Advice for translators starting out

There's a nice post by Jill Sommer over on TranslationMusings with hints and tips for finding translation work, building a clientele and surviving the first year of freelancing. Lots of good advice in the comments too.

Project management and quality training event, Portsmouth

Hi all,
The next in our series of professional training workshops takes place on 27 January. Raisa McNab of STP Nordic will be running the workshop. The workshop is addressed primarily to professional translators, both newly-qualified translators finding their feet, and more established professional translators who would like to enhance their awareness of and skills in project management and quality. See below for further details and a registration link.

Enhancing your project management and quality assurance skills

Raisa McNab

Friday, 27 January 2012

Park Building, University of Portsmouth

PROGRAMME: 

10 a.m-12 noon

• Introduction
• Project management for freelance translators: learning from a translation company context
• Managing projects efficiently
• Project management aids and tools
• Opportunities in the translation industry

12 noon-1.30 Lunch and networking

13.30-4.00 

• What is "good quality"? Quality assurance metrics, standards and considerations
• Quality assurance tools
• Hands-on exercise using a QA tool: Apsic Xbench. (Participants may use the on-site machines or bring their own laptops.)

Raisa McNab is the Production & Quality Manager at STP Nordic, a translation company specialising in the Nordic languages. She holds an MA in Translation from her native Finland and brings to the workshop eight years of experience in project management and quality assurance along with her experiences of the challenges translators face in their daily working lives.

 

Fee: £50 (£45 for ITI and CIoL members and postgraduate students)

To register, please click here. Enquiries should be addressed to translation at port.ac.uk.

posts in translation

Two job ads which may be of interest to readers:

One is a call for independent language contractors for the European institutions. The competition is for translators as contractual agents into all 23 official EU languages.  Deadline for applications is 29th November.  Candidates should have a BA degree, be native speakers of one official EU language and have a perfect knowledge of two other EU official languages out of which they can translate.  One of these languages has to be among the working languages of the EU institutions, that is English, French or German.  This means that English native speakers should have French or German among their source languages.

 

For more information and how to apply, please see

http://europa.eu/epso/apply/today/contract_en.htm

The second is for a Japanese-speaking translator/reviser with English as mother tongue

Ref.: TRAJAEN-09/2011
Company profile:
euroscript International is a leader in providing customers with global solutions in content lifecycle management. The euroscript divisions deliver comprehensive solutions that help customers design, build and run content management operations of all sizes. Thanks to its employees' expertise in the fields of consulting, system integration, language services as well as content and document management, euroscript is able to help businesses around the world to manage content more efficiently.

With a market presence in over 16 countries, euroscript serves customers in a variety of business sectors including the public sector, aerospace, defense and transport, manufacturing, life sciences, financial services and energy and environment.

euroscript Luxembourg S.à.r.l. is part of euroscript International S.A.

Your role:

As part of the translation team, you will revise and translate documents from Japanese into English.

Your responsibilities:

* Translation/revision, terminology research, and other related activities (set-up of glossaries, style guides, etc);
* Insuring the quality of the translations;
* Act as back-up team leader for the project (liaising between Project Manager and the team of project translators);
* Working with CAT tools on a daily basis.

Your profile:

* Diploma (university degree) or equivalent qualification in the field of translation;
* Excellent knowledge of Japanese is a must, knowledge of other languages are an asset;
* Perfect command of the mother tongue (written and spoken);
* User-level IT literacy (MS Office);
* Good teamwork and communication skills;
* Excellent self-organization skills;
* Experience translating intellectual property texts is a plus

* Willingness to work under pressure in order to meet deadlines.

If you are seeking a new challenge in an international, dynamic and deadline-driven environment, please send your full application, indicating the reference TRAJAEN-09/2011, to careers at euroscript.com.

translators sought for Front Line.

This may be of interest to current students or graduates:

Front Line, The International Foundation for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders, is seeking professional translators to assist with the translation of our website, e-bulletin, training documents and other general correspondance.

Selected candidates should be a native speaker of the target language and fluent in the source language, they should have a professional qualification and/or experience in translation, a proven commitment to human rights and an understanding of the work of Front Line.

Language pairs needed:
English to Arabic Arabic to English
French to English English to French
Spanish to English English to Spanish
English to Russian Russian to English
English to Farsi

Applications including a cv with specific details of previous translation experience and qualifications, references and a cover letter, should be sent to Tara Madden, Program Manager, at tara at frontlinedefenders.org

Front Line pays on a per word basis, please include rate of pay in your cover letter. Please put the relevant language pair in the subject bar of your email.

How much do freelance translators actually earn?

A nice post by Corinne McKay on her blog Thoughts on Translation about how much freelance translators actually earn, and how we gauge whether it's 'enough'. A good discussion in the comments, though it's a tad dispiriting to hear the 'things will never be as good for the new generation' shtick... Luckily, people have been saying that for so many thousands of years that I think we can treat it with gentle scepticism. 

job opportunities at thebigword

Some of you may be interested in in-house employment opportunities at thebigword, a large and growing translation service provider. More details of freelance opportunities with the company here.

marketing yourself to agencies

Well, it's the last week of teaching term (at Portsmouth at least), and the end of the course is looming ever larger on the horizon for translation MA students all over (bar a few tiddly things like dissertations, of which we shall not speak). So a timely post from Corinne McKay on marketing yourself to agencies, with some useful comments from other professionals. Don't just throw yourself into indiscriminate CV-bombing - think about who you want to work for and what your USPs (Unique Selling Points) are and have a structured approach to marketing yourself from the start. Good recruitment tips for freelancers too at the Essential Project Management blog.

translation job opportunity

Dear all,

I have been contacted by a UK-based translation and interpreting company looking to add suitably qualified (graduate) linguists to their database. They are particularly looking for native speakers of English. They cover telephone interpreting, face-to-face interpreting and translation. If you are interested, please contact me at carol.osullivan@port.ac.uk for a registration form.

Carol

call for freelance translators

Hello all!
Where did the sun go?!? Oh well. Have just received this email via a colleague which may be of interest to some of you.

Good morning,
I am writing to let you know that we are currently recruiting freelance translators at Orb Translations. We are very keen to work with translators at an early stage in their career as we understand how difficult it can be to start out as a freelancer therefore I would be grateful if you could pass this message on to your MA Translation students who may be interested in applying.

We are currently looking to recruit for all language combinations but are particularly interested in Arabic, Chinese (Simplified/Traditional), Danish, Dutch, Greek, Korean, Portuguese and Urdu. I have attached an application form which can be returned directly to me at this email address or there is also an online application form on the website (http://www.orbtranslations.com/form.htm). Obviously as your students will just be starting out, they do not need to worry too much about giving 2 referees.
Thank you in advance for your help.
Kind regards,
Louise Clegg

Orb Translations
29 Otley Old Road, Leeds, LS16 6HB, UK
T: +44(0)1138154149
M: +44(0)7929207675
F: +44(0)1132987966
www.orbtranslations.com