Training for Translators

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Corinne McKay

Some coffee break links

Here in the U.S. it’s an honorary Monday, since most of us took yesterday off to celebrate Labor Day (by not laboring!). So, in the spirit of easing back into the work week, here are some (admittedly not translation-specific) links to enjoy on your coffee break:

  • The U.K. Telegraph on 50 things that are being killed by the Internet. How timely; just the other day I was commenting on my own guilt when it comes to #27, not knowing telephone numbers by heart once they’re on speed dial.
  • Get Rich Slowly on The war on stuff. The Thoughts on Translation household has been in purge mode lately (anyone want a broken salad spinner, the pot to a coffee maker that broke 5 years ago or a set of dishes that’s too large to fit in our dishwasher?) so I really enjoyed this post on cutting the clutter.
  • Maybe I’m easy to impress, but I just love Wordle, the website that makes artistic “word clouds” out of text that you submit. It’s fun to use it to make a word cloud out of your blog (or any other website), but I also like to use it to make personalized greeting cards for friends. I’m totally un-artistic, so I type words that remind me of that person (things we like to do together, their favorite movies/books/foods, etc.) into the Wordle box and let it create a nice picture that I can put on a birthday card.


Corinne McKay

Link: living on an irregular income

Get Rich Slowly has a great post on How to budget for an irregular income; it’s definitely worth a read on your coffee break. Two of J.D.’s tips that I particularly agree with are:

  • Use separate business and personal accounts and pay yourself from the business account as if you were an employee. I started doing this about three years ago and it made a huge difference in my financial life. I pay myself equal amounts on the 5th, the 15th and the 25th of each month regardless of how much I’m earning. I’m not really given to overspending, but sometimes when I have a large “windfall” project, I give myself 10% of the money to spend on something I want but don’t really need. Otherwise I stick with the “salary” that I’ve set for myself and at the end of the year, I evaluate what amount I should pay myself for the upcoming year. If I have a big surplus in my business account, I take it as corporate profit (because I have an S-corporation) and pay that month’s personal credit card bill with it (and as we talked about in last winter’s post on Freelance frugality, I think that the number one principle of personal finance is to never, ever carry a credit card balance).
  • If you have a spouse/partner, live off one income. The Thoughts on Translation household lives off one income and banks the other, which gives us a great deal of financial flexibility. If I have a very slow month, instead of putting the groceries on credit we just don’t save as much of my husband’s salary as we otherwise would have. I feel that an additional benefit of this strategy is that I can avoid taking low-paying work out of desperation, and inevitably the higher-paying work comes back. Granted, in order to do this we have made some choices that other people probably can’t or don’t want to make. One car (used, paid for in cash), prepaid cell phone, no cable TV, no household service providers (lawn, cleaning, child care etc.), maybe one meal out per month, virtually all clothing and household items purchased used or on mega-sale, lots of homegrown food, etc. However, all of these steps have allowed us to live pretty comfortably on one (sometimes irregular!) income.


Corinne McKay

Some interesting links

If you’re looking for some coffee break reading, you might want to check out:


Corinne McKay

Links: for your reading pleasure

If the summer weather has you looking for some inspiration, here are some recent blog posts I’ve enjoyed reading. These are in no particular order:

  • Escape from Cubicle Nation (don’t you love the title?) Get Rich Slowly linked to this blog, which has some excellent tips on entrepreneurial topics. Check out the “open source coaching” posts where readers weigh in on an entrepreneur’s dilemma.
  • Various blogs have been chronicling LinkedIn’s recruitment of volunteer translators for its website. Here is a particularly interesting post from the Masked Translator on the topic.
  • Jill Sommer’s excellent post on Arabic linguist Lt. Dan Choi’s dismissal from the U.S. military because of his sexual orientation. On yesterday’s installment of the public radio show The World, reporter Kate Clark interviewed Lt. Choi about his experiences, and about the fact that the U.S. military has dismissed over 300 linguists solely because they are gay, despite the fact State Department, CIA and NSA have a critical shortage of employees with foreign language skills. You can read a transcript of The World’s interview with Choi here.
  • The Wealthy Freelancer on Why you should charge more. Make sure to read the part about the throat surgeon!
  • Translation Times on how to market your services every time you flip open your laptop by using a customized laptop skin. I have to admit, I’m not much of a splashy marketer but I’m considering getting one of these since I often use my laptop when I’m out and about. And while we’re at it, a happy belated birthday to the proprietors of Twin Translations themselves!

Happy reading!


Corinne McKay

Links: two excellent marketing posts

If you’re looking for some coffee-break reading, I highly recommend:

  • Riccardo Schiaffino’s post over at About Translation, on last weekend’s Colorado Translators Association marketing seminar. We had some weather-related drama associated with this event (a foot of wet snow in mid-April!) but fortunately it went off very well and we’ve received overwhelmingly positive feedback. Thanks to all of the presenters, they’re listed and linked to in Riccardo’s post.
  • Abigail Dahlberg’s post on finding work as an environmental translator on her blog The Greener Word. Even if you’re not an environmental translator, I think that Abigail’s post offers a very helpful overview of how to profile and find your potential clients. I think that many people could save a ton of marketing time simply by following her advice to look for clients who a) are likely to need your services and b) can pay your rates.

Happy reading!