The Savvy Linguist serves a worldwide community of translators and interpreters who are looking for practical solutions to everyday problems, ideas for growing their business, and support as they achieve their career goals. With high-quality, peer-reviewed content, you will find the answers to the questions you face as an innovative language professional.
We have published the ATA Savvy Newcomer since 2013 and ATA Next Level since 2021. Each blog has made unique and helpful contributions to our members. Savvy Newcomer was founded to help translators avoid the “school of hard knocks” that many of us went through. It has been helpful to new and experienced translators alike as we published articles on a variety of topics. Over the years, the blog team found that newcomers to the profession, our intended audience, were not necessarily a large majority of our readers. We were reaching a worldwide community of translators and interpreters who were…
Reblogged from the Gostalks blog, with permission This is to give you some pointers as to what and how to check for, hence a sort of QA/QC checklist, for legal translation: Unless you have perfect memory and consistency, write down a glossary, either a general one or a specific one for every larger project, to make sure that you translate the…
My Personal Style Guide for the ATA Translation Exam into Spanish
Reblogged from Gaucha Translations blog, with permission by the author Based on the comments from a failed exam. I am writing this to help others not fail the same way! Include necessary clarifying information to reduce ambiguity. (register former inmates/registrar para votar a los que habían sido…) (spread the word to thousands… /informarles la decisión a decenas de miles…) Keep…
Book review: The Subversive Copyeditor
I first became aware of the work Carol Fisher Saller does when she spoke at the American Copy Editors Society conference in Portland, Oregon, and presented on her book, The Subversive Copy Editor: Advice from Chicago. I finally read her book in January of 2018. I should have done so sooner. There are so many things we can learn from…
Inbox Zero: Forever in pursuit of “No new mail!”
There is nothing more satisfying than seeing those three little words: “No new mail!” My Gmail app announces, “You’re all done!”, and I especially love the accompanying image because, yes, I do want to be sitting in the sun reading a book right now. The elusive Inbox Zero is indeed attainable, but I have a little help. I use Unroll.Me,…
How to identify and avoid translation scammers
It is an unfortunate truth that translation scammers abound. Many of us receive dozens of emails per week that qualify as translation scams… some more convincing than others. How do we sort through the myriad of requests to determine which ones are legitimate and which are worth nothing more than a quick “Delete”? Although much has been written on this…
Fidelity In Translation
Reblogged from Dragon Translate blog, with permission from the author (incl. the images) Faithfulness or fidelity has been a measure by which a translator’s work can be judged. However, fidelity has not remained constant throughout time and across space and at different stages of history the interpretation of fidelity has varied quite broadly. This essay aims to discuss this meandering…
Book review: Guide to Becoming a Successful Freelance Translator
The translation and interpreting industries have been blessed with a plethora of new books in the last few years. The book I’m going to talk to you about is mostly for new translators and interpreters, curious to explore and eager to learn more about their communities. Let’s see the basics of the book first. Title The Ultimate Guide to Becoming…
Linguist in the Spotlight: An Interview with David Rumsey
Following our most recent “Linguist in the Spotlight” interview (with current ATA President Corinne McKay), we could not be happier to have had the opportunity to speak to immediate past president of ATA, David Rumsey. A Swedish-, Danish-, and Norwegian-to-English translator for nearly 30 years, David has a wealth of knowledge about the profession (which, by the way, he fell…
Dear Savvy: Will I Go Broke as a Literary Translator?
If you read the first post in our new “Dear Savvy” series, on breaking into culinary translation, you might remember that our inbox has been graced by a number of thoughtful reader questions lately. In this new column, we provide answers to your questions by asking those who know best. In this case, we recruited literary translator Lisa Carter to…
Certification Exam Changes
Reblogged from The ATA Chronicle, with permission There are major changes ahead for ATA’s certification exam in 2017. Eligibility Requirements Education and experience requirements needed to take the exam will be discontinued in January 2017. Why? Because they failed to predict the chances of an individual passing the exam. And that was the whole point—to ensure that exam candidates were…