Translation and Language Industry Observations
Translation and Language Industry Observations
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 …
If you work for a translation agency or you are a localization manager in a company, chances are that you receive a lot of job applications via email from freelance translators. You may be getting several emails a day or dozens of emails each week. Unfortunately, most of the emails are from scammers who either …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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. …
I have a colleague called Ryan. He’s been with me since 2014. He’s reliable, consistent and a valued member of the team. I’m from Northern Ireland and he’s from the USA, so we’re both English speakers working in the west of France. What separates us is that I am a physical being and he is …
Let’s start with a few basic facts: the translation industry is huge and generated over US$45 Billion in 2018. The world has several hundred thousand translators who are making a living in this industry. It is clear that there is a lot of money out there and freelance translators can do very well in today’s …
