A blog about translation, language, literature, and other related topics. Updated every approximately every five days.
Friday, May 01, 2009
A Guide to Working as Freelance Translator
A translation company contacted me earlier this year about a book they have written. It contains a lot of basic information about working as a freelance translator and could be useful to those of you who are now starting your translation careers.
Tomedes information is not good, and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who is serious about the profession. Much of the "advice" in that e-book is absolutely contrary to good business practice; for example the suggestion to limit one's circle of clients as much as possible if truly horrible risk management. This e-book is basically a front for Tomedes' services as a broker. When they tried to get me to promote it (and offered to do a guest post on my blog, for example), I passed the book around to other freelance professionals, all of whom were absolutely appalled. Corinne McKay and others offer much more professional advice.
I did not know about the book, but tomedes approached our company to hire our services as outsource provider of translation services. Though their marketing team is excellent, I cannot say the same about the rates they offer. And, as we all know, you pay peanuts, you get monkeys :-)
Originally from Chicago, I lived in southern Sweden for nearly 5.5 years, and moved to southern Wales in September 2006. I completed a Ph.D. translation studies in June 2009 at Swansea University, with a dissertation on the translation of children's literature.
Now I live in Norwich, England, where I am a lecturer at the University of East Anglia, and I also work as a translator, writer, and editor.
Contact me at bravenewwords (AT) gmail (DOT) com.
7 comments:
Whoa.. It is good for me...
I love to work as freelance translator
Another post interesting for freelance translator. "Where to promote your translations and interpreting services for free":
http://babelanmicroblog.blogspot.com/2009/06/where-to-promote-your-translations-and.html
Cheers
Tomedes information is not good, and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who is serious about the profession. Much of the "advice" in that e-book is absolutely contrary to good business practice; for example the suggestion to limit one's circle of clients as much as possible if truly horrible risk management. This e-book is basically a front for Tomedes' services as a broker. When they tried to get me to promote it (and offered to do a guest post on my blog, for example), I passed the book around to other freelance professionals, all of whom were absolutely appalled. Corinne McKay and others offer much more professional advice.
Thank you for your feedback, Kevin! I hadn't looked it over much!
Best wishes,
BJ
Hi Kevin,
I did not know about the book, but tomedes approached our company to hire our services as outsource provider of translation services.
Though their marketing team is excellent, I cannot say the same about the rates they offer.
And, as we all know, you pay peanuts, you get monkeys :-)
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