog post from a writer who takes a “technology sabbath” from Friday evening to Saturday evening, during which time he doesn’t use his computer or cell phone for work-related purposes. Michelle writes that she likes to get out of the office and go for a hike to decompress.

I will say that I agree wholeheartedly with this advice. There are times when being immediately available has its bonuses; if a client needs to call at a specific time with an update or question, it’s nice to be able to take the cell phone to the park, answer the call and then continue with the hike. But I do feel that more often, being “always on” is more a result of our own fantasies of indispensability than anything else, and that the vast majority of the time, we actually can afford to unplug for a few hours and get out from in front of the screen. In my own case, I take at least one computer-free vacation a year (and by vacation I mean ten days to two weeks, not a long weekend) and make sure to get outside and away from the computer for part of every day. Lately, my family has been experimenting with growing a lot of our own food, and I’ve found that there’s nothing like an hour of pulling weeds to really clear the brain!

Interestingly enough, many freelancers don’t seem to feel this way. Last year I was talking to another translator at the American Translators Association conference in San Francisco and the subject of vacations came up. When I told the other person that my family would be taking a two-week “beach and wildlife” trip to Baja over Christmas and punctuated it with “Two weeks without phone or e-mail, can’t wait!,” this person paused for a moment and then said “I didn’t know people still did that.” Granted, this vacation was during a time of year when many people take time off and business often slows to a crawl, but I have to say that my business didn’t suffer any ill effects, I really didn’t check e-mail or phone messages for two weeks, and best of all I was excited to get back to work at the end of the trip.

Unplugging: try it, you’ll like it!


Corinne McKay

Tracking your freelance income

After reading Jill Sommer’s post on job tracking systems for freelancers (for what it’s worth, I used to use a white board, then I switched to post-it notes, now I use a paper planner, but I agree that some sort of system is imperative), I thought I would write something about income tracking systems.

As with job tracking systems, there are various ways to track your income and outstanding invoices. I used to use a white board to write down the details of every invoice I issued. I liked this system because it kept everything in front of my eyes, and it was easy to see when invoices were overdue. There are also various programs like Translation Office 3000 that will track your invoices and income as well. TO3000 isn’t cheap (150 euros), but I think I might buy it if they produced a Linux version (yes, that’s a hint!). I’ve always used the open source accounting software GnuCash for my business accounting, and I’ve been quite happy with it.

I abandoned my white board invoice tracking system because I wanted a way to track my total outstanding invoices. Although this is obviously possible using the white board system and a calculator, it’s much easier if you use a spreadsheet, because you can just write a sum formula for the upper (or lower) cell in the column where you record the invoice amounts. My thought on this was that by tracking my total outstanding invoices (and assuming that clients pay on time, which most of mine thankfully do!), I would have an objective data point on which to base my project acceptance decisions. For example, if I want to earn a gross amount of $5,500-$6,000 a month and I see that I currently have only $4,500 in outstanding invoices, I know that I can’t be picky about accepting new work. On the other hand, if I have $7,000 outstanding, I know that I have at least a week of wiggle room and I can afford to either plan some days off or work on non-paying projects such as my blog, book and translation-related volunteer work.

I use a simple OpenOffice.org spreadsheet (like an Excel sheet) and record the invoice number in the A column, the issue date in the B column, the client in the C column, the invoice amount in the D column (and the top cell in the D column is the sum of all of the D cells below it) and the date paid in the E column. In the E column I also record follow-up to any overdue invoices i.e. “first reminder sent 6/5” or “certified letter with request for payment within 30 days sent 5/5.”

I find this system useful because it’s easy; every time I issue an invoice, I just record the details in the spreadsheet, and when I receive checks I delete the amount of that invoice so that it’s no longer included in my outstanding total. Also, this system makes it very easy to see whether I’m reaching my income goals; “no paid vacation” is one of the elements of freelancing that’s quite different from a salaried job, and often the major cost of a vacation is not the trip itself but the loss of income associated with it. I find that using an income tracking system helps me objectively decide when I need to hit the grindstone and when I can afford to spend an afternoon outdoors!


Corinne McKay

Check out…

  • Michelle Rafter’s guest post for The Urban Muse, on being a freelancer and being a mom. Michelle is a writer, but her advice applies to translators too!
  • Gabe Bokor’s post about Entering the Translation Market. Gabe is a seasoned translator and agency owner, and he offers some very insightful tips.
  • Keyboard shortcuts in OpenOffice.org. Go to Tools>Customize>Keyboard and feast your eyes on all of these mouseless tricks. So far my favorites are the shortcuts for Insert Manual Page Break (Control+Enter), Delete to End of Word (Control+Delete) and View Nonprinting Characters (Control+F10).


Corinne McKay

An interesting post on "end of day"

Jill Sommer’s blog “Musings from an overworked translator” has a great post on the definition of “end of day.” This is a subject that’s a frequent subject of jokes between myself and a friend of mine, who is also a freelance translator and also has a young family, since our “end of day” is often 10PM, 11PM, you get the picture! As Jill says, it’s yet another reason to clarify all of the terms of a translation project in order to avoid misunderstandings. Even if you don’t work odd hours, “end of day” varies widely when you’re in one time zone, your client is in another, and their client is in yet another!


Corinne McKay

Colo rats d'eau? Allons-y!

Yesterday, ever-observant EN>FR translator Marianne Reiner sent me a link to an article about my hometown, Boulder CO, in the online French publication Courrier International. In addition to being just plain amusing (I think I’ll start referring to Boulder as “a mini-Copenhagen with a view” as the author does!), this article struck me as illustrative of a few good lessons for translators.

  • It’s interesting to get a “client’s-eye view” of your own environment, because it helps you understand the client’s perspective. For me, it’s an everyday occurrence to see someone delivering pizzas in a Prius or to get passed on a running trail by someone who’s training for the Olympics, but it’s fascinating to see what a French person thinks of those phenomena. Takeaway: keep up with news about your country/city/political situation that’s written by speakers of your non-English languages in order to understand their perspective.
  • It’s fun and useful to keep up with neo-terms that are specific to your location/interests, etc. In this article I learned some new expressions for Boulderesque concepts such as “zero-waste policy” “bohemian lifestyle” “carbon fiber” “solar-powered heating system” and more.
  • As Marianne perceptively suggested to me, this could have an interesting business angle. A few ideas popped into my head; many of these don’t apply to what I do, but could work well for other translators: visit the businesses that are profiled in this article and suggest that since French tourists are already visiting their establishments and more (armed with this article and their extra-strength euros) will surely be coming, shouldn’t their menu/brochure/advertisement/guided tour be translated into French? Ditto with the local chamber of commerce: the U.S. is a euro-earner’s oyster, so let’s invite the French to (as the article suggests!) come bike, hike, eat organic food and meditate in Boulder. How about a French-speaking guided tour of downtown hotspots? A linguistic entrepreneur could also contact the publication where this article appeared and/or the writer, and let them know that when the French come to Boulder, we’re all set with French-language materials and services to welcome them.

Obviously, these tips have to be customized depending on the situation, but it struck me as a good moment to think about both outside-the-box marketing and ways to capitalize on new trends in the global economy.