Training for Translators

Classes for translators and interpreters

Technology


Corinne McKay

Where to find Trados Studio manuals

Thanks to everyone who commented on my previous post about software companies’ response to feedback from translators. I know that finding manuals for Trados Studio is only part of the issue, but I did want to give you a separate post with that information. At least two manuals for Trados Studio do exist:

  • SDL has a free quick start guide to translating and reviewing documents, which you can download as a PDF. As far as I know it’s available in English only, and the examples are for an English to German translation. However it is completely step-by-step and walks you through the basic process of translating or reviewing a document.
  • The full SDL Trados Studio manual, written by Mats Linder, is not free but gets excellent reviews. You can purchase it for US $45 from the SDL OpenExchange Application site or from Mats Linder’s website.

I’m planning to review Mats Linder’s manual on my blog in the near future; stay tuned! And if you’ve used either of these manuals, definitely contribute your feedback in the comments.


Corinne McKay

The software companies respond!

Ahead of last week’s ATA conference, I asked readers what you would like to tell your translation tool vendor. And with 27 comments (although some of those were me!), the post generated a lot of activity and excellent feedback. I then compiled those comments into a three-page document and presented the results at an informal lunch that the ATA Translators and Computers committee held for the software companies who were exhibiting at the conference. After giving the vendors your comments to peruse, I asked them three questions:

  • Do you really not offer these features that people are asking for, or do people not realize what you offer, or both?
  • What are your thoughts on training? (i.e. many translators commenting “I pay for the software, then I have to pay to learn to use it too”)
  • Over to you: what do you want to tell the freelancers who buy and use your software?

So first, let me say that the software company reps who attended this lunch were incredibly, incredibly forthcoming and constructive. Part of the problem is that when we freelancers rant and curse about translation software issues while we’re alone in our offices, the software companies cannot hear us. They cannot hear us unless we tell them what is wrong. So I think that this discussion was a good step in that direction. Second, let me say that in my opinion, the software companies get it. They do not think “Well, we’ve got your money, now leave us alone.” They realize that it is not good for business if people can’t learn to use their programs. And they had lots of good feedback for us. Here it is in a nutshell, from the software vendors’ point of view.

  • There are lots of training materials out there, and most freelancers don’t use them. The SDL rep commented that even when people purchase (yes, pay in advance for) an SDL premium pack that includes training, only about 10% of them follow through with the training.
  • There are training videos out there, and most people don’t watch them. The SDL Trados YouTube channel has over 100 free training videos on it. Wordfast has a YouTube channel also, and memoQ has tons of free training materials on their website. The companies are frustrated that more of their customers don’t make use of what’s already there. A couple of the reps estimated that their marketing teams spend almost half of their time developing training, and that training goes largely unused even if it’s free.
  • People want something that’s cheap, feature-rich and requires no training to learn, and that’s hard to produce. One attendee gave the example that most professional photographers and graphic designers accept that they cannot work without Photoshop and/or InDesign. The list price of those programs is about $700 each and they aren’t programs that you master in 10 minutes. Translation environment tools are the same: if you want all of those features, the software is going to be expensive and it’s going to take time to learn to use.
  • When the software companies try to attract freelancers to in-person training events such as road shows, very few people attend even if the training sessions are free, and most comment that they can’t afford to take the time off work.
  • Interestingly, many of the tools vendors commented that translation agencies put too much of the technological burden on freelancers. They feel that agencies are sending out unprepared files, then expecting the translator to return a TM (sometimes in several different formats), a clean file and bilingual Word files, and generally “expect things that translators shouldn’t have to know how to do; if the agency is earning half the money on the job, it needs to take on some of these tasks.” Interesting!
  • Some tools (like Wordfast Pro) already offer a version that can run natively on Mac. But don’t hold your breath for many of the other big guys to produce a Mac version. They don’t have plans to do this because “the large user base isn’t there and it wouldn’t be profitable.”
  • Many attendees felt that freelancers should consider the option of hiring a “personal trainer” to help them learn the software. For the record, this is what I (Corinne) did when I bought Trados Studio 2011, and I felt it was a great investment. The vendors feel that it’s important to know your own capabilities and limitations; know whether you are someone who learns best from a manual, or from another person.
  • As far as interoperability, the software companies feel that they could use more “real-world perspective,” for example having some translators on the XLIFF committee, because apparently there are none right now.

So there you have it. I found this discussion to be incredibly educational and productive. Feel free to comment further, and hopefully we can find a way to keep the discussion going! Thanks to everyone who commented on my original post as well.


Corinne McKay

What would you like to tell your translation tool vendor?

At next week’s ATA annual conference in San Diego, I’ll be giving a short talk for some of the translation tools vendors who are exhibiting at the conference. So here’s a question for you: what suggestions or requests do you have for your translation tool creator(s)? You can submit comments on any topic, but I’m specifically interested in tools interoperability: what suggestions can we give to tools vendors so that we don’t have to reinvent our workflow whenever we switch tools? If you have some feedback that you’d like me to include in this (very short) talk, please submit a comment with the name of the tool(s) you use and your specific suggestions. Thank you!


Corinne McKay

I love TracFone…there, I said it!

For someone who doesn’t love talking on the phone, I seem to talk and write about phone service quite a bit. My 2011 post about options for home office phone service generated a lively discussion, so now let’s talk about cell phones! And for what it’s worth, I’m still quite happy with my Vonage line, and I think that the sound quality has actually improved since I originally set it up.

If you’re a freelancer, or even just a human on Earth in 2012, chances are you have to have a cell phone. Maybe you only have a cell phone. But I bet that you have one. And in my conversations with many freelancers about their cell phones, here’s what I’ve found out:

  • Almost everyone hates their cell phone company. Nearly everyone will tell you that their coverage, sound quality, tech support or customer service are abysmal, or that all of those are abysmal, or that none of those are abysmal but the cost of that non-abysmalness is far too high.
  • Almost everyone thinks that their cell phone bill is too high. Many people in the US have an unlimited talk, text and data plan with a smartphone, and I’m guessing that if you have that, you’re paying between $60 and $100 a month for your phone.
  • Lots of people feel that they don’t use all of the features that their cell phone plan offers. Unscientifically, it seems to me that most people either talk a lot, text a lot, or browse the Web a lot, but not all three. But if they have an unlimited plan, they’re basically paying for all three whether they use them or not.

I know that for some people, an unlimited plan with a smartphone is the only way to go. If you don’t have a land line and/or you talk on the phone a lot; if you are an interpreter and you are out of the office almost all of the time; if you live in an area where Wi-Fi is scarce but cell service is good, or maybe even if you’re really hungry for work and you don’t ever want to miss an e-mail. Those are all good reasons to sink $1,000+ a year into your cell phone. However, I think that a lot of people spend that money without really casting a critical eye on their need for a full-featured cell phone. For a lot of people, I think that the 90/10 rule could be applied to cell phones; meaning that there could be a phone plan that does 90% of what you want, for 10% of the cost of the full-featured plan. If you don’t really need the full-featured cell phone’s features, you could take a pretty nice vacation for what you’re saving by switching to prepaid.

So here’s my confession: I love Tracfone and the prepaid cell phone service that they sell. This review perfectly sums up what I like about TracFone, and I fully agree with the author’s take on their service (“If you can keep your cell phone minutes down to a bare minimum, or really only use your phone for texting, quick chats, and emergencies, then Tracfone is a great option. It’s essentially taking what has typically been a high-priced subscription model product, and taking it to a frugal, bare bones extreme.”) Like the author, I’ve never had to deal with TracFone’s customer service to activate or add minutes to my phone, even when I accidentally let the service expire while I was out of the country. I don’t think I’ve ever had a dropped call either.  Best, I’ve spent about $100 per year on my phone in the eight years I’ve had it. Also, on the odd occasion when I hate TracFone for a few minutes (their coverage in remote locations is not great), I remind myself that I’m paying $9 a month for the privilege of hating them, not $100 a month.

After eight years of using a totally bare-bones Samsung phone that (get ready) only makes phone calls, I did recently upgrade to one of TracFone’s “smarter” models that has a Qwerty keyboard, Wi-Fi and some type of “mobile web,” although I’m still figuring out what that means. I’ll report on that model once I receive it and activate it! If you’re a heavier phone user, TracFone also owns two other companies, Net10 and StraightTalk, which offer unlimited talk, text and data plans for about $45 per month.

Like other frugal lifestyle options, a prepaid cell phone isn’t the right choice for everyone. Neither is living without a clothes dryer, but my family has managed that for 8+ years. I’ve nearly taken the smartphone plunge numerous times. But after realizing that, like the review author I quoted above, I largely use my cell phone to be available in emergencies, quickly check in with clients or friends when I’m out of the house, and to provide an alternate number in case clients really need to reach me, I’ve stuck with TracFone and saved a ton of money.


Corinne McKay

Coping with e-mail overload

In planning for our recent seven-week trip to Europe (of which I worked for four weeks and took three weeks off), I spent some time reconfiguring my e-mail setup to make it easier to manage, and I think that I was at least somewhat successful. Here are some thoughts, and feel free to share your own tips!

These days, I think it’s a given that we’re all in e-mail overload. The sources are almost too many to count; I receive e-mail from my clients, colleagues and friends (thankfully), from every professional association that I belong to, from Google Groups and Yahoo Groups that I’ve joined, from my daughter’s school, from Facebook and Twitter, from all the schools I went to, from the yoga studio I haven’t been to in six months, and so on and so on, to the point that even our garbage collection and electric companies send me e-mail newsletters every month. Part of an e-mail coping strategy has to be logistical (setting up better ways to deal with your e-mail) and part of it has to be conceptual (having the right mindset about e-mail).

First, logistics: If “checking e-mail” means that you’re deleting 90% of what’s in your inbox, you need to do some unsubscribing and filtering. This was step #1 of my pre-trip e-mail plan. Whenever I checked my e-mail during the month before we left, I took a look at each message and tried to assign it to one of three categories:

  1. I want/need to read this as soon as it comes in (messages from clients and colleagues)
  2. I want/need to read this at some point, but it’s not urgent (groups, some e-mail newsletters)
  3. I don’t want/need to read this at all

If a message fit category 2, I created a filter for it that bypassed my inbox. If you use the Gmail interface, here’s the Gmail support page on creating labels. Gmail also allows you to “bypass the Inbox” when you label something, so that you never see that message until you want to. If a message fit category 3, I unsubscribed from it. I tried to be merciless, because I really needed to slash my e-mail volume. This triage system cut my inbox volume by about 60%.

Now, concept: I’ve found that for me, the best way to cut the amount of time I spend on e-mail is to answer messages right away. I’m not great about this if something requires further thought or research before I can reply to the person. But a few years ago I read The Personal Efficiency Program, which promotes the concept of “processing” e-mail rather than “reading” e-mail. PEP advocates an e-mail strategy that’s similar to the “one touch” rule for dealing with paper; you only touch something once, either to deal with it or to toss it, and I think this is a good concept.

I’m efficient about replying to urgent e-mails, but I’m less good at replying to e-mails that are not urgent but need a reply. I feel like these strategies are helping, because I was able to get through my vacation backlog of 200+ e-mails in only one day. Any other thoughts on e-mail management?