Translation as a profession seems to be on the minds of many, and it's reflected in the many books that offer career advice to translators. In the past few months I've reviewed these three books by active translators who many of us know well:
- Alex Eames' Business Success for Freelance Translators: How to Build and Run Your Own Freelance Translation Business
- Judy and Dagmar Jenner's The Entrepreneurial Linguist: The Business-School Approach to Freelance Translation
- Chris Durban's The Prosperous Translator: Advice from Fire Ant & Worker Bee
Now it's time for the last of the publications that I'd been planning to review, this one written by Corinne McKay and titled How to Succeed as a Freelance Translator (2nd edition). Corinne is a veteran writer about translation, known to readers through her excellent blog and her now-defunct newsletter on open-source translation tools that I often referred to (she stopped writing the newsletter when she discovered blogging).
As with the other books I've reviewed, this is a pleasant read. If I were a translation newbie, I'd be plain stupid not to invest in this book. The checklist in the all-new Chapter 3 alone ("Your First Year as a Freelance Translator") would make it worthwhile. Corinne includes many more helpful tips, as well: how to write a résumé (though I wish she'd stuck with the first edition's spelling of the word rather than this edition's resumé); advice on contacting translation agencies; and suggestions for building relationships with direct clients (my favorite section). From this last tip you can see that this book is not only for novices -- experienced translators will also profit from its advice. It's good for all of us to be reminded of (or taught) good marketing practices, including the use of social networking (I loved the rather extensive section on LinkedIn and the clever advice on Facebook). It's also helpful to receive advice on seemingly mundane things like obtaining health insurance or raising your rates. (On second thought, why exactly did I call these things "mundane"?) Another very useful tool is the table on page 147 that will help you discover the hourly rate you need to charge -- you might be surprised to see that you've been significantly undercharging.
The book is primarily geared toward the translator living and working in the US, but Corinne has tried to include others as well -- though she could do only so much in 200 pages. I must admit I was a little disappointed with Corinne's section on tools. Though she often used the term "translation environment tool", from my admittedly biased perspective she focused too much on the tools' translation memory features when other features, such as terminology maintenance and QA, are just as important. I think this is important to understand, especially for newcomers.
With that one criticism aside, I really liked the book. In fact, I'm already looking forward to the next book that she plans to release later this year with a summary of her blog postings.
I'll leave you with a nugget of wisdom that I thought was not only very clever but was also an aha moment for me. On page 26, Corinne writes: "Localization breeds localization; a localized web browser automatically creates a need for localized websites; a localized piece of software demands a localized manual to go with it."
If that's not a happy thought for a language professional, I don't know what is.
As with the other books I've reviewed, this is a pleasant read. If I were a translation newbie, I'd be plain stupid not to invest in this book. The checklist in the all-new Chapter 3 alone ("Your First Year as a Freelance Translator") would make it worthwhile. Corinne includes many more helpful tips, as well: how to write a résumé (though I wish she'd stuck with the first edition's spelling of the word rather than this edition's resumé); advice on contacting translation agencies; and suggestions for building relationships with direct clients (my favorite section). From this last tip you can see that this book is not only for novices -- experienced translators will also profit from its advice. It's good for all of us to be reminded of (or taught) good marketing practices, including the use of social networking (I loved the rather extensive section on LinkedIn and the clever advice on Facebook). It's also helpful to receive advice on seemingly mundane things like obtaining health insurance or raising your rates. (On second thought, why exactly did I call these things "mundane"?) Another very useful tool is the table on page 147 that will help you discover the hourly rate you need to charge -- you might be surprised to see that you've been significantly undercharging.
The book is primarily geared toward the translator living and working in the US, but Corinne has tried to include others as well -- though she could do only so much in 200 pages. I must admit I was a little disappointed with Corinne's section on tools. Though she often used the term "translation environment tool", from my admittedly biased perspective she focused too much on the tools' translation memory features when other features, such as terminology maintenance and QA, are just as important. I think this is important to understand, especially for newcomers.
With that one criticism aside, I really liked the book. In fact, I'm already looking forward to the next book that she plans to release later this year with a summary of her blog postings.
I'll leave you with a nugget of wisdom that I thought was not only very clever but was also an aha moment for me. On page 26, Corinne writes: "Localization breeds localization; a localized web browser automatically creates a need for localized websites; a localized piece of software demands a localized manual to go with it."
If that's not a happy thought for a language professional, I don't know what is.
Source: The Toolkit
.webp)
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