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… in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes Ben Franklin, in a letter written in 1789 How can we prepare to get through the storms of life? My mother-in-law, my husband and my mom died in the last six years. While I was deeply saddened by this, I still had to take care of most administrative issues for them and keep looking to the future. I wanted to have work and clients after this was over. As freelancers, our clients disappear when we disappear. How did I keep clients through these crises? Years…
In the last post, we looked at the financial issues underpinning a need for COVID-related medical leave. This week, we turn to organizational issues. Since I first drafted this article, some of those issues have changed, both in the United States and around the world. Response to the highly contagious Omicron variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus differs from what we’ve…
The Spoken Language Interpreter Job Description, authored by Norma Andrada, Heidi Cazes, Helen Eby, Julia Poger, and Rafael Treviño, might be called a job description, but I swear it’s one of the simplest and most straightforward ways to answer client and employer questions about what interpreters do. The variety of the authors’ backgrounds and locations definitely enrich this solid and…
This post was originally published on Slate. It is reposted with permission. Ben Yagoda blogs about British words and phrases that have entered the American lexicon at www.notoneoffbritishisms.com. This summer, journalist Matthew Engel took to the BBC website to bemoan the corrupting influence of U.S. words on British English. Readers were invited to weigh in with their picks for the…
The idea for this post was born on my most stressful day in recent memory: the day I took three of my children to the doctor for COVID-19 tests. If even one tested positive, all three would need to skip school and spend up to two weeks at home with me. Along with my fears for my children’s health, my…
Imagine if you could freeze your rent payment forever. Now imagine that it could disappear by the time you retire. That financial advantage is a major reason why people take the plunge to become homeowners. Being a homeowner means that your “rent” will never increase unless you authorize it. Sure, taxes will increase, but never as much as rent tends…
Here at The Savvy Newcomer we understand that it can be intimidating to talk about money. It’s often a sticky subject, but we feel it’s the first order of business for small business owners. One major component of succeeding as a freelance translator or interpreter is managing your finances well. If you don’t master your money, your translation career won’t…
This post was originally published on Madalena Sánchez Zampaulo’s blog. It is reposted with permission. More and more translators are seeing the need to diversify their freelance businesses these days. Entrepreneur defines diversification as “a risk-reduction strategy that involves adding product, services, location, customers and markets to your company’s portfolio.” For many translators, the idea of diversifying their business may…
This post is a reblog, originally published on Nikki Graham’s blog, My Words for a Change, and later published in the ATA Chronicle. It is reposted with permission from the author. From the outside looking in, most translators probably seem like lone wolves, happily working at their desks all day with hardly any social contact. In fact, many freelancers highlight…
This post originally appeared on New Statesman, and it is republished with permission. I once met a French translator of Shakespeare. My immediate reaction on being introduced to him was odd: I felt a stab of envy. This French translator, I felt, could get really close to Shakespeare; I myself, being neither an actor nor a producer, could only read…
The Savvy Newcomer team has been taking stock of the past year and finding that one key priority for many freelance translators and interpreters has been diversification. Offering multiple services in different sectors or to different clients can help steady us when storms come. Diversification can help us hedge against hard times. With this in mind, we’ve invited a series…