Training for Translators

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Translation industry news


Corinne McKay

Nobel may open up new translation opportunities

It’s an exciting day for lovers of French literature everywhere. Today in Sweden, French author Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio was awarded the 2008 Nobel Prize for Literature, becoming the first French-language author to do so since Claude Simon in 1985 (Gao Xingjian, a French citizen who writes in Chinese, won in 2000).

Le Clézio has a very interesting life story , and at the moment few English translations of his works are in print, with the notable exception of “The Mexican Dream,” a novel that depicts Mexico without European settlers. It was published by the University of Chicago Press in 1993, but hopefully we’ll soon see more translations of Le Clézio’s work on the market!


Corinne McKay

New website: Translators Training

A new site of interest to translators is Translators Training, run by Jost Zetzsche (who writes the translation technology e-newsletter The Took Kit) and Intrawelt, a language services and e-learning company.

Translators Training offers “unbiased, objective information about translation tools,” which is something that’s certainly needed in our industry. Translators Training seems to have gone beyond the standard tool features comparison and asked tool providers to give concrete examples of how their tools perform various functions. For example, Translators Training offers a series of presentations in which various tools are used to translate the same Word document so that the viewer can see the exact steps involved. There are other presentations that seem equally useful, as well as a comparison table of 13 leading translation environment tools. Jost also has a video blog on the site, and it’s definitely worth a look; the site’s liberal use of videos is a very helpful touch.

Translators Training offers free previews of its content, but to see the full version you have to purchase a subscription for 34.99 euros per year. If you’re in the market for a translation tool and are looking at spending big bucks for one of the market leaders, this could be a very worthwhile investment. Or if, because of the site’s information, you decide that a less-than-market leader tool will do the job, it’s an even better investment. If you’re just browsing out of curiosity, it’s probably an ambitious amount to spend just to take a look, but I admire the fact that Translators Training says up front (in the “how do I…?”) section that it’s not a free site. I didn’t purchase a subscription since I’m happy with the non-market leader tools that I use, but I think that Translators Training fills a much-needed niche in the industry!


Corinne McKay

Translation on the news

I recently represented the ATA in a local media appearance, a live interview on the Denver NBC News station, KUSA 9 News. This interview was part of a business segment highlighting the bright employment outlook for bilingual people and the fact that bilingual people remain very employable even in a soft economy.

Live TV is certainly not my forté, but overall this was an interesting experience. I can’t say enough positive things about Wendy Greenwald of The SolutionPR; she’s definitely the person you want to take with you to any stressful media event! The ATA’s Public Relations Committee has done an excellent job of getting translation-related news items placed in local and national media as a way to educate the public about what translators do and why our work is critical to business success, international development, national security and more. I think I’m more successful in my home office than in front of a camera, but this was a fun opportunity to spread the word about the translation profession.


Corinne McKay

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 thought on a variety of fronts, because it’s always important to be thinking about translation rates. Also, I think that while of course we all want to avoid antitrust and price-fixing violations, it’s important to talk to other translators about rates too.

First, if you do an income calculation and feel that you will be earning too little, I think it’s almost always more effective to look for new and better paying clients than to try to convince your existing clients to pay you more. If you’ve been working for a client for a number of years and they are happy with your work, they might go along with a raise of a few cents per word, but it’s unlikely that they will willingly go along with a raise from 14 cents a word to 20. Likewise, if your target income level prices you out of the rate range that most translation agencies will pay, you simply have to start marketing yourself to direct clients, rather than looking for a few elusive agencies that will pay very high rates.

Second, don’t get fixated on the per-word rate when what really matters is the hourly rate. You can afford to take a lower hourly rate on a project where you produce 600 finished words per hour than on a project where you produce 400 translated words per hour, so focus on your hourly or daily earnings rather than on the per-word rate.

Third, don’t underestimate what your services are worth when you market to direct clients. A customer who wants to be your “drop everything” client should be willing to pay a “drop everything” rate. In this 2004 article from Business Week, well-known French to English translator Chris Durban comments that “The problem with most translators is that they make themselves too small. They have stuck with 12 cents a word for far too long. The top of the market is 50 cents or 60 cents a word — and it’s empty! There is very little competition at that level.” While I haven’t yet had the courage to ask a direct client for 50 cents per word, I know a number of highly skilled translators who are very busy at 25-40 cents per word.

So, however you calculate your income, make sure that you are basing your rates on objective data; the online income calculator is a great way to do that!


Corinne McKay

Google Translation Center

Thanks to reader Dierk Seeburg for sending the link to an article from the Washington Post about Google’s new Google Translation Center service (not yet fully launched, login seems not to work using a regular Google account). The Post article has a link to a yet more interesting article on Google Blogoscoped where one can even view some screen shots of the Translation Center.

At least to the untrained eye, this looks like an interesting combination of Google’s existing language tools, an online translator workbench including the source and target text and a column for “Previous Translations,” and on-demand access to human translators (this part looks similar to SDL’s Click2Translate service).

I think that the most interesting part of the article on Google Blogoscoped is the one in which co-editor Tony Ruscoe muses about the implications of Google’s reported plan to “match current translations with previous ones.” He points out that “This sounds like what the industry calls a Translation Memory” and brings up the question of ownership of the TMs created by the Translation Center.

At the end of the post, Philipp Lenssen says that Google has now “removed many of the pages and files in question,” but this looks like a translation website worth keeping an eye on.