ATA Savvy Linguist

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.

Writing Your Public Profile

By The Savvy Linguist | July 28, 2026

In professional associations, you can often publish a public profile. Clients use this profile to decide who to work with. It should be brief, but it has to tell your story. However, sometimes our public profile is not visible. Go to your profile settings on the platform your association uses and verify that your profile is visible. You can generally select items from your profile to share publicly, such as your phone, address, email, and social media profiles. Be intentional about what you share. This information can be seen by the public. That means both your clients and other people…

How do translators showcase their talent to translation agencies?

By The Savvy Linguist | March 24, 2015

By Gwenydd Jones Reblogged from The Translator’s Studio blog with permission from the author (including the image) Last week, Letraduct authored a post about one of the problems that your target customer (the translation agency) has, which is lack of time and desire to read lengthy cover letters, CVs and translation portfolios. The advice was clear: be a translator that makes…

Adventures with Direct Clients—Part One

By The Savvy Linguist | March 18, 2015

By David Friedman I have always wanted to work with direct clients, since the early stages of my translation career. I would like to tell you the story of what has so far been my most exciting direct client adventure, to show that these kinds of things actually happen in the real world if you play your cards right. You…

Reading the small print

By The Savvy Linguist | March 10, 2015

By Jo Rourke Reblogged from Silver Tongue Translations blog with permission from the author (including the images) I’m not entirely sure what happened. I’m usually pretty pernickety on details so I don’t know how it all got past me. Nevertheless, I am now the proud owner of an almost entirely redundant freephone business number, along with a phone and internet bill which will, over…

The ATA Mentoring Program through the eyes of a mentor-mentee pair

By The Savvy Linguist | March 3, 2015

With the deadline to apply for the ATA Mentoring Program for 2015 fast approaching this week—March 7, to be more precise—we thought this would be a great opportunity to showcase this hidden gem available to ATA members. But instead of providing a scholarly piece singing the wonders of this program, we found a mentor-mentee pair who was willing to share…

The Ins and Outs of Term Validation

By The Savvy Linguist | February 24, 2015

By Patricia Brenes Reblogged from In My Own Terms with permission from the author (including the images) Every step in term processing during the preparation of glossaries or updating of termbases is important, but probably the one that will save you the most time is term validation. How and when it’s done is key to achieve cost-effective/efficient validation. What is term validation?…

Do you know your ideal customer? Creating a customer avatar for your freelance translation business

By The Savvy Linguist | February 10, 2015

By Tess Whitty Reblogged from Marketing Tips for Translators with permission from the author (including the image) The other week I interviewed Alessandra Martelli on creating a marketing personas or customer avatars, and I wanted to write a bit  more about it here, since it is very important to know as much as possible about your ideal client. When you think about…

Go National or Stay Local?

By The Savvy Linguist | February 4, 2015

by Giovanna Lester in collaboration with The Savvy Newcomer Team Full disclosure: I am one of the co-founders and currently the president of the Association of Translators and Interpreters of Florida (ATIF), an ATA Chapter. I am also a teacher, a mother and a grandmother. I am starting to see a pattern… Joining a professional organization is an investment in…

Social Media Strategies

By The Savvy Linguist | January 27, 2015

By Catherine Christaki Reblogged from Carol’s Adventures in Translation with permission from the authors In order to get the most out of social media, you must develop an ever-expanding network. How do you do that? Who should you follow on Twitter and connect with on LinkedIn? The people I follow and connect with on a daily basis on Twitter and LinkedIn are…

How to Make the Most of Your Last Year at University? 7 Essential Steps for Translation Students

By The Savvy Linguist | January 20, 2015

By Marta Stelmaszak My last year at university as a translation student was a blast. I was thrilled to see how the quality of my translations has improved over the years, my head was full of translation theory knowledge and I was excited to be thinking about developing my future career. But I was also a bit, just a bit anxious…

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Writing Your Public Profile

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ATA66 Conference Preview: Business Practices Education at ATA66

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Retirement Planning for Freelancers

Professional Etiquette to Lower Your Stress and Improve Work-Life Balance

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