The Savvy Newcomer aims to serve newcomers to the translation and interpreting professions by publishing high-quality, peer-reviewed content on a weekly basis. We strive to provide you with the answers to the many questions you face as a new or aspiring translator or interpreter.
Many language professionals start out doing their work “on the side” of whatever else they are doing in life. When people find out you are bilingual, you may be asked to do some volunteer interpreting to help out a friend, family member, or someone in need, or you may agree or be expected to do the occasional translation—and maybe even get paid for it. Volunteering and doing small side jobs are great ways to gain experience and improve your skills as a translator or interpreter. But in order to be a professional—whether you plan on doing this work part-time or…
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This post originally appeared on The ATA Chronicle and it is republished with permission. The old industry adage might be spot on: most interpreters are fairly extroverted, while most translators tend to be introverts. That’s an oversimplification and I know that there are always many exceptions, but during my years in the industry, I’ve noticed that translators struggle more with…
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Marketing is a task that even experienced translators and interpreters dread, and it can feel especially daunting during difficult times, like the current pandemic and financial crisis. Should you still be marketing your services to clients? And if so, how can you do that without coming off as salesy and opportunistic? What if your clients are in an industry that…
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This post originally appeared on The ATA Chronicle and it is republished with permission. There inevitably comes a time in a translator’s life when he or she starts to challenge translation/translatability as a concept. More often than not, this occurs as a result of finding oneself confronted with a term that is deemed untranslatable and questioning not only the meaning…
Read MoreThis post originally appeared on ATA TCD News (Newsletter of the Translation Company Division of the American Translators Association), Volume 2 | Issue 7 | Winter 2021, and it is republished with permission. In this article we will focus on the importance of following professional standards even in remote interpreting settings, self-care for remote interpreters and interpreters at large, and…
Read MoreThe Savvy Newcomer team has been taking stock of the past year and finding that one key priority for many freelance translators and interpreters has been diversification. Offering multiple services in different sectors or to different clients can help steady us when storms come. Diversification can help us hedge against hard times. With this in mind, we’ve invited a series…
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This post originally appeared on The ATA Chronicle and it is republished with permission. There inevitably comes a time in a translator’s life when he or she starts to challenge translation/translatability as a concept. More often than not, this occurs as a result of finding oneself confronted with a term that is deemed untranslatable and questioning not only the meaning…
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ATA launched its new Back to Business Basics webinar series in September 2020. These webinars focus on a small, practical piece of business advice for translators and interpreters at different stages of their careers. The series quickly became popular: there are usually a few hundred people attending each live session. Members can access these webinars free of charge, and non-members…
Read MoreGetting Real with Translation & Interpreting
This post originally appeared on the Language Magazine blog and it is republished with permission. Caitilin Walsh suggests 11 resources to bring Translation and Interpreting to life in your online classroom In an educational landscape so dominated by talk of STEM—purportedly to prepare our students for technologically-influenced jobs—world language teachers are under constant pressure to defend their departments. This sits…
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How are research papers reviewed in other fields, and how can we apply those practices to the interpreting and translation field? As we observe the publicity surrounding vaccination efforts, we notice that developers are called to follow established procedures in their research. These research procedures are documented and can be reviewed by others. Their reports are checked for conflicts of…
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This post originally appeared on The Detail Woman blog and it is republished with permission. There are two main things I want to do on this page: first, I want to say a few things to people considering entering the translation profession. Mostly I want to clear up some misconceptions, but there are also some things I just plain think…
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