Business Tip: Small Talk

Our last post of the year will be short and sweet. It's about the art of making small talk at business events, which can be quite mortifying for many introverted translators. Try the following approach. We prefer networking with food. Photo by Judy. Ask a question. Instead of immediately talking about yourself, which most people will do, ask the person you are speaking to a question about herself or himself. Most...

Do You Have Klout?

Earlier this year, our dear friend and colleague Karen Tkaczyk mentioned that a Klout score higher than 60 would get her into a fancy airport lounge at San Francisco International Airport. We'd heard of Klout, but had never spent any time researching it. This nugget of information got our attention. So what exactly is this thing, Klout? Well, it is a sophisticated set of algorithms that measures how important one...

Intro to Translation at UC San Diego-Extension: Starts January 7

Judy at UC-San Diego this summer. Happy holidays, dear friends and colleagues around the world! We are taking some well-deserved (we think) time off during the holidays, but wanted to let you know about some of Judy's upcoming online classes at the University of California-San Diego Extension (the Translation/Interpretation Certificate for the Spanish/English language combination). Have a look: Introduction...

InterpreTIPS: New Resource for Interpreters

Interpreting at a museum. Photo by Dagy. We are delighted to announce that two wonderful colleagues (who happen to be true industry dynamos) launched a very useful website for interpreters. It's cleverly titled InterpreTIPS and it's a series of videos featuring Katharine Allen and Marjory Bancroft They answer questions about interpreting submitted by colleages around the world. The first three videos are already...

MOOCs for Translators and Interpreters

Judy at Harvard, 2011. At this point, most people and probably all of our readers are familiar with MOOC (massive open online courses), which are offered for free (yes!) by some of the world's best universities. They are offered entirely online and all students can sign up, although a few courses are intended for advanced students in certain fields. We've written about MOOCs before, and we are delighted to see that...

Question & Answer: Interpreter Ethics

We oftentimes get questions from colleagues and we are flattered that our colleagues think that we are qualified to answer them, and many times we can. However, due to the sheer volume, it can be difficult to answer individual questions. That's why we try to answer some questions here on the blog for the benefit of all. Here's one of the recent questions we received. Ready for the EU? Picture by Dagy. A colleague...

Customer Service Superstars: Bagels

A  few weeks ago, the Nevada Interpreters and Translators Association held one of its many workshops. Just like every time, we pre-ordered some bagels and coffee from Einstein Bros. Bagels. Now, we've ordered from Einsteins for many years -- both for professional and personal events. We already know that the nice folks at Einsteins aren't always the best at getting our orders right, but their ability to make...

Potential Pitfalls: Listservs

What would we do without the internet and e-mail? We really have no idea how our treasured colleagues worked without any of these tools not too long ago. Our hats are off to them! In our modern age, we've really come to rely on technology to help us solve our translation-related challenges, but we still rely on the best resources out there: each other. Now, thanks to listservs (large e-mail lists, usually run by T&I...

Cringe-Inducing Video: The Importance of Professional Interpreters

Happy Black Friday to our friends and colleagues in the US and happy Friday to everyone else! While we are certainly not going shopping, we are taking the day to play catch-up with work before we take the rest of the weekend off. Today we wanted to share this cringe-inducing article and video with you. They really drive home the point that professional interpreters are essential in many, many situations, especially during press conferences and public events. We recently came across the post on a Turkish blog (Turkish Business...

5 Downsides to Working for Yourself

Many new translators and students ask us about what's better: working as an in-house translator or working for yourself as a freelancer. Judy has done both, while Dagy has never worked in house, but our answer is clear: working for yourself is infinitely better. However, there are a variety of significant downsides, so we wanted to briefly list a few of them. This is a question we get quite frequently, so we wanted...

Monday Humor: German-Language Video

Thanks to our colleagues from the German Language Division of the American Translators Association, who found this gem and recently posted it on the listserv. It's quite silly and a bit absurd, but it's also pretty hilarious, and makes a (funny, if slightly long-winded) point about German compound nouns. It's definitely intended for German speakers, but might be good entertainment even for those who don't speak the language. Enjoy...

NAJIT Conference: Call for Proposals

The 35th annual conference of the National Association of Judiciary Interpreters and Translators will take place in Las Vegas (Judy's hometown) in May 2014. This relatively small (250 attendees or so) is a fantastic opportunity to learn from some of the best legal interpreters and translators in the country, and next year will mark Judy's third conference, and perhaps her third as a speaker if her proposal is accepted. We've...

Getting Dressed for Work

Most self-employed translators get to work from home and can wear whatever they want to work, which is fantastic. After years of working in-house (Judy), it's certainly nice not to have to get dolled up by 8 a.m., but the question of whether you should be completely dressed and looking professional before you work from home where no one sees you is a topic that comes up quite frequently on listservs. It's a question...

Recommended Reading: White House Interpreter

Last week at the fantastic 54th Annual Conference of the American Translators Association, we were lucky enough to get an autographed copy of The White House Interpreter by legendary English->German diplomatic Harry Obst. In addition, we also had the chance to hear him give a very entertaining (and packed!) lecture. Mr. Obst is now in his 80s, and hearing him speak about his experiences interpreting at the highest...

Interpreting: Two Quick Memory Exercises

During last week's amazing 54th Annual American Translators Association Conference, several colleagues commented on the fact that we had good memory, as we tend to remember spouses' names, pets' names, and anecdotes that colleagues told us the previous year. We do think that we have decent memory, as we are both working interpreters, but just like all interpreters, we constantly work on it. Please read on for two...

ATA Conference: Where to Find Us

It's been one year, and now we are getting ready to jump on a plane and attend our very favorite conference: the 54th Annual Conference of the American Translators Association in San Antonio, Texas. We are very much looking forward to seeing all our lovely friends and colleagues, and it will be a pleasure to meet new friends, too! We wanted to share a brief overview of where we will be in case you'd like to stop by,...

Read This: Slaves Of the Internet, Unite!

For the record: We paid for this image.  This past Sunday, we did what we always do on Sundays: We read the print edition of the paper of record, The New York Times. Yes, we are old school like that and really like getting ink on our paper. And the paper smells great, too, but we digress. One article on the cover page of the Sunday Review caught our attention, and we wanted to share it with all of you, dear...

A New Tool: TranslatorPay

Earlier this month, we saw a quick Tweet by our friend Eve Bodeux of Bodeux International. She mentioned TranslatorPay as a new tool for translators to get paid internationally without having to incur significant bank fees (which we are not very fond of). We were intrigued and decided to have a look at the website. We have a long history of doing international bank transfers and PayPal transfers (both receiving and...

Mysterious Ways

This week, we've been thinking about the fact that business opportunities can really present themselves anywhere, and that has certainly been true for us. Here are a few examples of how business has worked in mysterious ways for us: Dagy just issued a price quote to a long-time customer in Vienna. We briefly talked about the project, and then reminisced about the fact that she met this client in her Pilates class....

The Results: Federal Court Interpreting Exam

After three months of waiting, Judy knows the result of the oral portion of the Federal Court Interpreter Certification Examination (FCICE), which she took in Denver in mid-July. Read below for her take on it. I will make this short and sweet: I did not pass. It was close, but I still failed, and it's certainly very disappointing. I scored a 76%, and I needed 80% to pass. This was my first time taking this notoriously...

The Translation Tribe

We've both been on the road quite a bit lately -- actually, we have been traveling to workshops and conferences in Europe together, which has been truly fantastic. During our workshops (we do some jointly, and many individually) we like to emphasize how important it is to have great working relationships with your colleagues. These professionals are your friends, your support team, your cheerleading team (if you need...

Free E-Book: The Translator Diaries

We are delighted to announce that our colleague Lloyd Bingham, a senior in-house translator in the UK, has put together a nifty free e-book that's just recently become available. It's a collection of great insight for beginning translators, gathered from many fantastic contributors, and we really like the format. It's divided into easy-to-read chunks, it's quite informative, and the lay-out is visually appealing. The...

Business Lunches: Etiquette Question

It's a lovely place indeed. Taking our clients -- and potential clients -- to lunch is one of our favorite business activities. Who doesn't like a nice meal with lovely people? It's also a good way to get to know your clients, and clients don't have to invest too much of their time: just an hour or two. We've previously written about the art of the business lunch, and now it turns out that we have an etiquette question...

Humor: Seductive Tasty Pleasure in Santorini

Not great. Today's post is just for fun, because life is short and it's good to laugh, even if the translations/slogans are scary. The picture on the left is a photo of a flyer that we received from a restaurant in Santorini, Greece. In spite of the fact that this restaurant is abusing the English language a bit, we ate there anyway, and we are happy to report that there's nothing fishy about this restaurant. But...

Asking Questions: A Client's Perspective

Last year, we wrote a blog post about the sometimes challenging issue of knowing when it is appropriate to ask the client for clarification regarding any issue that arises during a translation project. Many new translators are quite afraid of asking the client, and prefer to ask questions on industry forums and listservs, which can be helpful.  Ask and you might get the answer. However, many times, the client...

Friday Challenge: Advertising Translations

As seen at the Athens airport. This past week, we spent a glorious week in Greece with Judy's hubby and our dear translator friends Catherine Christaki and Christos Floros (more on that fantastic vacation in a future post) and we saw a lot of clumsy attempts at English -- think menus, flyers, ads, etc.  We oftentimes ask Keith, our resident native English speaker (and a funny, sarcastic attorney with a very...