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Showing posts from July, 2011

What makes a good freelance translator? - Part 3. Business skills

Hi! How've you been? I've missed you so much! The past couple weeks before my niece's wedding were so busy that I decided to take a week off right after the wedding. And I thoroughly enjoyed my small vacation! We celebrated the wedding which took part in Suzdal and in Vladimir, I did some reading for pleasure, slept a lot, took long walks with my hubby and my daughter and did many other things that I wouldn't normally be able to do. Now I feel a lot better. So it's time for a new post in "being a good translator" series. It's the last post in the series. Here we are going to talk not just about any translators, but about freelance translators in particular. Being  good specialists  and having great motivation  is not enough for becoming a good freelance translator. A freelance translator also needs good business skills, otherwise their business will fail. As I was thinking about this part, I realized that the subject is so vast that it may make a

Anniversary of Andrey Bogolyubsky

Today is a very special day in our city - 900th anniversary of Prince Andrey I of Vladimir, or Andrey Bogolyubsky . Andrey Bogolyubsky played an important part in the development of Russia as a state and of Vladimir as its capital (at that time Vladimir was the Russian capital). You can read more about him in this article . We went to the center to take part in the celebrations. First of all, there was a fair where you could see all the crafts that Russians are so good at. Here are a few pics for you to see. I love that box. It's so pretty :) Icons and pictures made of birch bark Master class in painting your own clay toys My daughter loved that horse! Porcelain dolls in traditional costumes All these wonderful things are made of straw Crystal from Gus-Khrustalny After the fair there was a concert. We didn't stay through all of it because we decided to visit a museum called "Old Vladimir" which shows what Vladimir used to

What makes a good translator? - Part 2. Language skills - the obvious part :)

I guess this is the most obvious truth about translation. If you are not bilingual, you can't be a translator. But you know what? I've met some people who honestly think that anybody can translate. Some even think that a machine can do it. You can read about one of such cases in my post called " A funny sad story ". But even being bilingual doesn't mean you'll be a good translator. As one of my very respected colleagues once said, being bilingual just doesn't cut it.  My post about proofreading  explains how being bilingual doesn't mean you'll be a good proofreader. The same can be said about translation! I think it's not a secret that when you are studying a foreign language you also absorb a foreign culture and many idioms/concepts/grammar structures that are unique only for this language. And if you don't possess relevant training and/or experience there's a risk that your translations will not sound native because they will be too