Most unusual translation jobs #1

Two months ago, a Dutchman contacted me by e-mail to ask me whether I’d be interested in working with him on the lyrics of a song he’d written for an obscure Dutch female singer.
He’d learnt French at school, some 40 years ago, by reading Balzac and Zola; now he was trying to write a love [...]

Are you a Blackberry addict?

Please, take a few minutes to read this article: Marijuana Trumps Blackberries for Productivity!

Working part-time as a freelance translator #1

This article is the first in a series on “Working part-time as a freelance translator”, in which I’ll share my experience of moving from an 8-hour working day to a 4-hour one.

For the past few weeks, I’ve been undergoing the experience of working part-time. Before discussing the benefits of this decision and the strategies I’ve implemented [...]

Make your best clients your best ambassadors…

A few weeks ago, while sending an invoice to a major customer of mine, a very influential Dutch NGO, I decided that it would be a good idea to include a few of my business cards, together with a note saying, “Hi xxx, I’m including a few of my business cards. If, by any chance, [...]

Outsourcing… 5 good reasons!

In order to run your little business as a freelance translator you have to embody many roles at the same time: CEO/director, marketing specialist, administrative officer, web designer, call center, cleaner, personal assistant (to yourself, not the easiest person to deal with…), etc.
But how much time are you really devoting to your core activity , [...]

Fingertips

Are you tired of typing things like “best regards” every time you write an e-mail or “please find the translation attached to this e-mail” every time you send a translation?

Thanks to Fingertips (a free, easy to use software) you can create shortcuts for all these sentences that you continuously need. Every time you will type [...]

Convert your documents to PDF

I have noticed that many translators and interpreters still send their invoices in Word or Excel format. First this doesn’t look very professional and, more important, some people might not be able to open these documents (think of compatibility issues between Mac and PC, between different versions of Word or Excel…). Moreover a PDF document [...]

Checking your e-mails only twice a day?

How many times a day are you checking your e-mails? 10, 20, 30, continuously? What about reading and answering your e-mails only twice a day?

In his thought provoking book The 4 hour work week, Tim Ferriss recommends that we check our e-mails only twice a day and that we don’t open Outlook first thing in [...]