Translation and Language Industry Observations

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Scam Alert: Beware of Fake GTS Representatives Targeting Freelance Translators

Attention, freelance translators! We have an important alert regarding a scam targeting professionals in our industry. Fraudsters are posing as representatives of GTS Translation and engaging in deceitful activities that can jeopardize your hard-earned work and livelihood. Hello, I have been contacted by email from your company. I have been working on a project for …

Top 3 Skills Needed to Be a Medical Translator

by Luke Smith You’ve found a career that combines your love of language with your desire to help people. A career as a medical translator is both an art and a science. It is at once a creative and caring profession. Yet, you need much more than superb linguistic skills if you want to thrive …

Ravaged by COVID-19, Seattle is a city in decline

This post is based on some emails I received from one of our translators. It illustrates how badly the COVID-19 pandemic has ravaged Seattle and the outlying areas. I wanted to share this with our readers: I am now up in Bellingham, a small college town 90 miles up the coast from Seattle. Seattle (where …

Interpreter vs Translator

Professional linguists and students of languages can choose from various career paths. Two of the mainstream occupations chosen by linguists are in the fields of interpretation and translation. What is a Linguist? A linguist is a person who studies or has studied language. But this is a very broad definition as there are many kinds …

Chinese Translators take Coronavirus in stride

The coronavirus could not have come at a worst time. During the Chinese New Year, many people take to the roads and railroads, sometimes traveling up to three days to be with family. The outbreak of the coronavirus forced many people to stay at home for the holidays. But for most translators, business is usual …

International debt collection. Is there a happy ending?

As a freelance translator or a representative of a company in the languages industry, you work with international clients in foreign lands. The nature of our business is international, so your exposure to foreign clients is inevitable. So what do you do when such a client does not pay for services rendered? It’s a good …

Translation prices. Per word or per hour?

In the translation and localization industry, translation prices are typically quoted on a per-word basis. So if a document or file has one thousand words, we multiply the number of words by the price per word to get the translation price per 1000 words. It is a simple pricing system which seems to work. Translators …

How to Improve Your Translation Skills

Are you considering becoming a full-time freelance translator? Good for you! But before attending to the business side of the matter, you need to be absolutely sure that you know what you’re doing. Unfortunately, simply knowing a second language does not mean you can translate. Learning the profession of translation requires a lot of dedication …

8 Best Tools for Freelance Translators

Even professionals tend to make mistakes. Busy workloads, prolonged concentration and associated fatigue can cause people to make silly mistakes even in the most routine tasks. In order to avoid these situations and to detect errors on time, there are a few special assistants that will safeguard the quality of your material. If you have …

I need more time! Top 10 excuses for missing the deadline.

As professionals in the translation industry, whether you are a translator, a PM, a designer, a sales manager or a translation company owner, we all live with the clock. Anyone who has worked in this business knows that deadlines are a part of our life and are sacred. If you promised your client to deliver …

Everything you need to know about CAT Tools

Translators face many challenges in their daily work. They are forced to deliver projects within short deadlines and are often asked to translate more words per day than reasonably possible. And all of this must be done without compromising quality. It obviously means that stress and pressure are a staple of a freelance translator’s life. …

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