We recently came across an extremely well-written, hilarious and very insightful article written by fellow translator Wendell Rickets of ProvenWrite (excellent business name). Wendell's article is spot-on and full of inspirational points for linguists. The short version is: stand up for yourself, demand to get paid what you are worth, and act like the professional linguist that you are. Wendell's article really hit home with a lot of translators, as evidenced by the more than 60 comments that have been left thus far. Translators...
Two Entrepreneurial Lawyers/Linguists
A few days ago, we received an e-mail that two of the best legal translators (French<->English) had decided to go into business together. TransConnect Translations focuses, not surprisingly, on legal translations. We think their tag line is great: Translation for Lawyers by Lawyers. Congratulations, Marianne Reiner and Cindy Hazelton! We think theirs is an excellent, highly entrpreneurial idea: they have a native speaker in each language, can edit each other's work, and are both lawyers in addition to being linguists....
It's Official: Entrepreneurial Linguist Book Now Available
One year, hundreds of drafts, two hundred pages, two writers, eleven chapters, several dozen revisions, lots of sleepless nights, lots of second-guessing everything, dozens of logo and cover designs, three editors, one cartoonist, and one lay-out guru later: we have a book! We are delighted to announce that our book, "The Entrepreneurial Linguist: The Business-School Approach to Freelance Translation" is now available...
ATA Mid-Year Finance Seminar: Register Now
May 1 -2 is an important holiday weekend in many European and Latin American countries, but in the U.S., it is just another late-spring weekend. For those of you looking for continuing education points to keep your ATA certification current, those who did not have a chance to go to the ATA annual conference in New York, and those of you who specialize in financial translation: the ATA/DVTA finance seminar might be for you. The seminar, which will be held in Philadelphia, is conveniently located for all those East Coast linguists...
Google Docs Gets Even Better
As many of our readers might know, we are big Google fans and love Google Docs, which lets you collaborate on documents with colleagues from around the world. It's a very powerful, user-friendly tool. As with all things Google, the interface is simple and clean, and yes, it is free. We thought Google Docs was quite impressive before, but the company just released a new version with many upgrades. Our favorite is the sidebar chat, which lets you chat with collaborators in real time as you are working on a document. In addition,...
How Many Linguists Does It Take.....
....to organize an entire one-day conference? Apparently, if you are highly organized and ambitious, it only takes a grand total of two. Those of you who, just like us, serve on boards of directors of your local, state, or national associations are probably cringing at the thought of organizing an entire conference with just two people,. There is more: two Dutch linguists organized an entire conference without the help...
Billing: What We Learned
Without a doubt, payment and billing issues are not on the top of our list of favorite things. However, the reality of running a small business includes occassional complications and snafus with billing. We recently learned a simple, but important lesson and wanted to share it with our readers.
Last month, Judy did an interpretation assignment for a major insurance company. Everything went really well, and as is customary for us, Judy issued the invoice the very same day the services were rendered. Our maximum allowable payment...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
