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!

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!

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.

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?

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?

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.