The GITS Blog

On Monday morning, I got a call from a client. "How's the translation coming?" she asked.
"Fine," I replied. "I'll be sending you the translation a few hours early."
"Really?" she asked. "Even that second set of files I sent you?"
At this point I began to feel the symptoms of panic setting in. "What files?" I asked.
"The [...]

A couple of days ago, I did a translation of an equipment manual.
The client had helpfully supplied a glossary with the English translations of the various parts of the equipment.
One of them caught my eye:
Erection status monitor
I suggested to the client that they change that one to something a bit less, erm, suggestive. This is [...]

I lost a really great potential job today due to a series of misunderstandings.
A couple of days ago, another translator gave me a referral to an attorney, who was looking for an IT translator. The attorney sent me several files, and asked for an estimate, CCing his client.
The client then emailed me and asked [...]

A recent discussion on the Honyaku mailing list about low rates, and the clients who offer them and the translators who accept them, had me asking myself: should we care how much other translators charge?
I generally have no problem with what other translators want to charge, and wouldn't take kindly to other translators trying to [...]

The other day, I received the following inquiry from a translation agency:
Hello,
Would you be available to edit a 800 word Japanese file into English today?
I will need it back asap.
Rate:$35
Kind Regards
[Name withheld]
Let's play "spot the problems":

When an email doesn't address me by name, it's spam until proven innocent. In fact, this email ended up in [...]

A lot of times when I read about translation, the author seems to treat the writer and audience as abstract entities. The document often deals with translating some magazine or newspaper article, with no input from the author and only a general understanding of who the audience is.
I suppose that this simplifies things, but in [...]

I believe that as a technical translator, my job isn't to be innovative with language. Rather, my goal is to fade into the wall, chameleon-like, and let the reader consume my document without necessarily even knowing that it's a translation.
For this reason, I tend to err on the side of conservativeness when translating. For example, [...]

An acquaintance who owns a translation agency was complaining to me the other day about the pool of freelancers who send him applications. He claims that he wants top-quality translators, but so many mediocre ones apply that he can't sift through all the noise. He keeps creating stricter screening procedures in the hopes of filtering [...]

One of the nice things about being a freelancer is that you can earn as much as you're worth, rather than what somebody thinks you ought to earn.
Over on the Honyaku mailing list, however, "Captain Adam" doesn't think that translators should earn more than $75,000 per year:
In my opinion, a good translator is worth every [...]

A lot of translators who are starting out, or who haven't yet achieved the level of income that they want, ask about what fields of translation have the highest demand. They choose a field of specialization based on potential income instead of interest.
I don't agree with that approach. I prefer to translate in a field [...]