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...

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...

"Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm." Sir Winston Churchill Image granted by my colleague and friend Magda Phili If Sir Winston Churchill was right, then I should be very successful. We all make tons of mistakes. And I am not an exception. My mistakes nowadays may not be as big as they were at the beginning of my freelance career, but I still make them and do my best to learn from them. I also watch others make mistakes and I do my best to learn from them, too. So here's the list of major mistakes in freelance business I made since 2007. Hope it helps other colleagues to learn and grow. And you are welcome to share the mistakes you made, so we can all learn from one another!

Hi everybody! As you know, I am speaking at the Sharp End Training virtual worker conference this Tuesday. If you haven't heard about it yet, you can check the info here . We already held a similar conference for freelance translators and it was a great success! But there were also quite a few people who couldn't come, so this is your chance ! The online conference features a panel of speakers all experts in aspects of virtual working, blogging, client relations, networking, presentations and more .

If you have been following my blog for some time you might remember this post where I talked about my experience in social media. Well, there have been a few changes since then in my social media preferences. One of the huge changes happened when Jonathan Senior , the head of Sharp End Training, and I decided to create a special group for freelance translators. LinkedIn group . My first reaction to any changes is always panic. I have no clue why. But as a grown-up person and a business owner I understand the value of change and going beyond the limits of my comfort zone . So I did it. I became a manager of our group and you know what? I love it now. I absolutely love it. We now have over 400 members and have some interesting discussions going on. You can see the group profile and enter the group here if you want. This group also gave me the urge to start exploring the options that LinkedIn gives to its users. I started participating in the discussions not only in my group, b...

I know freelancers normally hate those times when they have little or no work. Especially if they are just beginning their career. But on the other hand, living constantly in a hectic rhythm isn't good for us . Moreover, those "famine" periods can even be useful for us and our businesses! Let me show you some things that I do when I am not overloaded with work. Maybe this list will give you an idea about things you can do! And if you have something to share, please do!

Recently, I've been thinking about the cultural/geographical aspect of rates. I remember my dear Twitter friend Konstantina Drakou also wrote about this issue in her blog post called " Is geography a quality factor? " I don't know why, but I regularly get messages from European translation agencies proposing me work for 0.02-0.03 EURO per word (how "generous"!) and they get really surprised when I state my actual rates. This is even more surprising for me because those companies find me through proz.com and other translation portals where my rates are clearly stated. I know that the issue of "competitive rates" is pretty important in this competition between different agencies in order to get more customers. But as a professional, I realize that I don't have to win clients only with my rates. There are far more important aspects to consider:

After two years of blogging I can definitely say that I love it. Can't imagine my life without it now. And there are some pretty serious reasons why I wouldn't give it up. Would you like to know them? Then read further :)

I have two very important announcements for you! Hope you find both of them useful. 1) I thought I already shared it, but I apparently forgot to post the info in my blogs :( Please forgive me! I am correcting this mistake, so here is the first announcement: Remember me talking about Joy Mo's book and then webinar ? Well, if you couldn't attend the live event, you can now watch the webinar replay !  You can follow the link and buy the recording. We got some wonderful reviews from the translators who attended the webinar, and I found it very useful, too. I really liked the fact that the webinar was literally packed with useful information and ideas for translators. Besides, though event went a little longer than planned everybody stayed till the end! That also proves that the webinar was extremely useful for translators. 2)  The second announcement is very important for all those who would like to   use Twitter to its maximum potential . Remember my review of co...

This is a personal post, and I'd really like to hear the opinion of my colleagues about such situations and how to deal with them. My situation is kind of like the one described in Mox's blog . In December a new prospective client wrote to me asking about my availabiility for a new project. When I read the overall description of the project, I got really interested in it. But the client needed to know exactly how much time it would take and how much it would cost. No problem, just send me the text to look through or a part of it so I could get the gist of the style, level of complexity etc. In the reply that person just stated the wordcount, but there was no sample. I thought, maybe they didn't understand me. English is not my native language after all. In my reply, I stated the estimated time and cost based on the client's wordcount, but I repeated the request to see a part of the text. And then the person thanked me and ... disappeared.

Dear readers, I am so happy to greet you now in 2012! Hope you had a wonderful Christmas and New Year celebration! In my next post I am going to share our celebration with you ;) The past year was very interesting. It was challenging, but also rewarding. It was in 2011 when I started receiving more comments to my posts and now my blog gets more than 2000 visits each month. I am so grateful to all my readers! This blog wouldn't exist without you! You rock! I'd like to share the most popular posts from 2011 with you. Some are quite logically popular, others - well, frankly speaking, I didn't quite expect them to be so interesting, but it was a good surprise. So, here's the list:

When you read translation blogs, especially advice from more experienced translators to their less experienced colleagues, the most popular topics are: setting your rates and keeping them, defining your fields of specialization, working on your quality, productivity and marketing. But I think there's one more thing we need to think about from the very first days as translators: topics that we won't cover, no matter how much money we are offered for our services. Those things differ from person to person. What you will or won't do really depends on your personality, views, religion, life experience and a lot of other factors. I don't translate texts that promote any occult practices, pornography, abortions, prostitution, smoking, drinking or any illegal actions. Please don't think that I am trying to impose my views on you! I don't work with such texts because of who I am and my priorities. My goal is helping people with my work , not doing them any har...

With the New Year rapidly approaching, I am starting to analyze this past year. In fact, I've been analyzing all the changes in my life since 2007. And I am learning to value the Lord's timing, His guidance and support while He has continuously been pushing me out of my comfort zone. I started working in the church while I was still a student and I never wanted to look for a different job, or a different position. Even when I realized that changes were necessary I did not welcome them. Partly, this was because I loved my work in the church. I made a lot of friends, I had a chance to develop the skills that could otherwise remain hidden, plus I had a privilege of serving the Lord and helping people in Vladimir and its suburbs, and even people from other countries. Thankfully, the latter point applies to my life now as well, otherwise I'd have to admit that I made a huge mistake ;)

January 1, 2010. Delia is standing next to one of her favourite cartoon characters made of snow Last year I wrote a post about advantages and disadvantages of being a freelancer . Now, as I am sitting by my daughter watching her sleeping and finishing another urgent assignment, I realized how blessed I really am. I can see how she's growing. I can spend time with her. I can take her home from the kindergarten right after lunch, not in the evening like most parents do. Every day we read or do some maths to prepare her for primary school. We can go outside and play in the first snow. We can watch her favourite cartoons together. All while people with 'normal' jobs are still at work. To me, this is the greatest advantage of being a freelancer. Yes, there are deadlines, taxes and Russian laws which are hard to figure out without some legal help, and sometimes I am not sure whether I'll be able to pay all the bills (but our awesome, amazing Lord helps us every single ti...

I started my journey in the freelance world in March 2007, so I am a relatively young freelance translator. My very first year as a freelance translator was pretty tough. In fact, I landed only one or two jobs during that year. But then (thank God!) I met the first two agencies who were satisfied with both my experience and quality enough to work with me on a regular basis. I got about 90% of all my translation work through them and was completely satisfied with that situation (big mistake! Now I know that I still had an employee's mentality back then, and this mentality didn't serve me well). But two years ago the situation changed and I started getting a lot less work from those agencies. That was horrible! I realized that I had made a mistake somewhere along the way. So I used my free time to surf all over the web and find information on how other freelancers look for clients and projects, what kind of rates they consider reasonable and how they build their schedule. And I c...

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...

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 ...

You may have already noticed that I am this kind of person who likes to meditate (in the Christian sense of this word) on different issues. So I've been thinking about this concept called "a good freelance translator". From a client's point of view . I intentionally avoid the term "successful translator" because I think it describes the translators' point of view. I've noticed that my clients don't quite care about how successful I am . All they care about is how good I am . So I decided to try thinking like a client and figure out what makes a good freelance translator. And the first thing I thought about was motivation . When your clients see that you put your whole heart into their project they will trust you more. If you are interested in the project your motivation will help you achieve the best possible results! A little tip for clients: Your appreciation, respect and friendly attitude can work miracles. I've had a few cases when m...

For the past two weeks I've been mainly doing proofreading and editing projects. I would like to share a lesson that I learned through one of my editing projects. There were two proofreaders who worked with the text. (The project was huge, so the proofreading work was divided between two people). The first proofreader obviously thought anyone can proofread translated texts . After all, if you speak two languages why not earn some extra money? That was the first time in my freelancing career when I realized that a proofreader can actually make a text worse, not better. How? Well, this person didn't check the spelling or grammar, and if he did, he obviously didn't bother about being consistent with the changes he made. He even changed the right grammar into wrong (!) and did everything possible to make the translation sound as literal as possible. (The client needed the text that sounded natural, not funny. So I was quite surprised that this proofreader actually thought t...

Every translator needs to keep working on the quality, otherwise we will quickly lose our clients. They want us to be reliable, because their business depends on our quality and promptness. So I have been striving for better quality from the very beginning of my freelance career. There are two dimensions in this process: the first is working on your quality "here and now" to make sure you send the best possible translation to your client; the second is working on improving your writing style, your spelling/grammar and other skills that you need in order to progress in your freelance career. Here are some ideas that have helped me and may be helpful to you: Keep a list of mistakes that you often make. Thus, next time when you need to type this difficult word, it will be right there before your eyes! That will definitely save you time that you normally spend on looking for the same word in a dictionary or typing it wrong and then correcting it. Do a thorough research ...