Your professional translator

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<...

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...

It's all here, in my new interview to freelancermap.com. I am grateful for a chance to share my experience and some tips with the subscribers of this wonderful website. The interview was an interesting process. I've been kind of silent here, because now being only a part-time freelancer, I can't decide what to write about. There are a couple posts in my drafts, but I've been hesitating about publishing them. So big thanks to Doreen for showing me that my experience can still be valuable for others. Dear Doreen, I promise, I will keep this blog living and active! So, things you will learn from this interview include: 1. How I became a freelancer (though you might already know that part ;-)) 2. Why freelancing is a part-time business for me now and how that transition actually happened. 3. What do I do to find new clients and keep them :-) 4. Some marketing and success tips from me. And of course, I will be happy to read your stories! Here's what you ca...

Fist of all, I am amazed at how popular my previous post became. There have been over 5000 views of it already. It has never happened to any of my posts before, which tells me that the article really struck the chord with my colleagues. We need to be honest and open about mistakes we make! That's how we can learn from one another! Thanks for all your comments here and in social networks. Your opinion and your experience matter! One of my readers asked to render an account of the ways to remedy those mistakes . I think it's a great idea, and, besides my experience, I am also going to use the experience of my colleagues, shared publicly in their blogs or in comments to the previous post.

Hi everybody! I am so happy to see you again! Today is my happiest day in a loooooong time - the end of Delia's school year! Yay! Parents love summer vacations just as much as kids do :) A few good things happened since we talked last: 1. I had a webinar on ProZ about Google Plus and what it offers to us, translators. In spite of some unexpected sound problems everything went excellent! 2. A few days before the webinar I was interviewed by Maria Kopnitsky about my experience as a translator, trainer and social media enthusiast. Here is the link . Hope you like the post.

Image source At least once in our professional life, all of us translators – beginning or experienced – have dealt with the translation of Portable Document Format (PDF) files. That being the case, there is no need stating the hard times we must have had handling such files, especially when it came with deciding how to process them and reflecting on ways and means to effectively render the target document in both a convenient and presentable way. Following the steps outlined below can prevent us much headache and help us to get out of trouble.

Just like most full-time translators working for well-known firms worldwide, I did not start my language professional career in the field of translation or interpreting . As soon as I graduated from university, I started teaching English at a secondary school. It was both challenging and fun, as working with a wide variety of students of all ages and backgrounds provided me with good knowledge of the human brain and heart.

Not long ago I finished a translation project related to international trade. At times I had real fun while translating. Why? Because customs seems to be that kind of service where everything, including translations, needs to be brought to some kind of a uniform standard. In reality, it's not always so (especially in the Russian-English non-native translations I came across). But I thought I'd put my discoveries here for future reference. As for those terms that have more than one variant of translation, you can always ask your client which option they prefer. Even if you are not a translator, these links may be very useful if you are learning English or Russian, especially for business. So check them out!

My friend and colleague Konstantina Drakou started a new series of guest posts in her blog called " So, graduation! Translator? And, then what? " and she kindly asked me to share my story. It always feels weird and a little awkward to speak or write about myself. Hopefully, I did a good enough job for you to see where I came from, how I became a freelance translator and in general, why I am who I am ;) You can find the post here, in Konstantina's blog . Happy reading!

After I realized how popular my last post about translation and language related tweets turned out to be, I thought it would be good to publish the links to most valuable content each month. So, here's the list of most popular tweets about translation and languages in March. Just so we are clear, it's not "my favourites" list. In order to define top tweets, I go to the website called topsy.com and find tweets for a specific month with most retweets and mentions. And then I publish them here. Last month I published tweets that got no less than 6 retweets. This month I decided to publish tweets with no less than 10 retweets and mentions. I can't say that I don't carefully choose the content for these posts though. Sometimes there are purely promotional tweets with quite a few RTs and mentions done by the staff of the same company who published the initial tweet. I don't include those in my list. I seldom include tweets with no links to useful materi...

I've been learning to use this translation memory tool and I think it is worth the attention of professional translators. I have been studying this whole issue of translation memory tools and trying to figure out which would suit me best. I like Wordfast, especially the Wordfast Anywhere cloud option. But it works with only a few formats, so I thought I need to discover something else. And then thanks to Rose Newell's blog I learned about OmegaT. Later I started reading Velior's blog and found out that this is a very useful tool. Since then I've been bookmarking their posts about OmegaT. A week ago I finally downloaded the program and by now I have done 4 small projects using it and I kind of like it.

I recently read a wonderful post in Writing Happiness blog called " 10 habits of highly successful bloggers " and I thought it would be interesting to find out what successful freelance translators have in common. Also, in the past two weeks I had three interviews with experienced blogging translators, so they also gave me some food for thought. Plus I've been following a few translation blogs and my conclusions are based on what I've learned from them. But first of all, I need to share my view on success with you, because all of us define this term differently. Some people think that being successful is being in demand . Others think that success is financial security . Yet others think that being successful means being a well-known professional with a spotless reputation .

There are obviously numerous different paths that can be followed in order to become a fully qualified translator or interpreter. No one definitive route exists that is considered the standalone, perfect way to forge a career for yourself in the industry. In fact, one of the most interesting aspects of working for a translation agency is that I get to meet linguists from all sorts of different backgrounds besides the obvious cultural ones. Many have always operated as freelancers, while others have had careers as translators in the private or public sector or have worked more directly in their specialised field. Some have little more than a bachelor’s degree to their name; others have more qualifications than you can shake a stick at! One experience that countless translators I come across have benefitted from and speak highly of is completing a master’s degree. Again, master’s graduates I have the pleasure of meeting have done their degree at different stages in their career. Go...

I am so very excited to share the news about this webinar. I am sure it will be very useful for both new and experienced freelance translators. Joy has a lot to share! We are going to explore the vital issues for all freelance translators : Feast and famine cycle - is it really the norm? Not having enough work and having too much work Having trouble finding high paying clients Having unreliable freelance income You can sign up for the event FREE if you click here The event will take place on Tuesday, June 12th. You can learn more about it here . I hope to see you at the webinar!

I just finished reading a great book written by Joy Mo called " Say Goodbye to Feast-or-Famine ". Here's how it looks:

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:

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 ;)

Hi! How are you? I hope you are doing great and enjoying the blessings of this wonderful season. Autumn is a wonderful time of the year. In February, I wrote a blog post about having little work . Today I'd like to share my recent lessons about having a lot of work. Pretty much all throughout October I was literally swamped in work. So I'd like to share some things I've learned throughout this month.

Hi! Hope your week was good and now you're ready for a new blog post :) This post is about some changes in my life and business that occurred since I wrote about my goals in winter. Do you remember my post " How well I have achieved my goals for 2010 "? It's time to see what's changed. First of all, my goal was to reach 150 readers in 2011. Right now I have 17 email subscribers to my posts.  I also have 4 members who joined me through the "Become a reader" top menu option. So that makes 21 people. Many thanks to each one of you who found my blog interesting enough to subscribe for it! I also have 114 Facebook fans and about half of them read my blog on a regular basis. I also have some readers on Twitter (to be honest, I have about 380 followers. I don't think all of them read my blog, but I do know of at least some of them), so I can say that right now about 100 people read my blog regularly! I'd like to thank each one of my readers! It...

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...