Sarah's Archives

an archive of content from ≈ 2005 - 2015, relating to international business, translation, freelancing, and working online.

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Experts in the Industry: Spencer Allman, Finnish to English translator

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Spencer Allman has been a freelance translator of Finnish into English for 18 years. He has given talks to groups of translators on various subjects, including the translation of musical texts, translation revision (the subject of his MA dissertation), and the use of the internet as a translation tool. He is also a tutor on the University of Birmingham’s MA in Translation Studies. Spencer will be presenting a paper on the notion of translational expertise on Sunday 17th May – check out the rest of the conference programme here. [Read more…]

Experts in the Industry: 15 interviews in 15 days

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Louis Lumiere with microscope and test tubes

I’m trying a little experiment*. If it works, then we should gain some interesting insights from a number of luminaries in and around the world of translation. If it doesn’t work, well, we might just learn something from that too.

My plan is to interview 15 interesting people in the 15 days leading up to the ITI International Conference on 16th and 17th May. Why? Well, [Read more…]

Don't ask, don't tell: translating and parenting

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A juggler entertains outdoors in Devizes, Wilt...
Image via Wikipedia

One of translation’s biggest trump-cards is the opportunity to work for yourself. Long before I started my masters, I decided that if I couldn’t work freelance I wasn’t interested in being a translator at all. This might sound a little extreme, but it has always been important to me to be able to pursue personal projects outside of work. After a couple of years in the workplace, I realised that a traditional desk-job was never going to give me the flexibility I needed to do this. So I assessed my strengths and weaknesses, researched a couple of options and identified a course I was sure would prepare me in the areas I needed. And here I am, give or take a stage, working for myself.

I know that not everyone entering the profession has gone about it in such a deliberate way. But I’m certain that the lure of flexible working is a huge part of what keeps translators, both aspiring and experienced, in the game. [Read more…]

4 things being a location-independent translator has taught me

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mobile office

We have a lot of flexibility around where and how we can choose to work as freelance translators. Sometimes we forget that we need to make the right choice for our individual set of circumstances, and that these choices will change along with our circumstances throughout our careers.

Last year I spent months running my office from just a laptop and a small folder when I was moving between London and Brisbane. I became a master of digitising, synchronising and reducing, and of setting up functioning workspaces in the least likely of places. While this was a great exercise in mobile working and streamlining more generally, it also made me realise a couple of things: [Read more…]

7 ways NOT to use Twitter for business purposes

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There are a million articles out there on how to use Twitter for business purposes, most of them based on Chris Brogan’s post on the topic. A few of them are great, most of them are dross, and a small number go so far as to actively irritate me. In response to the ones that fall into that last category (!), here’s my take on how I think translators, and professionals in general, should NOT use Twitter. [Read more…]

Work in progress!

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Excuse to shabby décor. I’m busy refurbishing today this week. In the meantime, feel free to enjoy the content, it’s just the cover that looks bad 🙂