bulbasson Сообщение 24/01/2010 13:13 Копия темы
Ten ways to please a translation client The easiest way to keep your translation business profitable is to cultivate a core group of regular clients who will fill your inbox with translation projects, allowing you to spend your time working rather than looking for work. Implementing some of the tips below will help you keep a regular stream of work coming your way.

1. Meet every deadline. If you can't consistently meet deadlines, you're not well-suited to being a freelance translator. Remember that your clients have deadlines too, and are sometimes waiting for your work as part of a larger project. As one experienced translator comments, "8:00 means 7:50, not 8:10."

2. Be easy to reach. Put your contact information in your e-mail signature file, so that a client never has to look up your phone or fax number. Realize that many times, if clients cannot reach you immediately, they will contact another translator. Since over 90% of contacts from clients will be by e-mail, put an auto-responder on your e-mail if you will be out of the office for even a few hours.

3. Follow directions. While it can be time-consuming to follow many different clients' particular ways of doing things, you will save the client time and money, and thus get more work from them, by following their instructions to the letter. If the client asks you to put your initials in the file name, do it. If the client asks you to put the word "Invoice" in the subject line of the e-mail containing your invoice, do it.

4. Don't waste your clients' time. It's acceptable, and even encouraged to ask questions when you need to clarify something. However, it's also important to show respect for your clients' time, and for the fact that yours is probably not the only project they are handling. Keep your e-mails short and to the point, and make your questions clear and easy to answer.

5. Provide referrals. Many translators worry that providing referrals to other translators in the same language combination will lead to less work for themselves, but in fact the opposite seems to be true. Clients like to work with freelancers who solve the clients' problems, and when you're too busy and can't handle their work or are going on vacation, it's a problem for them. Have the names of two or three translators in your language combination who you really trust, and provide these names to your clients when you aren't available for work.

6. Be easy to work with. This isn't to say that you should be a pushover or let clients take advantage of you, but for your regular clients, it's worth putting in some extra effort. Thank them for giving you their business; be friendly and polite if a payment is unexpectedly late; fill in for them in a pinch when another translator lets them down.

7. Ask for constructive criticism. It's important to see feedback as part of your quality assurance process, not as an attack on your abilities as a translator. If a client asks for changes in your translation, make them politely and immediately; if you decide later that the changes are unnecessary and you don't want to work for the client again, it's another matter. With your regular and trusted clients, periodically ask what you can do to better meet their needs, then implement these changes.

8. Appreciate your clients. Your regular clients are the people who make it possible for you to earn a healthy income while living a flexible and self-directed freelance lifestyle. A small gift at the end of the year is always appreciated when a client has given you regular work.

9. Don't bicker. If a prospective client offers you a project at a ridiculously low rate, politely decline it, possibly sending them a copy of your standard rate sheet if you have one. Don't insult them for offering such low pay or make negative comments about their business; just courteously decline to work for them and let them move on to someone else.

10. Charge what you're worth, and earn it. There will always be another translator out there who is willing to work for one cent per word less than you are, so don't compete on price alone. Giving your clients a little more effort than necessary proves to them that often, they get the level of service they pay for.

"How to Succeed as a Freelance Translator" Corinne McKay

bulbasson Сообщение 22/12/2009 22:45 Копия темы
Communist Christmas www.rathergood.com/christ...

bulbasson Сообщение 13/11/2009 17:28 Копия темы
Gosh, my pronunciation suxx. How much,you think, you could score? Check it out! Here is an absolutely wonderful rhyming stuff in English (a poem?!)
That's the bitter truth about English pronunciation. I was trying to count the number of the tricky words in it, but eventually lost the count. But i guess, were it a test, i would score no more than 70%. How much,you think, you could score? Read it out and get down to phonetics basics. LOL

Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
I will keep you, Susy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.

Just compare heart, beard, and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word,
Sword and sward, retain and Britain.
(Mind the latter, how it's written.)
Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as plaque and ague.
But be careful how you speak:
Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;
Cloven, oven, how and low,
Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.

Hear me say, devoid of trickery,
Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,
Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,
Exiles, similes, and reviles;
Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
Solar, mica, war and far;
One, anemone, Balmoral,
Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;
Gertrude, German, wind and mind,
Scene, Melpomene, mankind.

Billet does not rhyme with ballet,
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.
Blood and flood are not like food,
Nor is mould like should and would.
Viscous, viscount, load and broad,
Toward, to forward, to reward.
And your pronunciation's OK
When you correctly say croquet,
Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,
Friend and fiend, alive and live.

Ivy, privy, famous; clamour
And enamour rhyme with hammer.
River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb,
Doll and roll and some and home.
Stranger does not rhyme with anger,
Neither does devour with clangour.
Souls but foul, haunt but aunt,
Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant,
Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger,
And then singer, ginger, linger,
Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge,
Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age.

Query does not rhyme with very,
Nor does fury sound like bury.
Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth.
Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath.
Though the differences seem little,
We say actual but victual.
Refer does not rhyme with deafer.
Foeffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
Mint, pint, senate and sedate;
Dull, bull, and George ate late.
Scenic, Arabic, Pacific,
Science, conscience, scientific.

Liberty, library, heave and heaven,
Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven.
We say hallowed, but allowed,
People, leopard, towed, but vowed.
Mark the differences, moreover,
Between mover, cover, clover;
Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,
Chalice, but police and lice;
Camel, constable, unstable,
Principle, disciple, label.

Petal, panel, and canal,
Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal.
Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,
Senator, spectator, mayor.
Tour, but our and succour, four.
Gas, alas, and Arkansas.
Sea, idea, Korea, area,
Psalm, Maria, but malaria.
Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean.
Doctrine, turpentine, marine.

Compare alien with Italian,
Dandelion and battalion.
Sally with ally, yea, ye,
Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key.
Say aver, but ever, fever,
Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver.
Heron, granary, canary.
Crevice and device and aerie.

Face, but preface, not efface.
Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.
Large, but target, gin, give, verging,
Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging.
Ear, but earn and wear and tear
Do not rhyme with here but ere.
Seven is right, but so is even,
Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen,
Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk,
Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.

Pronunciation — think of Psyche!
Is a paling stout and spikey?
Won't it make you lose your wits,
Writing groats and saying grits?
It's a dark abyss or tunnel:
Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale,
Islington and Isle of Wight,
Housewife, verdict and indict.

Finally, which rhymes with enough —
Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough?
Hiccough has the sound of cup.
My advice is to give up!

bulbasson Сообщение 31/10/2009 23:35 Копия темы
the issue of "semi-nativeness" it never ceases to amaze how extremely good some people are at drawing the wrong conclusions as a result of poor understanding of some subject matter...
Unfortunately, there is no poll option here, but I'm damn curious about what the translation community think.
The question is whether it is possible to be "semi-native" in a language? Please, give your answers and reasons for or against.

bulbasson Сообщение 21/10/2009 21:37 Копия темы
the good and the bad things about being part of free-lance.ru It is October 22 today and according to the stats in my profile i've been using the network for 4 months now. Not that much, i do agree. Though i've already done a couple of projects, have been selected and gracefully rejected several times. Two positive feedbacks make me think that there is actually room for further growth. Very often i see some projects posted that I feel I might make my bid for. The description seems to be asking the kind of services i might be able to provide. But, i see that PRO sign, absolutely treacherous one. Granted, outsourcers can restrict the project to users only with pro account, thus saving themselves the trouble of rejecting numerous odd and "green" offers. But in this case a lot of truly professionals are outboard. "Get Pro Account and enjoy all the premium features?" I would love to, were the membership cheaper!! One-year membership costs 234 $ . Isn't it too much? I guess, it is.