Your professional translator

Happy New Year, my dear readers! If I say that 2020 was a rollercoaster, it won't be a surprise. But there were quite a few good things that I am grateful for.  1. In February, my daughter went on a school trip to Germany. The journey went very well, the kids saw Berlin and Dresden and visited a national park near Dresden. They loved it.  2. We started renovating our apartment — that's a big job that will continue in 2021. So far everything is going well.  3. I had enough translation and editing work all throughout the year. There was a little break in March and April, but things went back to normal pretty fast.  4. In May 2020, the LinguaContact translation school had its second conference. We had to move it online and make some alterations in the program, but everything went very well. Our third conference is going to be online as well. It is scheduled for 21-22 May . It is aimed primarily at Russian speaking translators and interpreters, just like the previous t...

How are you, my dear readers? Hope you are doing well. I haven't been posting anything here for quite some time, but I've been thinking about reviving this blog. And today it occurred to me that I can write here about any important work related events. I do a lot of things online, so it's time to actually speak about them :-) I have recently recorded my first marketing translation analysis (as part of my ongoing efforts to make a full-scale online course on marketing translation). Here it is. Hope you'll find it interesting (note: it is in Russian): Since last year, I have also been a member of the Translation Teachers Association. A couple weeks ago I was invited to speak about methods of effective online teaching. The webinar was also in Russian. Hope it will be interesting for those of you who speak Russian and teach online. Wishing you all the very best! Talk soon.

A few days ago I finished teaching the translation block at our Basic Course for startup translators. It was an unexpected turn as somebody else was supposed to do it. But the situation changed a few days before the New Year, so I had to stand in the gap. While teaching this group and while watching other groups for the past 4 years, I noticed eight common mistakes startup EN<>RU translators make in their translation work: 1. Word for word translation and various calques 2. Punctuation and syntax mistakes 3. Wrong sentence structure (Theme–Rheme relationship) 4. Making unnecessary transformations and forgetting about them when they are necessary 5. Adding things that are absent in the original 6. Skipping parts of original text while translating 7. Not studying the topic of their translation 8. Forgetting to check their work before sending it I strongly suspect that the above-mentioned mistakes aren't exclusively made by beginning translators in the EN<...

Happy New Year and merry Christmas, my dear readers! 10 years seems like an awfully long time. Yet it seems like it was yesterday. 10 years ago my daughter was 2 years old and I was frantically searching for some kind of work I could do while still staying at home with my child. 10 years ago I made up my mind to become a freelancer. I was scared, yet I knew it was the right thing for me. Today, I am managing translation CPD courses and working as a freelance marketing translator and editor in my favourite fields: education, tourism, and everything connected with pet foods. I feel real joy because I love what I am doing. I am truly blessed. I've had different times in my freelance life. Some were good, others not so good. But when I look back I see an exciting story unfolding. I can't wait to see what my life will be like 10 years from now. Some great things that happened in 2017: It was probably my best year financially so far. I was able to regularly donate some...

Hi everybody! How've you been? Has 2017 been good to you so far?  My 2017 has been very busy, although I have been working on getting back to the balanced lifestyle. The more busy I am, the more I realize how important it is to give myself enough rest, physical activity, and pleasant emotions. And the best thing that unites all three of the aforementioned aspects is of course travelling. A few days ago I took a short break and went to Saint Petersburg with my daughter and my nephew. Saint Petersburg is more than just a city. It's a historic legend, UNESCO World Heritage sight, and definitely one of the must-see places in the world. My break was short, but it was so good that I decided to share our itinerary with you just in case some of my readers find themselves in the situation when they have just 3 days to spend in Saint Petersburg and they can't decide where to go and what to see. Especially if you are travelling with teenagers (my co-travellers are 12 and 18 yea...

When we approach learning a language, thoughts of grammatical correctness and learning lists of words by rote are often uppermost in our minds. However, there are many elements of language learning that creep up on us unawares. Some of these are inextricably linked with the culture from which that language developed. This is something that those in professional translation embrace as part of learning a new language, but is it possible to learn a language without absorbing its culture as well? Take the Portuguese word saudades , for example. It doesn’t have a direct translation in English. Google Translate provides ‘miss you’ as the translation, but this is a long way from the mark. Saudades is a deep-rooted sense of longing or yearning for someone or something – a melancholy that touches the heart and the soul. It’s not a word to be used lightly! The very existence of such a word offers a hint into the Portuguese character and culture. It expresses something that we have no dire...

A few days ago I came back from Translation Forum Russia which took place in Ufa, Bashkortostan . My daughter Delia went with me because she never visited Ufa before (neither have I) and because of the trip to the Southern Ural mountains we planned to take after the conference with a small group of colleagues. Ufa is not considered one of the primary tourist attractions of Russia, though I am convinced now that it definitely should be. Some pictures of the city (not all of the pictures are mine, some were made by the official photographer of the conference Elena Ekaterininskaya, our company CEO Fedor Kondratovich and some other colleagues): The bee is a symbol of the region as Bashkortostan produces the best honey in Russia. We saw installations shown below in different parts of the city. There were still covered because of the cold weather, but they will be full of blooming flowers as soon as the warm weather comes. The bee as we saw it That's what it...

We are humans and we screw up many times! And receiving a negative feedback about your translation work if one of them. As translation professionals, we work daily with people from different cultures and backgrounds. So, it is quite important to keep a level of etiquette while we do our business communication. Whatever your years of experience or your educational background, there are times when daily life affects our business badly. It is how we react to these situations what makes a big difference between professional translation service providers and those who are not. I was lucky enough when I started my translation career back in 2004 to read about the “ A Complaint Is a Gift ” business book and receive my training by a true professional Arabic translator. My colleague taught me the tactics of a professional’s reply to a negative feedback and the book mentions the bright side of receiving a complaint about your work. If the client does not like your work, he can just m...

It seems from current trends that the German translation market is becoming more and more important as time goes on. Due to an apparent increase in demand, the German Book Office in New York recently arranged a workshop for new and current German English translators. It’s keen to support the growing army of German to English translators, particularly those that are involved in literary translations. Is Literary Translation More Challenging Than Any Other Translation Task?

If you’re a freelancer providing a professional translation service and you don’t have a marketing plan, it’s time to write one. Now. A marketing plan is an essential tool in defining what you want to achieve and how you’re going to do it. It can help you to think through how you approach getting clients, ways in which you could be more effective and how to earn more money. Sounds good? Then let’s get started! Marketing plan overview

2016 was some year! It was a year when the breakneck speed of globalisation got a bloody nose, first from the Brexit vote in Britain and then the U.S. Presidential election shock result. In many parts of the world it felt that the trend towards greater communication and business expansion worldwide might slow down, even contract as communities in many countries signalled their discontent with being left behind. Could this affect the translation industry in 2017? It seems unlikely at this stage. 2016 saw a big spurt in the need for translators and there seems no signs of this slowing down in 2017. So what are the trends on the horizon, especially for marketing translation in 2017? More demand for video translators Marketing is using the power of video more than ever. As consumers demand ever increasing amounts of data access and are using their mobile devices to make choices over buying preferences, video marketing has an ability to sell products in a more lifelike way than still im...

Hi everybody! How are you? I've been missing you a lot! Seems like life's going faster and faster. Since I've been in touch with you last time, a lot of things have changed. Nancy Matis has finished her training course on Translation Project Management with our translator school , there have been a few more courses taught by Russian-speaking trainers, and some other courses have just started, including a brand new military translation course .  Today I'd like to share a guest post written by Hanna Sles , a fellow translator and blogger. So let's welcome Hanna! Let us know what you think about this post in comments! How to become a freelance translator: freelancing with direct clients or agencies? Freelancing is an excellent opportunity to be your own boss, work your own hours, and be responsible for your success. While some freelancers thrive on being their own boss, others find that they’re not as good at working for themselves as they were working for a c...

Hi everybody! I remember my promise to you about the linguistic side of the Translation Forum Russia conference and I am going to keep it. One thing I learned throughout the past couple months is that I'm probably never going to be completely free to write a blog post, and that's probably a good thing! So I will use whatever spare time I have to update this blog. The post about the conference will be the first to come, but I will also share more about my day job, and the amazing colleagues we are working with, like Nancy Matis. I will do my best to publish new articles regularly (or as regularly as I can)! Today I would like to share a guest post written by Rachel Campbell from Morningside Translations. It's going to be about 50 words untranslatable into English. Enjoy! Language is a truly remarkable thing in that around the world, you can find thousands of unique, complex variations, each of which offer a way for people to communicate and enjoy a conversation together...