Investments to start a new career Thread poster: standog
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Hi All,
Just a few words of presentation:
I am an Italian mothertongue and I worked in software localisation and lived abroad for several years.
My partner is English mothertongue and works as English teacher.
We want to start a new career as translators.
We have done some translation jobs already, in a very small scale, and our customer are quite happy, and we would like to make the big jump now....
We are deciding where to invest mon... See more Hi All,
Just a few words of presentation:
I am an Italian mothertongue and I worked in software localisation and lived abroad for several years.
My partner is English mothertongue and works as English teacher.
We want to start a new career as translators.
We have done some translation jobs already, in a very small scale, and our customer are quite happy, and we would like to make the big jump now....
We are deciding where to invest money:
1) platinum subscription to Proz.com
2) a CAT tool (wordfast)
3) some promoting/marketing investment (translatortips ebooks maybe)
Do you have any suggestion/advice?
I apologise for the long post
Thanks
Standog
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| | | | Edward Vreeburg 
Netherlands
Local time: 23:32
Member (2008)
English to Dutch
+ ...
| hello new member | Mar 10, 2003 |
Hello New member,
My first (and only) and probably most important advice:
- Keep your dayjob.
Translation is a very though business and comming from localisation/IT (?) you are probably not going to find many clients that are going to pay you huge amounts of money for your translations...
Goodluck!
Ed
| | | | Gerard de Noord
France
Local time: 23:32
Member (2003)
English to Dutch
+ ...
| Invest almost no money and get your targets straight | Mar 10, 2003 |
Hi,
Present yourself as an EN-IT translator only. Your partner should do the opposite. Take separate ProZ profiles.
Buy Wordfast (170€), join the Wordfast group at Yahoo and start spunging glossaries wherever you find them. Use the extra glossary fields you have in Wordfast to describe the entries to filter them in future.
Buy an Internet domain, the name should be short, not scary ... See more Hi,
Present yourself as an EN-IT translator only. Your partner should do the opposite. Take separate ProZ profiles.
Buy Wordfast (170€), join the Wordfast group at Yahoo and start spunging glossaries wherever you find them. Use the extra glossary fields you have in Wordfast to describe the entries to filter them in future.
Buy an Internet domain, the name should be short, not scary and easy to type and remember: www.standog.com is an option. Don\'t waist time trying to buy www.italian-to-english-tanslator.it and similar. Take care to host your domain with a singular IP adress. Virtual hosting is cheaper but will get you into trouble in the end. Copy the texts of your best ranking IT-EN and EN-IT competitors and make them better. Writing HTML is easy. Learn about optimising HTML for Google. Don\'t use frames. Don\'t use JavaScript. Don\'t use Flash. It makes all the difference if you\'re first, fifth or threehunderdth etc. in a Google search. Create a site with English and Italian pages to cater for all languages. Add your site to www.dmoz.org.
Ignore the existence of agencies as long as you can. Bear in mind that doing small jobs for 0,07 euro can mean survival in your first year and bankruptcy in your third year.
Invest in a cheap Internet connection. Internet search is the best thing that has happened to translators in centuries.
Invest in time, not in money.
Regards,
Gerard
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| | | | | The key investments ... | Mar 11, 2003 |
for me were:
1) a decent computer with up to date software
2) Some specialist dictionaries
3) Alex Eames translatortips (it worked for me) & tranmail - this helped me get my expectations realistic, set up a price list and write a decent CV
Everything else came later:
CAT tools
premium membership
qualification
etc.
It takes time and energy but go for it - it\'s worth all the effort!
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| MY WAY OF DOING IT | Apr 3, 2003 |
Hi,
I\'m relatively new in the translation business as well. I think that it\'s very important to get a good computer and software and access to the internet (definitely!!!) Try to write a good CV, register in websites designed for translators and most important of all, keep on studying and working on your style and areas of specialisation.
I\'m doing all that and now I have my website, it\'s a simple one but easy and practic... See more Hi,
I\'m relatively new in the translation business as well. I think that it\'s very important to get a good computer and software and access to the internet (definitely!!!) Try to write a good CV, register in websites designed for translators and most important of all, keep on studying and working on your style and areas of specialisation.
I\'m doing all that and now I have my website, it\'s a simple one but easy and practical to the visitors.
www.virginiatrans.uk.tt
visit it if you have the time!!!
i think this is all i can tell you so as to help you. GOOD LUCK!!
Virginia
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