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…
ATA Business Practices: Red Flags For Avoiding Scams
Translators, like other business owners, are susceptible to scams. Although the internet makes it easier for scammers to find a target, it also helps potential victims to identify scams before it’s too late. See the article below for 4 red flags that should raise the suspicions of translators looking for new clients. Red Flags to Look Out For Before accepting…
ATA Business Practices: Workflow Management
What do we do during two weeks of enforced vacation, when the offices that usually send us work are on vacation? What do we do when we receive an email on Friday evening asking us to have a translation ready for Monday? Balancing work and life as a freelancer includes these challenges. The holidays are a good time to think…
The Top Three Things I Wish Somebody Told Me When I First Started As a Freelance Translator
By Pilar Saslow I earned a degree in translation and interpretation from a university in Peru a long time ago (I won’t share how long). I was naive enough to think my degree totally prepared me to enter the workforce. I had a rude awakening when I moved to the United States where the business of translation was handled very…
ATA Business Practices: Appropriate Prices for Services
Each month the ATA Business Practices Education Committee contributes a column entitled “Business Smarts” to The ATA Chronicle that discusses various management practices and business-related questions submitted by translators and interpreters. You can find this column online at www.atanet.org; in fact, this article was taken from the column at http://www.atanet.org/business_practices/smarts_2008_may.php. It addresses many factors involved in answering one of the…
Conference Wrap-Up
By Helen Eby & Jamie Hartz The 54th annual American Translators Association conference was held this year in downtown San Antonio, Texas, just a short walk from the Alamo and the beautiful Riverwalk. The conference was a huge success on several fronts: it drew over 1,400 attendees from all over the world, and it was the first year that featured…
Building Your Presence Offline
By Daniela Guanipa I am a big proponent of making communications more effective, handling matters electronically as much as possible, and I really enjoy the enormous benefits of being able to connect with people anywhere in the world, from the comfort of my computer or any other electronic device. However, in this era of Internet, emails, and social media, it…
From ATA’s Divisions: The Portuguese Division
By Mirna Soares Member of the PLD Leadership Council It took me many years to join a community of translators. When I started, I was unaware of best business practices, I missed all the interesting conferences and I never got any specialized feedback. Everything seemed to happen very slowly. Looking back, I realize I could have taken some shortcuts. I wasted…
Finding your First Translation Clients
By Corinne McKay Reblogged from Thoughts On Translation with permission from the author I receive a lot of inquiries from people who would like to become translators, and most of these e-mails have something to do with finding those first few elusive translation clients. If you ask 100 translators how they got started in the business, you’ll probably get at…
How Do I Get My First Paying Gig?
By Giovanna Lester Let’s start from the premise that you already have some training, you know the language and culture you will be working with, and now what you need is some exposure, some clients. Where do you go from here? The answer is multi-tiered and demands determination. These are my recommendations to anyone about becoming a freelancer: 1. Identify your…
Why Be a Buddy?
By Helen Eby At my first ATA conference, back in Denver, I felt overwhelmed by the newness of it all. My roommate, however, acted as a buddy. She was great! I met her through the Roommate Finder, so she was a total stranger. We didn’t share a language, a specialty, or anything of that nature. Just a desire to have…