Reader question roundup: Digging into the mailbag

It’s been a while since I’ve done a reader question roundup! Here are three interesting topics that came up lately during my online course alumni calls. 

Who’s doing well right now? 

Question: “Based on your recent survey and your own experience, which translation specializations seem to be doing well at the moment?” 

Answer: In my opinion, and from talking to other people who talk to lots of translators, “who’s doing well right now” has almost nothing to do with your language pair(s) or specializations, and everything to do with who you work for, and your clients’ attitudes toward MT and AI. 

The only specialization that I see as being truly untouched by AI (unless you choose to use AI for the translation): certified translations of official documents, because ChatGPT can’t sign the certification statement. 

Otherwise, I think that most specializations have corners that are doing well and corners that are doing less well, but the real variable is the client. For example, I’ve heard multiple pronouncements that, “Legal translation is dead: DeepL did a huge marketing push to big law firms and they all bought in.” 

This is categorically not true. A couple of weeks ago, I got a project offer from one of my long term law firm clients. They’ve never mentioned technology in the 8+ years I’ve worked for them. They just want a good translation, and they don’t really care how I do it.

This week, I got a project offer from a boutique legal translation agency that I like a lot, and with whom I’ve worked periodically for at least five years. The offer was for a large MTPE project (and indeed, a DeepL translation!). I responded and told them, I don’t do MTPE but thanks for the request. They immediately replied and said the whole project wasn’t MTPE, and how much “from scratch” translation could I take? They sent what I requested, and it was really interesting to work on. 

The hard part: there’s really no way to tell how a client feels about AI and MT unless they say so on their website. Otherwise, you really have to poke around and find out, if post-editing AI translations isn’t your preference. But I can assure you that non-MTPE work is out there! 

How to prepare for the ATA exams? 

Question: What’s the best way to prepare for the American Translators Association certification exam? 

Answer: Take the practice tests!! I can’t stress this enough. The real test costs $525. The practice test costs $105 for members and $155 for non-members. Plus, you get your graded practice exam back with the errors marked, which you don’t on the real test unless you pay for a review. It’s amazing to me that so few people take advantage of this opportunity; go get it! 

How to avoid competing with your agency clients, if you’re marketing to direct clients? 

Question: If you’re doing direct client marketing, how can you avoid working with your agency clients’ end clients and potentially violating your non-compete agreement?

Answer: I’m a real stickler for abiding by my agency clients’ non-compete clauses, because agencies work incredibly hard to land and retain their end clients, whose work they then pass on to freelancers. 

For example, if I’m on an interpreting assignment through an agency and someone asks for my contact information because they want to hire me, I tell them to contact the agency I’m working through, because I wouldn’t be there without the agency.

If I were at an in-person networking event or trade fair and a potential client mentioned that they currently worked with one of my agency clients, I would do the same thing: move along, and don’t try to work with them directly. 

However, things get trickier when:

• You work for a huge company through an agency. Like if you work for the marketing department of Microsoft in Belgium through an agency, and you’re approached to write UX content by Microsoft in the U.S., should you refer them to the Belgian agency? Would that even work? That’s a situation where I think you have to use your own ethical compass because there’s not a clear answer. 
• Likewise, you can only avoid working for clients who you know to be clients of an agency you work for. The only way to completely avoid competing with your agency clients is to have them send you a list of all of their end clients, which they’re never going to do. This can get awkward if you start working with a direct client, and later find out that they jumped ship from one of your agency clients to work with you. Should you then stop working with them? Tell the agency? Again, this is something you have to work out if it happens, because I don’t think there’s a clear right or wrong answer. 

Have a great week, I hope these questions and answers are helpful!!

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LinkedIn: We love it, we hate it, it helps us network with clients we can’t e-mail and can’t meet in person, we fantasize about buying LinkedIn for the sole purpose of shutting it down…it’s complicated!

And if you want to completely quit LinkedIn, Amelia Hruby of Off the Grid will help you do it! I don’t even want to completely quit social media, but I find Amelia’s ideas creative and her opinions refreshing. Plus, she herself runs a six-figure business with only placeholder accounts on LinkedIn and Instagram (“Find me on my website because this account is dormant”). Remember: you’re a freelancer. No one “makes” you do anything in your business. Clients work with you or don’t, but if social media is making you nuts, get off!

The pluses of LinkedIn 

That being said, LinkedIn has some definite advantages:

• You don’t have to find anyone’s contact information
• You don’t have to worry about e-mail privacy
• You have access to endless amounts of information about who works where, where they used to work, who replaces them when they quit, it’s all right there 
• You can nudge people or companies on LinkedIn without worrying about what to write in a 150-word e-mail besides, “Do you have any work for me??? How about now???” 
• You can repost other people’s posts if you don’t want to write your own
• You can comment on other people’s posts in addition to or instead of writing your own 
• You can write your own posts and maybe get found by people who don’t yet know you and might be in a position to hire you or refer work to you
• You can look for full-time jobs and pitch yourself as a freelancer while they look for a full-timer or instead of a full-timer 

Despite the (many) annoyances of LinkedIn, I think these advantages (and probably others you’ve thought of) make it worth your time and attention. 

Forget the stupid algorithm 

Sorry for not finding a more professional way to say that. People have all kinds of theories about LinkedIn’s algorithm. Posts from personal accounts should always say “I” while corporate accounts should say “We.” Always use an image, never use an image, put your link in the post, put your link in an image, put your link in the comments. Comment on someone else’s post before you post so you don’t look like a lurker. 

I say life’s too short and my brain is already too overloaded to worry about this. Just get a little more active on LinkedIn and let the algorithm live its bot life without you. I *do* often put a “subject line” at the start of my posts. Here’s an example, where I posted about last week’s T4T newsletter. This makes it easier for people to see what the post is all about, but I think it looks formulaic if you do it all the time. 

 

The lowest-commitment way to start

The problem? When most of us think “networking on LinkedIn,” we think of the spammy messages we get all the time. “Offering you a paid Board position.” “Train AI and put yourself out of a job.” Or we think of the people whose every post is an “I’m So Great, don’t you wish you could be me???” or the people who post in an overly aggressive manner on potential clients’ posts. “Sounds like a disaster! Next time hire me and this won’t happen!” 

If you’re terrified of this, start here:

• Go on LinkedIn and follow some current or potential clients. Just go to their company page and click Follow. I know, some people worry that this gives away their business secrets or people will know who they work for. Personally I say, people really don’t think about you as much as you think they do. They barely think about you at all. Just follow some companies or NGOs or publishers or film studios or whatever, and if people want to be weird, leave them to it. 
• Get super-brave and just click the “Like” button on the post of a freelancer, corporate leader, or company you admire. Just that: one click. You can do this! You won’t die, I promise! 
• Repost someone else’s post (individual or company) that you like/agree with/want to support, just by clicking “Repost.” Don’t add any thoughts. I know, I know, the algo supposedly hates that, but here we’re training you, not the algo. 

Do those three things, then if you survived that (of course you did), keep going. 

Three ways to comment on someone else’s post 

Lots of stats and anecdotes show that commenting on LinkedIn is one of the best ways to get on the radar screen of a current client you’d like more work from, or a potential client you’d like to work for. But how do we do this? What do we say? How to not come off as too pushy or only commenting for the sake of commenting? Try this!

• Just be supportive and encouraging. It’s really OK to not say something pithy. The world needs more people who are just kind and positive and make other people feel good about themselves. It’s 100% OK to comment something like:
  •  “I really appreciate the information in this post, thanks for writing it up!” 
  • “Such great information, I’m making a note of this for the next time I’m thinking about/dealing with [topic of post]” 
  • “Great insights about [topic of post], thank you!” 
• Add a simple idea of your own to what the person/company said. Such as:
  • “I love how you talked about clients who specifically want a human touch instead of pure AI. I recently noticed this when a client came to me asking for…” 
  • “You’re so right that the AI transition has been a lot to deal with, but has also forced us to rethink how we want to work. I was pretty devastated to lose a client to machine translation, but I then found a replacement client who explicitly wants their writing to sound human.” 
  • “That’s interesting that you’re having trouble finding freelancers who do multilingual audio description. I wonder if any audio description training courses provide referrals to people who’ve taken their classes?”
• Ask a question that builds on what they said or encourages them to say more. Such as:
  • “I really appreciated your comments on XYZ trend. Do you think we’ll see more of that in the future, based on what you’re observing now?” 
  • “That’s interesting that you’ve gotten so many requests for multilingual clinical trial support. Do you think international trials are expanding? Maybe it’s getting harder to run trials in the U.S.? I’d love to read more about that.” 
  • “I really enjoyed this NGO trends report, it’s so hard to get good information on what’s happening post-USAID. Do you have any plans to release another study like this, maybe focusing on francophone Africa?” 

Posting on LinkedIn is its own topic, one that I’m not going to cover in this issue. But if you’re feeling tentative or even terrified about networking on LinkedIn, in any way, I hope these tips are helpful!

I’ve had a few requests for this topic, so let’s address it! Readers have asked me for ideas on “getting it all done,” how to organize your day, calendaring techniques, and just (waves hand in air) “all of that” in general, so let’s take a look.

First, a few resources:

• Cal Newport’s recent episode of his podcast Deep Questions, How I’m organizing my life this fall. He’s a computer science professor (not what we do) and an expert on deep work and how to give yourself time to think about important topics (what we do), and I really liked this episode. 
• Amelia Hruby’s book, Your Attention is Sacred (Except on social media). I don’t want to quit social media, but I really like Amelia’s podcast, articles, and book, about reclaiming your time and attention from The Scroll. Her viewpoint reminds me of a quote from Cal Newport that I liked so much, I wrote it on a Post-It note above my desk: “If you aren’t intentional about how you spend your time, technology will do the choosing for you.” 
• Todoist, the to-do app that I use. I find the free version sufficient, and I love being able to pre-schedule things on a recurring schedule. Remind me to do X task every Monday, every weekday, the first day of every month, etc. etc. 
• Toggl, the time-tracking app that I’ve grudgingly started using, but gotten a lot of benefit from. 
• Pomofocus, a simple timer that prompts you to work in 25-minute blocks, then take a break. 

First, what does a typical day look like for you?

I know, there are no typical days as a freelancer. But I get asked this a lot, so here’s an overview. 

I usually go to bed around 10:30 or 11:00 PM and get up around 7:00. My husband works from home and I work at a co-working office (more on that below), so we usually have breakfast together, then I take the bus or ride my bike to my office and get there between 8:00 and 9:00. I typically work until around 4 or 4:30 PM, taking regular breaks throughout the day to move around (stretch, do a little strength workout in my office, take a 10-minute walk, etc.).

After work I often go to a yoga class, have dinner between 7 and 8 PM and then lift weights and/or practice one of my musical instruments. That’s a typical day, but of course there are variations: picking up and dropping off our foster cats, having dinner with my parents who live near us, getting together with a friend for a walk or dinner, etc. etc. 

One thing you’ll notice: at this point in my life, I have close to zero caregiving responsibilities. For years and years (18 years, in fact!) my daughter’s schedule was the main driver of my schedule, and I nearly always stopped working around 2 PM, then picked back up for a few hours after dinner. If you have a massive factor like this in your life: aging parents, kids, someone else who needs you, your own health/energy level issues, give yourself grace and wiggle room when scheduling your work.

Here’s the first question: how many external demands/scheduled appointments do you typically have in a day, because I think that may dictate whether you’re more of a time-blocker or more of a checklist person. I’m more of a checklist person, because I tend to have a lot of scheduled appointments during the day. Here’s a look at this week: 

Monday
8-10 AM remote court interpreting assignment 
1-2 PM meet with ATA mentee
3-3:30 PM consultation with graphic designer about my new website 
3:45 leave work to meet a friend for early dinner 

Tuesday
8-10 AM remote court interpreting assignment 
11-11:30 online coffee chat with someone from my advanced freelancers’ group
2:45-3:45 get my hair cut 

Wednesday
10-11 T4T alumni question and answer session 
12:30-2:00 remote court interpreting assignment 
2-3 attend a webinar on SEO
4:30 leave work to pick up new foster cats 

Thursday
8-8:30 meeting with a consulting client 
10-11:30 T4T ghostwriting class
1:30-3:30 remote court interpreting assignment 

Friday
10-12 remote court interpreting assignment 
1:30-2:00 weekly meeting with a client 

It’s actually pretty rare that I have a day with no scheduled appointments or meetings. Writing this prompted me to look at my calendar, and the next day when I have absolutely nothing scheduled is October 13, almost a month in the future. Thus, I’m scheduling “everything else” (translation and writing work, all things Training for Translators, my own marketing and administrative work) around these pre-scheduled appointments. 

Time-blocking, or task-oriented planning?

When you’re thinking about how to organize your time, I think this is question #1: should you use time-blocking (single-tasking for a designated part of your day or week), or what Cal Newport calls “A, B, C time management,” where A is what you have to get done, B is what you’d like to get done, and C is what you do if you have time after you’ve completed all the A and B tasks. 

Personally, I like the idea of time blocking, but I just don’t have enough time for it to work (insert gales of laughter at that bad joke!). It’s just so rare that I have a whole day as a blank slate, and honestly I like it that way. I’m impatient and easily bored, and I’m an Upholder, so I love a list of things to check off, I’m pretty disciplined even about things I hate doing (Upholders gonna uphold, right?) and if something has to get done, I get it done. Time-blocking is promoted as “stop constantly switching from one task to another,” and just between you and me, I love switching from one task to another. The checklist productivity method works for me! 

I also incorporate the Pomodoro method. I recently, grudgingly, started time tracking in Toggl and I admit that it’s really helpful. First off, I’ve learned that I work a lot less than I think I do. But that’s a topic for another time! The topic here: I watch the Toggl timer, and when I’ve worked for about 25 minutes on one task, I take a break, so I use Toggle as a de facto Pomodoro timer and I find that helpful as well.

But maybe you’re the opposite: your days are completely yours to organize, you’re not an interpreter, you don’t have many meetings. Then maybe think about time-blocking. You could do this in a few ways:

• Divide the day into Pomodoros (25-minute periods of focused work). Aim for a certain number of Pomodoros in total, or a certain number where you do a certain thing, i.e. at least one marketing Pomodoro per day. 
• Create a one to two-hour Deep Work block at your most productive time of day, especially if you can do that at a time of day when you don’t have to regularly check e-mail (before or after your clients are in the office, depending on time zone). 
• Learn from other people. Here’s a freelancer who calls himself Captain Time, who has a really good video on time blocking with Google Calendar. And here’s an article by Austin Church (who runs the advanced freelancers’ community I’m in) on his time management method, which is much more time-block than task-oriented. 

Other factors 

Here’s a list of questions I find helpful, along with my answers in case they can help you:

• What time of day are you most productive? What’s your worst nightmare of a time of day to be working? Me: I maintain that I’m neither a morning person nor a night person, I just love to sleep. But I really, really dislike working at night and try to avoid it. 
• Where (physical location) are you the most productive? Me: Not at home. The rest of the world dreams of working from home; I end up with really clean closets and that’s about it. I moved to a co-working office in 2012 and (with the exception of six highly unproductive months at the start of COVID) have never worked at home since then. 
• Are you more of a time-block person or more of a checklist person? Me: Checklist all the way. 
• Scale of 1-10, how avoidant are you about tasks that you hate? Me: Probably a 6, but I’ve found that if I force myself to do the unpleasant stuff first thing in the day, the feeling of satisfaction is so great that it outweighs the avoidance. For example right now I’d like to find a new content marketing client, so I do the outreach for that before I even answer my e-mail. 
• How chaotic is your work life? How often are you missing deadlines, finishing projects at the last minute, pulling an all-nighter, logging on after an interpreting assignment has begun, etc. etc. I ask this because if these things are happening, I think you need to look at the bigger picture, not just time management. Do you dislike your work? Do you have neuropsychological factors at play (ADHD, depression)? Do you feel overwhelmed in life in general? Did you last take a day off in 2018 and you’re just totally burned out? Me: I’m OK on these, but I know they are issues for a lot of people and I have a lot of empathy for that. I feel fortunate to have the time and money to take regular vacations and days off so that I don’t burn out, and I know that’s not the reality for everyone. 

I hope these tips are helpful if you’re trying to organize your time this Fall! Talk to you next week!

In episode 29 of the Training for Translators podcast, I talk about three ways to take a vacation, when you’re a freelancer with no paid vacation! Plus an option if your budget is close to zero.

The episode is based on this blog post if you’d rather read than listen, which you can do on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or right here!

True confessions: I love vacation 

I really enjoy my job, but I love traveling so much that I even love the things most people hate about travel:

• The people-watching 
• The tiny snacks
• The animals people bring along on their trips 

Case in point: day one of my recent Europe trip was a “positioning” trip from Denver (my home airport) to New York that involved landing at LaGuardia and getting to a JFK airport hotel for the next morning’s flight.

I was by myself with minimal luggage, so I thought, let’s spin the adventure wheel and take public transportation instead of an Uber. This involved the airport bus to the subway, a subway ride, a 20-minute walk, a wait for a bus that never came, and a wait for a bus that did come. Basically most people’s idea of hell, and to be honest, I loved it. 

It’s hard to describe the array of humans that ride public transportation in New York, what they wear, what they talk about, what you see from the bus window. Such as: a restaurant advertising “Trinidad-style Chinese food.” So many questions: how did these two cuisines fuse, what do they serve, who eats there (people from Trinidad, people from China, people who just like this kind of food?).  An Uber would have been $65 plus tip, this cost me $6.50, and honestly it was better than a movie! And the trip just got better from there. Every day was literally perfect. 

But how do we take a vacation, without paid vacation? 

When we pair the words “freelancer” and “vacation,” there’s good news and there’s bad news.

• No boss to ask for permission (yay!)
• No paid vacation (whoops!) 

The real consequence: in the U.S. at least, most freelancers just don’t take vacation. Pre-COVID, the accounting platform HoneyBook did a survey showing that 92% of freelancers felt that they could never take vacation, or worked during what they called a vacation.

As someone who really believes in the benefits of vacation, I find this sad. To me, vacation isn’t just fun; it’s a mental and physical break that gives me renewed energy for my business, and new ideas. I find that when I’m not working, my mind can think about the bigger picture of freelancing: what do I want more of and less of in my work life? Where do I see myself in three years? What’s working and what’s not working? 

Three options to try

If you want a vacation but you’re struggling with how to do it, here are three possible models I’ve tried all of them, so I’ll give you my perspective on each one. I’ve also got an option if your vacation budget is close to zero. 

Option 1: Just unplug 
As I often remind people, you’re a freelancer. You can honestly do whatever you want with your business. “Can’t take vacation” is something you’re telling yourself, not something someone else is telling you. If you can afford it (in terms of money and client retention), just put on your auto-responder and go. 

Pluses: You get a complete break from work, and I think a lot of freelancers never really get that.
Minuses: It’s expensive and risky. To do this, you really need a paid vacation fund (so that your bank account isn’t at zero when you get back), and you need to either have a workflow that lends itself to this kind of thing (i.e. your work slows down a lot at a certain time of year and you take vacation then), or you need to accept that you may lose work because you’re neither available for work nor responding to e-mail. 

Option 2: Don’t work, but keep up with e-mail
This is what I did on my recent two-week Europe trip. Sadly, it’s fairly uncommon in U.S. business culture to take two consecutive weeks off, but I really needed a break, and because I was moving around a lot during this trip, I wanted to take only a carryon backpack and not haul my work computer with me. I did not put on my auto-responder, and I relentlessly answered e-mail (came home to 12 messages in my Inbox, less than an average weekday morning). 

Pluses: Clients may not even know you’re gone, and you have less FOMO about what might be happening in your Inbox, yet you’re not really working. I did no paid work during my two-week trip, and I took only my phone, no computer. It was liberating!
Minuses: You’re not truly on or truly off. You’re not earning money, but you’re not totally unplugged from work. However I will say that of the three options I’m suggesting here, I liked this one. I despise coming home to 975 unread e-mails, and I really didn’t mind spending around 30 minutes a day on e-mail. 

Option 3: Workcation
Although I think we all need true breaks from work, I’ve become a big fan of the workcation (I wrote about it in this blog post in 2024). Workcation is what it sounds like: you go to a new location, but you work from there. I’ve done this for as long as a month, and it went well, but I think you need to be strategic about time zones and other logistical factors. My husband and I have now done three workcations in British Columbia in the summer, and it’s honestly a huge advantage that it’s light until almost 10 PM: we usually work until around 4 PM, then go mountain biking or hiking for a few hours, and it’s still broad daylight! Likewise, you could go from the U.S. to Europe, have most of your day free, and start working in the afternoon when your U.S. clients get into the office. 

Pluses: You’re getting at least sort of a vacation without losing income. When I’ve done workcations, I felt that they were totally worthwhile even though I was still working.
Minuses: You’re, well, still working on vacation! Zero unplugging! Time zone can be a big factor, as can reliable internet if you’re an interpreter or if you do online meetings. For example, I will not interpret over wi-fi, only in a location where I can bring my own ethernet cable and plug it into the router (I ask the lodging host about this before I book). 

An option that’s close to free

Maybe you’re thinking, “Nice idea, but I can’t afford any of this. I can’t take time off, I can’t spend any extra money, I can’t even go on a workcation because I’d still have to pay for a place to stay.” If you’re not a traveler and you’re fine staying home, do that. I’m not here to shame you into taking a vacation if you’re a homebody.

But if I wanted to travel and couldn’t really afford to spend much/any extra money, I think I’d take a workcation while housesitting in a situation where I either got paid, or at least didn’t pay anything. A couple of ways to do that:

• Join a platform like Trusted Housesitters (mostly involves pet care; you don’t get paid) or HomeExchange (house exchange, but it doesn’t have to be 1:1; you accrue points that you can use anywhere)
• Find a group of like-minded people; oddly enough I’m in a Facebook group for cat-lover translators, and people commonly exchange live-in cat sitting 
• Travel somewhere that people pay a lot for house/pet sitting. Where we live (fairly high-cost and dog-obsessed area of Colorado), people on our neighborhood e-mail list will offer up to $1,000 a week for live-in dog sitters if you’re willing to spend most of your time with the animals 

Some people take this to the extreme: here’s an interesting article by an American remote worker who went more than eight months with no permanent place to live while housesitting full-time through Trusted Housesitters. I was honestly tempted! 

I hope these tips are helpful if you’re planning a vacation! I like to have something on the calendar before I come back from a trip so that there’s always something to look forward to. And if you went on an adventure this summer, I hope it was great!