On Language and Translation: A 12-Step Program for Large Projects

On Language and Translation: A 12-Step Program for Large Projects

Getting the most out of a conference

I am getting excited for American Translators Associations annual conference at the end of October and I hope to see some of you there. It is two months away but it is high time to start planning for it. Here are some tips on what to do to get the most out of a conference you are attending.



Before the conference:
- Make professional looking business cards so you can exchange them with all the people you meet.
- Polish up your resume and print out at least 50 ex to bring with you to the conference
- Contact the people you know and see if they will be attending so you can plan to meet
- Contact a few people that you would like to get to know better and suggest a meeting during the    conference
- Explore the conference schedule to see which sessions you cannot miss. Be selective and strategic about planning your schedule!
- Plan questions you would like to ask the people you want to get to know better, or potential clients
- For the ATA conference: see the insider tips provided by the Colorado Translators Association for great tips on exploring Denver and eating well.

At the conference:
- NETWORK!!! Engage others in conversation and ask for their business card
- Schedule time to meet with people you would like to speak to
- Take advantage of social events and breaks
- Attend valuable sessions and workshops (duh!)
- Distribute business cards and resumes to valuable colleagues and prospects
- Jot down a few descriptive points on the back of the business cards you receive to make it easier to follow up

After the conference:
- Review you notes and documents from the conference. Make a to do list to take action on valuable information from the conference, people to contact, business tips etc.
- Follow up with people within 1-2 weeks after the conference

Do you have any useful tips on how to make the most of a conference? Please share!

How do you keep up your native language when living abroad?

For a freelance translator living outside the country where they speak my native language, it is imperative that I work hard on keeping up my native language skills. I have several Swedish friends who are not doing that and they start sounding very "Swenglish" after a while, not to mention the writing. How do you keep up your language when living abroad? Here are some ways I do this:

1. Speak my language at home and with Swedish friends every day.
2. Read Swedish books. We have even started a Swedish book club where we read and discuss Swedish books, written by Swedish or Nordic authors.
3. Read Swedish newspapers and industry journals online every day or at least several times a week.
4. Listen to Swedish radio while working. ;-)
5. I am not much of a TV watcher, but I am grateful to be able to watch some Swedish TV-programs online every now and then.
5. Last, but not least. Travel back to Sweden as often as possible. I try to go once a year and stay for a month. Unfortunately Sweden is quite far away from Utah, US and the trip is expensive. It is also very important to me to bring my children when I go so they can keep up their second native language.

One thing that will really help is my husbands sabbatical year in two years. He is a professor at the university and will get a sabbatical year every 7 years. Then we will go to Sweden and live there for a year and a half. I am so looking forward to this, but my children not so much. Perhaps because they will be 14 and 12 then and it is a sensitive time in their life. But I know that in retrospect it will all be good for all of us.

Do you think this is working? I do. However, just to make sure, I also have a native Swedish proofreader living in Sweden that I work with. Are there any freelance translators out there reading this that are not living in their native country? How do you keep up your language skills?

Becoming a translator - by accident, meant to be, or strategic decision

Lately, I have been thinking about how I became a translator, and I was wondering if there are many that are in my situation. How did you become a translator? Was it by accident, was it just meant to be or did you make a conscious decision to become a translator?

I am born and raised in a bilingual country, Finland, and speaking the minority language, Swedish there. My education and upbringing was all in Swedish and I knew more about the Swedish culture, than I did the Finnish. Strange? Early on I loved reading and writing and soon developed a keen interest in languages and different cultures. Apart from my mother tongue, I studied English, Finnish, German, French and Italian in school. Did I ever think of becoming a translator? No! It never crossed my mind. I ventured on with studies in International Marketing, hoping I could make use of my language skills and love for different cultures through that.

After my university studies I lived in both France and Belgium and settled in Sweden. I met Kevin, who is now my husband, during my studies. He is an American and received a great job opportunity in Utah, USA, and that is how I ended up here. When I arrived, I was pregnant with my second child, used to one year of maternity leave, great daycare and a very family friendly company, working as a product marketing manager. Coming here was quite a culture shock and I decided to stay home with my two small children.

After a while I started looking into possibilities of working from home and tried all sorts of multilevel marketing opportunities with no real success. One of my friends suggested that I should be a translator. One day I was playing around on the Internet and found some translator networks online. I studied them, did some research online, and decided to sign up. It wasn't long until I received my first job and after that I have never looked back.

I have now worked as a freelance translator for 7 years, educated myself on the way, and now have a successful freelance translation company. I learn something everyday and love what I do. I also love learning and would become certified and educated if there would be opportunities for English-Swedish translation education and certification in the US. At least I am working on starting English-Swedish certification through the American Translators Association.

But I am wondering about others. Many other translators that I know are highly educated, and come from successful careers in medicine, law etc. How did they decide to become a translator? Was it by chance, like me? There are educational programs in translation. Therefore, there must be many people that early on have made a conscious decision to study translation and become a translator. Whichever way you get there is a good way. Don't you just love what you do? Please share!

More about me on Watercooler

Andrew Bell is managing the popular "Watercooler ...Networking for Professional Translators", where you can read a lot of interesting discussions about everything regarding the translation business. This week he is graciously featuring an interview with me on the Watercooler. If you want to find out more about Watercooler you can go to http://watercoolernetwork.com/ and if you want to read the interview, you can go to http://watercoolernetwork.com/profiles/blogs/spotlight-ontess-whitty

How do you market? Do you have a marketing plan?

I am writing a paper/presentation on marketing plans for freelance translators. This is your chance to contribute (I would mention you). How do you market yourself as a freelance translator? Do you have a marketing plan? I know I will have one soon, since I will be presenting one. ;-) Hope to hear from you!

Child Labor at Swedish Translation Services

This summer I asked my 11 year old son if he wanted to work for me a bit. He did, and went online himself to find out the minimum wage in Utah. He ended up working about 6 hours a week for three weeks. He would have worked more if I had more work for him, and if he had not been away at camps or travel for most of July. He updated my customer database and put everything into an online customer relationship management program called Zoho. (http://www.zoho.com/). He also put in all my "prospects" and did a great job. Now I just have to use Zoho and all the contacts in it. Perhaps he can help me send out some news last week of summer break. We will see!

I was very happy with the help, and will certainly employ him for more work later. I am already looking forward to when he can do more complex tasks. He is my favorite assistant for sure. Perhaps he can do Swedish-English translations in a few years. At the moment I am feeling a bit overwhelmed with some administrative task and marketing task, and I am looking for a good Virtual Assistant to hire for website maintenance, design, SEO and market research. Please let me know if you have any recommendations.

Are anyone else out there using their children as helpers in the company? If so, please share your experiences. Have a good rest of the summer!

Victor Borge - Inflationary Language

I am having a particularly hard time getting started on this work week/Monday. Must be the result of a slight work overload lately. However, I just found this link with a five minute presentation on what would happen if the language would be affected by inflation too. Sure to cheer all you linguist up today. Off to work I go.

Creating a Marketing Plan for Freelance Translators

I am grateful to have a background in international marketing, both professionally and as an education. Now I would like to share this knowledge with other freelance translators and I get the opportunity to do so at the ATA:s annual Conference in Denver, CO on Saturday Oct. 30th.

Most of us know that we should have a marketing plan for our small (or one man) business. But how do we create one that is targeted specifically to our industry? The session will cover the elements of a marketing plan, such as objective, product/service, unique selling points or benefits, market and segmentation, competition, customers or prospects, what media to use and how to track, follow and adjust the marketing plan. Specific examples are given that are targeted and adapted to the translation industry from the standpoint of an independent contractor.

I hope to see you there, but if you miss this you can also watch/listen to a presentation on the subject at the ProZ Virtual Conference on Translator's Day, Sept, 30th, 2010.

Now you have a chance to also share your marketing tips for freelance translators by posting them as comments here. Do you have a marketing plan?

While I was away - Six great blogpost for freelance translators

I am back from a whirlwind vacation. 10 days, three states (Idaho, Oregon, Nevada), 2,400 miles, two houses, three campgrounds, elevation 0 above sea level to 9700 feet above, plus family reunion and 50th anniversary party. Whew!

Here are some links to great blog posts that came while I was gone:

Right now there is a 10% summer discount on a great book for freelance translators. The book is "The Entrepreneurial Linguist: The Business-School Approach to Freelance Translation" by Judy and Dagmar Jenner and contains all the bricks and mortar, plus great ideas on how to have a thriving freelance translation career. The book can be ordered here.

Here is a great blog post about quoting for freelance translation jobs and the ever popular topic on how to determine your rates from Naked Translations.

We all wish to have direct clients, especially direct clients that pay reasonably and quickly. Corinne McKay has a great blog post on how to ensure payment from direct clients on her blog "Thoughts on Translation".

Machine translation has been a hot topic for a while now and we are probably all following the discussion with great interest. I found this post "What is holding the wider adoption of Machine Translation back?" on eMpTy pages by Kirti Vashee. Very interesting reading stating reasons why MT is not more common yet.

BecomeATranslator.com posted an interview on the Global Translation Certificate Program offered by The Global Institute. I did not even know about this certificate before, perhaps because they do not offer courses for English-Swedish. Does anyone else have any views on this certification program?

Eve Bodeux is gathering information for a Vendor Management seminar later this fall and is looking for your views and feedback on the relationship between vendor/agency and freelancer. Give your opinion and feedback here.

Well, I better start transitioning into working mode again. I am lucky to have two weeks booked already with translation projects into Swedish. Until later!

Linguistic quality assurance

The second of the four types of quality assurance for freelance translators is linguistic quality, which is the most important aspect for us linguists. The subject has been discussed in many venues and forms before but a refresher is always useful.


I summarized linguistic quality in my previous post as the following:
- Only accept projects that are within your expertise
- Have access to suitable, current reference material
- Use relevant tools that increase quality, for example translation memory and spell checking
- Proofread the end result carefully

Today I want to develop each of these points a bit further. Linguistic quality is the foundation for the “product” we deliver and the core of our knowledge. Many have tried to create “systems” for linguistic quality assurance. There are the ISO and BS systems, there is certification and accreditation, and there are quality assurance programs etc.


Are you feeling overwhelmed already? What can a translator do for quality assurance? Here are some tips:


1. Only accept jobs within your area of expertise/specialization and only translate into your native language.
2. Use CAT-tools to avoid omissions and eye mistakes and to keep the formatting.
3. Never hesitate to contact your customer for clarifications.
4. Find another translator to co-operate with for second proofreading when needed.
5. Always read the clients reference material and use their glossaries
6. Know the target audience for the final product and translate for this audience.
7. Understand the objective of the translation project; is it informative text, ad copy, brand identity…?
8. Use Translation Quality Assurance software if available. These are able to decrease the number of mistakes and improve the overall quality, even if they cannot detect everything, or detect too much/the wrong things.
9. Proofread carefully.


When you proofread there are even further tips to increase the quality:


1. Avoid rework by translating each phrase as if the translation were to be published immediately.
2. Keep a list of dangerous words that you often mistype, but that a spell checker cannot detect.
3. Run the spell and grammar checker. Before doing this though, select the entire document, set the language to your target language and make sure that the checker is fully active.
4. Learn study and comply with target-language typography and punctuation rules. I have noticed that this is one of the most common mistakes among newer translators. For example in US English you write $3,000.00, but in Swedish it is written USD 3 000,00.
5. Never use the “Replace all” command
6. Proofread by comparing with the source, but also by just reading the target text to check that it “flows”.
7. Check headers, footer, graphs and text boxes. These are easy to miss; even CAT-tools can miss them sometimes.


Last but not least, read in your target language often and take continuing education classes at conferences, universities, translation associations etc.


These are some of the tips I have collected. Do you have any you find valuable?
I will leave you with this rather long and heavy post for the month of July. I am off on a road trip to the Oregon coast for family reunions, parties and camping. Have a great summer!

What is administrative quality for freelance translators?

Today I would like to go a bit deeper into my previous post about quality assurance for freelance translators, or any type of freelancer. I will start with administrative quality. This is again based on information I have received from the Swedish Association for Professional Translators (http://www.sfoe.se/).

All work is easier if you use structure and routines to improve quality. It is important to organize your work and not change routines that work very often, especially routines for accepting jobs, registering jobs, purchase orders, organization of your translation work, project management, deadlines, delivery, invoicing and accounting.

Without administrative routines it is next to impossible to deal with possible complaints, since you cannot track your jobs or find proof for your case. Stress levels are elevated when you cannot find things, and the profitability decreases if you need to do rework for things you cannot find. Perhaps you forget to invoice for a job you performed, or cannot invoice properly, since you lost the purchase order.

I am not here to impose a certain way to do things for you. If you have a system that works, great! If not, try to find one that works for you. Create a filing system on your computer that makes it easy for you to find things. Use an accounting software and invoicing software. I file things by customer, project and date and also file all emails by customer. That works well for me and I can find and trace jobs easily. The most important thing is that you can go back and find that PO, that invoice, or that translation you did 11 months ago.

Do you have any other advice for administrative quality and organization? All advice welcome! Have a great, stress-free summer and good luck with organizing your business.

Is warm sunny weather affecting your productivity or schedule?

This is the second week that my children are on their summer break from school and the warm summer weather has finally reached Park City. More than ever I feel the need to plan my work time and set productivity goals, and I have noticed a shift in my hours. In the day, the warm sunny weather and my two wonderful children are pulling me away from the office, resulting in work still remaining to be done in the evenings. Good thing I am a night owl. I get up early, check email, plan for what needs to get done today, but then I take a several hour break and enjoy our garden, go to the outdoor pool or hiking with my children, plus play mommy taxi for camps and play date arrangements. My iPhone is a great help for the communication with my clients and the planning. Then I get back to the office late afternoon and start working again, often into the late hours of the evening. And do you know what? I kind of like it. I like that I can spend time with my children and enjoy the short, but fabulous, mountain summer AND work at the same time, just later in the evening. Long live freelancing!

Does your schedule change during the summer? Are you as productive? Please share!

What I learned about improving cash flow - 9 tips for freelancers

Tonight was the first time I attended the monthly meetings held by "Park City Women's Business Network". These are fun social events with a learning twist. Most of all, I enjoyed the networking with other business women in Park City. Tonight's speaker talked about improving your cash flow. The audience was very diverse and many also had business facilities and employees, but a lot of the tips were also useful for freelancers in general and me in particular with home based translation business.

Here are some of the tips I found useful for freelancers:

1. Improve profits by analyzing return on investment by customer and product line. I can very easily see from past result reports who are my most profitable customers and also which business activities that generate the most money (translation in my case).

2. Maintain customer loyalty (we all know this one, but it can never be repeated too much). Fix the problems, do something extra, follow up and ask for repeat business.

3. Sales and marketing - spend money to make money, but spend it wisely. Luckily we freelance translators have many low cost alternatives through Internet and social media.

4. Have the right tools available for your business - accounting tools, translation tools, project management tools

5. Implement a quality improvement program

6. Facilities - downsize, renegotiate lease terms or work from home. Insulate roof, attic, weather-strip doors, energy-efficient lighting, auto shutoff, check out tax credits.

7. Recycle and reuse - print on both sides of paper, buy reusable water bottles

8. Accounts receivable - be sure to put payment terms on your invoices and have a clear collection policy. Follow up with customer via phone and mail consistently and persistently. Consider requiring down payments of some portion for new customers.

9. Forecast cash flow and plan for future, retirement, have an exit plan

I also left the meeting feeling grateful that I work in a business where the level of financial investment is low and gladly skipped all tips about loans and financing. Now off to do some more translation work and improve my cash flow.

Four types of quality assurance for translators

The other day I received a pamphlet about quality for translators from The Swedish Association for Professional Translators (sfoe.se).



One way to make the concept of quality easier to deal with for linguists, is to divide it up into four parts: administrative quality, linguistic quality, business quality and cultural quality. International quality standards focus mostly on administrative quality, since it is the easiest to measure. Linguistic quality is the most important for language professionals. Business quality is defined as the relation to the customer, and cultural quality is when a translation speaks to the end customer/reader. All four are important for linguists and warrant further investigation.


Administrative quality:
Routines for handling translation projects, inquiry, offer, order confirmation, translation, control/check, delivery, invoicing, follow up, archiving.


Linguistic quality can only be achieved if you:
- Only accept projects that are within your expertise
- Have access to suitable, current reference material
- Use relevant tools that increase quality, for example translation memory and spell checking
- Proofread the end result carefully

Business quality can only be achieved if you:
- In advance check with the customer what they want/what is needed
- Deliver a product that fulfill the terms agreed upon

Cultural quality can only be achieved if you:
- Are thoroughly familiar with the cultural context of the source text
- Translate the text based on the cultural environment of the target language so that the text will have the same meaning.


I found these definitions very useful. It is easier to work on quality assurance if you can break it up into these aspects and follow them. What do you think? Do you have a system for quality assurance?

The power of immersion for linguist

We linguists are usually all language lovers and most of us know two languages fluently and often have various degrees of knowledge of a few other languages. We might have studied other languages in school, or have been living in other countries. What is then the single most efficient way to learn a language, and the culture, of a country? I believe it is immersion!

Last weekend I was spending four days in Paris, one of my favorite cities, where I have also lived on two occasions for half a year at a time. On arrival I felt that I barely remembered any French at all, after having been away for fifteen years. By the time we left though I could once again get by in French and all of the culture came back to me, and I also could notice some cultural changes.


This started me thinking about the power of immersion for linguists. We work with languages every single day and the single most efficient way to keep up on all the small details of the “other” language, and the culture is immersion. It is important that we regularly and often immerse ourselves in the second or first language of ours. This is not only for pleasure, it is a necessity in order to keep up with all the nuances, changes, slang, borrowed expressions from other languages, and of course, the culture. Try to spend time in the country where they speak the language you are working with as often as possible, read literature, newspapers, magazines etc. Speak the language as often as you can and listen to it as often as you can. It really works and makes you more and more proficient.


Fortunately for us, this has all become much easier with the Internet. I cannot afford to go to Sweden more than once a year, but then I usually stay at least a month. In between I read Swedish newspapers online, listen to Swedish radio online and here in Utah we have even formed a Swedish book club. We are 16 women that meets every six weeks to discuss a book that we have read and to just socialize in Swedish. I look forward to every single meeting.


Have you ever thought about how easily a child learns a second, or even a third language. This “ease” is usually achieved through immersion. For example Rosetta Stone has used immersion as a language teaching method. Granted, you cannot “immerse” yourself very easily through a computer, but it sure beats a regular text book and tape.


How do you keep up with your languages? Do you immerse yourself and how often do you get to do this?


A bientot!

Training for Professional Translators - ProZ an untapped resource?

Nothing beats the quality of a live training event and the networking you can get from attending a professional conference on a national or local scale, but if you do not have the possibility to attend all of these, and if you want to learn more in between these occasions, then ProZ.com can be an good resource. There are on demand training and live sessions.


Here are some examples of what you can find there:

Translator business development - 35 courses available
Training to help translation professionals improve their business on topics including, personal branding, how to find new clients, increase rates, negotiation, etc.

Software, tools & computing - 130 courses available
Training to learn computer aided translation tools, software and to remain current and up to date on the tools used by translation professionals.

Translation skills development & client services - 36 courses availableTraining to help improve translator efficiency, develop and learn new skills.

Agency business development - 10 courses available
Training to help improve your agencies efficiency, gain certifications, implement processes, and more.

Linguistics, theory & pedagogy - 10 courses available
Training to help improve language skills, translation essentials and theory.

SDL Trados Training & Certification - 19 courses available

Now we just have to find the time to tap these resources too. Perhaps some time management tips can help. Do you have any good online training resources to share?

Utah Translators and Interpreters Association - developments and events

I am glad to see that there is finally a local association in my neck of the woods for translators and interpreters. This has not always been the case, but now Utah Translators and Interpreters Association is growing and developing.

What activities does UTIA provide for its members?
Activities include informative programs relevant to translating and interpreting, as well as social events. Networking is an important benefit of participation.
Workshops, seminars and annual conferences provide for professional development and contact with a wider circle of colleagues.
ATA accreditation examinations, sponsored once each year, are one way for members to demonstrate their translation competence. Only ATA members may sit for these exams. Please see the web site of the ATA.

Here are some of the member events that are planned:

June 9th at 6:30 pm: Code of Ethics for Medical and Legal Interpreters
July 14th at 6:30 pm: Translation tools overview

Click here for more information on Utah Translators and Interpreters Association.

Local business expo events - anything for freelance translators?

I was heeding the advise of my Entrepreneurial Linguist consultant Judy Jenner and attended a local business expo and networking event arranged by the Chamber of Commerce last week. I was very sceptical going there. Who would need my translation services there? What was I doing there? I decided to go there anyway, with the mindset that I wanted to see what kind of businesses would be there. It was also good to get out of my office chair and actually network with people in the flesh for a change.

To my surprise I had a lot of fun. What did I get out of it? No new customers off the bat, of course, but many people were interested in hearing what I did. I found a PC-consultant that can fine tune and "clean" my computer for $45 four times a year, which sounded like a good deal to me. I became a member of the Local Business Women's organization and promised to give a presentation during one of their networking events. Last but not least, I was offered to be featured in the local/regional business magazine. I also got some contacts for event planning and tourism companies, who might need translation services.

So, even if you are translating into a unique/rare language, it is well worth attending a local business networking event from time to time, especially if companies that work in your expertise areas will be there. You never know what you will get out of it.

Vote for Top 100 language blogs

Lexiophile's are each year giving us the opportunity to vote for the Top 100 Language Blogs. The nomination process is over and the voting has begun. I feel very honored to be nominated this year. Thank you guys! My blog has only existed for about three months, but if you like my posts, please take a moment to vote for this blog. A great motivator! Thanks again all for nominating and reading this blog.

To vote for Blogging with Swedish Translation Services, you can click here: