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Greetings, Training for Translators readers! I’m posting this on January 6, but it was actually the final newsletter of 2025; here we go into 2026!

This is the final newsletter of the year; I’ll take two weeks off, and the newsletter will be back on January 6. Thanks to my friend and colleague Eve Bodeux for suggesting this topic! Over the holidays or in January, maybe you have some time to research new software tools that could be helpful in your business. There are tons of options out there, but here’s a starter list. Most of these are free; if not, I’ve indicated the pricing for them.

• Asana and Notion: These are online workspace/project management tools. I don’t use either of them, but I have a lot of students who are raving fans. I would recommend checking them out if you’re planning an active marketing campaign, because they can automate reminders, follow-ups, etc.
• Audacity: A really useful, completely free audio editing program. With starting the T4T podcast this year, I decided to try editing the recordings myself in Audacity, and it’s totally doable. I feel like Audacity makes it pretty easy to use the basic features, and ignore the complicated stuff that you probably don’t need for simple projects.
• Calendly: I have mixed feelings about Calendly, which is an online scheduling too. To me, it always feels a little like, “You’ll need to check with my secretary if you want to book time with me,” but it definitely saves a lot of the back and forth and time zone juggling when you need to meet with someone.
• Canva: I’m the world’s worst graphic designer, and even I can make decent stuff in Canva, and the free account is sufficient for my needs. Check out their LinkedIn banner templates if you’re still using the default blue-grey thing that LinkedIn puts there.
• Doodle: I love Doodle, a polling tool for scheduling meetings. It’s really great when you need to find the best time slot among a group of people; for example I coordinate an informal professional group that has about 85 members all over the world, and I use Doodle to find the best time slot for our online sessions.
• HappyScribe: Another interpreter introduced me to Happy Scribe, a very helpful subtitling and captioning tool. I find it more accurate and easier to edit than the Zoom captions, so I now use it for my online course videos. I have the basic paid plan which costs about $100 a year.
• HubSpot: HubSpot is probably best know for their customer relations management tool (I have some students who use the free version and like it!). I don’t use that, but I love HubSpot Academy, their free online learning platform. HubSpot must be doing well financially, because these classes are quite high-quality and are completely free, and they’re not a sales pitch for HubSpot’s software. I’ve done their SEO and Content Marketing certifications, and I’ve signed up for their Content Strategy class.
• iLovePDF: I switched from Adobe to iLove when Adobe started charging to rotate a PDF (seriously??). I actually kind of hate PDFs (Jost Zetzsche’s joke: “It stands for Pretty Darn Frustrating”) so I’ll have to forgive this company for their slogan, “Online tools for PDF lovers,” but the tool itself is great. It merges, splits, compresses, edits, signs, converts, I really haven’t found any PDF-related thing that it can’t do, and the $60 per year plan suits my needs.
• Loom: Loom is a screenshare video tool that makes it really easy to create video messages for other people. Personally I just use Zoom for this, but I’ve had a few people send me Loom messages, and I like them, especially if the person is showing me a software tip or something I need to watch on their screen.
• LSP.expert: An accounting, invoicing, and project tracking tool just for translators and interpretersMy accountant requires QuickBooks (just about my least favorite piece of software and it’s also expensive), but everyone I know who uses LSP.expert, loves it. Their prices range from EUR 12.50 a month to EUR 45.00 a month (I’m not even going to tell you what I pay for QuickBooks, but it’s a lot more than that!!).
• Slack: I know, just what you need, another messaging platform, right??? But I will say that if you want to create an online discussion group where people can scan the threads instead of getting every single message (as opposed to WhatsApp and Signal), give Slack a try. I use it for some of my classes, and to me it combines some of the positives of Facebook without the invasive creepiness; for example you can even create a dummy Gmail address that you only use for Slack, then just delete the account if you no longer want it.
• Todoist: Meghan McCallum introduced me to Todoist a couple of years ago, and it’s now my go-to productivity app. In many ways it’s just an online to-do list. I keep mine on my phone’s home screen so it’s right where I can see it. But I love the more advanced features, even in the free account. You can have it remind you to do a specific task on a specific repeating frequency (i.e. remind me to reconcile my accounting on the 5th of every month), and you can set reminders for as far in the future as you want. You can also keep lists (I keep a list of books I want to read, movies and shows I want to watch, and potential newsletter topics).
• Toggl: Time tracking is something I should do more of, and I still can’t remember to turn Toggl off most of the time (so it thinks I’ve been working on accounting for 19 hours…pretty much my worst nightmare). But it’s probably the best tool out there if you want to see where your time goes.
• WeTransfer: A really helpful tool for sending enormous files, like if you want to send someone the actual file of a one-hour video call.
• Zoom: I mean, Zoom is, well, Zoom, and a lot of us would like to spend a lot less time on Zoom. But I will say this: Zoom works. I do a ton of remote interpreting in Zoom, the features are good, they keep adding new things (most recently: relay interpreting) and it’s very stable. So at least there’s that: we’re not chained to a horrible, buggy program!

That’s it! Thanks for a great 2025, and here’s to a healthy and lucrative 2026 for all of us!

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Thanks for helping the T4T podcast get to 9,000+ downloads! Here’s episode 21: Six ways to branch out into a new specialization or service offering. Subscribe in Apple Podcasts or Spotify, or listen right here:

If you’d rather read the blog post that this podcast episode is based on, here it is.

January classes open for registration! Thanks to all 1,700 people who registered for T4T’s offerings in 2025! Actually not 1,700 people, 1,700 registrations, many of which were one person taking multiple classes. I’m glad you find these classes helpful; now onward to 2026. Here’s what’s open for registration now, and opening soon: Open now: January’s master class, Introduction to content marketing, for your business, or for your clients. Registration is $75 and includes the recording. Learn how to use a blog, podcast, e-mail newsletter, lead magnet, or social media posts to market your freelance business, or offer this service (as a translator or writer) to your clients! Open now: March Marketing Madness challenge group. Back for year eight (!), MMM has become a T4T tradition and our biggest offering of the year. Twenty days of business challenges that will take you 15-30 minutes to complete, and this year I’ve added three live sessions. Registration is $90 (last year’s price) until February 1. Opening soon: Check the T4T upcoming classes page on December 20 for the next session of Direct client research lab, my personalized direct marketing class. Registration is currently open only to people on the wait list, and will open to everyone else on December 20 at $175.

This week’s topic: A software sampler This is the final newsletter of the year; I’ll take two weeks off, and the newsletter will be back on January 6. Thanks to my friend and colleague Eve Bodeux for suggesting this topic! Over the holidays or in January, maybe you have some time to research new software tools that could be helpful in your business. There are tons of options out there, but here’s a starter list. Most of these are free; if not, I’ve indicated the pricing for them. Asana and Notion: These are online workspace/project management tools. I don’t use either of them, but I have a lot of students who are raving fans. I would recommend checking them out if you’re planning an active marketing campaign, because they can automate reminders, follow-ups, etc. Audacity: A really useful, completely free audio editing program. With starting the T4T podcast this year, I decided to try editing the recordings myself in Audacity, and it’s totally doable. I feel like Audacity makes it pretty easy to use the basic features, and ignore the complicated stuff that you probably don’t need for simple projects. Calendly: I have mixed feelings about Calendly, which is an online scheduling tool. To me, it always feels a little like, “You’ll need to check with my secretary if you want to book time with me,” but it definitely saves a lot of the back and forth and time zone juggling when you need to meet with someone. Canva: I’m the world’s worst graphic designer, and even I can make decent stuff in Canva, and the free account is sufficient for my needs. Check out their LinkedIn banner templates if you’re still using the default blue-grey thing that LinkedIn puts there. Doodle: I love Doodle, a polling tool for scheduling meetings. It’s really great when you need to find the best time slot among a group of people; for example I coordinate an informal professional group that has about 85 members all over the world, and I use Doodle to find the best time slot for our online sessions. HappyScribe: Another interpreter introduced me to Happy Scribe, a very helpful subtitling and captioning tool. I find it more accurate and easier to edit than the Zoom captions, so I now use it for my online course videos. I have the basic paid plan which costs about $100 a year. HubSpot: HubSpot is probably best known for their customer relations management tool (I have some students who use the free version and like it!). I don’t use that, but I love HubSpot Academy, their free online learning platform. HubSpot must be doing well financially, because these classes are quite high-quality and are completely free, and they’re not a sales pitch for HubSpot’s software. I’ve done their SEO and Content Marketing certifications, and I’ve signed up for their Content Strategy class. iLovePDF: I switched from Adobe to iLove when Adobe started charging to rotate a PDF (seriously??). I actually kind of hate PDFs (Jost Zetzsche’s joke: “It stands for Pretty Darn Frustrating”) so I’ll have to forgive this company for their slogan, “Online tools for PDF lovers,” but the tool itself is great. It merges, splits, compresses, edits, signs, converts, I really haven’t found any PDF-related thing that it can’t do, and the $60 per year plan suits my needs. Loom: Loom is a screenshare video tool that makes it really easy to create video messages for other people. Personally I just use Zoom for this, but I’ve had a few people send me Loom messages, and I like them, especially if the person is showing me a software tip or something I need to watch on their screen. LSP.expert: An accounting, invoicing, and project tracking tool just for translators and interpreters. My accountant requires QuickBooks (just about my least favorite piece of software and it’s also expensive), but everyone I know who uses LSP.expert, loves it. Their prices range from EUR 12.50 a month to EUR 45.00 a month (I’m not even going to tell you what I pay for QuickBooks, but it’s a lot more than that!!). Slack: I know, just what you need, another messaging platform, right??? But I will say that if you want to create an online discussion group where people can scan the threads instead of getting every single message (as opposed to WhatsApp and Signal), give Slack a try. I use it for some of my classes, and to me it combines some of the positives of Facebook without the invasive creepiness; for example you can even create a dummy Gmail address that you only use for Slack, then just delete the account if you no longer want it. Todoist: Meghan McCallum introduced me to Todoist a couple of years ago, and it’s now my go-to productivity app. In many ways it’s just an online to-do list. I keep mine on my phone’s home screen so it’s right where I can see it. But I love the more advanced features, even in the free account. You can have it remind you to do a specific task on a specific repeating frequency (i.e. remind me to reconcile my accounting on the 5th of every month), and you can set reminders for as far in the future as you want. You can also keep lists (I keep a list of books I want to read, movies and shows I want to watch, and potential newsletter topics). Toggl: Time tracking is something I should do more of, and I still can’t remember to turn Toggl off most of the time (so it thinks I’ve been working on accounting for 19 hours…pretty much my worst nightmare). But it’s probably the best tool out there if you want to see where your time goes. WeTransfer: A really helpful tool for sending enormous files, like if you want to send someone the actual file of a one-hour video call. Zoom: I mean, Zoom is, well, Zoom, and a lot of us would like to spend a lot less time on Zoom. But I will say this: Zoom works. I do a ton of remote interpreting in Zoom, the features are good, they keep adding new things (most recently: relay interpreting) and it’s very stable. So at least there’s that: we’re not chained to a horrible, buggy program! That’s it! Thanks for a great 2025, and here’s to a healthy and lucrative 2026 for all of us!

To get our weekly posts directly in your inbox, sign up for the Training for Translators mailing list!

How to branch out into a new specialization or service

As we look ahead to 2026, many of us may be thinking about diversifying: offering a new specialization or a new service (interpreting, editing, subtitling, copywriting). A few newsletter readers have asked me about this, one of whom wrote, “I wanted to reach out because I’m thinking about branching into a new area (literary/book translation) while continuing to work in my current (unrelated) specialization. I’m curious about strategies for marketing such different niches, optimizing my LinkedIn profile, and managing the transition effectively.”

Here’s a list of six options to consider. I’m giving you six, because the best way to do this depends on a lot of factors: what the new specialization/service is; whether you can afford to take an income hit as you make this transition; whether the new specialization/service requires additional training, and so on.

1. Minimum Viable Product. Test the new idea in a low-risk way. Think of the smallest step you can take, and offer it to a low-pressure client who already likes you. For example, our aspiring literary translator doesn’t have to start with an epic novel. They could start by approaching a short story author who’s published something in a literary journal that they like to read. Get a feel for what literary translation consists of, how long it takes, the pluses and minuses, without giving up any of their existing work. If you’d like to start offering copywriting in addition to translation, pitch that to one of your existing translation clients. Offer to write one press release, or improve one page of their web copy.
2. The sidestep approach. Branch out into a service that is adjacent to something you do now. I’ve recently talked to a few subtitlers who are thinking of learning how to do SDH (subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing). If you’re an interpreter, have you thought about offering translation and voice talent services to companies that produce museum audio guides? If you love translating press releases, what about writing press releases in your own language? The sidestep takes a lot of the anxiety away, because you’re already doing a very similar thing.
3. Collaboration. Look for people who are a couple of steps ahead of you in this new specialization or service. What kind of help might they need from a junior person? Do they need someone to prepare files for them? Someone to create glossaries? Someone to run consistency checks on their finished work? This can be a foot in the door and you may learn a lot.
4. Make your own portfolio. Instead of waiting for clients to give you work, do your own work and show it off. If you want to do multilingual fact-checking, pick a public domain document, fact-check it, and write an article about your process. If you want to do SEO, improve your own website’s SEO and write an article about how you did it.
5. Volunteer for a cause you support, donating time instead of money. I have mixed feelings about pro bono work; it runs the risk of looking like you think your work is worth nothing. But here’s an exception: if you would actually donate money to an organization, or if you really support their cause, do a limited amount of pro bono work as a way to test the waters. If you just took a subtitling class, look up some causes you support on YouTube, and see if their stuff needs subtitling. If you have a friend or family member who suffers from a rare disease, find that disease’s research foundation and offer them a small amount of work for free.
6. Take the big leap. Get a graduate degree. Do a specialized certification. Enroll in a months-long class or bootcamp. Sometimes, it’s the only way! When I did my conference interpreting Master’s (after growing weary of seeing clients hire untrained bilingual people), I knew that it would be expensive and really challenging, but I thought (correctly, I think) that in order for clients to see me as legitimate, and for me to have the confidence to market myself as a conference interpreter, I had to get a degree in conference interpreting.

What about marketing multiple specializations or services?

Marketing a “portfolio” business requires some strategizing on your part, but it probably bothers you more than it bothers other people. A good rule in life in general: other people really don’t think about you as much as you think they do.

You also have to work with the options and constraints of your marketing platforms: you can put as many sub-pages as you want on your website (I’d do individual pages for each specialization), but LinkedIn makes it really difficult to set up multiple profiles, unless one is your personal profile and one is a company.

Here are three ways you could market multiple specializations (and again, very personal decision).

1. Go from broad to specific. Use a broad headline (“English to Spanish translator”) then narrow down, even if the specializations are a little disparate (“Patents/Intellectual Property | Non-fiction books”). Again, you’re probably more bothered by this perceived disparity than other people are.
2. Market different specializations in different places. For example, I would wonder whether our aspiring literary translator really needs to highlight literary translation on LinkedIn. Maybe just market that directly to publishers? Put it in your LinkedIn About section but not your headline? This could work particularly well if you want to translate or interpret for a creative sector: maybe market that on Instagram, or in a series of articles on your website?
3. Write a case study that combines your specializations. This probably won’t work for our aspiring literary translator, but it could work if you do something like UX (user experience) writing and NGO translation. “Improving user experience for a German NGO,” or “How I helped a Swiss NGO communicate its results in fewer words, with greater impact.”

If you’re thinking about shaking things up in 2026, I hope these tips are helpful!

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Somehow, it’s December?! I’ve started a tradition of reporting on my reading list for the year; you can read 2024’s post here, and 2023’s is here.

I traveled a lot this year, which allowed time for a lot of reading. After finishing 15 books in 2023 and 16 in 2024, I bumped it up to 18 in 2025! No links, because you know where to buy a book! If you have a local, independent bookstore (shoutout to mine: Boulder Bookstore), please give them your business!

Top picks

Each year, I try to single out a few books that I would particularly recommend, and here are my top three for 2025, all very different from each other!

Orbital, by Samantha Harvey. I picked this one up because you can’t go wrong with a Booker Prize winner, and I really loved it. It’s short but pretty epic: a meditation on life and space, through the eyes of six astronauts from different countries, as they orbit the earth for a day.

The Postcard, by Anne Berest, translated from the French by Tina Kover (who I fangirled on LinkedIn and she wrote back…highlight of my year!). Published in French as La Carte Postale, I read this in English because I bought it in an airport. It’s so flipping good: combining a true story (the author receives a postcard with no message other than the names of her great-grandparents and their son and daughter, all killed at Auschwitz) and fiction (what happened to them after they were deported). The author ultimately sleuths out the postcard’s origin: read the book to find out!

The Wide, Wide Sea: Imperial ambition, first contact, and the fateful final voyage of Captain James Cook, by Hampton Sides. I’m not much of a history/historical biography reader (love Robert Caro, but made it through about the first 10 pages of the Lyndon Johnson series), but this one is a winner. It looks at the 1700s age of exploration in general, and Cook’s fateful end in the South Pacific in particular.

The rest (and no duds this year!)

In past years, I’ve had a few DNFs, but this year I honestly really liked everything I picked out, and they all got finished eventually!

Atomic Habits, by James Clear.  I know. The rest of the world read this when it came out in 2018, and I just got around to it. I really love James Clear’s writing style, and his thoughts on the factors that underly productivity (and lack thereof).

The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead. I feel like Colson Whitehead is kind of a polarizing author (people really like his books or really dislike them) and I’m a huge fan. I had to read this after seeing the movie, and of course the book was better. It’s not a peaceful read (based on the true story of child abuse and murder at a reform school in Florida), but so well written.

Memoir of My Former Self by Hilary Mantel. Wait, didn’t Hilary Mantel pass away in 2022? Yes (sadly…I miss her writing so much). But this is a compilation of everything she ever wrote for newspapers and magazines. I feel like I read it mostly because I miss Hilary, but the topics are incredibly varied and interesting!

Harlem Shuffle and Crook Manifesto by Colson Whitehead. What can I say, I was on a Colson Whitehead kick this year and I read these on the beach in Fiji. Kind of unlikely beach reading, but they’re outstanding novels about small-time crime culture in New York.

A Change of Habit by Sister Monica Clare. I went down a rabbit hole with this book after listening to a finance podcast about how you have to be debt-free in order to become a monk or a nun (seriously). They interviewed Sister Monica Clare about her transition from LA hipster to nun; kind of fascinating!

Playing Dead: A journey through the world of death fraud by Elizabeth Greenwood. OK, this one actually should have been on the top picks list! Another podcast rabbit hole: this time an episode of Stuff You Should Know, about people who try (with varying degrees of success) to fake their own deaths. Pro tip: Don’t take out a large life insurance policy and then “die” in a boating accident!

The Let Them Theory by Mel Robbins. This is one of those personal growth books that can kind of be summed up in one sentence (let other people do what they do and think what they think, while you do what feels meaningful to you), but gives tons of great examples and stories to help you actually put the idea into practice.

Penitence by Kristen Koval. I heard this reviewed on a radio show about Colorado authors. It’s a novel about a complicated family dynamic (fratricide, old flame, rocky marriage) and is well written.

Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson. I feel like this book—about how government policies meant to solve the problems of past decades are hindering progress in the modern era—didn’t totally live up to my passion for Ezra Klein, but it’s not bad! Lots of wonky deep dives into what “liberalism that builds” means.

I See You’ve Called in Dead by John Kenney. John Kenney writes for The New Yorker’s “Shouts and Murmurs” column. If you like that writing style, you’ll like this book. If not, skip it. I liked it a lot: a novel set in New York, about a burnt-out obituary writer who accidentally publishes his own obituary, then starts attending the funerals of strangers as therapy.

Nothing More of This Land: Community, power, and the search for indigenous identity, by Joseph Lee. Another one I found from a podcast! A really interesting memoir/ethnography/family history about Native American culture on Martha’s Vineyard.

Wishful Drinking: A family history, by Carrie Fisher (I listened to the audiobook, read by the author). I also miss Carrie Fisher! I had kind of forgotten about this book (a book version of Carrie Fisher’s one-woman stage show by the same name) and found it on a list of short audiobooks because I wanted something that I could finish on a cross-country airplane trip. Carrie Fisher’s life was literally crazy (she has a breakdown in London and her mom sends Ava Gardner to check on her??), and she was so smart and funny and a great writer.

Greenlights by Matthew McConaughey. I haven’t seen any of Matthew McConaughey’s box-office hit movies, but I think his performance in season one of the HBO series “True Detective” is one of the best screen performances I’ve ever seen. His memoir is, well, kinda off the rails (he alternates between going on retreats at monasteries and getting arrested for playing the bongos naked), and he’s a good writer and has interesting observations about life.

We Computers: A ghazal novel, by Hamid Ismailov, translated from the Uzbek by Shelley Fairweather-Vega. I’ve read exactly zero Central Asian novels, but I had to get this after Shelley presented about it at the ATA conference. It’s kind of a wild ride, about a French poet who writes a computer program that analyzes and generates literature, interspersed with musings on the life of the Persian poet Hafez and other interesting elements! How Shelley translated this so well is beyond me, but it’s in progress and I’m enjoying it!

New for this year: Limited-series podcast recommendations

I can read on airplanes, but I prefer podcasts if I’m in motion. In addition to traveling a lot this year, I’ve been doing a lot of driving for my court interpreting job, which leaves a good amount of time to listen to audio stuff. Here are a few limited-series podcasts I really enjoyed (in various ways!).

• The Retrievals, Season Two, hosted by Susan Burton. Susan Burton only seems to write and talk about intense topics (check out Empty, her story of recovering from a long-term eating disorder in middle age) and this podcast is no exception, and it’s also really good. It focuses on the experience of pain during C-section births, and everything that goes along with that (why aren’t the women believed, what’s going on medically, how do doctors see this).
• The Mysterious Mr. Epstein, hosted by Lindsay Graham. I know, you’re probably totally sick of hearing about Epstein, but I really didn’t know much about the story, and this podcast is pretty fascinating.
• The Good Whale, hosted by Daniel Alarcon. The story of the real-life whale who played Keiko, the whale in the move “Free Willy.” You can probably guess that it’s not a happy ending, but the storytelling is amazing.
• The Big Dig, hosted by Ian Coss. OK, don’t laugh…an entire podcast series about a tunnel. It’s so good! And it won a Peabody Award! If you’re interested in Boston, or why America is so bad at large-scale infrastructure projects, you’ll like this podcast!
• Lost Patients, hosted by Will James. A difficult but really informative look at the US’s system for forcibly treating people with severe mental illness. I see a lot of these types of cases when I work in court, so I was interested to learn more about it.
• Camp Swamp Road, hosted by Valerie Bauerlein. A true-crime story about a road rage incident in South Carolina. Kind of reinforces everything you might assume about small-town law enforcement in the South, but it’s well done!

Thanks for reading, and I hope this list gives you some suggestions for your own reading and listening if you’re (hopefully!) taking some time off over the holidays.

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