Tag Archives: translation best practices

         

Podcast Interview: Three Ingredients to Becoming a World-Class Translator

Published on April 15, 2015
    


Tess Whitty was kind enough to interview me on her “Marketing Tips for Translators” podcast this week on such topics as premium markets, best practices, subject-matter expertise, how translators’ use of dictionaries is evolving, how we might need to radically change the way we train the next generation of translators, upheavals in the translation industry and the future of the translation profession. Bonus: My somewhat counterintuitive “tip” on how translators can best market themselves to direct clients and even the better boutique agencies. I’ve had some solid positive feedback from colleagues on the interview, so I thought I’d use this blog post to both spread the word on the podcast and also to provide a platform for commentary and feedback should colleagues have observations, objections or additional insight, which is very common (and always welcome) on this blog. The interview…



Translators as Rabid Philosophers of Meaning

Published on February 20, 2015
    


A book on translation and translators that’s concise, brilliant, entertaining and ultimately indispensable. It’s been five short years since its publication, but in this sparkling gem of a book, Chris Durban shatters the Poverty Cult thinking that still drives much of the labor pool that sustains the global translation services industry: the success-averse, hand-wringing, endlessly apologetic talent who have dutifully taken up their position as the trudging tortoise supporting three elephants, silently holding up the world, as in the Hindu creation myth. A refreshing blast of fresh air – part wake-up call, part tough-love and part an earnest appeal to practicality – this book stands in stark contrast to the endless parade of post-recession books and Internet 10-step guides on how to become a madly successful freelance translator by standing downwind of a person speaking kitchen Spanish and absorbing all…



Why Translators are Promoting Premium Markets

Published on November 28, 2014
    


As one of the more visible proponents for moving upmarket into the premium translation market sector — a position I’ve argued since 1997, but one that is just now finding traction as we can reach increasingly larger populations of translators with the message — I think it’s crucial to discuss why premium-market translators have volunteered so much of their time, money and effort in recent years to share their experience and expertise with their colleagues on this topic.  The ultimate objective of this outreach, of course, is to point our colleagues to the greater opportunities, higher rates, more challenging work and often exceedingly high levels of client appreciation for what we do – all characteristics of the premium market – for those translators with the skill sets, inclination, dedication, personality and commitment to make such a move. Market “research” vs….



Masters of the Translation Universe: 101 Things a Translator Needs to Know

Published on May 28, 2014
    


“Sometimes the original is just a pale imitation of the translation.” Translation takes a back seat to nobody in this bold and daring book, as that compelling and subtly wry observation makes abundantly clear. As just one of 101 pithy and insightful gems, this book represents the collected wisdom of 500+ years of experience from some of the most respected and, frankly, hardest working translators in the industry. All that hard work, though, is a labor of love and devotion and passion. And these authors – members of the WLF Think Tank, an informal gathering of like-minded colleagues – wish to share that passion and warmth and good humor with their translator colleagues around the world. Aimed squarely at the working professional translator – while effortlessly swatting away the vacuous, specious, silly and often wrongheaded advice from “consultants’” books, webinars…



Bad Advice for Novice Skydivers: “Learn As You Go.”

Published on December 11, 2013
    


  Why the First, Best Lesson I Learned about Translation Was a Healthy Fear I was a poor, scrawny white kid with crooked teeth who grew up in the barren hills of central Arizona. The year before my birth, the Soviets launched Sputnik, shocking the world, and causing a frantic U.S. Congress to allocate funding for fast-track training of the next generation in science and the Russian language. These were dollars that flowed downhill and into the deserts and chaparral country and back woods to us public school kids who played in dirt schoolyards and chased lizards and lived in makeshift trailer parks carved awkwardly into the hills. Just a few short years later, I found myself working as an intern, holed up in a tiny library with sunshine pouring through ornate windows in the Smithsonian Castle building on the…


             
  
   
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