Your professional translator

I just had to post this picture here, initially shared on Translators Do It Better page on Facebook I still remember what happened that day in March and that overwhelming feeling of shame... Awful. Why did that happen? It was all my fault. I knew I couldn't give my 100% to work because I was sick, but I still agreed to do it because I really, really missed translating. Money wasn't the issue. I just wanted to work.

Translation played a huge part in Russian history. It all started in 864 AD when the two Byzantine Greek brothers Cyril and Methodius were sent as Christian missionaries to the Slavs . They were the authors of Cyrillic system that is now considered one of the most used writing systems of the world (this is not my opinion, that's what Wikipedia says ). And then they translated the New Testament, the Psalms and some more religious books.  So our nation, our Orthodox church and our mentality now are to a great extent based on what those two brothers did, including their translation work. Later in history, a  lot of famous Russian writers and poets were also brilliant translators. They opened a whole new world of prose and poetry to the Russian people. And I am sure you have heard at least some of these names I am going to share with you today!

It has been about 6 months since I started subcontracting work to other freelancers. So it's about time to make some conclusions and share my lessons. I'd also like to hear from you if you have experience working with subcontractors.

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...

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 ...

December and January are my time for reviewing my life and setting big and small goals for next year. Do you remember my post from July 20 ? So let's watch if I made any progress. I have to admit that I haven't achieved my targets for 2010 that I set to myself, but I am far from being disappointed. I wanted to attract 100 people to by blog. Well, I don't have 100 readers. But my FB fans read it, I know. That makes 62 people. Plus I know of 1 or 2 more people who regularly check out my blog for new posts. That makes 64. Not bad for the first half a year of blogging! =) And I don't want to just attract anybody, I want my blog to be interesting for people who have something to do with translation! So I am not disappointed. =) My second goal was to earn enough money to be able to help my husband support our family. Well, I can say that I've been doing better at that, too, though I haven't reached my target monthly income yet. But, what's more imp...

Several days ago I got a sign that I've been moving in the right direction with my translation business, and that providing additional value besides just translation itself IS important. A couple weeks ago I got a project through one of my favourite translation agencies from a client who turned out to be ... hm... not very organized. So after I did the translation I had to make amends to the text and translate little additions to it, plus check the graphic files several times making sure that the client didn't make mistakes after my part was done. I was fine with that because it was a very special project and I really wanted everything to be perfect. It was a great pleasure when I opened another message from the project manager and saw that he was thanking me for being "so service oriented". Those words gave me a lot of joy. I can see that my plan is working and I am gradually becoming one of the best translators in my spheres of expertise. Why? Because I think real...