Our Secret Interpreting Weapon

 Our secret weapons on vacation in Mexico. You might think: is it a special note-taking technique? Is it a memory-strengthening exercise? Some new and revolutionary way to excel at the dreaded long consecutive form? No, it's none of these things. Our secret weapon is simple, cheap, has nothing to do with technique and everything to do with confidence. Interpreting is challenging, especially in high-pressure situations...

Giveaway: Another $100 in Google AdWords

Since we had so much fun last time and we like sharing stuff (as twins, we learned to share early on), we figured we'd give away yet another $100 Google AdWords certificate that we just received as part of a little thank-you gift from Vistaprint (we are good customers). Last time, our German colleague Anke Wiesinger won the certificate, and we hope she's putting it to good use. A quick overview of Google AdWords:...

Keeping Track of Your Inquiries the Smart Way

When is the best – read: slowest – time of the year to go on vacation? Who is my best client in terms of translation volume? What is my proposal-to-job ratio? Do most potential clients contact me via e-mail or phone – and can I fire my fax? To get a better idea of how many potential clients contacted us when, how, and how many times quotes turned into projects, we’d been keeping a very simple Excel spreadsheet for many...

The Amazing Story of the Tripling Budget

A few days ago, a client for whom Dagy had done a few small projects requested a quote for a legal translation. He wrote that his budget was XYZ euros. Dagy did the math and it turned out that the actual price was three times as much, plus 20% tax. She sent a friendly e-mail, explaining to the client that it is not the client’s budget that determines the price, but the length of the source text. We’ve said this before, but here we go again: you are the service provider, and you determine the price. Don’t panic when potential...

Free Translation Advice and an Umbrella

Here is a story about how pointing out less-than-stellar translations can result in a win-win situation, make everybody happy and even make the lousy Austrian weather less frustrating. Our Austrian company, Texterei, is a member of KSV1870 (Kreditschutzverband, a collection/business protection service). For a membership fee, they conveniently track the creditworthiness and financial standing of companies in Austria....

Blogging Lesson Learned

Some of our wonderful readers noticed and contacted us because our blog was offline for roughly a day earlier this week. Thanks to our IT guru and guardian angel Thomas Gruber, it's now back online, and we couldn't be more grateful. This is a Blogger blog (part of Google), and here's what happened and what we learned: Google found some suspicious activity in the Gmail account that's associated with the Blogger account, which is Judy's (she rarely uses it). Google promptly shut the account down, which is a good thing. When Judy...