The next session of my online course Getting Started as a Freelance Translator starts this coming Monday, January 10. I have two or three spots left for anyone who’d like to join us! This is a six week course on business practices (not translation technique) for people with little or no translation experience. We cover topics such as writing a translation-targeted resumé and cover letter, developing a marketing plan, researching potential clients and pursuing specializations, plus I provide individual feedback on your work throughout the course. All of the details and registration information are on my website. The course registration fee is $350 including a copy of my book, How to Succeed as a Freelance Translator, and if you’re willing to wait until the end of January, you can get a copy of the second edition! ATA members receive a $50 discount on the registration fee through the ATA member-provider program. Hope to see some of you there!
Announcements
Thanks for a great year of blogging!
WordPress sent me a summary of Thoughts on Translation’s statistics for 2010; here it is! Thanks to everyone who makes this blog so much fun to write!
Crunchy numbers
The Louvre Museum has 8.5 million visitors per year. This blog was viewed about 98,000 times in 2010. If it were an exhibit at The Louvre Museum, it would take 4 days for that many people to see it.
In 2010, there were 80 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 332 posts. There were 20 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 3mb. That’s about 2 pictures per month.
The busiest day of the year was May 11th with 613 views. The most popular post that day was Marketing your services to translation agencies.
Where did they come from?
The top referring sites in 2010 were proz.com, Google Reader, translatewrite.com, omegat.org, and twitter.com.
Some visitors came searching, mostly for thoughts on translation, hash mark, corinne mckay, treadmill desk, and corinne mckay blog.
Attractions in 2010
These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.
1
Marketing your services to translation agencies May 2010
13 comments and 1 Like on WordPress.com,
2
The hash mark in Twitter February 2009
5 comments
3
Paid by the word or paid by the hour? March 2008
11 comments
4
Inserting accented characters in OpenOffice.org August 2008
7 comments
5
About/Contact February 2008
33 comments
Speaking of Translation goes webinar
Back in 2008, my colleague Eve Bodeux and I launched the podcast Speaking of Translation and over the years we’ve gotten some very nice feedback on it. To our knowledge SoT is the only podcast dedicated exclusively to translation and the business of translation. Breaking news: Speaking of Translation is going webinar! All of our podcasts will remain on line (free, of course!) while we branch out into a new and more interactive direction for 2011. I’m up first on January 26 at noon Eastern Time with Beyond the Basics of Freelancing, based on my sold-out preconference seminar at the 2010 ATA conference. In February we’ll be offering an introduction to social media for translators, then we’ll see where the webinar currents take us! My Beyond the Basics webinar costs $35 through January 16 and $40 after that. Hope to see some of you there!
Upcoming session of "Getting Started as a Freelance Translator"
The next session of my 6-week online course Getting Started as a Freelance Translator starts on Monday and I still have a few spots left. This is a ground-up course for people with little or no translation experience; we cover topics such as writing a translation-targeted resumé and cover letter, finding and retaining well-paying clients, developing translation specializations and networking inside and outside the translation industry. From the link above, you can read more about the course, read feedback from previous students and register if you’re interested!
Upcoming ATA webinar
I’ll be posting a wrapup of last week’s ATA conference soon; in short, it was fantastic. Enlightening sessions, enlightened colleagues and that unmistakable Colorado energy. I feel like the French sessions get better every year, and every year I come away with a long list of new ideas to improve my translations and my business skills.
Lots of people at the conference were very enthusiastic about ATA’s ongoing series of educational webinars. The first two (Judy Jenner’s The Entrepreneurial Linguist and Mary David and Naomi Sutcliffe de Moraes’ Getting the most out of your ATA membership) sold out, and people seem really pleased with the technical setup. I’m up next, with Getting started as a freelance translator from noon-1 PM U.S. Eastern Time on Tuesday, November 9. This webinar is directed at people who are just starting out in the industry, and we’ll talk about writing a translation-targeted resumé and cover letter, finding and retaining clients, developing specializations and setting your rates and payment terms. The cost is $35 for ATA members and $50 for non-members (limited to 100 participants) and you can register here.
It was great fun to meet so many other bloggers and blog readers at the conference! Back soon with more in-depth reporting.