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What would you do? December 17, 2008

Posted by Jill (@bonnjill) in Business practices, Random musings.
9 comments

I had a difficult client (unreasonable Trados levels – 5!, sending e-mail to my Gmail account [which I only use as a backup] despite multiple e-mails requesting he write my work address, etc.) until a few months ago, when the company owner sent me a proofreading job on a Saturday due on a Tuesday. Since I try not to work on the weekends and try to stay away from my computer when I can, I didn’t get the e-mail until Sunday night. I wrote him telling him I would be happy to accept the job and when I didn’t receive an e-mail on Monday telling me the job had been assigned to someone else I assumed I had the job. I spent Monday evening proofreading a text that had obviously been translated by a non-native speaker or someone who didn’t know what they were doing. It was a nightmare. When I delivered the job and sent my invoice I received a pithy e-mail response from his project manager telling me that she had never issued me a PO and that she wouldn’t be paying the invoice.

Needless to say I was upset by this and wrote them and the invoice off as “never again.” This afternoon I had another e-mail from the company owner asking me to proofread another job. Obviously I am not going to accept the job, but I am curious as to whether you would even respond to his e-mail. My gut is telling me to just ignore it, but my instincts as a responsible business person tells me I should at least let him know why.

So what would you do?

Handling clients who ask for lower rates December 15, 2008

Posted by Jill (@bonnjill) in Business practices.
6 comments

The number one question most translators have, whether they are new to the field or have been translating for a while and are looking to add new clients, is how to handle clients who ask for lower rates. I stumbled on this discussion on Translatorscafe a while ago and wanted to share it with you all. I agree with the woman who originally cross-posted it from the ATA Interpreters Division. She strongly recommends that all freelancers read and follow its advice, especially those new to the field. I couldn’t agree more. Even though it was originally written for dentists, this advice is universal and invaluable.

Editorial
by Jim Du Molin

Negotiating Fees with Patients

“Doctor, your fees for this treatment plan seem awfully high to me. I called Dr. Slipshod’s office down the block and they said they could do it for a lot less.”

For many doctors, this statement leads to the ultimate test of self-confidence. When a patient questions your fees, you may feel that they are questioning your personal and professional integrity, your technical competence, and/or the value of your services.

You have invested years of education and financial sacrifice to master your craft. Yet, invariably, you continue to encounter patients who question your right to be adequately compensated.

In addition, the patient is making you feel that you are overpriced for the market place and can’t compete. You worry about losing the time you’ve invested in preparing the treatment plan, if the patient goes to another practice that’s willing to cut fees to compete.

While all of these thoughts and emotions may come to mind, the reality of the situation may be entirely different. In reality, the patient is setting the stage to negotiate.

The patient is saying that in her opinion, your fees “seem awfully high.” The reality is that the patient hasn’t the slightest clue of what it costs you to provide the treatment. Her only justification for her statement is that she called Dr. Slipshod’s office for a comparative bid. Did Dr. Slipshod perform a complete exam and prepare a treatment plan over the phone?

When a patient makes this type of statement, she is really making her opening move to negotiate a lower fee. She is “bottom fishing” for the best deal.

You have several choices at this point.

Cave in and cut your fee.

Become irate and lose the patient to Dr. Slipshod.

Play the game, understanding that the stake is the patient’s personal health care.

The first thing you must understand is that choice number one is never acceptable. Cutting your fee is cutting your throat. It is tantamount to telling the patient that your craftsmanship is overpriced and your fees are negotiable.

On top of that insult, you are adding injury to the basic economics of managing your practice. It costs money to deliver quality health care. Inadequate compensation can only lead to a reduction in qualified support staff, the use of lesser materials, and reliance on inadequate or obsolete equipment.

Choice number two is a lose/lose situation for both you and the patient. You become angry because you feel the patient has attacked your personal and professional value. Rather than deal with the negotiating ploy, you send the patient to Dr. Slipshod for what could possibly be inferior treatment. This reaction denigrates you and embarrasses the patient.

Even worse, you have lost the patient and the patient’s health care may have suffered. Again, an unacceptable alternative.

Your final choice is to play the game, understanding that you and the patient are really negotiating on the quality of the patient’s health care. You must structure the negotiation so that both you and the patient can win. Remember that in the psychology of negotiating, the person who blinks first often loses. With that in mind, let’s replay the dialogue:

Patient: “Doctor, your fees for this treatment plan seem awfully high to me. I called Dr. Slipshod’s office down the block and they said they could do it for a lot less.”
Doctor: “Mrs. Bottomfisher, we are very proud of our fees.”

At this point the doctor must be absolutely silent. What you have just said is that you feel good about your fees and that they are correctly calculated. At this point, eighty percent of the patients will stop negotiating and accept treatment.

The worst case is that the patient asks: “What do you mean by that?”

Your reply is, “Our fees are based on the quality of the materials we use and our experience in performing this treatment.” And don’t say another word.

It is rare that a patient will persist in questioning your fees after this statement. The implication to the patient is that if you want your treatment performed with lesser quality materials or by a less experienced doctor, you are welcome to go elsewhere. In any case, you have made the statement in such a way as to reinforce your personal and professional integrity without embarrassing the patient.

If Mrs. Bottomfisher persists in arguing about fees, the question now becomes: is this the type of person you want in your practice? Assuming you offer a full range of payment alternatives to make the treatment plan affordable, the persistent bickering over fees indicates the patient places a higher value on money than health care. In this case, you end the conversation with this statement:

“Mrs. Bottomfisher, we appreciate your concern over the cost of your treatment plan. If you like, we’ll be happy to send your x-rays down to Dr. Slipshod’s office.”

This statement tells the patient the negotiation is over and that you are confident in your position. It should always be followed by, “If for any reason you would like to return to our practice, please don’t hesitate to call us. We’ll be glad to have you back.”

The final statement graciously leaves your door open to the return of the patient. Plus, there is a good chance that she will return within a year, after having thought about the possibility that she is receiving poor materials or inexperienced treatment at Dr. Slipshod’s office.

In developing financial strategies for our consulting clients we are often asked, “What should my fees be?”

Our answer is invariably, “Whatever you feel confident in charging.” There is essentially no limit to what you can charge for your services. (We will discuss the issues surrounding insurance companies and your fees in my next editorial.)

The basic premise is that you are confident that your fees are representative of the quality of the materials you use and your experience in performing the treatment.

The key word is confident. Any lack of confidence or hesitation will be detected by the patient and exploited in the negotiation.

One of the most successful doctors we know accepts no insurance and requires all fees be paid in full prior to beginning treatment. The cost to a patient for a single gold crown ranges from $950 to $1,250.

He presents his treatment plan by saying, “My fee for performing this treatment is $950. I will attach a copy of the lab bill detailing the materials and their preparation cost to your bill.” His case acceptance level is in the 90% range.

Patients immediately perceive that this doctor knows his worth. I must also add that every stage of the patient’s interaction with the doctor’s staff, facility and post-treatment care are of the very highest quality. This high level of quality supports the 90% acceptance level and reinforces the sense of value the patient perceives in the doctor’s capability to deliver the treatment.

The best confidence-builder to help you feel comfortable with your fees is very simple. Just remember that quality treatment must be supported by commensurate fees.

Fight for your rights if you have to December 10, 2008

Posted by Jill (@bonnjill) in Business practices, Translation Sites.
7 comments

My disagreement with my client has been peacefully resolved, with everyone except maybe the end client happy (but then again the survey was huge, so it shouldn’t be a surprise that the bill will be expensive…). My PM has apologized, and I have graciously accepted her apology and told her we should put it behind us and all is forgiven. Forgiven, but not forgotten. I won’t forget the lessons I learned from this incident, and I am vowing to stand up for myself more with this client.

They are my best client, and I have put up with a lot of things from them that I wouldn’t with other clients. I don’t mind churning out several thousand words a day for them, because the jobs are usually very easy and do not require a lot of effort looking words up. It pays very, very well, and I for one appreciate it. They are marketing surveys asking German respondents what they thought of this ad or that ad and why. I generally translate the phrases as fast as my fingers can type,  which was last recorded at a little over 90 words per minute. Sure, I often have to decipher atrocious misspellings and typos, determine which umlauts are sometimes missing, and figure out what the respondent was trying to say, but after four and a half years I have gotten really good at that.

The problem stemmed from the exporting. The exporting tool was aborting in the middle of the word count exports, and that caused the PM to think that the word count was half the amount I was claiming. She redid the word count at my request and came up with a higher word count, but it was still 10,000 words less than the word count I had. In the end I had to call her boss, and a third party familiar with the tool reviewed the word count and agreed with me. I just sent my invoice. Unfortunately I didn’t have the heart to charge for the time I spent reexporting everything for a detailed word count, but it was worth the effort since I was able to get my full word count recognized.

So you are probably wondering what the point of this post is. For all those of you who are new to the business and reading this, please realize that you have every right to insist on being paid for your work. If the PM refuses to discuss it with you and you know you are right, go over their head and talk to someone else. If you do the work you should be paid for it.

I have also decided that I will be insisting on more reasonable deadlines in the future. Their end client needs to be taught that translators are not machines. If I keep killing myself to make the unreasonable deadlines, the end client gets used to it and starts to expect it. And that doesn’t benefit anyone but the end client. Client education is so important, and I for one intend on working to educate the PMs there as often as I can.

When is it worth quibbling over word count? December 1, 2008

Posted by Jill (@bonnjill) in Business practices, Random musings, Translation Sites.
11 comments

I spent the weekend translating a really big online survey. The client had also translated some responses, so I copied and pasted the responses I translated into Word for an accurate word count. My word count ended up differing from the client’s word count by 226 words, which was an improvement from the 625 word difference the client initially reported (he hadn’t taken a second tab into consideration). Since we were dealing with over 6000 words I decided not to quibble over the 226 words and accepted the lower word count. After all, I’m not perfect and might have made a mistake while copying and pasting responses all weekend (but I doubt it 🙂 ). In the end it was only a $25 difference, so I am not freaking out about it. But I’m curious to hear how you all would have handled this. Would you have let it go and accepted the lower word count since the PM did a word count three times and came up with the same count the last two times?

I hate fighting with clients about prices and nickeling and diming them to death, but sometimes you have to in order to make a profit. I did a job for a client about two months ago. I spent more time dealing with their administrative paperwork than I did on the actual job itself. It was a conference call and I billed for two hours (one hour prep work and one hour on the phone). I had to sign their contract three different times (because for some reason they didn’t want me to fill in the date, which is stupid because my signature is dated 8 days before the date on the top of the contract. whatever) and fax and mail it back to them (in England). I managed to talk them into allowing me to add 5 euros to the bill to cover those costs. I got my phone bill over the weekend. My fax costs alone were $16. Not to mention postage to England ($0.94 a pop). OK, that’s my fault for using AT&T and not some 0150 number or some online fax service, but I will definitely think twice before working with them again. I will also think twice before faxing overseas from my office fax machine. I made a small profit on the job, but it is definitely a lot smaller than it would have been otherwise.

Certified translations – truth or myth? November 24, 2008

Posted by Jill (@bonnjill) in Business practices, Translation Sites.
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Unlike the way things work in Germany, where translators apply with the courts to become beglaubigt, which then allows them to stamp and certify their translations, “certification” in the U.S. is a whole other ball of wax. Let us not get this confused with ATA certification, which entails taking (and passing – no small feat!) a test and having to complete a set number of continuing education points every two years in order to maintain your certification. You do not have to be an ATA certified translator to certify a translation.

I am talking about the translation and certification of legal documents, such as birth certificates and divorce decrees. NOTA published an article by Nancy Huskins, Doing the Impossible – Quite Possibly What Translators Do Best, in the May 2005 NOTA BENE that details the situation very well. We also have numerous quotes from our members about certification and how they certify documents.

I feel one comment in particular summed it up best:

I don’t really know what people want when they say “certified translation” and I guess they don’t know either. For whatever purpose they need a translation, they have been asked to get the translation “certified” and they pass the requirement to the translator. I also have continuous requests for “certified translation” and it always involves birth certificates or other type of certificates and also diplomas. What I do, after the translation, I just add a sentence which reads, “This translation has been prepared by me, (name). I am a professional translator and fully competent to translate, and to the best of my knowledge and ability, this translation is
complete and accurate.” Signed, dated and signature notarized, and it always works. Which leads me to believe that this is a “certified translation.”

When I need to certify a translation I include a cover page (see below) and go to a notary public to get my document(s) notarized. The notary public can be a secretary, someone at a bank, or a fellow translator. There are several translators I know who are notary publics. They, like other notary publics, still can’t confirm that the translation is a “true and accurate translation of the attached original,” but they can notarize you “appeared before them and acknowledged that [you are] an active/certified member of the American Translators Association and that [you] executed the document as [your] free act and deed”. You also might want to include a disclaimer such as “to the best of my knowledge and ability.”

The best certification example, which was submitted by Dr. Lee Wright and a version of which I now use, is as follows:

[to be printed on translator’s business letterhead]

[date]

I, [translator’s name] ([translator’s academic or other credentials, if any; e.g., Ph.D.]), a translator of proven expertise in translating to [target language] and an active/certified member of the American Translators Association by a certificate attesting thereto issued on [date], do hereby CERTIFY that the foregoing translation of [a] document[s] pertaining to:
corresponds to its/their original in [language], which I had in my possession.

In [city], [state], USA, on the ____________ day of _______________, ______.

_____________________________________________
[TRANSLATOR’S NAME]
STATE OF [STATE]
COUNTY OF [COUNTY]

I, the undersigned Notary Public, do hereby certify that [translator’s name] appeared before me and acknowledged that [she/he] is an active, certified member of the American Translators Association and that [she/he] executed this document of [her/his] own free act and deed.

In witness whereof, I have set my hand and seal, this ___________ day of ______________________________.

_____________________________________________
NOTARY PUBLIC

Naturally, you shouldn’t include the “original in [language], which I had in my possession” if you only had a copy of the document. And of course it goes without saying that you should always charge for the time and extra work involved with certifying a document.

Keeping your Internet profile clean November 20, 2008

Posted by Jill (@bonnjill) in Business practices, Random musings.
6 comments

As a professional it is so important to keep your online profile clean. A careless comment in a blog, a website publicizing an illegal or questionable pastime, or a racy photo on MySpace can really hurt your chances of landing a good client or job – not to mention generating lots of gossip among those who know you. It never ceases to amaze me how many people don’t think about this.

I attended my twentieth high school reunion last year, and everyone was talking about how one of the guys was a “pervert” because he had posted a picture of his johnson on MySpace. This was just recently impressed on me again when one of my clients asked if I knew a certain translator who had applied for an in-house job because they became wary after viewing his MySpace page.

According to May 2008 article in the Washington Post, Keeping Your Profile Clean, “a recent survey by ExecuNet, a networking organization for business leaders, found that 83 percent of executives and corporate recruiters research job candidates online, and 43 percent have eliminated a candidate based on search results. Even if you’re not in the market for a new job, it’s a good idea to clean the skeletons out of your digital closet.”

The author suggests doing a Google search “to pinpoint any negative hits you’d like to remove.” She also talks about setting up a Google Alert on your name to keep tabs on your reputation and mentions several other services one could use to improve one’s online reputation. This seems like a lot of work to me. I simply suggest not doing anything to generate those negative hits in the first place.

If you are going to participate in social networking sites like MySpace, Xanga, LiveJournal or Facebook, I suggest thinking before you post. Think of these sites as an extension to your rĂ©sumĂ©. Ask yourself, “Would I put this information in my rĂ©sumĂ© or a job application?” A picture of you drunk at a party – or worse – is clearly not a good way to promote yourself. It is also important to make sure that your friends do not post inappropriate pictures or information about you on their sites.

Of the social sites I mentioned, Facebook is a little better, because you can control who has access to your information. You have to “friend” (i.e., approve) someone before the person can have access to your page. However, it is important to remember that many institutions may hire students or have sites themselves and they could request access to your site. And you certainly should not befriend a client on Facebook if you don’t want the client to know mundane details about your life or the fact that you are hung over from the big party last night – especially if you have a big translation due at the end of business. They and everyone else who is linked to you might then be asking themselves what you are doing partying if you have a big job due in the first place. But that’s a whole other can of worms…

A stellar job opportunity November 17, 2008

Posted by Jill (@bonnjill) in Business practices, Translation Sites.
9 comments

I just received the following job inquiry and couldn’t resist sharing it with you all.

Hello,
Looking for an interpreter/Translator that can translate from english to any foreign language or vis-visa.I have a project at hand that demands some vital language learnings. This book has been written to help parent know thier duties and obligation to kids from age of 2 to 12 years. I will like to know your area of specialization? and also what language suit your knowledge.As this book will be publish and distributed around the world.The book contain 25 pages,words counts is 9,000 thousand to 11 thousands..written in english.I will like to know the cost to translate this to your specialization for my usage.I will need your contact information.Once your payment is okay by me,I will update you with the copy of the book through fax or mailing it to you.You can also contact me through my email.If i am unable to pick my call, you can email me back,I will like to have an agreement with you before sending you copy of the book. Note that there will be no editing as regards translating it…I will await your cost to do this with your name and address so that i can send your payment to seal our agreement after which i will send you copy to proceed with your job.I hope you will be able to finish this within 1 month? to aviod mistake.The book is title (WHAT TEENAGERS NEED FROM THIER PARENT). I will await your response asap. Thanks.

Wow, I’m going to jump right at the chance to translate this guy’s no doubt stellarly written English into “any foreign language and vis-visa”… NOT! A book that contains just 25 pages and 9-11,000 words? Sounds like a brochure to me… I love the fact that he is asking what my field of specialization is despite the fact that he states the book is “to help parent know thier [sic] duties and obligation to kids.” Sorry, I don’t specialize in child rearing. I’ll resist my rant about modern day parenting and simply delete this dude’s e-mail. If you received it I suggest you do the same.

Funny how this inquiry differed dramatically with another inquiry I received this morning. It was only one line, but I have no doubt it is on the up and up and I responded with a proper quote:

Dear Jill

Can you please send me a quote on translating the attached document from German into English.

Kind Regards

What a difference proper English and attaching the actual document makes. He’s also going to have to pay upfront for the translation, but I have no doubt that I will actually be paid for the latter job.

Taking criticism like a man and applying it to T&I November 9, 2008

Posted by Jill (@bonnjill) in Business practices, Random musings, Translation Sites.
6 comments

The Art of Manliness has an interesting post on how to give and take criticism like a man that definitely benefits both genders. The point of (constructive) criticism is to help someone improve – and who doesn’t appreciate being able to improve? When used sparingly and constructively, criticism can be quite welcome. I think translators should read this so that we learn how to best respond to criticism. If you always respond negatively to criticism you are inevitably burning more bridges that you are building. I also really wish our clients would read this post and take some pointers for the times when they need to offer us feedback.

If you have been in the T&I industry for any length of time you have most likely had your translation criticized in one way or another. Let’s face it, it happens. Sometimes one’s style does not necessarily jibe with the client’s. Stylistic complaints are the most frustrating, and they are easier to brush off in my head. Not everyone likes my style, and that is ok. I simply devote myself to my clients who do.

Also, sometimes I have an off day (or several) when I’m not feeling well, am feeling out of sorts and/or lethargic, etc., but still have to meet the deadline. It is so nice to translate when I am highly motivated and the words just flow. However, not every day is like that. Our tight deadlines ensure that we have to produce even when we have a very tight deadline and are having an “off” biorhythm day. Clients also need to remember this, because no one is perfect.

I am not advocating doing sloppy work or offering excuses. We should always do whatever we can to ensure we consistently produce quality work. As Thea Dohler suggested, we should schedule our most demanding work at the time of day in which we are in our highest productivity curve. I intend to implement this starting this week. My highest productivity curve tends to be around noon or one. In my case, in order to ensure consistently qualitative work I have a colleague who proofreads the texts which I feel could use a second pair of eyes and I proofread her texts and help her with computer problems. This collaborative partnership works very well, and it ensures that I do not deliver a text in which I have misunderstood something or made a grave error.

My favorite passage in the abovementioned post was:

Criticize the action, not the person. Try to keep the person as separated from their mistakes as possible by criticizing their action and not them. It makes the criticism less hurtful and much more effective. So don’t say things like, “Jeez Louise you must be an idiot! Look at all these mistakes you made in this report!” Just because someone makes a mistake, that doesn’t make the person a pinhead. We all have bad days.

A little over a year ago one of my (now former) clients ripped apart my translation and demanded a discount, but since she was known for doing this I didn’t take it personally, admitted some of her points were valid and accepted a discount. However, I repeat: I did not take it personally (see: Consider the source in the quoted article). Ripping apart a translation really has nothing to do with helping a translator improve. I wasn’t hurt when they stopped contacting me, because frankly it was too stressful to try to produce a quality text that I knew was going to be ripped apart anyway. I don’t miss them, and they weren’t a good fit for me. I have since found new clients who are a much better fit.

Anyway, I have digressed… The sentence “Criticism is an important part of our personal self improvement, for it is other people who can point out mistakes and shortcomings that we can’t see because we lack objectivity.” is an important one. It is so true. If I am acting like an idiot I need to be told diplomatically so that I don’t continue to act like an idiot. As a Virgo, I am already my worst critic as it is and have most likely already magnified my behavior in my head to be worse than it probably is. 🙂

I love getting feedback on my translations, because it makes me a better translator. However, clients need to be as specific as they can, because a simple “it just wasn’t good” frankly isn’t good enough. We need specific examples to decide whether the criticism is justified and to change to ensure the client is happier the next time. I like to think I can take criticism like a man, but this article was a welcome reminder of the various ways to do so.

Musings about the ATA conference in Orlando November 9, 2008

Posted by Jill (@bonnjill) in Business practices, Random musings, Translation Sites.
4 comments

Greetings from sunny Florida, where I have deliberately tacked on an extra day after the conference to my trip. The original plan was to go to Epcot, but the more I thought about it the more sense it made to simply lay around by the pool and relax. I’ve been to Epcot and enjoyed it, but it’s expensive and frankly I am exhausted after two consecutive days of very late nights and very early mornings. This night owl isn’t used to getting up early, and I closed the hotel bar two nights in a row and woke up very early for two consecutive mornings to drive friends to the airport.

My first ATA conference was Atlanta in 2002, and I haven’t missed one since. They are very addictive for numerous reasons – the biggest one being the pleasure of being around intelligent, like-minded people. I don’t necessarily go there to meet new clients or learn something new, but it inevitably happens. I was mulling over everything I learned at this conference and thought it might be fun to share it with you all in bullet form.

What I learned at the ATA conference:

  • I met a lot of great new people and was able to put lots of faces with names.
  • The hotel bar (and/or hotel pool) is the best place to get to know people.
  • I enjoyed visiting with old friends. Ted Wozniak, Michael Wahlster and Susanne Aldridge (III) are absolutely hilarious and fabulous people to hang out with. I haven’t laughed that hard in a long time. Every lunch, dinner and drinks in the bar with them or a combination thereof as well as anyone else who ended up joining us was an absolute joy.
  • I need to schedule a lunch or dinner with Jost next time. I really wanted to talk to him more than I was able to.
  • No matter how hard I try I will never be able to spend as much time as I want with everyone I want to spend time with.
  • Being the only sober one in the hotel bar at 1 a.m. because you have to drive to your off-site hotel can be quite amusing, because you can sit back and soak in the drama and heightened emotions of the artificial conference setting and alcohol-induced behavior.
  • I’m staying in the conference hotel next year – damn the cost. Drinking one or two drinks and then just ginger ale ensures you can function after four hours of sleep, but it isn’t as fun. Plus you should try to get to the morning yoga session, because it is apparently very invigorating.
  • I will be doing yoga every day at home from now on to try to loosen my taut muscles. And Nina G.’s suggestion of two-hour massages every two weeks is also going to be a serious consideration.
  • The massage therapist in the Exhibit Hall taught me some easy ways to loosen the muscle in my forearm and get rid of the tendonitis. She was shocked how tight it was all the way down to my wrist.
  • I will be buying a T-Mobile Dash this week, because they are really cool. Three of my friends had one, and I was able to test it out.
  • Thea Dohler’s presentations were just as good if not better than I have always heard they are. Thanks to her time management seminar, I learned how to manage my time better and schedule my work based on my biorhythms. Her Attracting Clients from Germany seminar gave me some very useful tips for approaching German direct clients.
  • The one session you are really looking forward to may not be at all what you expected. I should have really read the session description for the social networking session closer, because I assumed it was something it was not.
  • I will be submitting a proposal on social networking tools like Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook (in this case urging it not to be used for business purposes) for next year’s conference. It gives me a year to really study how they can be beneficial to translators. Judy Jenner and I will most likely present it together.
  • I will also be submitting a proposal for a session with Susanne (and hopefully Marita) about optical character recognition, ABBYY FineReader and other OCR tools, and word count tools.
  • Presenting two sessions is just enough. Any more than that is pure insanity. I really enjoyed doing a preconference session and the first session, because I could enjoy the other sessions without worrying about my presentation overlapping with a session I really want to attend.
  • It is much better to present with someone else, because I easily forget to mention things and the co-presenter can chime in with a brilliant insight that might not have been mentioned otherwise. Corinne McKay is really good at that. It also livens things up.
  • We will be having another blogger lunch again next year. It was a really fun lunch. I’ll be posting my photos later, because I forgot to bring a cable to upload them from my camera and my laptop is so antiquated it doesn’t have a suitable photo card drive.
  • Wearing a t-shirt to advertise your blog is a waste of time. I felt sloppy, and people looked at me funny. Or I will plan ahead better and really get a sharp t-shirt that has the graphic as it is in the header of the blog and not just the address and a really tiny graphic that can’t be recognized.
  • Reservations for lunch or dinner should always be for a (much) higher number than originally planned because your friends invite two friends who invite two friends and so on and so on…
  • I’m going to let others organize the lunches and dinners, because I don’t handle change or delays well. As a double Virgo (Sun and rising sign in Virgo), I can become quite cranky, irritable, and nervous when things don’t go as planned and others are surprised when I do so and don’t realize I get over it again quite quickly. And it spoils the mood somewhat.
  • I will be adding graphics of the book covers I have translated to my web site.
  • I will be posting several of my LinkedIn references on my web site’s References page.
  • I will be tweaking my web site a little better to attract German clients.
  • I need to market more to direct clients.
  • I need to work more on focusing on the person I am talking to and really concentrating on what they say. When I did that I found it much more rewarding.
  • Bring ear plugs to the conference dance, because the music is simply too loud to enjoy without them. I would have loved to stay longer and actually dance, but my ears hurt.
  • Don’t expect to eat well at the division receptions unless they are off-site. Hotel-catered receptions suck. And if you can’t eat cheese or drink lots of wine they suck even more. Think of the attendance fee as a networking/advertising expense and not as payment for the “refreshments.”
  • Harangue your friends to stay for the conference dance, because it isn’t as fun without anyone to dance with.
  • Consider staying until Monday. After four days of networking and being “on” it feels wonderful to just relax and do nothing. I had a nice chat with several folks by the conference hotel pool this morning. I also loved sitting by the seafood restaurant in my hotel facing the fountain with a good book and several banana coladas and having a blue heron try to beg for some of my seafood. It also allowed me to take a much-needed nap by the pool and then in my room at my hotel this afternoon.

I’m sure there are more, but these are the ones that have sprung to mind so far today. I’ll be going into more detail about several of these list items in the coming weeks.

Autoresponders are your friend November 4, 2008

Posted by Jill (@bonnjill) in Business practices.
2 comments

Several folks in the translation blogosphere have recently written about autoresponders in preparation for the upcoming ATA conference. I am interrupting my regularly scheduled vacation to add my two cents. It’s ok. My cousin just left to go vote, so I have the time. I voted weeks ago. All I’m doing is drinking coffee and catching up on the blogs in my feed reader – and finishing one of the books I brought with me, “The Gift of Fear” by Gavin de Becker. I’m heading to Orlando later today to meet with Corinne and go over our presentation for tomorrow’s preconference session.

Autoresponders are something you don’t really think about until you are frantically rushing around to head off on vacation. However, they take some foresight and planning in order to work in the most ideal way possible. Ideally you should set up an autoresponder for your work e-mail and your personal e-mail (just in case your clients have that one too).

One thing most people don’t consider when turning on their autoresponder is that it automatically answers all your listservs and newsletters as well. That is annoying for everyone on the listserv and perhaps the newsletter owner, while you are blissfully unaware and enjoying your vacation. You could set all your listservs to “no mail” while you are gone, but there will inevitably be one or two newsletters or listservs you forget about. The solution to this is to set up an e-mail address that you use for any listservs or automatic e-mails you receive (like my daily cartoon or Jost’s Tool Kit newsletter). Most translators I know who are active on listservs have an e-mail address called “lists@domain.com” (or some variation thereof) that they use to subscribe to listservs. I go one step further and also subscribe to my daily comic strip and other weekly newsletters using that e-mail address as well.

Since I don’t use Outlook and don’t need my computer to run and use up electricity while I’m gone, I set up my autoresponder directly on my ISP’s web site where you manage all the e-mail addresses and things. It is actually really easy. I simply log onto the Customer page and click on the e-mail addresses that I want the autoresponder for and then type the “out of office” message and save it. I would include some screenshots, but I’m not on my computer. If you aren’t sure if your ISP offers this, ask. I bet they do. The login for controlling your e-mail addresses and aliases is usually on the same page as the login for their web mail interface.

Now if I could only figure out how to get it to selectively not respond to spam and let them know there’s a real person at that address…