The GITS Blog

A few weeks ago, a translation agency asked me to do a trial translation for a potential new client. They sent me a short text to translate, and a few past translations that the potential client had commissioned before to serve as a reference. (The agency paid me for this trial, incidentally. An agency that [...]

I recently took a job from a translation agency that will remain nameless. I had passed their test some time ago, but didn't do much work for them because their rates were usually too low for me. They recently contacted me about taking part of a big job, and agreed to my usual rates, so [...]

The other evening, I was out at a pub with some friends, when my cell phone went off at around 10pm. My friends asked me if I was going to take the call. I pulled out the phone, and saw it was from a translation agency, so I put it on "manner" mode (vibration mode), [...]

Some of the more unscrupulous translation agencies practice what I call the bait and switch. They use their more expensive translators on the first couple of jobs for a new client, and then switch to their cheaper translators after they've locked in a juicy contract. Of course, you always want to do the best possible [...]

Last week, I gave a talk at Naha Nishi High School about the translation profession, as well as language learning and some of my experiences in Japan. The talk was arranged through an educational company called Kids Corporation. Although my talk was in Japanese, the students emceed the presentation in both English and Japanese, and [...]

Just a month after writing about how agencies should give translators direct access to their clients, an agency asked me to go with them to meet their client for a big new job. The back story The end client had been burned a couple of times by horrible translations. So they contracted with this new [...]

Translation agencies tend to bear the brunt of translator complaints, but there are some great agencies out there that truly "get it." I want to list 5 things that agencies can do to win the loyalty and commitment of their translators. 1. Offer to raise rates without being asked Of course, everybody likes to make [...]

In an auction, buyers compete to offer the highest buying price; in a reverse auction, sellers compete to offer the lowest selling price. Reverse auctions are one of the ways that big corporations cut their expenses down to the bone. They know that everybody wants a "big" client, and they take advantage of this fact [...]

One of my New Year's resolutions this year was to create a Japanese-language website. I waited until November, but I managed to get one up by year's end. Here it is: BetterTechEnglish.com My goal for the site is to give pointers on technical-English writing to Japanese native speakers, while creating a presence that will help [...]

The other day, I wrote about when translators should leave information in the original out of their translations. Today, I want to write about the opposite case: when you should add information not included in the original. This often happens when the grammar of the target language requires certain information to be explicit that's optional [...]