Blog Archive

We have written before about why a lot of agencies will ask you to complete a test assignment, and why you can’t hold it against them. If you are taking a translation test, here’s some unhelpful advice from the editor who is always marking applicants’ test translations. My mom says I’m a great translator — the editor is […]

The Internet is teeming with guidelines regarding skills translators must possess to be considered good. As a rule, they all mention the same qualities: perfect proficiency in foreign languages and flawless mastery of the native one, ability to “sense” linguistic subtleties, integration with the language environment, extensive vocabulary, advanced computer skills, etc. Hence, the natural question: if […]

Not only do you, some of your friends, and your brother Alex consider yourselves to be translators, but so does just about anyone else who has ever studied a language. But getting a degree is just theory. When that theory comes into contact with how language is used, this can result in countless mistakes, misunderstandings, […]

When purchasing goods or ordering a service, we expect them to meet our expectations. But you don’t always get what you pay for, and that is especially the case if you can’t check what you’re buying in advance. Translation services are no exception: you can contact a translation agency with a good reputation and recommendations […]

Technological development allows us an ever-greater degree of freedom From a communications channel, the Internet has become a medium for storing and processing information, while increasing network capacity and improvements to hardware and virtual technologies have made widespread access to cloud computing possible. The cloud enables not only access to information from anywhere in the […]

The success of any business heavily depends on the quality of the goods and services that it offers. This statement is also true for translation agencies. If you earn a reputation as a reliable supplier who doesn’t cause problems for its clients, you’ll most likely end up with a stream of orders for many years […]

For people who aren’t involved in translation, it is often unclear what distinguishes one translation agency from another. After all, they all do the same thing, i.e., translations. At times, however, they may have less in common than a dentist and a cosmetologist. No one asks a masseuse to fill a tooth or a veterinarian […]

Oleg retired from the Housing DepartmentBecause he was tired of unclogging blocked drains.He wanted the money without having to strain,So he became a translator. When you speak to someone who’s not into publishing industry it is sometimes difficult to explain how much nuance is required to produce a well-published text. Over the many years that […]

Freelancing is often not taken seriously and considered to be a side job; an additional source of money on top of a main salary, or a temporary cash aid until a full-time job is found. Working as a freelancer is the format of a fully-fledged professional activity. A real freelancer is a self-employed entrepreneur. Freelancing […]

There is a widespread belief that Sir Walter Scott was the first to use the term “freelancer“ meaning “freelance“, in his novel Ivanhoe: —I offered Richard the service of my Free Lances, and he refused them. Although Ivanhoe was published in the early 19th century, freelancing as a format is a rather new phenomenon. Today, a growing number of experts […]