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The Savvy Newcomer aims to serve newcomers to the translation and interpreting professions by publishing high-quality, peer-reviewed content on a weekly basis. We strive to provide you with the answers to the many questions you face as a new or aspiring translator or interpreter.

Cultivating Connection: 8 Tips for Interpreters and Translators to Tackle Loneliness

By The Savvy Newcomer | February 6, 2024
Cultivating Connection: 8 Tips for Interpreters and Translators to Tackle Loneliness

This post was originally published on KGH Interpretation. It is reposted with permission.  In 2022 I facilitated a session of the Language Access Café at the NCIHC Annual Membership Meeting and was asked to speak about interpreter self-care. Prior to the meeting, I decided to do an informal survey of medical interpreters asking them some questions about their mental health. I wanted to have a little bit of data that would clue me in on some of the issues interpreters were facing. While most of the results I shared during the AMM focused on stressors and supports, I also briefly shared…

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

By The Savvy Newcomer | 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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MIIS: A Day in the Life

By The Savvy Newcomer | January 13, 2015

By Erin Teske My first glimpse of what it would be like to be a student at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, formerly the Monterey Institute of International Studies (MIIS), came when I received the results of my Early Diagnostic Test (EDT), which is an essential part of the application process. The Spanish program coordinator suggested that I…

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A tour of celebrations around the world through different time zones!

By The Savvy Newcomer | December 18, 2014

By The Savvy Newcomer Team and Friends The Savvy Newcomer is read in many countries, by translators and interpreters who work in many languages. As we consider Christmas and New Year around the world, we decided to explore some of those cultures by asking some of our translator and interpreter colleagues to take us on a selected world tour and…

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University of Lund: A Day in the Life

By The Savvy Newcomer | December 9, 2014

By Marie Eriksson I came to Lund University for the first time as winter was just giving way into spring. My father drove me from one side of Sweden to the other in a shaky, noisy truck in a snowstorm, while I tried to sleep against the car window on an itchy old pillow. I arrived with no more than two…

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Marketing to Direct Clients

By The Savvy Newcomer | December 2, 2014

Reblogged from the ATA Business Practices. Instead of working exclusively for agencies, many translators and interpreters are discovering that working for direct clients is a rewarding experience. However, the approaches that work for soliciting work projects from agencies are often not helpful when it comes to attracting direct clients. Dear Business Smarts: Business from some of my regular agency clients…

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What to do when things slow down…

By The Savvy Newcomer | November 25, 2014

By Helen Eby As freelancers, we are thrilled when we get a lot of work! Then we go pretty crazy with the load, saying yes to every assignment that comes. Fortunately, there are down times. What do we do with them? Some colleagues get anxious about their cash flow. “I haven’t had a new assignment for a week! What am…

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ATA Conference Through the Eyes of Newbies and Buddies

By The Savvy Newcomer | November 18, 2014

By The Savvy Newcomer Team It has been almost two weeks since we all returned from Chicago, but it already feels like the ATA Conference was a long time ago. Every year, those wonderful four days fly by in the blink of an eye, and attendees (all 1842 of them this year!) will find themselves looking for e-memorabilia to remember…

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Lesson 94: 9 Negotiation mistakes every translator has been guilty of at least once

By The Savvy Newcomer | November 11, 2014

By Marta Stelmaszak Reblogged from Want Words with permission from the author I thought it was a very relevant topic to cover because of many misconceptions around negotiation, and even more little mistakes we’re all guilty of. Negotiation is often seen as something dodgy, perhaps close to haggling. Oftentimes we expect that when we give our price, the client says yes (hopefully)…

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What’s New on the Business Practices List—Confidentiality and Revision

By The Savvy Newcomer | November 4, 2014

By David Friedman Confidentiality is not something that you can afford to take for granted in today’s digital world, where devastating disclosures of trade secrets can occur in the blink of an eye. You have to use your best judgment to determine what degree of confidentiality the documents you are translating need to be treated with in many cases if this…

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Buddies Welcome Newbies at ATA55

By The Savvy Newcomer | October 28, 2014

By The Savvy Newcomer Team The pre-conference event that was a resounding success last year, Buddies Welcome Newbies, is back this year and it promises to be an even bigger event! Led by Helen Eby and Jamie Hartz, with the support of lots of volunteers, this program is designed as an ice breaker for those attending the Conference for the…

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