Training for Translators

Classes for translators and interpreters

Translation quality


Corinne McKay

When a client is dissatisfied

No matter how meticulous you are about a) your translations and b) your business practices, you can’t work as a freelancer without dealing with disgruntled clients from time to time. First, let’s say this: unless you love interpersonal conflict, dealing with unhappy clients is awful. Running your own business means caring very deeply about your work and putting your reputation behind every translation that you do, and it can be a truly horrible experience to have a client question your competence, integrity, whatever. But since this situation is bound to occur, let’s look at what you can/should do after you receive that angry phone call or e-mail from a client.

For the purposes of this post, let’s assume that the client’s complaint has at least some basis in fact. Maybe you don’t see the problem as being as serious as the client does, but you agree that there’s some shred of an issue to be dealt with. Baseless client complaints are another issue altogether, and one that I’ll save for another post (or better yet, another translation blogger can take that one on!). I think that resolving legitimate disputes boils down to three basic steps:

  • Admit to the mistake;
  • Apologize;
  • Try to make it better.

Admittedly, I’m a pretty conflict-averse person, and I’m also very committed to maintaining a good reputation in the translation industry. Therefore, I probably go a little further with these steps than some translators do. For example, if I make a legitimate error, I nearly always offer the client some sort of compensation: I once e-mailed a client the wrong file for a (thankfully) very small project the night before I was leaving for a vacation. When I returned from vacation and realized what had happened, I told the client that of course I didn’t expect to be paid for that project, but that I also wanted to do a small job for them for free in the future. I think that this type of gesture shows the client that I get it: that freelancing can be a “one strike and you’re out” type of business, and that I am very committed to client satisfaction.

A few other dispute resolution tips that I’ve gleaned over the years:

  • When you receive an angry e-mail from a client, first, do nothing. Don’t respond when you are angry too. Wait until you’ve cooled off a bit, then compose your response. Or compose your response and let it sit for an hour, then read it over before you send it.
  • Always ask for specific examples of quality issues. It’s really hard to know how to make it better with a client who says “The tone isn’t what we wanted,” “The terminology wasn’t right for our audience,” etc. Always ask for an edited version of your translation, or for a few specific examples of the kind of issues the client is talking about.
  • Resist the urge to write a lengthy explanation in response to a client complaint. When you respond, be concise, be kind and admit what happened. “I really apologize for neglecting to fully comply with your style sheet; I agree with the changes that you made to the document and I want to assure you that I will be more meticulous about this in the future” is enough. Save the venting and ranting for your trusted circle of friends and colleagues!
  • Don’t complain about the client’s requirements after the fact. If the client sends you a 12 page style guide for a 1,500 word project, or expects you to go through an arduous QA process with no increase in your rate, the time to lodge your objection is before the project starts.
  • Don’t take it personally. Clearly, this is easy to say and very, very hard to do. But when you’re dealing with a business issue, try to keep it businesslike. Stay calm, stay polite and try to see things from the client’s point of view.
  • After the complaint is resolved, decide whether this client is a good fit for you. Sometimes the client’s complaint reflects the fact that their work style and yours are not a good fit. And really, that’s OK. There is enough other work out there for you, and there are enough other translators out there for them.


Corinne McKay

Happy 2011: Are bad habits a form of self-protection?

Happy 2011 to everyone out there in the translation blogosphere!

To start the year off, here’s a very interesting interview I came across: sports writer Bill Simmons interviewing New Yorker writer Malcolm Gladwell. Both Simmons and Gladwell draw some interesting parallels between sports and the rest of life, but my favorite is Gladwell’s take on why certain people (in this case athletes, but it could be translators) “don’t work hard when it’s in their best interest to do so.” Gladwell posits, and I’d agree, that failure caused by poor preparation is a way to insulate oneself from a more awful possibility: failure caused by a lack of ability. Gladwell applies this theory to golfers Tiger Woods (an obsessive preparer on the golf course, whatever his vices off the course!) and Phil MIckelson (who states that he didn’t pick up a golf club for 5 weeks before a major tournament), saying “…it’s really risky to work hard, because then if you fail you can no longer say that you failed because you didn’t work hard. It’s a form of self-protection. I swear that’s why Mickelson has that almost absurdly calm demeanor. If he loses, he can always say: Well, I could have practiced more, and maybe next year I will and I’ll win then. When Tiger loses, what does he tell himself? He worked as hard as he possibly could. He prepared like no one else in the game and he still lost. That has to be devastating…”

Let’s apply this to the business of freelance translation. Hopefully you achieved some or even most of your goals for 2010. But as for the goals you didn’t achieve, did you fail because you didn’t follow through or did you fail because you followed through and still fell short of the target? I’m with Gladwell on this one; it’s a lot easier to tell yourself that you didn’t meet your income goal because you didn’t have time to do your marketing than it is to accept that you marketed and marketed and things didn’t pan out. Therefore, it’s a lot safer not to do the marketing so that you have that excuse in your back pocket.

So here’s a resolution for 2011: whatever your business-related goals are, give yourself permission to really, really try to meet them. Rather than protecting yourself with the usual “not enough time,” “too much else going on” types of excuses (I’m as guilty of these as the next translator!), give those goals your best, most honest and most thorough effort. Accept that you might not reach them, but try to drop the self-protecting excuses!


Corinne McKay

ATA conference wrapup

I know that this post will show my local bias, but this year’s ATA conference in Denver was just fantastic. I didn’t actually take any photos, but you can see a few on Jill Sommer’s blog and look at the daily conference slide show on the ATA website. Thanks to Jeff Sanfacon of ATA for the great pictures!

Judy Jenner commented in her ATA Chronicle column that the ATA conference is her favorite week of the year from a professional standpoint. I have to agree! Although this year’s conference was a bit more hectic for me than past ones (lots of volunteer roles, plus presentations, plus zipping back and forth from my house to the conference hotel), it was a real thrill to be able to show Denver off to 1,500+ translators. The conference hotel (Denver Hyatt Regency) is spectacular and the ATA team did an outstanding job carrying on positive traditions from past conferences and innovating with some new ones. Huge thanks to ATA President Nick Hartmann, President-Elect Dorothee Racette and the ATA headquarters staff for the draft horse-style work that they did to put all of this together. For all of us locals, it was a huge relief that there was no blizzard during the conference…just that sapphire Colorado sky and warm weather!

Lest you get the impression that the ATA conference is all socializing and no actual learning, I thought that this year’s sessions were particularly worthwhile. I selected a mix of speakers I’ve seen and enjoyed many times (Grant Hamilton‘s “Spot the Gallicism”), subjects I don’t see myself pursuing but about which I need to know more (Bruce Popp‘s “Making sense of French and US patent terminology”) and entirely new horizons (Katharine Allen’s “Notetaking for dialogue interpreting in all settings”). This year’s French Language Division Distinguished Speaker, David Jemielity of the Banque Cantonale Vaudoise in Lausanne, Switzerland, presented two outstanding sessions on financial translations and is one of the best Distinguished Speakers I’ve heard in the six years I’ve been attending the conference. I also had fun catching up on the translation bookosphere (can we call it that to contrast it with the blogosphere?) at Marianne Reiner’s presentation on her translation of David Grann’s Trial by Fire and Chris Durban’s signing of her new book The Prosperous Translator.

Working as a home-based freelancer in 2010, I think it’s easy to discount the value of face-to-face interactions and to assume that all the valuable networking happens online. In my experience, this is a misguided assumption. It’s amazing how lasting an impression one can make during a very short in-person interaction, and how valuable it is to simply have a visual impression of someone you only know via phone and e-mail. Unfortunately I couldn’t make the bloggers’ lunch, but it was lots of fun to talk to other translation bloggers and blog readers during the conference.

Despite Lionbridge’s untimely decision to impose a 5% rate decrease on their translators, I felt that the mood at the conference was generally very positive. Many attendees said that their business has never been stronger, others are branching out with higher paying direct clients, and I think that many translators are also focusing more on producing very high quality translations for very quality-conscious clients.

Thanks to everyone who attended my seminar on Beyond the basics of freelancing, and if you have follow-up questions, feel free to submit them and I’ll try to answer some of them here. I was also honored to present “Blogging 101” in Riccardo Schiaffino’s place, and you can download that presentation and Riccardo’s notes from his website. See you in Boston in 2011!


Corinne McKay

Spicing up your translations with little-used expressions

At last summer’s Translate in the Catskills conference (I know, I talk about this conference all the time…it was great!), instructor Grant Hamilton commented that he had never seen a translator use the expressions “giving short shrift” or “paying little heed.” Grant’s point was that most translators stick to the path of least resistance, the expressions that they’ve used over and over again when writing their translations. Since then, I’ve been making a deliberate effort to spice up my translations with expressions that are accurate but that give the translation a flair that hackneyed phrases don’t have. I’ve found that even boilerplate legal documents are more engaging to read when you really focus on writing well. I think it’s important (especially in legal documents) not to sacrifice meaning for style, but especially if you write for direct clients, compelling style can be a real boost for your translations.

For example, how about “This ruling gave corporations full freedom to set prices” versus “This ruling gave corporations free reign to set prices.” This also led me to an interesting discussion of Free Rein or Free Reign (I decided to use “free reign”).  Here are some “bland to spicy” makeovers that I rarely see in translations:

  • Bland: All at once. Spicy: In one fell swoop.
  • Bland: This decision conflicts with current thinking. Spicy: This decision goes against the grain.
  • Bland: This marketing strategy is innovative. Spicy: This marketing strategy is ahead of the curve.
  • Bland: The corporate spokesperson was  honest. Spicy: The corporate spokesperson did not mince words.
  • Bland: The situation changed. Spicy: The tables turned.
  • Bland: The plaintiff did not seem upset by the decision. Spicy: The plaintiff seemed to take the decision in stride.
  • Bland: As more consumers switch to organic food… Spicy: As more consumers jump on the organic bandwagon…
  • Bland: An atmosphere of distrust. Spicy: A cloud of suspicion.

And feel free to add your own favorite but little-used expressions as well! A few caveats: even when you’re trying to write compellingly, it’s important to maintain the register of the original document. You don’t want expressions like “a dog eat dog world” in a formal legal document. Likewise, know your audience. Especially if you’re writing for non-native speakers of the target language, avoid culturally-specific or sports-inspired metaphors that will fall flat. Americans particularly love to include sports expressions such as home run, hole in one, Hail Mary pass, so avoid these if your target audience will be confused by them.


Corinne McKay

How to be a better proofreader

If you’re looking to move up in the translation market, more effective proofreading is critical. If you’re the type of person who cringes at the sight of an error in print, make sure that your translations aren’t contributing to the problem, and give your clients that extra quality step that marks your service as above average! Here are a few tips I’ve gleaned over the years, and feel free to add your own!

  • It’s hard to proofread your own work, but sometimes you have to do it. A cross-editing partner is really invaluable if you work for direct clients. If you work for agencies and can’t afford to hire out your proofreading, try to do as thorough a job as possible on your own work.
  • Proofread in a different format than the original. I prefer to proofread from a hard copy; I print the target document, then proofread in front of two computer monitors with the target document in one window and the source document in the other, so that I can make corrections as soon as I see the errors. If your work (i.e. Flash animations, graphics, etc.) doesn’t lend itself to being printed, at least try to change the size, font, color, anything to make the target text look different enough that you have to pay attention to it.
  • Pay particular attention to easily-botched numbers and words. Check every digit in every number. Check every letter in every name and place name. Check every negative expression to make sure that you wrote the correct version (i.e. always versus never).
  • Realize that the majority of errors consist of the wrong word, not a misspelled word. The spell-checker saves you from cracking a dictionary to remember whether recommendation has one m or two, but it doesn’t save you from typing fat instead of fact, or asses instead of assets, or any other number of mortifying blunders. So force yourself to slow down; when I took editing classes with Alice Levine, she advised pointing at each word with a pen, and also never proofreading when you’re tired.
  • Watch out for your typical errors. For some reason, I habitually put the space in the wrong place when I’m typing two small words in a row, such as “tot his” instead of “to this.” Sometimes the spell-checker saves me (“thi stime” instead of “this time”) but “tot his” slips through!.
  • While you’re at it, mark the errors in the source document. The client may or may not be concerned with these, but you can add a little value and it’s not much extra work. Also, I think it’s almost easier to find errors in your non-native language because you spent so many years drilling the correct spellings and conjugations!