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: Iwan Davies, French and German translator and localiser

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Iwan Davies is a French and German to English translator and localiser, and one half of the crack team at Translutions Limited. In addition to almost 15 years as a professional translator, Iwan has extensive experience in computer programming, including working with complex file formats and characters conversions. He is also webmaster of the ITI Scottish Network, and is working away behind the scenes as part of the Conference Committee. On Sunday 17th May, he will be part of a panel discussion called Where to draw the line?.

Check out the rest of the ITI Conference programme here. [Read more…]

Experts in the Industry: Nick Rosenthal, Managing Director of Salford Translations Ltd

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Nick Rosenthal is Managing Director of Salford Translations Ltd. He is a former member of the ITI Council, immediate Past President of the UK chapter of the Society for Technical Communications and sits on the Translation Subcommittee of the OASIS Committee. Nick has also been involved in translator training and professional development since 1989, and is a tutor on the excellent ITI Professional Support Group (PSG), run online for newly-established freelance translators. He will be part of a panel discussion called Where to draw the line? on Sunday 17th.

Check out the rest of the ITI conference programme here. [Read more…]

Experts in the Industry: Richard Gray, CEO of CLS Communication Ltd

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Richard Gray is CEO of CLS Communication Ltd, the UK subsidiary of one of the world’s largest language service providers CLS Communication AG. He has a degree in French and Philosophy from Bristol University and lived in Madrid for 7 years, where he translated Spanish into English for investment banks on a freelance basis before founding Richard Gray Financial Translations (RGFT) in 1996. With offices in London, Paris and Madrid, RGFT was acquired by CLS Communication in 2004. He is currently the corporate representative on the ITI Council, and on Sunday 17th will speak about setting up a conciliation service within the ITI.

Check out the rest of the ITI conference programme here. [Read more…]

Experts in the Industry: Stefan Mikulin, French, German, Polish, English translator and interpreter

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Stefan Mikulin is a freelance interpreter and translator covering French, German, Polish and English. He was trained at the University of Salford in the UK, where he now lectures part time, and the Jagiellonian University in Poland. He is currently studying for the UK’s Diploma in Public Service Interpreting. At the session for recent graduates on 16th May, Stefan will present a paper based on his MA thesis on the evolution of simultaneous interpreting at international criminal tribunals. (If you miss him there, you can also hear Stefan present on this topic at the International Association of Forensic Linguists‘ 9th Biennial Conference in Amsterdam later this year.) Check out the rest of the ITI conference programme here. [Read more…]

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…]