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Many of you may know Russian-into-English translator Lucy Gunderson from her leadership with the ATA Divisions Committee and the Slavic Languages Division. I had the pleasure of speaking with Lucy last month, and hearing about how she has navigated her career among shifting geopolitics was very moving. The challenges she has experienced in her business are relatable, and she has met them with resourcefulness. Read on for more. How did you learn your languages? I started studying Russian in college. I had studied French for eight years in school and wanted a change. Despite struggling mightily through the first semester,…
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When was the last time you were asked to provide a volume discount? My guess is not too long ago. Did you say “yes” to the request? Do you have a strict policy in general? Do you decide ad hoc, based on your workload that day? Do you feel like there is pressure from the market (i.e., from your colleagues…
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This post is a reblog, originally published on Madalena Sánchez Zampaulo’s blog. It is reposted with permission from the author. As freelance translators and interpreters, we can spend a lot of time in our inboxes on any given weekday. This can be both distracting and a never-ending game of whack-a-mole, as you try to answer all your emails and keep…
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If you continuously struggle to stay organized and tend to work long hours to compensate for daily distractions, learning about productivity can mean wading through a body of presumptions. The advice of self-help materials–repeated in a myriad of online resources–can be difficult to follow, as there are relatively few productivity resources that openly acknowledge the impact of physical and mental…
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In the last post, we looked at the financial issues underpinning a need for COVID-related medical leave. This week, we turn to organizational issues. Since I first drafted this article, some of those issues have changed, both in the United States and around the world. Response to the highly contagious Omicron variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus differs from what we’ve…
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The idea for this post was born on my most stressful day in recent memory: the day I took three of my children to the doctor for COVID-19 tests. If even one tested positive, all three would need to skip school and spend up to two weeks at home with me. Along with my fears for my children’s health, my…
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Imagine if you could freeze your rent payment forever. Now imagine that it could disappear by the time you retire. That financial advantage is a major reason why people take the plunge to become homeowners. Being a homeowner means that your “rent” will never increase unless you authorize it. Sure, taxes will increase, but never as much as rent tends…
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This post is a reblog, originally published on Nikki Graham’s blog, My Words for a Change, and later published in the ATA Chronicle. It is reposted with permission from the author. From the outside looking in, most translators probably seem like lone wolves, happily working at their desks all day with hardly any social contact. In fact, many freelancers highlight…
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Most of us have heard it before: To be a good translator, you have to be a good writer. Today this maxim is truer than ever. Successful translators have always sought to provide high-quality copy to their clients as a way to add value and stand apart from the rest, but the increasing popularity of machine translation gives us even…
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This post is a reblog, originally published in the Audiovisual Division Part of the American Translators Association’s Deep Focus Newsletter, Issue 7 in 2020. It is reposted with permission from the author. I haven’t typed my full name or email address in years. Instead, I type abbreviations that get expanded after I type a punctuation mark or press a trigger key,…
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This is a summary post from Tess Whitty’s ebook Quick Start Guide: 10 Steps to an Optimized Website, published in 2019. Having a website is one of the best ways to maximize your online presence. Your website serves as the hub for all your marketing activities and is a good place to store information about your products and services. When…
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