During Speaking of Translation's recent interview with Chris Durban (recording online for free, at that link), Chris mentioned an excellent quality metric for specialized translators: the 10-minute Turing test. A Turing test involves a human attempting to determine if he/she is having a discussion … [Read more...] about Passing as "one of them": the client Turing test
Clients
Working with direct clients: tips from Chris Durban
This morning, Eve Bodeux and I (in our incarnation as Speaking of Translation) did an interview with superstar translator Chris Durban, focusing on her tips for working with direct clients. Whether you're just testing the direct client waters or you've been in the direct client market for a while, … [Read more...] about Working with direct clients: tips from Chris Durban
Some thoughts on hourly and salaried pay
In the early days of Thoughts on Translation (March, 2008 to be exact), I wrote a post on charging by the word versus charging by the hour. For a long time, it was the most active post on my blog and it inspired some interesting and heated discussion. Get Rich Slowly's post today is on hourly versus … [Read more...] about Some thoughts on hourly and salaried pay
What about TM discounts?
During the recent discussion on volume discounts, a number of readers brought up the (very valid) issue of translation memory discounts. I feel a can of worms about to open here, but I'll inject some of my thoughts on TM discounts. First caveat: I am neither a huge fan of nor a heavy user of TM. I … [Read more...] about What about TM discounts?
Some thoughts on volume discounts
I get lots of questions from beginning and experienced translators about volume discounts (charging a lower per-word or hourly rate for larger projects). I actually think that after "how much should I charge?", "should I offer a volume discount" might be the second most frequently-asked question … [Read more...] about Some thoughts on volume discounts