Our new book, The Ultimate Guide To Becoming A Successful Freelance Translator, is a fast-paced and informative guide to the translation industry and how you can find your place within it. It covers a wide range of topics to help brand-new translators, experienced veterans and even those who are thinking of going into translation but haven’t yet taken the first step. In this article, we’d like to highlight some of our favourite chapters from the book to give you a brief introduction to its content and style.
Being a good translator means having strong language skills, so we’ve taken the time to explore some of the trickiest linguistic issues translators face. For example, have you ever heard someone describe a term or turn of phrase as untranslatable? We don’t believe there’s any such thing as untranslatability, and to prove our point we take a look at a practical case study in a tricky little German term. Whether you find a suitable word-for-word translation or rephrase sentences entirely, a good translator knows that the range of possible translations is limited only by our imagination.
Freelance translators are also responsible for running their own businesses, so we make sure to investigate the commercial side of things, too. How should you decide how to set your rates? We address this question in the book, and in particular the issue of whether to offer different rates for different projects. Offering rate packages to clients can be a powerful competitive tool, and it also ensures that you get paid fairly for even the most challenging and time-consuming work.
We also discuss professional standards. Have you ever seen a translation that’s so bad it’s funny? In one chapter, we explore how translations like this can come about, and what we can do to improve the image of translation. If you can identify industries that suffer particularly frequently from substandard translation, you might be able to carve out a niche for yourself there by offering a professional-quality service above and beyond what’s currently available.
Aside from these subjects, the Ultimate Guide also covers a wide range of other issues, including specialist translation, so-called ‘Global English’ and the practicalities of a home office – to name just a few. If you’re interested in discovering more about this book and the hot topics it features, visit www.translatorsbook.com or our Amazon product page. Once you’ve read the book, please let us know what you thought of it – and what issues you think are most critical to translators today. We’d love to hear your feedback!
The readers of SFT can get this ebook at a discounted price at www.translatorsbook.com.
You can apply the code “SFT50” during checkout to get a 50% discount.
The discount is valid until April 30, 2017.
About the authors
Oleg Semerikov
Oleg had a passion for languages and entrepreneurship since he was just nine. That’s why he chose to be a translator and in 2006 successfully started his career as a freelance English-Russian translator. Soon afterwards, he founded a team of translators, which today is a rapidly developing translation agency, Translators Family, based in Poland. Oleg is fond of discovering new trends in the translation industry and applying them to his business. He keeps a blog on his company website as well as publishing his articles across a variety of magazines and web resources for translators.
Follow Oleg Semerikov and Translators Family on social media: LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Youtube
Simon Hodkinson
Simon is a British-based translator who works primarily from German into English. After completing a degree in German Studies at the University of Warwick and spending a year living and working in Germany, in 2011 he set up as a freelance translator, editor and copywriter specialising in marketing and information technology. His experience of life ‘in the trenches’ as a freelancer helped provide practical examples and insights into the real world of translation.
