Working from home

Sep 22 2011
Corinne McKay

The ten essentials of freelance translation

There’s something about the number 10. Not just the connotation of “perfect 10,” but the number has an undeniable appeal. This year’s American Translators Association Translation Company Division conference was focused on the number 10 (10 sessions that each featured 10 tips on a certain topic), and people really seemed to enjoy the manageable scale of the presentations.

In my non-translation life I spend a lot of time in the mountains, so I’ve long abided by the guideline of The Ten Essentials that everyone should take into the backcountry. Outdoor enthusiasts are advised to equip themselves with a map, compass, sun protection, food/water, extra clothes, headlamp, first aid kit, fire starter, matches and a knife. This got me thinking about The Ten Essentials as applied to other areas of life, specifically freelance translation. What 10 must-have items would you recommend that every freelance translator arm herself or himself with? I’ll go with (in no particular order):

Business cards; the kind without a “Get your free business cards at…” imprint on the back
A reliable computer
A computer backup system and potentially a backup computer
A good office chair, yoga ball or treadmill desk
A separate business bank account to keep business and personal finances separate
A membership in at least one association for professional translators
A high-quality computer keyboard; it sounds like a minor thing, but it’s important when you’re tap-tap-tapping away at those keys for 30-50 hours a week!
A few good dictionaries in various flavors; print, online, general, specialized, etc.
A thesaurus; some days I use mine more than my French-English resources. For those times when you just need another way to say it!
At least one trusted colleague. I realize these aren’t available at Office Max, but I do think it’s hard to reach your full freelance potential without a good network of colleagues.

Readers, over to you! What 10 items should go in every freelance translator’s survival kit?

Sep 09 2011
Corinne McKay

The second half

International Translation Day is coming up at the end of this month; this year’s theme is Translation: Bridging Cultures (I like it!). Karmically enough, ITD is also my (and my husband’s…is that karmic enough for you?) birthday, and this year it’s a big one. Although I don’t think I’m in mid-life crisis mode over turning 40, it has occurred to me that at least from a statistical point of view, I’m knocking on the door of the second half of life. And I do think that any big milestone is a good opportunity for reflection, so I’d like to solicit some input from readers who are past the halfway point themselves. Specifically, what changes have you made in your work life (or what changes would you like to make) now that you’re in mid-life? What have you re-evaluated and what have you kept the same? Here are some thoughts that have popped into my head so far:

As I get older, I love translation more and more. Being a better translator is more important to me all the time. However, I find that I also get less tolerant of job stress; clients who needed the project yesterday are less and less appealing and rush work is more and more stressful.
Translating stuff that hangs around for a while and that people actually read is more important to me. This is why I’ve always loved international development translation, and it’s why one of my goals for this year is to take a literary translation course.
I find myself thinking more about my future work life. In part, this is because I had my daughter at what’s considered a relatively young age here in Boulder (30). As compared to some of my friends who are in their mid-40s and have preschoolers, I’ll be 48 when my daughter graduates from high school. That opens up lots of possibilities; teaching translation, getting an in-house job, going back to school, and so on. Right now I can’t say that I’m hankering for a radical departure from what I do now, but it’s interesting to think about.

Mature readers, any tips from you?

Apr 22 2011
Corinne McKay

Staying comfortable in the office

One of the appealing aspects of working from home is that you’re free to configure your work environment however you want, especially if you have a dedicated office room in your house. Readers, what are some of your favorite strategies/configurations/products for staying happy and comfortable in your office? I recently gave my office a thorough cleaning and used the occasion to evaluate the ergonomics of my setup. Here are what I think of as some critical elements of feeling good and being productive at home:

Good light is absolutely essential. I love this about my office: my desk is centered between two north-facing windows and two west-facing windows, so I have lots of natural light without a lot of glare. I use an overhead light but I find that a desk lamp creates too much direct light for my taste.
I’m addicted to two large monitors. This used to require a second video card in your computer, but most late-model computers will now support two monitors without a lot of reconfiguring. With two 21-inch (or larger) monitors, you can have a pretty good view of four documents at once: for example I often translate with the French and English documents side-by-side on one monitor and an online dictionary and the project glossary side-by-side on the other. The only downside is that I’ve lost the ability to translate using only one monitor!
For your hands’ sake, invest in a keyboard that you really like. It seems like a small thing, but if your hands are going to be striking this thing 40 hours a week, you want the experience to be pleasant. I cannot speak highly enough of Unicomp keyboards; they are the descendant of the legendary IBM “buckling spring” keyboard which gives you a very audible “click” when you strike the keys. I have the SpaceSaver 104 model ($79) and I love it so much that I clean it with rubbing alcohol on Monday mornings to keep it grime-free (seriously; just don’t tell too many people!).
What you sit on has a lot to do with your in-office comfort too. I’m not a huge fan of the traditional office chair because I often end up sitting sideways with my legs crossed which is obviously not great from the circulation or posture point of view. I’ve thought about trying a kneeling chair, but my favorite office chair is actually a $20 fitness ball that I’ve had for years. I like fitness balls because it’s physically impossible to sit on one with your legs crossed, and they encourage you to sit in a neutral (non-hunched) position.
I’m not a neat freak, but I do think that a relatively clutter-free office is key to productivity. I find that if there are piles of stuff around me, I think about cleaning them up rather than what I should be working on. I also like to keep some of my favorite family pictures and pictures of my favorite vacation places where I can see them from my desk.
Sound is a big contributor to workplace comfort as well. I listen to music only if I’m doing something totally mindless like entering receipts into my accounting program. Once in a while if I’m working very late at night, I’ll listed to disco music on my iPod just to stay awake. At the same time, I don’t like a totally quiet environment when I’m working during the day. I’ll admit this is a weird behavior, but my preferred sound environment is to leave the radio in the kitchen on NPR (news/talk radio) so that I can hear the sound of voices but I can’t make out what they’re saying. For some reason this is just enough background noise for me to focus and not enough noise that it’s distracting.

Any other tips for feeling good in the home office?

Mar 27 2011
Corinne McKay

Options for home office phone service

Lately I’ve been thinking about phone service for the home office. I’ve had a custom ring number (an extra phone number that runs over my home phone line but rings differently) ever since I started freelancing. At the time, Internet telephony was not a well-developed option and I didn’t want to switch exclusively to a cell phone for work. Here’s a look at the various home office phone options I’ve found, along with a few pros and cons for each.

A plain old land line is the most straightforward option. If you live alone or don’t have small children, you can probably get away with one line for work and personal use. However, if you need to have a second land line installed, the process can be expensive especially if you have to have additional phone jacks put in.
The aforementioned custom ring number is great in that it’s inexpensive ($5 per month through our local phone company), doesn’t require an additional physical phone line and gives you a way to distinguish between business and personal calls. But there are a few downsides, which are becoming more of an issue for me now that I work for more direct clients. The custom ring number and the main number have to share an outgoing voice mail message, so either my clients get to listen to the “you’ve reached the home of…and the home office of…” message, or I have to put an office-only message on the home line. Also, only the main number is displayed on the caller ID when I phone someone, so my clients have occasionally redialed that number. Then when I answer, I think it’s a personal call when it’s actually a work call (awkward if one happens to be cooking dinner with a group of friends when a client calls!). In addition, it is not possible to forward the custom ring number to another phone without forwarding the main number at the same time.
A business cell phone is another option, and not a bad option if you need or want a smartphone for work. Keeping the cell phone for business use should allow you to tax-deduct the bill, and you don’t have to worry about how to handle your phone calls when you’re out of the office. Two issues keep me from switching to a business cell phone: I would need one with an international calling plan (expensive) and as much as I try to be adaptable, I just hate talking on cell phones for long periods of time. I do have a cell phone that I use to check my work messages when I’m not home, but I wouldn’t want to use it as my exclusive work phone.
Because of these issues (largely the separation of voice mail and forwardability), I’m thinking of switching to Internet phone service. Due to issues with emergency calling, I wouldn’t switch my main phone to an Internet-based system, but it’s not an issue for my work phone. In addition, most of the main Internet phone services do enable call forwarding, so if I want to answer work calls when I’m not in the office, I can forward the work line to my cell phone. I’ve been looking at a few plans such as Vonage Lite, some of which are around $10 per month.

Any other thoughts on the pros and cons of the various home office phone options?

Jan 05 2011
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!