Beginning and aspiring freelance translators and interpreters: start here! Following is a list of resources especially for those new to the translation and interpreting professions. To stay up to date, join the Training for Translators mailing list!
Books
I’ve written two books for freelance translators and interpreters: How to Succeed as a Freelance Translator (over 15,000 copies in print!) and a shorter book, Finding and Marketing to Translation Agencies. Read more or purchase them here!
Recorded webinars
For an overview of how to launch and run a successful freelance translation or interpreting business, how to market to agencies, and how to market to direct clients, see my The Basics! series of recorded webinars.
Associations
I’m a huge fan of professional associations for translators and interpreters!
- The US’s largest professional association for translators and interpreters is The American Translators Association. ATA also has local chapters that are a great resource, a webinar series (live and recorded), an annual conference, and a translator certification exam. There are also specialized associations like NAJIT (court interpreting) and AAITE (educational translation and interpreting).
- Many other countries have associations for translators and interpreters. Start with the FIT website if you’re not sure where to look.
Training programs
There are lots of self-paced training programs, online courses, certificate and degree programs for translators and interpreters. So many that it would be impossible to list them here, but here are a few to get you going!
- If you’re looking for self-paced options, the American Translators Association has a lively webinar series, many are free for members, and most national and local associations have something similar.
- In my experience, there are more training programs for interpreting than for translation. If you want to aim for the top, Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey is the “feeder school” in the US for many international institutions and government entities. Kent State University’s programs are also very well-respected. Lots of universities have translation and interpreting certificate programs: University of Arizona (Spanish only), University of Houston (Spanish only), UCSD (Spanish only), UMass Amherst, and University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, to name a few.
- If you want to be a conference interpreter, I would highly recommend doing a full Master’s in conference interpreting (not a combined translation and interpreting Master’s). The AIIC list of interpreting programs is a good place to start. I did the MCI at Glendon College/York University and I really liked it. Read more here.
- When I was studying to be an interpreter, I did a number of really helpful courses, including Interpretrain, Acebo, and the Cambridge Conference Interpretation Course, and private training with Athena Matilsky. I highly recommend all of those!
Posts on the Training for Translators blog
I’ve written over 1,000 (!!!) posts on this blog since 2008, so it’s hard to identify just a few that beginning translators and interpreters might want to read. But, here are some starting points to hopefully get you going in the right direction! Join my mailing list from the sidebar of any of those posts, and then you won’t miss out!
Note! This list is a brain dump! The posts are listed in no particular order, some of them date back 10+ years, and I don’t generally edit old posts on my blog, but hopefully they’re helpful!
- FAQ for beginning translators and interpreters
- Is the career path for beginning freelancers changing?
- Six things every beginning translator needs to know
- Avoiding beginner’s mistakes
- The real question to ask about artificial intelligence and machine translation
- How to get some experience, when you have no experience
- Ten must-do tasks for your first year as a freelance translator
- Three ways to find your first translation clients
- Agencies won’t pay my rates, and I can’t find direct clients…what to do?
- How I market to agencies
- Four sources of potential direct clients
- Direct clients: figuring out who needs you
- Marketing to direct clients, using a touch-point system
Blog posts specifically about interpreting
I’ve thought about and written about interpreting a lot since 2018, when I first “caught the interpreting bug.” Here are a few posts specifically about that process:
- Preparing for the state-level court interpreting certification exam
- Resources for practicing French interpreting
- My first month as a Master’s in conference interpreting student, then a post about my first semester, then a post about finishing the program , then a post about my first year as a conference interpreter
- Is it worth learning long consecutive interpreting?
- Ways to improve your interpreting skills
- Thoughts on combining translation and interpreting
Corinne McKay (classes@trainingfortranslators.com) is the founder of Training for Translators, and has been a full-time freelancer since 2002. She holds a Master of Conference Interpreting from Glendon College, is an ATA-certified French to English translator, and is Colorado court-certified for French interpreting. If you enjoy her posts, consider joining the Training for Translators mailing list!