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The Savvy Newcomer aims to serve newcomers to the translation and interpreting professions by publishing high-quality, peer-reviewed content on a weekly basis. We strive to provide you with the answers to the many questions you face as a new or aspiring translator or interpreter.

Cultivating Connection: 8 Tips for Interpreters and Translators to Tackle Loneliness

By The Savvy Newcomer | February 6, 2024
Cultivating Connection: 8 Tips for Interpreters and Translators to Tackle Loneliness

This post was originally published on听KGH Interpretation. It is reposted with permission.听 In 2022 I facilitated a session of the Language Access Caf茅 at the NCIHC Annual Membership Meeting and was asked to speak about interpreter self-care. Prior to the meeting, I decided to do an informal survey of medical interpreters asking them some questions about their mental health. I wanted to have a little bit of data that would clue me in on some of the issues interpreters were facing. While most of the results I shared during the AMM focused on stressors and supports, I also briefly shared…

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Savvy Diversification Series: Online Language Teaching

By The Savvy Newcomer | June 8, 2021

The Savvy Newcomer team has been taking stock of the past year and finding that one key priority for many freelance translators and interpreters has been diversification. Offering multiple services in different sectors or to different clients can help steady us when storms come. Diversification can help us hedge against hard times. With this in mind, we鈥檝e invited a series…

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Getting Started: 10 Tips

By The Savvy Newcomer | June 1, 2021

This post originally appeared on Translation Times and it is republished with permission. We oftentimes get questions about how to get started in the profession, and that’s a long answer. Actually, part of this blog is dedicated to answering precisely that question, and we have a long list of articles that we’ve marked for beginners. However, a dear friend of…

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Savvy Diversification Series: From Text Translator to Film Subtitler in Just a Few Months

By The Savvy Newcomer | May 25, 2021

The Savvy Newcomer team has been taking stock of the past year and finding that one key priority for many freelance translators and interpreters has been diversification. Offering multiple services in different sectors or to different clients can help steady us when storms come. Diversification can help us hedge against hard times. With this in mind, we鈥檝e invited a series…

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Setting a Fair Price: It鈥檚 All about You

By The Savvy Newcomer | May 18, 2021

This post originally appeared on The ATA Chronicle and it is republished with permission. We are freelancers. We don鈥檛 need to maximize profits for invisible stockholders, who tend to only care about their dividends or capital gains and not a whit about language or what we do. For us, the definition of being rich is not to want for anything.…

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Savvy Diversification Series: Translator Training

By The Savvy Newcomer | May 11, 2021

The Savvy Newcomer team has been taking stock of the past year and finding that one key priority for many freelance translators and interpreters has been diversification. Offering multiple services in different sectors or to different clients can help steady us when storms come. Diversification can help us hedge against hard times. We’ve invited a series of guest authors to…

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The Translator as an Editor

By The Savvy Newcomer | May 4, 2021

This post originally appeared on The ATA Chronicle and it is republished with permission. When it comes to reviewing copy, translators are often at what I like to refer to as 鈥渢he very end of the line.鈥 By the time copy is deemed ready for translation, it has usually been reviewed and edited by a plethora of people, including a…

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Savvy Diversification Series: Monolingual Editing

By The Savvy Newcomer | April 27, 2021

The Savvy Newcomer team has been taking stock of the past year and finding that one key priority for many freelance translators and interpreters has been diversification. Offering multiple services in different sectors or to different clients can help steady us when storms come. Diversification can help us hedge against hard times. With this in mind, we鈥檝e invited a series…

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Four Myths about ATA鈥檚 Certification Exam

By The Savvy Newcomer | April 20, 2021

This post originally appeared on The ATA Chronicle and it is republished with permission. ATA鈥檚 certification exam was instituted in 1973. Its purpose is 鈥渢o elevate professional standards, enhance individual performance, and identify translators who demonstrate professional level translation skills.鈥1 Every year, a large number of professional translators and aspiring translators take the exam in one of the 27 language…

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Language Access in the Spotlight: Meet Yasmin Al-Kashef & Piyawee Ruenjinda

By The Savvy Newcomer | April 13, 2021

As we are all trying to navigate our way through the disruptive changes that have taken place in our lives in the past year, it is particularly important to highlight the efforts of those making a difference in the day-to-day. In this article, the focus will be on two interpreters from Oregon working on language-related initiatives within their communities and…

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Small Talk Tips for Translators

By The Savvy Newcomer | April 6, 2021

This post originally appeared on The ATA Chronicle and it is republished with permission. The old industry adage might be spot on: most interpreters are fairly extroverted, while most translators tend to be introverts. That鈥檚 an oversimplification and I know that there are always many exceptions, but during my years in the industry, I鈥檝e noticed that translators struggle more with…

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