Training for Translators

Classes for translators and interpreters


Corinne McKay

March Marketing Madness starts Tuesday!

I’ll be leading the fourth annual March Marketing Madness challenge group, starting on March 1 (next Tuesday!). We have a good group signed up, and there’s still room for you! Registration is $90 and you don’t need to be online at any certain time; participate at you own pace! Join us for:

  • 20 business days of motivational videos and marketing challenges
  • A fun, supportive (optional!) Slack group to share ideas and successes
  • The opportunity to make marketing less painful and more systematic

Each day, you have the option to do that day’s challenge, or what we call “the daily pitch.” The daily challenges range from simple things that we all neglect (review and update your e-mail signature, listen to your outgoing voicemail, update your LinkedIn headline), to push-the-comfort-zone activities like making a video of yourself giving your elevator speech. The daily pitch gives you the option to:

  • nudge one dormant client
  • apply to one agency
  • contact one potential direct client via LinkedIn or e-mail

Here’s how last year’s participants described the experience:
“Corinne’s March Marketing Madness challenge group has transformed my approach to marketing forever! It was an intense and exciting month, during which I felt empowered to ramp up my marketing efforts in ways I hadn’t considered before.”

“I went from being terrified of contacting a single potential client to firing off multiple emails and LinkedIn connections to dream clients on a daily basis. My only regret is that I didn’t join earlier editions of this group.”

“A precious resource for any translator who is or isn’t already doing any marketing. Corinne provides a ton of practical advice and creates a social and enthusiastic community over the month that reminds us we are not alone! Everyone will take something helpful away.”

I’ve included one of last year’s videos below, so that you can get a sense of what the videos offer. Then come join us!


Corinne McKay

Google Ads master class on Wednesday

This Wednesday (February 23, 2022), join expert instructor Madalena Sanchez Zampaulo for a three-hour master class on using Google ads to market your freelance business. The live class runs from 12 noon to 3 PM New York time. Registration is $90 and includes the recording.

This master class will walk you through the process of how to set up and run Google ads if:
– Your goal is to attract new clients in a specific field or niche
– You don’t want to spend a lot of time creating new content to market your business
– You want to convert people who click to solid leads

In this step-by-step master class, you’ll learn how to:
– Purchase and set up a Google ad for your business
– Determine what keywords and copy will work best in your ad and on your clickthrough page
– Set up an effective landing page (the clickthrough page) that appeals to your target market and urges them to take an action (contact you, ask for a quote, etc.)
– Know when it’s time to make changes to your ad to improve your outcomes
– Test and adjust your ad to produce more warm leads

Past participants in Madalena’s courses say: 

“I’ve had a few opportunities to learn from Madalena and always profited from it! Her lessons are actionable, the advice she gives is highly personalized, and she is such a sweet and kind person to co-operate with. After listening to her webinar on LinkedIn for Translators and spending an hour following her suggestions, I’ve been contacted by a dozen potential clients – thank you!”

“Madalena’s mini-course on SEO through Training for Translators is fantastic! Among the best $50 I’ve spent on my business in years and worth much, much more. I know a little bit about SEO, but have already learned a ton and we are only on day 4. Thanks so much. Great content + delivery.”

“For the record, Madalena’s copywriting course is one of the best professional development courses I have taken in years. The content is top-notch and it has me dreaming of all kinds of new possibilities in my business.”

Full description and registration here!


Corinne McKay

My 2021 business expenses

My accountant’s early deadlines are a really good thing, because they force me to get my year-end finances in order in January. My 2021 income (gross, minus subcontracting) was right on target at a bit over US $100K. I’d like to aim for $140-$150K, but I’m happy with what I earned in 2021, given that I was still in conference interpreting graduate school for half the year, and I then took most of July off to celebrate passing my MCI exit exams.

I always find it interesting to break down my business expenses during the tax preparation process. I hate…no, I actually loathe accounting, but I find the accounting data interesting. My 2021 business expenses were $24,581; approximately the total that I earned from freelancing in 2005. Here’s the breakdown of the top five:

  • Office rent: $5,715
  • Bank fees and credit card commissions: $4,743
  • Online subscriptions (web hosting, Zoom, online course platform, Microsoft Office, antivirus and backup software, etc.): $3,693
  • Professional services (accounting, website manager, etc.): $3,092
  • Continuing education (conferences, webinars, one on one coaching, etc.): $2,736

A quick analysis of these, and how they fit into my business model:

  • I pay $545 a month for my co-working office desk (this expense varied during 2021 because I worked in a small, private office for part of the year). Obviously I could reduce this rather large expense to zero, simply by working from home, but I’m the oddball who hates working from home. That’s a topic for another day, but the six initial months of COVID that I spent working from home were among the least satisfying and least profitable of the past several years. In part, this is because we live in a very small house by U.S. standards (1,150 square feet), and I’ve worked at a co-working office since 2013, so I no longer have an office, or even a comfortable place to work, in my house. Honestly, I like it that way. I like going home and not thinking about work. So, although my co-working office costs almost 6K a year, I’m not looking to reduce or eliminate that expense.
  • Bank fees and credit card commissions: Annoying, but I don’t see a way around this expense. Nearly everyone who signs up for a Training for Translators class pays by credit card, and there’s simply no way to take credit cards without a commission. Likewise with my individual translation clients; I offer them options where I don’t incur a fee (Zelle, Wise, etc.), but most still pay by credit card.
  • Online subscriptions and professional services: I’m pretty liberal about spending money on things that make my business run better, or that free me up from tasks that I hate. And it seems like most software is moving toward the subscription model instead of the one-time license model. So I don’t see this line item going down anytime soon, and in fact it will probably increase, because I just switched from Excel for accounting to QuickBooks online.
  • Continuing education: What can I say, I enjoy learning! I also did a lot of interpreting workshops this year, attended the ATA conference in person (yay), and at about 3% of my gross income, I think what I spend on continuing education is pretty reasonable.

So there you have it! Readers, any thought on your business expenses from last year?


Corinne McKay

What payment methods should you accept for your freelance services?

Of all the reasons to lose a freelance project, perhaps the most logical is because the project doesn’t fall into your area of expertise. And perhaps the worst, in my opinion, is because you can’t figure out how to take the client’s money. I’ve never really understood why some freelancers are very rigid about how they want to be paid, and I accept the widest possible variety of payment methods. If a method costs me money to accept, I don’t pass that on to the client directly, but I build it into my rates, and chalk it up to the cost of doing business.

It costs money to make money. Almost everyone who takes a class with Training for Translators pays by credit card or PayPal, and I paid a whopping $4,700 in PayPal commissions in 2021. I’ve since added direct credit card payments via Stripe as an option, but the fees are about the same. In 2021, I had clients pay by:

  • Check (yes, paper checks are still widely used in the US)
  • Zelle/Chase QuickPay
  • PayPal
  • Venmo
  • ACH
  • Wise
  • Bank to bank wire transfer
  • Cash (no kidding; I translated a birth certificate for someone who came to my office with cash)

I hate paper checks. They’re slow, and they’re impossible to track. The expression, “the check’s in the mail” exists for a reason. I really try to guide clients away from paper checks, and I no longer use paper checks myself, but some clients simply will not pay any other way, so I continue to accept them.

Psychologically, my clients seem to pay much faster when they pay by an electronic method. For one of my law firm clients, I use PayPal.me, which allows you to create a one-click link that’s pre-set to the correct amount. This particular client, who wants to handle everything as fast as possible, loves the convenience of PayPal.me.

I’ve switched to using Wise for all of my outgoing international payments, for example to my online course instructors who live in other countries. I like Wise a lot. It’s easy to link it to your bank account, the fees are transparent, and you can see exactly how much the recipient will receive, before you send the payment. I also really like incoming transfers via Wise, because (for whatever reason), Wise’s international transfers post in my account as if they were a domestic ACH/direct deposit payment, so they’re free. This is compared with the $15 that I pay for an international bank-to-bank transfer, so it’s a big win.

Personally, I feel that it’s good to just ask clients what payment method they prefer, then if there’s a fee to you, build that into your rates. The only exception to this is that I require all individual clients to pay in full, in advance, before I do the translation, so I do not accept checks from individuals.

Two payment methods I’ve recently added are Venmo and Stripe. Venmo works well for individuals, as long as you’re positive that you’re sending money to or requesting money from the right person (I recommend always using the feature where you verify the last four digits of the person’s phone number). Just make sure that you have your Venmo privacy settings locked down, so that your contacts aren’t seeing all of the transactions you make on Venmo.

After using PayPal exclusively for a number of years, I just added Stripe as an option to pay for Training for Translators courses. Thanks to colleagues Madalena Sanchez Zampaulo and Meghan Konkol for their encouragement to try Stripe! Stripe allows people to pay directly by credit card without going through PayPal, their fees are reasonable, and the system to receive your money is similar to PayPal, where you link your bank account to Stripe for automatic transfers. I integrated Stripe in about 10 minutes using Woo Commerce Payments, because I’m already using Woo Commerce to process online course registrations.

I’m still hoping that someday, the US banking system will move into the 21st (or even 20th!) century and use IBAN numbers, or a system like SEPA, but until then, I’ll keep adding new electronic payment methods as good options become available.


Corinne McKay

Afrikaans edition of Finding and Marketing to Translation Agencies

How cool is this? English to Afrikaans translator Laetitia Sullivan did an Afrikaans translation of my book, Finding and Marketing to Translation Agencies. You can purchase a copy here, or read more about it on Laetitia’s website. I’ve honestly never heard of any books about translation being translated into Afrikaans, so I’m excited that Laetitia took this project on!