Beth Hayden's blog on blogging recently led me to a fantastic blog on personal finance, Get Rich Slowly (isn't that a great title?). Although this blog is obviously not related to translation or even specifically to self-employment, it's loaded with great advice for people in all types of financial … [Read more...] about Some thoughts on financial solvency
Freelancing
Hire yourself
An excellent piece of advice that I've seen in various places (such as the Business Smarts column in the ATA Chronicle) is for self-employed freelance translators to "think of yourself as your own employee." Taking a third-person look at your business, as if you're the boss and some other person is … [Read more...] about Hire yourself
Online translation income calculator
Thanks to ATA member Dorothee Racette for sending the link to the new income calculator on the ATA website. This is a helpful tool that allows you to calculate your monthly and annual gross translation income based on how much you work and how much you charge. The income calculator is good food for … [Read more...] about Online translation income calculator
Some thoughts on translation specializations
One of the issues with which beginning translators most frequently struggle is specializing: what to specialize in, how to decide what to specialize in, what the most/least requested specializations are, how important it is to specialize, etc. While there aren't too many hard and fast rules when it … [Read more...] about Some thoughts on translation specializations
A little bit of this, a little bit of that
Gabe Bokor's blog post "Specialist or Generalist" gives some excellent insights into the fact that translators need to be both specialists and generalists. Gabe gives the example of a medical translator who also needs to be familiar with electronic instrumentation, or an environmental translation … [Read more...] about A little bit of this, a little bit of that