Taking advantage of the down time February 11, 2009
Posted by Jill (@bonnjill) in Business practices.trackback
I’m sure it’s just an anomaly, but things have been quite slow recently for this normally overworked translator. I’ve taken advantage of the down time to prepare my financial statements and hand them over to my accountant (much earlier than I would normally have done!), send out some resumes to potential new clients, finish a test translation for an agency that I first tried to finish back in May ’08, and update my woefully neglected website (I hadn’t updated in the Translation Hints page in almost 5 years – ouch!). I’m sure things will pick up again any day now, so I am enjoying being able to take advantage of the lull. However, like most of you, I can’t help wondering if this trend will continue or whether business will pick up. I have a few promising irons in the fire, but nothing has materialized yet. I just need to keep telling myself that this too shall pass and soon I will be complaining about being overworked.
On a related note, I am really unhappy with the format of my Translation Hints page. It stems from 1995 when HTML was a brand new thing, so if anyone has any suggestions to make it easier to read and nicer to look at, by all means let me know. The only reason it is still in table form is because that is how it started out.
Musings from an overworked translator 
If you send me all your HTML pages I can send you some examples of what I can do with it! That would go nicely with my post of the day
I would have my financial data ready to email to my accountant on Jan. 2 if it weren’t for waiting for those 1099’s 😦
Another one came in yesterday. I’ve received them as late as May.
Hey Amelia, thanks for all the comments today! I keep a running spreadsheet of my income with one spreadsheet for each quarter – with the German income converted into dollars, so the 1099s are just a formality. I had another one come in yesterday too. Now if only some of those checks that are lost in the mail would arrive…