The beauty of working from home April 29, 2011
Posted by Jill (@bonnjill) in Business practices, Random musings.11 comments
I am sitting in my hotel room after the Welcome Reception for the ATA’s TCD conference. Corinne McKay gave me and several others signed second editions of her popular book, How to Succeed as a Freelance Translator (hot-off-the-press – it’s not yet available for sale but it will be very soon). After staying up late last night to finish translating a particularly tricky contract and packing to then wake up early to fly to DC I declined joining several friends for dinner, choosing to crash in the hotel. I started reading the book, and something in her Introduction resonated enough with me that I wanted to immediately blog about it. She talks about work-from-home opportunities and how translation is one of the few legitimate work-from-home careers. The sentence “…working from home, you’ll probably experience greater job satisfaction and less stress, since a relatively minor disruption like a dentist appointment or furnace repair won’t derail your entire work day.” made me say “right on!”
I recently experienced this first-hand. Wednesday night my Internet kept going down and was running at an average of 36 MPbs. Repeated reboots of the cable modem and router – and even my computers – were unable to speed up the connection. Frustrated, I turned the computer off, hoping it was a momentary upgrade problem. Thursday morning things hadn’t improved, so I called my cable Internet provider to complain. The service rep checked the line and agreed that I did have a problem. He offered to send a tech out, but he noted with some trepidation in his voice that he wasn’t sure when the tech could come out and I would need to be home the whole day, possibly as late as 8 PM. I cheerfully informed him that that wasn’t a problem because I worked from home and urged him to put me as high on the list as possible since I depend on the Internet for my job. Luckily I didn’t have to wait all day. The tech was there within a half an hour and even though he didn’t find the cause of the problem and would have to come back later to check the cable on the telephone pole the Internet was somewhat more stable after he left and I was able to work again.
If I worked in an office this scenario could have never been possible. I would have had to take a vacation day to be home to let him in, and he wouldn’t have been able to fit me in so quickly in the day. I was already home, so the tech was able to immediately come by.
As Corinne so aptly states, the beauty of working from home as freelance translators is that we can structure our work day around our peak energy times and family needs, rather than our employer and its policies. I particularly love working from home in the winter, when my commute on snowy days is from the bedroom to the coffeemaker to the office, where I read all kinds of irate tweets and status updates from people complaining about their commutes and the weather. And in the summer I can take some time off at any time to take the dog for a walk. You really can’t beat it… and I wouldn’t exchange it for anything.
Scam or trend? March 28, 2011
Posted by Jill (@bonnjill) in Business practices, Scam alert.30 comments
Usually I automatically delete e-mails like the one below after reading the subject line or at most the first line, but one of my friends forwarded it to me with a snarky comment that made me giggle this morning: “Can you count the typos/misspellings in this email???? Don’t think any of us will be going out of business anytime soon.” She was also wondering if it was the latest scam or the latest trend.
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Also, while responding to her e-mail, in which she mentioned an e-mail last week from “TextKing”, it occurred to me that the two might originate from the same person. So what say you, fellow readers, scam or misguided attempt to fill a market niche that simply doesn’t exist? After all, a 10% commission of 0 is still 0!
Nebulous business practices abound… March 15, 2011
Posted by Jill (@bonnjill) in Business practices.9 comments
Do you have any capacity to take on work for Thursday morning?
That was all the e-mail that I received this Tuesday afternoon said. How am I supposed to answer this? “Uhm, yes?” “Sorry, I’m all booked up.”? I ended up going with “It depends.” and asked them how many words they need translated and what kind of a document it is – and, most importantly, what is the field/subject matter of the text itself? Could some clients be more nebulous about what they need? I don’t think this client could include less info if they tried…
Clients need to realize they need to be a little more specific when asking about our availability. 1000 words of an e-mail is not the same as 1000 words of legal or medical text. I can probably squeeze in 1000 words in a field that doesn’t require a lot of research and thought, but 1000 words of dense legal just isn’t going to happen. Especially when I am already working on 2500 words of medical reports recalling stent and bypass procedures. Besides, I had to take the critters to the groomer’s today and am running behind…
Folly and foolishness in the translation industry March 3, 2011
Posted by Jill (@bonnjill) in Business practices.39 comments
A recent discussion on Proz.com (<sarcasm>that well-known bastion of professionalism</sarcasm>) suggested a general strike against TRADOS and other expensive CAT tools. Luckily most of the people in the discussion presented well-founded ideas why this is not a good idea. As @NadVega pointed out, “A CAT tool is an investment like any other. If the ROI justifies the purchase, it is not too expensive.” Like it or not, CAT/TEnTs are now part of doing business as a translator. As professionals we need to make sure we are investing in our businesses.
This cult of poverty thinking that is so prevalent among so many of our colleagues drives me crazy.
The idea of the “poverty cult” stems from a presentation by Neil Inglis at the 1996 ATA Regional Conference in Washington, D.C. and later that year at the Annual Conference in Colorado Springs. Inglis, a translator at the International Monetary Fund, suggested that the poverty cult “may develop from the inferiority complex that language professionals have (and others have about them) regarding their worth in the marketplace.” Inglis characterized “the Seven Deadly Sins of the Poverty Cult” as “envying the success of others, gloating over the failure of others; a pervasive sense that it is better for everybody to fail than for a few to succeed; a sickly squeamishness where the subject of money is concerned; shabby gentility, more shabby than genteel; a widespread conviction that it is better to have a little and be secure than to take a gamble and risk losing everything; and last, and very much least, Schadenfreude mixed with sour grapes.”
This suggestion to strike just goes to show that – despite great strides – the cult of poverty is alive and well in the translation industry. To that I say… if you are not earning enough that a couple hundred dollars presents a hardship or an annual dinner or workshop by your local translation chapter that costs $30 makes you twitch you should either raise your rates or find another profession.
Every profession has its own tools and expenses. You need to adapt or perish. Dentists need to upgrade their x-ray machines and dental tools. Lawyers need to remain up-to-date on the most recent rulings in their field of specialization. Architects need to spend several thousand dollars on AutoCAD and other CAD software. Sure, their clients don’t demand discounts because they have this software, but there are plenty of clients out there who don’t insist on discounts. I know, because I work for many of them. If a client tries to “bully” me into buying one tool over another I simply don’t work with them. There are plenty of other fish in the sea…
In our profession you need at a minimum a computer, e-mail, and language skills in order to translate. Most people also prefer to buy dictionaries in which to look up terms. Some of us choose to use CAT/TEnTs. Whether you buy an expensive or cheaper tool or use a free tool is up to you. If your client wants you to work with a certain tool it is up to you to decide if you are willing to adapt or possibly lose the client.
Back in the early days translators translated their texts using quills and parchment, then pen and paper, and then typewriters. They went through a lot of carbon paper and White-Out back in those days. And if they were like me they would have to retype the document if they made too many typos. When computers were invented, several translators I know were the first ones to buy a computer, which back then cost several thousand dollars and didn’t have near the storage capacity as we have now (or any storage capacity for that matter…). Fax machines and modems were also very expensive. They may have complained, but they coughed up the money in order to continue working because they knew the tools were necessary to be more productive. They used their expensive modems and dial-up connections to communicate with each other on CompuServe and LANTRA-L. They tossed the modems and dial-up when high-speed Internet was available. They are still in the business, delivering files via e-mail or FTP and translating several thousand words a day with the help of CAT/TEnTs.
One agency near me hasn’t done such a good job in adapting. The company owner has developed a reputation for driving to his translators’ homes and hand-delivering the source texts. One colleague called me just today complaining that he wanted the translated paragraph directly beneath the source paragraph in the translation of a fairly lengthy technical text. She was shocked because that was the first time in 15 years anyone had asked her to do that. I laughed and told her that sounded about right and suggested she tell him he can either do the necessary cutting and pasting himself or she would charge him more for the formatting work. And if he balked tell him to find someone else… You’d be surprised how many members of my local translators association don’t have an e-mail on file with us!! Adapt or perish…
Just because we use a CAT/TEnT and charge by the word now does not mean we are merely “CAT operators” as one person vehemently contends. I used to think I didn’t have enough repetition in my work to warrant using a tool. I too used to be vehemently against the idea of using translation tools until I finally saw the benefits these tools provide. My CAT/TEnT has saved me hundreds of hours and earned me lots of money that I wouldn’t have otherwise earned. Using alignment I was able to align a quality assurance manual, import it into my translation memory and save myself three days of work because all I had to do was proofread the suggested translations and change the company name. The client was thrilled, and now I have a good Quality Assurance TM. My Medical TM has become so vast that I can quickly translate several thousand words a day of highly technical stent reports or discharge reports thanks to the repetition in medical reports. I still have to be careful to check numbers and make sure each segment is translated accurately. This doesn’t mean I am just a CAT operator; it just means I am able to leverage previous translations and benefit from the consistency this ensures.
For the record, I use Trados 2009 and sometimes Transit XV. I just bought another TEnT (Fluency) today after attending an online tutorial. I liked that it had built-in tabs with online resources like Linguee and Google. It cost me $99, which I am sure will quickly pay for itself. One translator in the above Proz.com discussion uses Omega T because it is a free, open source tool. You don’t have to spend a lot of money on a tool, but you really should have one if you want to compete in the current market.
As Neil Inglis stated, “We are highly skilled professionals and should expect to be treated that way, and our status as such should give us clout in every regard (not just as language professionals).” I would also add that we need to act like professionals in order to be treated as such. Stop complaining about the cost of this and that if it is part of doing business and pay the subscription fees or buy the tools that make you work more efficiently and effectively.
♪♫ Everybody’s working on the weekends… ♪♫ February 26, 2011
Posted by Jill (@bonnjill) in Business practices, Translation.8 comments
After about a month of being underworked I have returned to the world of the overworked translator. I was lucky to earn enough to cover my rent and bills last month, while this month it looks like I am on track to exceed my monthly income target. I have turned down a lot of projects over the last few days (and suggested colleagues who may or may not be available). However, I have several clients to whom I simply can’t say no, so I am working this weekend – by choice. This seems to be a common habit in our industry. Everyone always complains about the clients who call at 4 PM on Friday with a job that absolutely must be done by Monday morning. And when you ask for a rush rate? Yeah, good luck trying to get one from the clients, because it seems there are a lot of our colleagues who are perfectly willing to consider Saturday and Sunday a normal work day. Perhaps because they work a full-time job and only translate on the weekends or simply have no life outside of translation…
I hope to be able to take a day off at the end of this coming week to balance my time spent translating this weekend. Both big projects are due March 1st and March 2nd respectively, plus a little mini-job for Monday that I really should have finished yesterday but chose to procrastinate on. If we work on the weekends the least we can do is take time off during the week instead. I have no intention of burning out after only 15 years in the industry.
I don’t intend to spend my entire weekend stuck behind my keyboard and monitor. I have plans with friends and family this weekend that I am not willing to cancel. Being a translator truly forces us to be masters of time management, because otherwise we simply wouldn’t get everything done. But I can guarantee you that there is one thing I WON’T be doing this weekend – housework!! LOL! I have a Living Social coupon for a cleaning service that I intend to cash in very soon…
Sharing What I Do as a Translator February 25, 2011
Posted by Jill (@bonnjill) in Business practices, Translation.3 comments
Fabio from Fidus Interpres just published a blog post with the exact same title as this one on his blog based on an exchange he had with another translator on LinkedIn to “exchange infos about each other, explaining what we do so that maybe we can be an interesting resource for each other in future translation & localization projects.” Instead of writing an extensive comment on his blog I thought I would take a page from his playbook and share what I do here. They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. I invite other bloggers to do the same on their blogs. I think it will be fun to learn a little bit about each other.
Like Fabio, I very rarely outsource jobs, and if I do I rely on translators who I have met in person or have worked with successfully in the past. However, as Fabio said, you never know if one of your clients may need someone with a skill set that matches that of one of your colleague’s.
I have been translating (and proofreading) from German into English (American English) since 1995.
Most of my customers are translation agencies in the United States and Europe (usually Germany but occasionally Switzerland, England or Austria). I worked for the FBI as a contract linguist for about four years, and now work for several agencies with government contracts. I do not work for the larger translation agencies. I find the smaller agencies appreciate my skills more and are more willing to pay my rates. I prefer to work for agencies that value me and respect me as a professional.
I have a Master’s degree in Translation from Kent State and lived for six years in Bonn, Germany and one year in Salzburg, Austria. My time living abroad helped me not only become extremely fluent, but also gave me the cultural knowledge one needs to be a successful translator. I also have a working knowledge of Russian, which sometimes helps me translate documents that have been uncovered in the former Eastern Bloc countries for my agencies with government contracts.
I specialize in documents in the fields of medical and computer. I love translating medical reports, medical documents for insurance and pension claims, FTP manuals, computer games, mobile phone apps and games, and anything and everything software-related. I taught myself HTML back in 1995 and have taught web design for the translation students at Kent State, so I have a deep love for Geekspeak and the Internet. I have also been known to translate legal documents relating to Nazi hunting, Internet fraud, witness statements and interviews, police reports, legal claims, and the occasional contract. I proofread a lot of the police reports related to the 9/11 hijackers who lived in Germany back in 2001 and 2002. I am not a big fan of personal documents (birth certificates, letters of reference, school transcripts, genealogical documents), but I translate them when a client asks me. I also translate I also translate responses for market research surveys, so this means not only am I a fast translator since the deadlines are often tight and the word counts are high but I am also very good as deciphering the most terrible misspellings and typos you can imagine. I am also very, very good at formatting Word and WordPerfect files cleanly (I set a tab where I need it instead of using tabs and spaces to get there) and making them look almost like a mirror image of the original.
I’m not arrogant to claim that I am the best translator out there, but I am good at what I do and my clients are very happy with my results. If you have complicated, high-falutin’ German that sounds like it comes from an ivory tower or need the translation to sound like poetry I’m probably not your girl. But if you need to know what the text says, it needs to be conveyed clearly and sound good, and you need it to mirror the original I’m the one to call.
I do not translate financial, chemistry, patent, or technical texts. If I read a text and don’t understand it I will turn the job down and most likely be able to recommend someone more than capable of handling the text. I have built a very good network of contacts on both sides of the ocean. I recently helped a client find a German to French translator by recommending three excellent colleagues who I know from living in Bonn.
I also do not translate into German. German grammar is too complicated for a non-native speaker who was not exposed to it from a young age, and it takes me too long to translate into my non-native tongue.
Now, how about you? Would you like to tell us about your translation background (specialization, experience, likes and dislikes)?
What is your gut telling you? February 17, 2011
Posted by Jill (@bonnjill) in Business practices, Translation.4 comments
No, not that you need to get out and exercise more. ALL of our guts are telling us that! I’m talking today about intuition, your gut feeling. We’ve all had those job requests where our gut tells us “RUN!” but we take it anyway and live to regret it. You spend all weekend researching a bunch of terms and slowly plodding through the text only to have the client come back with a lot of complaints a week later because you didn’t know the subject matter enough. Or you take a job only to learn three months later that the client is a known scam artist and you’ll never see the $3000 he owes you. We all have our stories…
I have learned to listen to my gut more. This is something they don’t teach you in school.
If your gut is telling you something isn’t right, chances are the job offer is fishy or you simply aren’t up to the job. That e-mail from the Prince of Ghana is most likely not from the Prince of Ghana. The other subtle warning signs in the mail like typos and bad grammar are causing your gut to clench and say “don’t even bother responding.” That check you received in the mail from that client in Nigeria is probably a fake, just ask your gut.
One of my colleagues wrote our listserv today asking what seemed like a simple question about word prices for creating a specialized dictionary. She seemed to think it would only take one work day to create, and the client was requesting a word price instead of an hourly rate. Her colleagues suggested she demand an hourly rate and budget at least a month for the project. I would also have suggested asking for $40 a word since there would be a lot of research involved. I bet she’s glad she listened to her gut and asked for a second opinion from her colleagues. I bet if I had asked that colleague what her gut was telling her she would have answered “don’t do it.”
If your gut tells you something isn’t right or that you really shouldn’t try to translate that technical specification because you don’t recognize one-third of the words and would have to look them up, try listening to it. Ignore all the voices in your head telling you “well, I need the work” and tell the client no. Because if you listen to those voices you could really end up regretting taking the job (and possibly being institutionalized, but that’s a post for another day… LOL!).
Have you ignored your gut and lived to regret it? Feel free to share your experience here. I’ll start…
The freelance translator at home: instructions for use February 16, 2011
Posted by Jill (@bonnjill) in Business practices, Translation.add a comment
Catherine from the blog Catherine Translates has translated a blog post entitled The freelance translator at home: instructions for use, which is a translation of Céline’s Vivre avec un traducteur, mode d’emploi. This post is brilliant and needs to be shared with as many people as possible. I felt like Céline had installed a web cam in my home, because she definitely described how I go about my life. It is an instruction manual for everyone who comes into contact with a translator. As she explains, “This guide will help you understand the lifestyle and needs of your significant other” (who is a freelance translator and not an in-house translator – although that in itself is truly a very rare breed nowadays). I hope you all enjoy it as much as I did!
Time keeps on ticking, ticking, ticking… February 8, 2011
Posted by Jill (@bonnjill) in Business practices, Random musings.3 comments
As Leo Babauta said in Minimalist Time Management: Keep Your Day Open (Freelanceswitch.com): “There are the super-organized among us — those who schedule every minute and stick to the plan to the letter — and then there’s the rest of us. We schedule a lot of plans, but our days don’t usually resemble the plan very much.”
I don’t know about you, but I am usually pretty organized. I keep a calendar updated on Google Calendar that syncs to my HTC G2 phone (which by the way I LOVE!). It helps me keep track of my social activities and appointments, which I can schedule while actually in the dentist’s office or business location. That said, I don’t schedule every minute of every day. I prefer to be a bit more spontaneous. I know what my goals are for that day, usually based on what deadlines I have looming over me.
I just survived a two-week dry spell of work. I had a small job here or there, but nothing really juicy to keep me at the computer. I thoroughly enjoyed it, but I couldn’t believe how unmotivated I became. E-mails were postponed, blog posts remained unwritten, housework fell by the wayside. I did a lot of reading and caught up with numerous television shows. And I got the stomach flu just as work started coming back in (figures, right?)…
I eased back into work with a proofreading job and now have a couple translation jobs on my desk. I knew the dry spell wouldn’t last. It never does. I have learned to embrace the slow spells, and I have a financial cushion so I don’t lose sleep wondering how to pay bills with no money coming in.
Coming out of the stomach flu also gave me the energy to clean the apartment and clear my mind. I am not proud of my laziness. I knew it was well-deserved, but I decided to try implementing a time management system. After a brief search I think I might have found what I need.
Mr. Babauta’s rules for Minimalist Time Management are:
1. Don’t schedule appointments
I have realized that an appointment in the middle of the day can really eat up most of the day. My massage at 1 today bled into grocery shopping for an hour (after being sick for the last 4 days my refrigerator was BARE). I got home at 3:30 and hadn’t translated more than a couple hundred words. Luckily I am at my best in the evening…
My father prefers to schedule his appointments in the morning, leaving the rest of the day free. I won’t go so far as stop scheduling appointments, but I will try to be a bit more judicious and not fill up my week with one appointment every day. I will try to schedule most appointments that are near each other for the same day and just take the afternoon or whole day off.
2. Know what you want to accomplish today
Mr. Babauta suggests focusing on three things that you want to accomplish that day. For me that was translate about 2000-2500 words, get a massage and grocery shop. Mission accomplished.
3. Focus on one thing at a time.
Since I am such a multi-tasker this will be a hard one. The multi-tasker in me would have filed this blog post as a draft and gone back to translating, but I know it will be better to just publish it and then go back to focusing on translating the survey. Mr. Babauta claims “… single-tasking is not only more productive, it’s more relaxing as well.” I’ll let you know how that works…
4. Note tasks as they come up, to consider for later.
He suggests noting tasks that come up on a sheet of paper or a small notebook and then get back to the task you were working on. Sounds pretty simple. I will start trying this tomorrow.
Hey, it can’t be worse than what I’ve been doing, right? I have also occasionally adhered to the Flylady system, which can be a pretty good one. She recommends setting a timer for 15-20 minutes at a time as well as cleaning your house through small daily tasks (if any of you are living in chaos you might want to check her out…). If any of you have a time management system you would like to share, please share it in the comments.
Musings from an overworked translator 