Training for Translators

Classes for translators and interpreters

translation podcast


Corinne McKay

New podcast episode: What we’re reading

In this episode of Speaking of Translation, Eve and Corinne discuss a favorite topic among translators: books, and what we’re reading: what genres we enjoy, how we make time for reading, how we choose new books, what formats we enjoy and don’t enjoy reading or listening to, how we track what we read, and book recommendations for our listeners!

Websites mentioned in this episode:

Our book recommendations (we are deliberately not including links, so that you can purchase them from the outlet of your choice!)

  • Transformations: Harriet and Helena Scott, Colonial Sydney’s Finest Natural History Painters by Vanessa Finney
  • Memorial Drive: A Daughter’s Memoir by Natasha Trethewey
  • Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi
  • My Life in France by Julia Child
  • Shady Characters: The Secret Life of Punctuation, Symbols, and Other Typographical Marks by Keith Houston
  • This Close to Okay: A Novel by Leesa Cross-Smith
  • It Would be Night in Caracas by Karina Sainz Borgo
  • French Like Moi: A Midwesterner in Paris by Scott Dominic Carpenter
  • Ultralearning: Master Hard Skills, Outsmart the Competition, and Accelerate Your Career by Scott H. Young
  • Born a Crime by Trevor Noah
  • Humans, by Brandon Stanton
  • The Translator, by Nina Schuyler
  • Say Nothing, by Patrick Radden Keefe
  • L’Arabe du futur/The Arab of the Future, by Riad Sattouf
  • Wolf Hall, Bring Up the Bodies, and The Mirror and the Light (Henry VIII trilogy) by Hilary Mantel
  • A Place of Greater Safety, by Hilary Mantel
  • Icebound, by Andrea Pitzer
  • Good Words Fast, by Oliver Dirs
  • Pancakes in Paris, by Craig Carlson
  • All the Light We Cannot See, by Anthony Doerr

Listen on the audio player below, download the audio file here, or subscribe to Speaking of Translation on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher.


Corinne McKay

Speaking of Translation: Self-care and mental health in the pandemic

As the coronavirus pandemic drags on, self-care and mental health are increasingly important to us as freelancers, moms, partners, and friends. In this episode of Speaking of Translation, Eve and Corinne discuss:

-what self-care means, and why it’s not selfish
-tools and strategies we’ve used to stay safe and stay sane during the pandemic
-self-care and mental health maintenance techniques we’d recommend to our listeners
-what to do if you or someone you care about needs professional mental health help

Links mentioned in this episode:
-Eve’s Global Reads book club
-The fitness tracker apps Corinne uses: Fitbod and My Fitness Pal
-A couple of guided meditations to try: Tess Whitehurst’s meditation to clear limiting beliefs, Jeannine McGlade’s Five minute meditations podcast, and Yoga with Adriene’s Seven-minute meditation to start the day
-If you or someone you love is having a mental health crisis, you can call (in English or Spanish, in the US) the SAMHSA national helpline 24 hours a day: 1-800-662-4357

Download the audio file here, and don’t forget that you can subscribe to Speaking of Translation on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher!


Corinne McKay

New podcast episode: roundtable discussion on freelancing during the pandemic

In this episode of Speaking of Translation, Eve Bodeux, Corinne McKay, freelance translator Karen Tkaczyk, and freelance conference interpreter Alex Gansmeier discuss life as a freelancer during the COVID pandemic, including:
-How the pandemic initially affected their businesses in March through May of 2020
-How things are looking now
-Is anything going better during the pandemic? Any silver linings?
-How to maintain your sanity and your work volume as the pandemic continues over the long term

Links mentioned in this episode:
-Karen’s professional website
-Karen on Twitter
-Alex’s professional website
-Alex on Twitter
–Troublesome Terps, the excellent podcast that Alex co-hosts

Click the audio player link to listen online

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Panel discussion: freelancing during the COVID pandemic


Corinne McKay

New podcast: ATA59 wrapup

Eve Bodeux and I released a new episode of Speaking of Translation this week. It’s a wrapup of last month’s 59th annual American Translators Association conference. We discuss our favorite sessions at the conference, how the conference is planned, and some tips for anyone who’s never attended an ATA conference and would like to. Here it is!

If you enjoy Speaking of Translation, you can listen to more episodes on our website, or subscribe in Apple Podcasts or on Stitcher.

Speaking of Stitcher, here’s a plea for tech help: when I connected our show to Stitcher, I was told that Stitcher’s site would automatically scrape our podcast logo tile from our RSS feed, but it didn’t do that, and there is no way to manually upload a logo tile in Stitcher. I’ve contacted Stitcher customer service about this, and their only response was the same information that I had already found in their knowledge base (no way to do this manually; the system will automatically find the logo tile, which it still hasn’t). If anyone has a solution to this, can you let me know in the comments?


Corinne McKay

New podcast: Eve and Corinne’s favorite new tips and tricks

In this episode of Speaking of Translation, Eve and Corinne share some new tips and tricks to help you work more efficiently and learn new skills. Including:

      • Text-to-speech proofreading (having your computer read your translations out loud). Addendum: the text-to-speech engine in MS Word is available for Chinese, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, and Swedish.
      • Speech-to-text dictation in Excel (rather than retyping those tedious numbers)
      • Using a tablet as a second monitor
      • Kutools for Excel, an MS Office add-on that lets you–among other things–search across multiple Excel files
      • ORCIT, the European Union’s Online Resources for Conference Interpreter Training course (thanks to Tamara Muroiwa for the recommendation)
      • PayPal.Me, a money request that uses only a link
      • The Infinity USB digital foot pedal, for controlling video and audio on your computer using your foot instead of the keyboard
      • Alt-Shift-Control, for highlighting non-contiguous text in MS Word

      Click the audio player link to listen online


      Right-click the link below to download the MP3.
      Chrome/Firefox: Choose “Save Link As”
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      Safari: Choose “Download Linked File”
      Our favorite new tips and tricks