Freelance translators have their say: Is it better to work with agencies or direct clients? Part of the joy of being a freelancer is being
Read more
Resources on Rare Diseases for Translators – Mastermind Translations
To celebrate Rare Disease Day, in this post I briefly discuss rare diseases and list resources on rare diseases and orphan drugs for medical translators.
Read more
Proof-reading – editing – revising: the essentials
Today, I want to talk a little bit about a term used by work-providers and which greatly irritates many translators: that term is ‘proof-reading’. I
Read more
Why Translators are Promoting Premium Markets
As one of the more visible proponents for moving upmarket into the premium translation market sector — a position I’ve argued since 1997, but one
Read more
Business School for Translators
Are you a translator or an entrepreneur? 5 ½ lessons of the Business School for Translators course will put you on the right track to
Read more
Resources for Translators
If you enjoy this blog, you might also enjoy… My online courses Getting Started as a Freelance Translator: for beginning translators who want to launch
Read more
Machine translation forces major Japanese publishing company into bankruptcy
We said it before here — In machines translation you get what you pay for! Takeda Random House Japan Co., Ltd has been forced into
Read more
Working with agencies
Standing out in a competitive market is a must, no matter the industry you work in. The translation industry is no exception, and it’s not
Read more
Translator scams and how to protect yourself from them
Freelance translators should think of themselves as business people. As such, they should pay serious attention to risk management, including the actions needed to minimize
Read more
Translators and project managers: together we fall, together we rise
Our guest writer Ricardo Souza discusses the role of the translation and localization project manager in the contemporary translation industry.
Read more
Where should translators live?
Can translation quality be inferred from where a translator is located? Does it matter where translators live? The fabled in-country translators “We only work with
Read more
Pricing in the Translation-Memory Workflow
Translation memory (TM) and machine translation (MT) continue to change the translation industry. Pricing is evolving, too, as clients, translators, and agencies offer and accept
Read more
Bad translations as a marketing tool
A reader asks: I come across lots of bad translations in my language pairs. How can I use these to pitch my freelance services to
Read more
Evaluate yourself: Is being a freelance translator really for you?
Whilst there are lots of benefits to working as a freelance translator, there’s also significant amounts of less-romanticised, hard work that’s also involved. This post
Read more
Winging it — No project management for translation or localization
Sound project management is crucial to taking possession of a quality, error free project. If you’ve undertaken a translation or localization project, even a small
Read more
How Translators and Project Managers See a Translation Project
The key to a successful translation project is getting the right people to do the job. Highly qualified translators make up the core of a
Read more
Translation rates and charges – what you are paying for
When you request a translation quote, you are given a price you probably do not understand. You also want to know why translators ask you
Read more
Marketing tools for your freelance translation business
One of the biggest challenges that any business faces is how to find and attract clients. You cannot help people or attract clients if they
Read more
Let’s talk about… The difficult role of the project manager
One of the main purposes of this blog when we recently created it was bringing the translators community closer and promote the sharing of different
Read more
Multilingual Big Data and Terminology
Once upon a time some translators had one or more cardboard boxes where handwritten and alphabetically ordered terms ─ including their definitions, sources, synonyms and
Read more
How do translators showcase their talent to translation agencies?
Last week, Letraduct authored a post about one of the problems that your target customer (the translation agency) has, which is lack of time and
Read more
Thirteenish reasons why you might stop working for an agency
Correct me if I’m wrong, but the overriding factor causing translators to end their relationship with an agency is not being paid at all (no-brainer
Read more
Free e-books for freelance translators
Here you can download my free e-books for translators including Working for high-end clients demystified, Working for agencies demystified, and the entire Little Books for
Read more
On rates
I have recently seen a link posted by Ral (thank you, Ral!) to a really interesting article on setting consultancy rates. It is clear, helpful, and
Read more
Translations and Avoiding Minimum Fees
Avoiding translation minimum fees It can sometimes be difficult in the translation industry to get the translation of a single word or sentence without it
Read more
In praise of the project manager
Linguists – The best translation project managers are linguists. (I can think of only one notable exception that I worked with). Many translation project managers
Read more
Translators: 7 Ways to Boost your Productivity with AutoHotkey
Productivity is a hot topic in the translation industry. As many of us are paid per word, it is in our interest to produce translations
Read more