Starting out as a freelance translator

Hello everyone, hope you’re all well out there in translation land and have some exciting plans to round off the year!

Today’s post is something a little different. I recently gave a talk to the Translation Studies MA students at the University of Hull and thought I’d share my presentation with you here.

As the title of this post suggests, the seminar was all about getting started as a freelance translator, with me sharing tips and advice based on my own experiences within the wonderful world of freelancing.

Hopefully there will be plenty of useful information in there for those of you interested in a career in freelance translation and perhaps there will even be one or two handy snippets for more experienced freelancers.

The presentation touches upon everything from finding and completing your first translation job to a few different ways of developing an online presence using social media.

Public speaking and presentation skills aren’t my strongest areas but they are skills that I’m keen to develop, especially with conference papers, teaching and further presentations on the horizon. As such, any feedback or handy links for developing these areas would be greatly appreciated!

Anyway, here’s the recording of the presentation and the accompanying slides. (Click the images to get the full screen, slideshow version)

Enjoy!

P.S. If you’re having trouble with the SoundCloud player, here’s a direct link to the recording: https://soundcloud.com/jaltranslation/starting-out-as-a-freelance-translator

12 responses to “Starting out as a freelance translator”

Alina Cincan

December 11, 2015 at 2:39 pm

Excellent job, Joseph! I am sure the students found this very useful. And it was nice to also put a voice to the name and picture 🙂 You have a very warm and pleasant voice, I loved listening to you.

Reply
1. jaltranslation
  
  December 11, 2015 at 6:32 pm
  
  Thank you very much Alina, you’re much too kind! Listening back was a real learning experience for me too, and highlighted a few areas to work on. Hopefully the presentation will be of use to some emerging translators out there! Have a great weekend 🙂
  
  Reply
  1. Alina Cincan
    
    December 11, 2015 at 6:34 pm
    
    I thought it went really well. But, of course, it’s in our nature to always strive for better I guess.
    
    Have a great weekend too!
  2. jaltranslation
    
    December 11, 2015 at 6:39 pm
    
    Yeah, I was happy with how it went, especially as I’m not a very natural public speaker. It’s something I really want to keep working at!
Catherine Christaki (@LinguaGreca)

December 13, 2015 at 10:13 pm

Great presentation Joseph, so useful especially for newbies. I’ll contact you soon to ask your permission to reblog this post along with the recording and slides in ATA’s The Savvy Newcomer blog. Thank you very much for the kind mention too in the Twitter accounts to check out 🙂 By the way, did you by any chance upload the slides in SlideShare? Have a great week!

Reply
1. jaltranslation
  
  December 14, 2015 at 10:19 am
  
  Hi Catherine, thanks very much for the kind words, hope you had a great weekend! You’re more than welcome for the mention, your Twitter feed has always been one of my favourites.
  
  That sounds great, I’d obviously be more than happy for the post to be reblogged, I’ll keep an eye out for your message.
  
  No, I’ve never used SlideShare before so may have to look into it. I did want to embed the images as a slideshow but couldn’t get the WordPress plugin to work as I wanted and had to settle with plain old images… Oh well!
  
  Thanks again and speak soon 🙂
  
  Reply
Weekly translation favorites (Dec 18-24)

December 28, 2015 at 5:09 pm

[…] Language Do the Eskimos Really have 50 Words for Snow? Nice collection of quotes about translation Starting out as a freelance translator The Different Types of English How to retain freelance clients Names of the Year […]

Reply
Nancy A. Locke

February 11, 2016 at 12:36 pm

Well done, Joseph! I will be sharing the link with my students (who, by now, are getting really tired of listening to me). 🙂

Reply
1. Pilar San Felipe
  
  February 11, 2016 at 12:57 pm
  
  Never Nancy! Thank you again! Thanks to Joseph too!
  
  Reply
2. jaltranslation
  
  February 11, 2016 at 1:10 pm
  
  Thanks very much Nancy, I hope it’s of some use to them! Enjoy the rest of your week 🙂
  
  Reply
Hanna Sles (@hannasles)

March 22, 2017 at 2:53 pm

Great post, Joseph! I like that you mention about business and IT skills. Most of the time people miss them. But without business and IT skills, it is very difficult to survive and even thrive in the competitive world of freelance translation and localization today. Let me share my post with you about that https://goo.gl/jh0fC3

Reply
Latifah

December 17, 2017 at 4:26 pm

Thanks for the presentation. Very good and definitely useful for me since I just started as freelance translator (English to Malay pair). Quite excited frankly after not working for sometime. IT skills is important to make the process more easier to manage the source data, file structure etc. I really like to send personalized cover letter if possible to potential customers/agencies. USP… maybe 😉
Have a good week ahead.

Reply