Training for Translators

Classes for translators and interpreters


Corinne McKay

Is the career path for beginning freelancers changing?

Some days, I feel like all anyone wants to talk about is “our changing profession/industry.” Some days I agree that it’s changing a lot, and sometimes I feel like “Yes! Things change…cope or try to stop the earth from turning.” But here’s something I’ve been thinking about lately: as the translation/interpreting professions change, is the career path that most people follow going to change as well?

What about that career path?

I feel like our profession has always had its oddities in terms of getting started and progressing through the ranks. By “oddities,” I mean factors such as:

  • A severe lack of university programs in translation and interpreting (in the US at least).
  • The fact that clients (like translation agencies) that have enough work for full-time translators and interpreters still tend to use freelancers.
  • The resulting lack of in-house translation and interpreting jobs, compounded by even fewer entry-level T&I jobs. At least in the US, the few in-house jobs that exist are often restricted to people who have extensive experience, or who graduated from a T&I Master’s program, or who can pass something like the UN language competitive exams, which few beginners can.
  • The lack of a universally-accepted translation credential (like the CPA credential for accountants), resulting in a “no barrier to entry” work environment. And honestly, I don’t see this changing, because it would be nearly impossible to certify translators in every language combination on the planet.

But still…

I also feel like there has been a bit of a standard career path in our profession, in that people either:

  • Attended a T&I Master’s program and then entered the working world, or
  • Bootstrapped it as primarily self-taught freelancers, who in most cases started out working with agencies, then either stuck with that but moved up in the agency ranks, or transitioned into the direct client market, doing similar work to what they did for agencies.

In a profession (ours!) where few things are standardized, I feel like this is the closest thing we’ve had to a traditional career path: start out working with agencies, then work for better agencies or work with direct clients. That’s how I started out, and how most freelancers I work with started out as well.

And how about now?

Things in our profession, as in the world in general, are changing. Personally, I don’t think they’re changing for the worse (here’s a whole post about that), but they’re certainly changing. My one-sentence summary of the situation would be, “It’s getting harder to make a living at the low end, and there’s more competition at the high end,” and the changes that I see include:

  • Agencies that are open to entry-level translators (those that base their hiring primarily or exclusively on one’s results on their tests, rather than on one’s credentials or experience) often pay very, very low rates; much lower than they did when I started freelancing 17 years ago. In some cases and for some language pairs (i.e. English into Russian), these rates are so low that they literally cannot go much lower unless translators are asked to pay the agency in order to work.
  • More discerning agencies have a wider choice of translators (because fewer experienced translators want to work for lower-end agencies), and are also under price pressure from their own end clients. They’re looking for higher quality and faster turnaround at lower rates and–I tend to believe–they’re getting it. As an example, I recently received an inquiry from a reputable agency, seeking only ATA-certified translators willing to translate 12,000 words between noon on Friday and noon on Monday, and the request was rescinded just a few minutes later, because they had all the people they needed.
  • More translators are aware of and interested in the direct client market. When I started freelancing in 2002, nearly all the translators I knew worked exclusively with agencies. There were vague rumblings about, “You could work directly with businesses, but it can be hard to find them and they don’t know anything about translation.” Even fewer translators did things like attending client-side events. Now, those things (working with direct clients in general and attending non-translation events) are pretty common: attend an event like AMWA or ACES and I’m sure you won’t be the only translator there.
  • Advice that one might give to an experienced translator–market to direct clients, target your most lucrative specializations, diversify your range of services, attend in-person client-side events–is less applicable to beginners, because they often don’t know enough about the profession to do those things.

And how about the future?

Well, that’s the question, isn’t it? Here’s the dilemma, and I’m asking this because I honestly don’t know the answer.

If you were a beginning translator starting out in the profession right now, and you couldn’t reach your target income on entry-level agency rates, what would you do?

  • Work at entry-level agency rates anyway, just for the experience?
  • Work every angle to try to get work from higher-end agency clients? Attend conferences, meet with them in person, try to get referrals, etc?
  • Cast your net into the direct client market, even without a ton of experience?
  • Pursue a T&I Master’s to make yourself more eligible for in-house jobs or higher-end freelance work?

I find myself recommending a combination of these approaches to the students who take my classes, and many of them are extremely successful at it. Some work the entry-level agency market for a year or two, alongside another job or while setting very modest income goals, then they move on to higher-paying clients. Some do paid mentoring with experienced translators so that they feel more prepared to work with direct clients. Some pursue graduate programs to increase their skills and confidence in preparation for entering the market.

Mostly I’m wondering about the agency-to-direct client career path, now that entry-level agency rates are getting lower and lower. Readers, any thoughts on this? If you’re an experienced translator, how would you start now if you had to? If you’re a beginner, what strategies are you using and how are they working?


Corinne McKay

Mindset Mondays: Coping with perfectionism

This time of year can be somewhat crazy for all of us, so I’ve prepared a series of YouTube videos called Mindset Mondays, to hopefully bring some sanity to your freelance game. I’ll release these in December and January, then we’ll see what happens in 2020. This first video is on coping with perfectionism: a plus/minus personality characteristic for many of us as freelancers. Check it out for three tips on concrete ways to defeat the inaction and anxiety that perfectionism can cause.


Corinne McKay

A recession may be coming: how can you prepare?

Watch your back for a recession

I’m not an economist (far from it!), but it’s hard to miss the rumblings in the financial press that the US (or even the world) economy may be headed for a recession. After a 10-year bull market, we’re in a bit of a “what goes up must come down” situation, and as a business owner, the best time to start planning for a downturn is last year, but if you haven’t done that, let’s start planning now!

This topic has been marinating in my mind for a while, and it came to the forefront when I listened to a recent episode of The Freelancers Show podcast, on recession-proofing your business. Side note: I both understand and dislike the term “-proofing” (future-proofing, recession-proofing), because you can’t really “-proof” against something as uncertain as the future, or a recession. And I think it can create a false sense of security to say “my business is now recession-proof,” when in reality that’s not possible. However, I understand why people use that term, so let’s go with it.

A helpful episode of The Freelancers Show

The Freelancers Show–hosted by a rotating panel of IT guys–is one of my favorite non-translation business podcasts. The hosts and topics are generally really interesting, I think it’s good to get perspectives from another industry, and I find a lot of their advice appealing because it’s for nerds. It’s straightforward, non-salesy stuff for people who work in nerdy industries. The host of this recession-proofing episode, Reuven Lerner (he’s a Python programming trainer), is one of my favorite panelists, and his strategies are often surprisingly applicable to translators, because he works with a lot of international clients.

Step one: build up your savings

So, if a recession is in fact coming, what can you, as a freelancer and a business owner, do to prepare? I recommend that you listen to Reuven’s podcast episode, and I’ll elaborate on a few of its suggestions here, with a few of my own.

–If business is good for you right now, start building a cash cushion. If the recession comes, you have a financial buffer. If it doesn’t, you still have a financial buffer and you can re-invest it in your business, or decide that life is short and it’s time to go to Hawaii for a month. Either way, a better cash cushion in your business is a healthy thing to have.

–How much is “enough” in savings? That’s a tough one because it depends on the specifics of your situation. By how much could you cut your living expenses in a pinch? How much debt do you have? Who else relies on your income?  Ideally, I think a year of living expenses in the bank is a good cushion. In reality, you have to balance the many moving parts of your financial situation.

With the caveat that I’m not a financial advisor, here’s an example. I aim for about a $10,000 cushion in my business savings account; much less than a year of living expenses. However, I feel that for my situation, it’s sufficient. We paid off our mortgage a number of years ago and are now completely debt-free, and our house has approximately doubled in value since we bought it in 2004–that opens up the option of taking a pretty large home equity loan if we needed cash. We have a decent amount of long-term savings in retirement accounts, but because of our big push to go debt-free (which my husband and I both agree was worth doing), we probably have less liquid cash than many two-income families do. However, we have a lot of financial flexibility if we need it: we have one kid who will go to college next year (all the money for that is in a 529 account) and thus will no longer live with us full-time. If we did some improvements to our house, we could rent it for probably $2,500 a month. I already have a job where I can work from anywhere. My husband has an in-house job, but he works in IT so theoretically could find a remote job. And let’s say that we a) needed to cut our living expenses and b) wanted to go on an adventure, we could do something out-of-the-box like move to Thailand for a year, where one can rent a quite nice one-bedroom apartment for, let’s say, $1,000 a month, while simultaneously renting our own house out for a lot more than that. Realistically, we both love traveling, and we could probably find a place in a really inexpensive country where we could even live without working if we rented our house out. That opens up a lot of options.

On the flip side, if you have a big mortgage, car loans, credit card debt, student debt, a spouse who stays home full time, your elderly mom in the garage apartment, and three kids in elementary school, you’ve got a very different situation. That’s a pretty big ship to re-route if the economy goes sour. In that case, you might aim for more like 75-100K in savings. Everyone’s mileage varies, but hopefully those examples help.

Step two: consider your current clients

In the podcast episode, Reuven makes the point that recessions don’t hit every business sector equally, or perhaps even at all. For example, the dot-com bubble really only affected tech companies. At the time of the 2008 recession, I was doing a lot of legal translation. Business volume during that time: never better! Some sectors of the translation industry make money “coming and going” so to speak, and are probably relatively immune to a recession.

But you want to look at your current client base and identify clients where you might be classified as “the fat” if that client had to “trim the fat.” Reuven uses the example of teaching in-person training courses: he anticipates that if there’s a recession, his smaller clients may stop hiring in-person trainers all together (so he’s developed more robust online offerings), or they may bring trainers in for shorter courses. In our profession, I’d be looking at clients who are hiring a translator because they want to, not because they have to. If you’re translating a client’s blog because they think it’s fun to have it in multiple languages, that might be an expense they’d look to cut if they needed to. If you translate for architecture or construction companies, they could be some of the first to be hit by an economic downturn.

So first, take a realistic look at, let’s say, the clients that provide the top 50% of your income, and ask yourself whether they’re likely to cut back on translation in a financial pinch.

Step three: consider what thrives in a recession

Even in a serious recession, there’s still business to be found. Reuven gives a great example of this: in a tight job market, many people are looking to build up their professional skills so that they’re as marketable as possible for the smaller number of jobs that are available. Recessions are a great time to expand into teaching and training, or to offer services like copywriting and web design that help freelancers market themselves.

Recessions are also a great time to beef up your own career skills. When you don’t have a ton of work, you have another advantage: time. If you have that robust savings cushion and can afford to take a hit on your paying work, a recession can be a great time to go back to school, pursue a new specialization, re-train for an aspect of the language professions you’ve always been interested in, whether that’s software localization or conference interpreting.

Step four: Start casting a wider net

When you have a thriving business, it’s easy to get complacent. But when a recession hits, you’re stuck kicking your (nonexistent) marketing engine into gear. Better to start revving it up now, so that the groundwork is in place when/if you need new clients. Examples of this would include:

    • Starting to attend client-side conferences to get to know the players in your target business sectors. Perhaps you can even start replacing some of your lower-paying clients right now. Read a blog post about how one of my online course participants did exactly that.
    • Expanding the circle of translators and interpreters who know you, which is not only fun, but increases the possibility that they will think of you when they’re giving referrals or looking for someone to partner with. I’m doing that in my own business: for a long time I’ve turned down basically every non-ATA speaking invitation I received, and I’m now starting to accept some of those since I have more time. This appeals to me personally, and is also a good way to spread the word about my online courses and books to new people.
    • If there’s a job search portal for your target business sectors, join it. For example I belong to Devex, which focuses on the international development sector. I’m not looking for an in-house job, but I like to keep an eye on which entities are hiring, which indicates that they’re on solid financial footing.
    • The run-up to a potential recession is also a good time to think about diversifying. If you’re interested in running a multi-pronged business–which not everyone is–now may be a good time to launch another arm of your business.

Finally: take a look at your fixed expenses

A sudden business downturn can hit very hard. For example, I expect to make almost exactly $100,000 from translation this year (which makes it easy to calculate percentages…) and I earned $18,000 from one client and $17,000 from another, both of which are entities that could theoretically take their translations in-house if they assigned them to a bilingual staff person, which I know for sure that they have. Of course that’s not a great option–they’re happy with my work and their bilingual staff have other jobs and aren’t professional translators, but it’s still possible. And that’s 35% of my income for this year.

To keep that kind of hit from becoming a catastrophe, it’s good to a) build a savings cushion (see above) and b) carefully review any fixed expenses you have in your business. Reuven gives the example of having salaried employees who he had to lay off during the 2008 recession. If you have employees, especially if you live in a country where you’re legally obligated to pay them severance if you lay them off (one month per year of service is not uncommon in some places), that’s something to consider. If you rent an office (which I do), that’s also something to consider. For example, I would probably not take out a year-long lease on a desk space right now; I’d go for month-to-month if at all possible, and if not then something like six months. If needed, I could–perhaps at the cost of my mental health!–give up my desk space and go back to working from home.

Readers, other thoughts on this? How concerned are you about the possibility of a recession? What are you doing to prepare?

If you enjoyed this post, you might be interested in the January-February 2020 session of my online course Marketing to Direct Clients; including recorded slide presentations, live question and answer sessions, and individual feedback on your plan to target direct clients.


Corinne McKay

Preparing for the state-level court interpreter certification exam

Eve Bodeux and I already recorded an episode of Speaking of Translation on this topic, but a few readers have asked me for a written post, so here you go! It’s long, but I hope it will be helpful to other people who want to take the state-level court interpreter certification exam, especially if you work in a language other than Spanish.

Executive Summary

After a year and a half of studying, I passed the Colorado court interpreter certification exam for French, in June. It was really challenging, but I passed on the first try after a lot of preparation. How much preparation? About 400 hours of direct studying for the oral exam (plus about 20 hours for the written), using the Acebo home study course The Interpreter’s Edge (they don’t have a language-specific version for French, so I used the Generic Edition), private coaching with interpreter trainer Athena Matilsky, and finally the practice test from the National Center for State Courts (again, no language-specific version for French, so I used the English version). On top of those 400 hours, I did an additional 100ish hours of “other” practice: French shadowing, doing flash cards of legal terms, etc. etc.

Many people fail the court interpreter certification exams, because

  • the test is hard
  • many people underestimate the test and don’t prepare adequately
  • if you do a language other than Spanish (LOTS), there are very few language-specific prep materials available

However it is possible to prepare so that you have a reasonable chance of passing on the first try. I’m now one of two court-certified French interpreters in Colorado, so there is a fair bit of work available; not enough that I am planning to immediately cut back on my translation work, but a fair bit. My next goal is to perhaps prepare for the Department of State interpreting exams, once I decompress from the end of my term on the ATA Board!

If that’s all you wanted to know, you’re good–you can stop here. If you want the details, read on!

In the beginning

When I started freelancing in the early aughts, I did a bit of community interpreting and loved it. However at a certain point, scheduling around my daughter’s part-time preschool schedule got too complicated. So I stopped, and did only written translation from about 2004 on. But I always missed interpreting, and thought (and thought and thought and thought, without taking any action…stop me if this sounds familiar) about getting back into it.

At the 2017 ATA conference, I went to Athena Matilsky’s presentation on consecutive interpreting, and something within me snapped. I thought, “You never have to pursue interpreting, but if you want to, it needs to be now.” So I did. I first paid Athena for a consulting session to tell me if this idea was totally nuts (her take: maybe a little nuts, but doable), and then I sought her advice on how to proceed. We jointly decided that I should pursue the state-level court interpreter exam, because there is a language-specific exam for French, and because–at least in Colorado–you do not have to pass all of the exam’s three sections (sight translation, consecutive interpreting, simultaneous interpreting) in one shot. Within a certain period of time, you can re-take only the section that you failed. I also surmised that there might be a reasonable local market for French interpreting since there was, at that time, only one court-certified French interpreter in the whole state.

I dusted off my long-dormant copy of The Interpreter’s Edge and got to work, trying to practice for about 30-60 minutes, five times a week. I then met with Athena about twice a month to do live interpreting practice sessions with her critiquing my performance. Operation Interpreter was rolling.

The orientation and written exam

I’ll give a huge shoutout to the Colorado Judicial Branch for the organization of their interpreter recruitment and training system. The process is very straightforward:
-Attend a full-day orientation
-Take the written exam
-If you pass the written exam, take the oral exam
The orientation is simply a matter of attending; as long as you are there for the full day (the cost varies, but I think mine was $150), you are then eligible for the written exam. The orientation covers the requirements for working in the Colorado courts, interpreter ethics, and the qualification or certification process, plus specific information on preparing for each component of the exam.

The written exam is–depending on where you were educated and your level of knowledge of the legal system–either not that big of a deal, or really hard. As an educated native English speaker with some knowledge of the US legal system, I didn’t find it extremely challenging; I passed with a score in the 90s after preparing for about 20 hours. Mostly, I studied flashcards of all of the legal terms in the guide that Colorado Judicial provided. However, if I had to take a corresponding test on the French or Swiss legal systems, the test would have been extremely challenging. I think that how much you need to prepare really depends on your baseline language skills and knowledge of the US legal system.

The major challenge: the oral exam

After passing the written exam, the next step was the oral, which was by far my biggest challenge in the whole process. If you live in a state that uses the National Center for State Courts’ exam, the test consists of:
-sight translation in both directions (from and into English)
-a consecutive interpreting dialog where you interpret in both directions (i.e. one actor plays a court official who speaks English and the other plays a witness or defendant who doesn’t speak English, and you interpret for both)
-a simultaneous interpreting passage where you interpret from English into your other language

As I mentioned above, I used The Interpreter’s Edge for all of my English into French preparation. The major challenge was finding materials for French into English. If you do a LOTS language, I would highly recommend working with a trainer for your language if you can find someone. Trainers often have some of their own materials that they’ve paid to develop, or they know where to point you to find resources for your language. To be honest, I was never able to find a good source of English<>French consecutive interpreting dialogues where you have speakers of both languages in the same passage. So I mostly used things like French Canadian court videos on YouTube, French court documents, etc. to practice going into English.

Pro tips for preparing for the oral

Here’s a lightning round of my top tips for preparing for the oral:

–Do every passage in The Interpreter’s edge multiple times. As Athena told me, continue working on each passage until either it’s perfect or you’re ready to throw the book out the window. This really helped me: rather than thinking, “Well, that was awful!” (which most of my renditions were when I first started out), I would record myself, listen to the recording, and analyze what I did wrong, then repeat the passage until it got better.
–Know all of the boilerplate legal stuff like the back of your hand. When you go to the exam, you are dealing with a lot of unknowns. Mostly, you have no idea what will be the subject matter of the case that you are interpreting. It could be anything from armed robbery to traffic court to attempted murder. However you can be sure that certain boilerplate legal language appears in every case: words like judge, jury, verdict, plea. Phrases like “ladies and gentlemen of the jury,” “raise your right hand to be sworn in.” And even whole utterances like, “Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God.” You do not want to be racking your brain for the French word for “witness stand” (la barre des témoins), when there’s a 90% chance that the term “witness stand” will appear somewhere on the test. Make flashcards of as many of those types of terms as you can think of, and go over them again, and again, and again. I actually kept my flashcards in a little Ziploc bag so that I could study them at breakfast, on the bus, while waiting on a conference call, etc. etc. Knowing those terms inside and out really helped my confidence level when I went to the exam.

–When you make a mistake in simultaneous, don’t let it derail you. I think that many people fail the simultaneous section because they get rattled by a word that they know they got wrong. But instead of missing just that one word, they pause to think about it (oh no…the number was 70 and I said 17) , and miss the rest of the sentence, resulting in multiple error points. It’s really, really, really hard to do, but when you miss a word in simultaneous, just let it float away like a balloon, and keep on interpreting.

–Use your two consecutive repetitions, but use them judiciously. Consecutive is by far my weakest mode (working on it still…), so I really wanted to take advantage of the option to have two of the consecutive segments repeated. I think most states offer this; you just tell the tester “repeat that please,” and they’ll play the segment again, and you can request that for two segments. On the exam, I got very lucky in that I selected the two longest segments for my repetitions, but that is a hard call when you’re very nervous: you don’t want to waste your repetitions on short, easy segments, but you also don’t want to leave a repetition unused.

–Focus on passing the test, not on being perfect. This is a really hard one if you–like 99% of language professionals–are a perfectionist. To pass the exam in Colorado, I had to get a 70% on all three sections. But I didn’t want to get a 70; I wanted to get a 100. It took time to accept that that wasn’t going to happen, and that I needed to focus on the requirements for passing, not on perfection. It can also be somewhat terrifying to realize that–as difficult as the exam is–interpreting in the real world is even harder. For example the simultaneous passage on the exam is 125 words per minute. And in real life, very few people talk that slowly. People also do not politely pause at the end of a thought while you take notes. In a real court hearing, you don’t get two repetitions. Just keep reminding yourself that right at this moment, you don’t need to worry about that. The simultaneous passage is 125 words a minute, and you get pauses and repetitions during the consecutive, and your goal is to pass the exam.

The big moment: exam day

Before registering for the oral exam, I took the NCSC practice exam and scored above an 80% on all sections, and I was going only from English into French (my weaker direction), so I figured (hoped/prayed) that I had a good chance of getting above a 70 on the real test even with the nervousness factor, so I registered for the April sitting in Denver.
Athena gave me great advice for the final tune-up: finish on a high note. Two to three days before the exam, do a passage very well, then stop. Don’t be preparing until the 11th hour–you won’t improve, you’ll just make yourself more nervous. So that’s what I did: I picked a fast simultaneous passage from The Interpreter’s Edge that I had actually cried over (no exaggeration) the first time I tried to interpret it (as in “I’ll never be able to do this”), did it solidly, and put the prep materials on the shelf.

The day of the exam, I arrived an hour early to the testing location so that I wouldn’t be stressed out about the time, and then I listened to French music on my phone while I waited. This helped to get my French-language juices flowing without the pressure of having to interpret.

The court staff member who administered my exam was great. She was very calm and confident about administering the test, which really helped. At least for the Colorado version of the exam, you should be prepared that:
–The tester sits at the same table as you, almost close enough to touch you. So you might want to practice with another person (your spouse, a friend, etc.) sitting at the table with you while you interpret, so that you’re used to that.
–There is a time limit for the sight and consecutive sections, so make sure that you’ve practiced doing those modes efficiently (not pausing for too long) so that you’ll finish within the time limit.
–You can use headphones for the simultaneous but not for the consecutive. Again, I would practice this at home so that you’re used to it.

After my exam, I felt that it went about how I expected. That sounds kind of anticlimactic, but I also felt that it was a sign that I had prepared thoroughly. As I expected, sight translation was my highest score, then simultaneous, then (the dreaded) consecutive, but I passed all three sections on the first try, which I was excited about.

Parting thoughts

If you’re interested in taking the state-level court exam, I would definitely encourage you to go for it, but be realistic about the amount of preparation it requires and what skills you need to practice in order to pass.

Since passing the exam, I’ve seen a number of benefits: court interpreting work of course, plus, oddly enough, I’ve gotten a lot more translation work from law firms, who want someone who is certified for both court interpreting and translation. I’m not sure I see the logic there, but if it’s a business advantage, great. Passing the exam has also given me the motivation to start preparing for the Department of State interpreting exams. Finally, I wanted to give a huge shoutout to the people who encouraged me and cheered me on during the looooong time it took me to study for the exam: my trainer Athena of course, and Judy Jenner, Cris Silva, and Melinda Gonzalez-Hibner. Their advice was really, really helpful and gave me the confidence to follow through on this big goal!

Readers, what questions do you have about preparing for the state court interpreter exam? Let me know in the comments!


Corinne McKay

Speaking of Translation: Contracts and service agreements for translators

In this episode of Speaking of Translation, Eve and Corinne discuss contracts and service agreements for freelance translators. Thanks to listener Erin Riddle for suggesting this show topic! If you have a topic you’d like us to discuss, drop us an e-mail at speakingoftranslation@gmail.com. We discuss:

  • When do you need a full written contract for a translation? When is an e-mail OK?
  • How do you specify the terms of use for a translation?
  • What about subcontracting agreements?
  • What terms should be included in a contract?
  • Should you sign indemnification clauses?

Links mentioned in this episode:

-ATA’s translation services agreement guide and model contract
-ATA’s interpreting services agreement guide and model contract
-The PEN model contract for book translations

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Contracts and service agreements for translators