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Autumn is in the air again. For me, the beginning of the season means mountains covered in brightly colored trees, fresh apples鈥攁long with apple pie, applesauce, and apple cider donuts鈥攁nd a new briskness in the air. It also means I鈥檝e spent too much time on the ATA65 website, poring over descriptions of too many fantastic-sounding presentations and wondering how I鈥檒l ever narrow down the choices to just one per time slot. To help solve this problem, at least partially, for the last two years I鈥檝e created fictional language professionals, each with their own career needs, and chosen business practices-related sessions…
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If you continuously struggle to stay organized and tend to work long hours to compensate for daily distractions, learning about productivity can mean wading through a body of presumptions. The advice of self-help materials鈥搑epeated in a myriad of online resources鈥揷an be difficult to follow, as there are relatively few productivity resources that openly acknowledge the impact of physical and mental…
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In the last post, we looked at the financial issues underpinning a need for COVID-related medical leave. This week, we turn to organizational issues. Since I first drafted this article, some of those issues have changed, both in the United States and around the world. Response to the highly contagious Omicron variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus differs from what we鈥檝e…
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The idea for this post was born on my most stressful day in recent memory: the day I took three of my children to the doctor for COVID-19 tests. If even one tested positive, all three would need to skip school and spend up to two weeks at home with me. Along with my fears for my children鈥檚 health, my…
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Imagine if you could freeze your rent payment forever. Now imagine that it could disappear by the time you retire. That financial advantage is a major reason why people take the plunge to become homeowners. Being a homeowner means that your 鈥渞ent鈥 will never increase unless you authorize it. Sure, taxes will increase, but never as much as rent tends…
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This post is a reblog, originally published on Nikki Graham’s blog, My Words for a Change, and later published in the ATA Chronicle. It is reposted with permission from the author. From the outside looking in, most translators probably seem like lone wolves, happily working at their desks all day with hardly any social contact. In fact, many freelancers highlight…
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Most of us have heard it before: To be a good translator, you have to be a good writer. Today this maxim is truer than ever. Successful translators have always sought to provide high-quality copy to their clients as a way to add value and stand apart from the rest, but the increasing popularity of machine translation gives us even…
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This post is a reblog, originally published in the Audiovisual Division Part of the 兔子先生鈥檚 Deep Focus Newsletter, Issue 7听in 2020. It is reposted with permission from the author. I haven鈥檛 typed my full name or email address in years. Instead, I type abbreviations that get expanded after I type a punctuation mark or press a trigger key,…
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This is a summary post from Tess Whitty’s ebook Quick Start Guide: 10 Steps to an Optimized Website, published in 2019. Having a website is one of the best ways to maximize your online presence. Your website serves as the hub for all your marketing activities and is a good place to store information about your products and services. When…
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This post is a reblog, originally published on the Austin Area Translators & Interpreters Association blog. It is reposted with permission from the author. If you鈥檇 walk into a major bookstore today, one of the first books you see on display will have Malcolm Gladwell鈥檚 name on it. In one of his books, Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know…
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I have been teaching business classes for freelance translators for about 15 years, so I鈥檝e seen 鈥渦nder the hood鈥 of many freelancers鈥 businesses. The truth is, when we talk about goal-setting in our freelance businesses, many freelancers have amorphous goals (鈥渆arn more money,鈥 鈥渇ind better clients鈥) or no goals at all, because their business management strategy consists of two steps:…
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