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How to edit and proofread your own work 

Whether because we want to, or because we have to, many of us need good strategies for proofreading our own work; either something we translated, or something we wrote from scratch. I’m not a naturally gifted editor. In a way, this is an advantage, because I’ve had to develop robust techniques that work well for me! Let’s take a look. 

First question: How does your brain work, and what do you need help with? 

Before you dig into this question, pause and ask yourself two questions:

• How does my brain work? Do I catch mistakes and weird phrasings more easily when I read them on a screen, when I read them on paper, or when I hear them?
• What do I need help with? Case in point: if I don’t edit my writing, I’m repetitive and wordy (Department of Redundancy Department). Knowing this helps me identify what needs cutting and what needs some spice. 

Knowing these things is a huge first step. We tend to assume that everyone’s brain works the way ours does, and that would make for a pretty monotonous world. Brains are different. When I recently posted on LinkedIn about my passion for text-to-speech proofreading (having the computer read the document to you out loud), several people chimed in that this doesn’t work for them. “I just tune out and miss errors!” Whereas the opposite is true for me: when I visually proofread, I start skimming, and I miss errors. So, step one, figure out what works for you. 

Next question: What’s the goal of the piece? 

Sometimes, we just want to get information across, in an error-free way. Sometimes, we want to engage the reader. Knowing that is also important, because it tells you what tools to use. 

I tend to write repetitively, using the same words in the same ways. To combat this, I use an excellent book, written by a translator: Oliver Dirs’ Good Words Fast, a “unique thesaurus” that helps you replace common, tired words with more descriptive ones. 

The key: a good proofreading strategy 

Before you worry about spice and jazz, you need to eliminate errors, particularly in your translations. My go-to for this is text-to-speech proofreading, for which I use a tool called TextAloud that works as a Word plugin, and a standalone tool. What’s so great about this technique? Where do I start?:

• I hear errors that I don’t see, for example in words that look alike (form/from)
• I hear errors in numbers, especially “nonsense” strings of numbers like a bar code 
• I have to slow down to the computer-reader’s pace, so I pay more attention to the sound of what I wrote
• I hear glaring errors that I might miss on paper (where I meant “always” and wrote “never”) 

If you want to test this out, just use the Read Aloud feature in Microsoft Word. It’s right there and you’re already paying for it. It just doesn’t have as many features as a tool like TextAloud. 

Two other strategies to try if you prefer to proofread visually:

• Paper. Obviously, this is the O.G. proofreading technique (print the translation), but it has a major downside. You then have to transfer the corrections to the electronic version, which brings the possibility of correcting the wrong thing or introducing an error that wasn’t there already. 
• On-screen, but different. Make the text look different; put it in a totally different font, or make it into a PDF, or put it in a different orientation. Anything so that your brain doesn’t think, “Yeah yeah, I already read this 20 times.” 

Then, edit for your pitfalls 

We all have them! I use a self-editing checklist with my particular bugaboos:

• Writing too much in general (why say in 20 words what you can say in 50?)
• Overly long sentences
• Not mixing up sentence length; this is something you want to do, to avoid boring the reader with sentences that all sound the same 
• Using the same word many times
• Overuse of emphasis (“intensely aggravating,” when it’s more emphatic to just say “aggravating”) 
• Repeating what doesn’t need to be repeated. For example, for the sentence above, “What’s so great about this technique?” I had originally written “What’s so great about text-to-speech proofreading?” and then decided, people know what I’m talking about, I don’t need to say it again 
• I also tend to have some inconsistencies, like inconsistent punctuation at the end of items in a bulleted list. For this I sometimes use a tool called PerfectIt, which also catches things like multiple correct spellings of the same word (gray/grey) and can edit for specific style sheet requirements. 

Read it out loud to yourself 

Some people can proofread by doing this. I can’t (same problem: I see what I want to see, not what’s actually there). But even after I’ve done the steps above, I’m surprised at how helpful it is to read the document out loud. I always catch something that sounds unclear, or repetitive, or otherwise needs tweaking. 

I hope these tips are helpful if you’re proofreading something you translated or wrote! Have a great week,

…one of a series of occasional travelogue/travel tip posts I like to write! Just search “travel” in the blog search box to find more!

When it’s time to pay attention to miles and points

I’m not a black-belt miles and points person, but lately I’ve started paying more attention to this, with airfares, and now baggage fees, rising. As I wrote about in November, my miles/points radar perked up when I got an Amex Blue Business Plus card and pretty quickly clocked enough points for a free ticket to London this summer.

Newest case in point: I started to consider getting an airline-branded credit card, if it would pay for itself through flight credits and free checked bags. I recently did this with the United Quest card, and it paid for itself in one trip! If you’re interested in this type of card, my two favorite sources of good information are Frequent Miler, and NerdWallet. Just be aware that most “credit card comparison” websites make a great deal of money off affiliate deals; analyze the information and then make your own decision!

I’ve never had an “expensive” airline credit card, and I’ve never cared much about free checked bags. As described in this post from 2023, I despise checking luggage. To be honest, I barely track the cost of checked bags, because I’m usually on the traveling light plan with my Underseat Pro backpack.

Checked bags: The cost starts to add up

Checked-bag reality hit me this winter. My family took a ski trip to Idaho and Utah over New Year’s, flying on United. For that trip, we were able to check the bags for free on my young adult daughter’s United Premier Silver status, but she was back at school by the time my husband and I flew from Denver to Kalispell, Montana in March, checking a bag of skis and poles, plus a large duffel with our ski boots, helmets, and other gear that wouldn’t fit in the backpacks we carried on (again, on United). United charged $35 per bag, each way, so this added up to a not insignificant $140 total, which got me thinking about how to avoid such a charge in the future.

To boot, United, like many U.S.-based airlines, has now raised their checked bag fees, in United’s case to $40 per bag. Some airlines have gone even further, with Southwest (another airline we fly fairly frequently) jumping from $35 to $45 for the first bag, and $55 for the second. This was the wakeup call I needed: definitely time to look at credit cards that waive these fees.

Picking a credit card: Focus on what benefits you will actually use

Sidebar: when looking at credit cards with significant annual fees (I’d say $150 a year or more), think about what benefits are actually important to you, and what benefits you will actually use. In my case:

• Lounge access is of zero value to me. I actually enjoy the people-watching aspect of the boarding area, and if the noise is bugging me, I just wear headphones. And I don’t typically do itineraries with long layovers where the opportunity to take a shower or sleep would be of any value.
• I don’t have the patience for a million coupons. $10 credit for Uber, but only on Tuesdays in even-numbered months? Even if I would use the coupon credits, I don’t want to deal with calculating the eligibility criteria.
• We don’t tend to eat in fine dining restaurants or order food delivery. If you do these things, there are credit cards that might be really appealing. For example the American Express Platinum card gives you a $100 Resy credit every quarter, which is significant. But we do neither of these, so this is also a zero draw for me. Another good tip here: identify what’s not important to you and the benefits you will likely never use, even if they’re objectively appealing.

Advantages of the United Quest

After doing some research, I settled on the United Quest card. It has a $350 annual fee (not waived for the first year, you pay right away), but offers two financial benefits and one “soft” benefit that I actually care about:

• A $200 United travel credit each year. We fly United quite a bit, so I knew that I would use this right away. In fact, I did use it for a flight I booked within two weeks of getting the card.
• Two free checked bags for the cardholder and a companion, when you book the tickets on the same reservation. Ditto: On the first trip I booked, two checked bags were unavoidable. This meant that in the first trip after obtaining the card, I had already gotten $360 of benefits on the $350 annual fee, so we’ll put this card in the Win column.
• Group 2 boarding. This isn’t a quantifiable benefit, but I like it because you’re pretty much guaranteed an overhead bin spot for your bag, and there’s less boarding hysteria than in the later groups. Although I love my Underseat Pro (and it has saved me from baggage fees on airlines like Frontier and Spirit that charge you for the overhead bin), it’s nicer to have the leg room if you can get it. From Colorado, it’s a four-ish hour flight to the East Coast where we have a lot of friends and family, I’m a relatively tall person, so I like to get a bin spot if possible and have some leg room.

Additionally, by spending $4,000 on the card in the first three months, I’ll get 80,000 United bonus miles. Even as a relatively frugal person, this spending goal is doable. The card is a Visa, so you can use it at Costco (the only credit card they take is Visa, otherwise you have to use debit), where we buy most of our food, and I’ve also used it to book two sets of plane tickets and a couple of AirBnBs. Overall, I’m very happy with the benefits offered by the United Quest!

Interpreters! If you’re preparing for an interpreting exam, this week’s Training for Translators master class is for you. How to prepare for (and pass!) an interpreting exam, coming up on Thursday (April 16). Registration is $60 and includes the recording:

The class runs for 90 minutes, and walks you through how to analyze the structure of an interpreting exam, prepare a training plan that focuses on what you need to pass, and how to avoid common pitfalls on the day of the exam.

I started interpreting from pretty much zero (could not even shadow well at the start), and I used this strategy to pass three sets of high-stakes interpreting exams on the first try. There’s a good group signed up, and there’s room for you!

Whether you’re looking for agencies or direct clients, it’s always a dilemma whether to contact multiple people within the same company. And if yes, whether to contact them simultaneously, or in a staggered way. A number of people in my recent March Marketing Madness challenge group had this question, so I thought it might be helpful as an article topic!

First, the easy scenarios

This is a nuanced question, so let’s get the easy aspects out of the way first:

• If the potential client is an agency, there’s less stress about bugging them, because you know that, at least in theory, they need you. Agencies can’t do business without translators and interpreters, and their staff are almost always overloaded. Years ago, an agency owner told me, “Follow up until you get a yes or a no,” and that advice is perfect. As I’ve previously described, expect to contact an agency two to six times before you get work from them.
• If the company is tiny, just contact one person at a time. You can usually get a sense of a company’s size from their website or LinkedIn. If LinkedIn lists them as having 1-10 employees (the smallest category on LinkedIn), don’t contact four people at once.
• As with most things in life, remind yourself that other people don’t think about you as much as you envision that they do. In fact, strangers barely think about you at all. Much less do they gossip at the office, “That translator who contacted THREE PEOPLE in our company at the same time! THE NERVE!” Seriously, that’s not a thing that happens.
• Overdoing it isn’t the end of the world. I’m in an orchestra for adult cello learners (shoutout to my fellow mediocre and enthusiastic adult musicians!) and our conductor always tells us this. “When I tell you to play in a different way; louder, softer, more staccato, more legato, your goal should be to make that change dramatic enough that I then tell you to dial it back just a little bit. Like you want me to say, ‘That was definitely louder!! Great!! But next time, make it 10% softer than that’.” The same is true of our marketing: right now, it’s likely that you’re radically under-doing it. Maybe you swing the other way and overdo it a little bit; the potential client notices that you really want to work with them, because you e-mailed seven of their project managers. Honestly, so what? Then dial back.

The dilemma

Here’s where it gets tricky. You identify a good potential direct client, but there are multiple people who look like they might hire freelancers:

• Director of Marketing
• Marketing Manager
• Director of Communications
• Director of International Communications
• Director of Content
• Content Specialist

And so on. Here’s my “finished is better than perfect” strategy.

• Pick three potential contacts. If possible, spread out across departments. In the example above, choose one person from Marketing, one from Communications, and one from Content.
• Create a schedule, by which you contact each of the three people by e-mail, then on LinkedIn, then by e-mail, spacing these touchpoints one week apart for each contact. This will take five weeks.

It looks like:

• Week one: Introductory e-mail to Contact #1
• Week two: Introductory e-mail to Contact #2, LinkedIn connection request to Contact #1
• Week three: Introductory e-mail to Contact #3, LinkedIn connection request to Contact #2, Follow-up e-mail to Contact #1
• Week four: LinkedIn connection request to Contact #3, Follow-up e-mail to Contact #2
• Week five: Follow-up e-mail to Contact #3

This repeatable system makes the contacting less painful, and you’ve now nudged this company nine times. If you’re interested in the specifics, such as how to find e-mail addresses and what to say in these messages, that’s the topic of my April 23 master class, Marketing to direct clients using e-mail and LinkedIn.

I hope this tip is helpful in your own marketing efforts! Have a great week!

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Most of the time when a client thinks I’m too expensive, I just let them move on. I’m fortunate to have enough work, and it’s draining to explain to people why high-quality language services aren’t cheap. But once in a while, I decide to push back a little, and it’s always interesting to see the client’s reaction.

About a week ago, an individual client e-mailed me about a birth certificate translation. I responded that I charge $75 per page, including a certificate of accuracy with my ATA-certified translator stamp on it.

Client: I see online services charging $27 per page; is there any chance we could meet in the middle at $50 per page?

Me: If the online service meets your needs, by all means, use them. However what I’m offering is not just the translation. The fact that I’m ATA-certified (which costs money to prepare for, obtain, and maintain) means that I personally sign the certificate, including my contact information, and I stand behind the translation. If there’s ever an issue, you can contact me personally and I’ll resolve it. It would surprise me if a $27 per page service offers this, but I’m fortunate to be very busy at my regular rates, so I don’t offer discounts.

Client: OK, send me the invoice.

These days, I think it’s easy to get discouraged by the prevailing trends: faster, cheaper, good enough is good enough, go with the cheapest option or just throw it at an AI tool and see if you get caught. And to be fair, a $75 job is different than a $5,000 job. But on a small scale and a large scale, there are still clients who care, and that’s who you want to be working with.

I hope this is helpful! Have a great week.

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