Hi, guys -

Do any of you have experience by chance with taking a client to court over refusal to pay for services rendered? I am regretfully in a position where I now need to decide whether or not to do this and would love to hear any shared experiences you might have.

TIA

I have no formal translation education and what I know about it is self taught for the most part. I’m into literary translation, so it’s a lot of huge chunks of texts. As of right now I’m translating from English as a hobby but plan to make it my job and shift to Japanese or mandarin. Anyhow, I’m gaining experience right now and for the last year I’ve been struggling a bit, my translations have been very rough around the edges and it always takes a lot of rereads to make my texts almost read well. Word choice is also something I have problems with too. It doesn’t happen often that I confidently make a final decision on how to come about translating some pieces of text, instead i keep going back and forth for as long as I keep doing rereads. Having made translation a part of my daily routine I quickly realized that, at least for me, getting a chunk of text to read well in a single day but miraculously the next day mistakes magically become apparent and what I do is I abuse this little observation. In general the process doesn’t really go smoothly, the structure of a the undertaking is lackluster and it looks like aside from experience my knowledge on translation theory is insufficient.

I’d like to read some books on that and hear some advice from more experienced people.

Thanks in advance

P.s.: please pay no mind to the grammar, odd word choice and etc, typing this in a hurry and English is not my first language

Sometimes they outright sent me a full material for me to translate. Are they looking for a free work? Or my bank account? Or something? Their email address is super sus like they didn't even try, and I wouldn't even think that they could find a client if this is how they operate. Now what are they looking for here, if not free work? What will be their next move after I ask for a PO?

Hello everyone. After over a decade of working as a freelance translator in commercial/medical/legal domains I have the opportunity to branch out into videogame localisation.

I am negotiating my rates and I was wondering if it would be okay to ask for the file containing the whole text so that I could process it in Trados and provide a more detailed quote based on the correspondence analysis.

I usually have no problems asking my potential clients the same, but these are my first steps in this field and I want to make sure to move in the right direction.

It will be a project based collaboration. Thank you all for your advice.

My least favorite CAT tool, XTM, has gotten significantly better over the last several months. It's more stable, it can now apparently be used to translate multiple files at once and the automatic tag insertion function works pretty well.

Remaining problems:

1. No possibility for the translator to run "pre-translate" (for example to overwrite MT with TM fuzzy matches)

2. The QA function is COMPLETELY useless, see MemoQ for something that works (sort of)

3. Filtering is incredibly clunky and non-intuitive:

• no direct access to text filter from editor, which is what ALL other CAT tools offer
• no ability to do anything with filtered segments (you cannot for example clear the translations from all segments with machine translations)
• it's still incomprehensible to me how stacking multiple filters works, if it is even supposed to be possible
• Filtering for "unconfirmed" segments is called "incomplete", why you would want to use a different terminology here rather than what all the other CAT tools are using is incomprehensible, I suppose the developer wants to be special

4. No "Views" like in MemoQ

5. No locking of segments

6. No flexibility at all for translators:

• no possibility of tying in your own TM or your own glossary
• no possibility of downloading any included glossary
• no possibility of exporting a review file and re-importing it

7. Shortcuts are weirdly defined and reassignment is arbitrarily restricted:

• Why does anyone think they need to re-invent the wheel instead of going with Trados or MemoQ shortcuts?

• Why can't I use "Ctrl-Alt-/" as a shortcut? It works in other CAT tool.

The title. I'm mildy infuriated about this and it's currently being discussed with the agency, but I'd like to ask if someone noticed anything similar in their respective field of view.

Hello, everyone! I know this question is only indirectly related to translation, and I already asked on the Premiere sub, but I would be happy if multiple people could give their input on this issue.

I have managed to save the default options for the actual subs in Premiere Pro 2025 as a file/folder and I can import it, but it always imports only the actual subs options (format, stream, style).

However, I want to import defaults for the transcript that comes beforehand, and those settings don't save - it always defaults to English and mix, instead of what we use ( German and audio 1).

I already tried this tutorial but the changes do NOT get saved/applied.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZL9S5C3gHo

Is there a way to fix/change this? Thanks!

Hi guys, I have the next question, how many days can be not taking calls from Propio Language Services? I'll be out of town with not wifi or my laptop so I want to know about that.

Thanks in advance.

I looked into TM Town just now - first time, have been around Proz for years - my impression is TM Town is abandoned. Is that true? Does anybody actually use it or update content on that site?

I'm seeking career advice from other translators here as my professional network is not very big and I'm at a bit of a crossroads. If you were me, what would you do?

Background info -- my language pair is Japanese-English. I'm relatively new to translation, with about 5 years of professional experience. Currently, I work in-house at a large company. It's not a translation agency, but has a department dedicated to translation because we have many foreign partners and employees. My work is split pretty evenly between translation and native-checking as our team is mainly non-native English speakers.

I like my job well enough. As an in-house position it is stable, and it pays quite well for this industry. Most of my work is on internal documents, though occasionally I get tapped to work on stuff for social media and public-facing presentations when there's a need.

Why I need advice -- I came across an opening for an in-house native checker/editor/translator position at a smallish translation agency (position is heavier on checking/editing, lighter on translation). I applied, ended up getting an offer, and need to decide what to do.

This new position appeals to me for two main reasons.

1. As I mentioned, I'm relatively new to professional translation. My goal is to eventually branch out into more technical and specialized fields (e.g., legal, patents, medical). I don't have a technical background I can immediately put to use, but this company deals in the fields I want to pursue. I would get experience on the job with these kinds of documents, and move to taking more technical freelance work for them in the future.

2. I am an extremely anal-retentive editor/native checker. (That said, please forgive any typos, I'm not on the clock right now lol.) It's starting to feel like my level of scrutiny is just not what is needed or wanted for the internal documents I work on. Frankly, sometimes I think I ended up in the wrong job entirely and I should have been a copy editor instead of a translator. But this new position would make better use of that skill -- my work would be more in the line of quality assurance, so my anal-retentiveness might actually make a difference for clients rather than just causing me to nitpick my coworkers' syntax.

However, I would be taking a pay cut: about a month's worth of salary less per year. I would also be stepping out of a position where I'm somewhat protected from the advent of PMTE driving prices down. My spouse is going through a career change right now as well, so the timing is not ideal for me to take a leap like this.

The practical side of this is glaringly obvious: I should stay in the job where:

• I get paid more
• I don't have to worry as much about how the translation market is changing / my bonus isn't going to get cut because of clients switching to machine translation

The people I've asked for advice so far have been working in the field for 20+ years and seen it change drastically. They told me that it's a bad idea to make a pivot like this given recent trends. I'm inclined to agree.

But when I think about staying where I am now for the next 20-30 years...yeah. I realize I have other options available to me. I can stay in my current job while I study the fields I'm interested in, try picking up freelance, and go from there.

I still feel conflicted because I felt so hopeful at the interview....and then they made me an offer lower than I was willing to take. Their phrasing made it clear they're not able to negotiate higher. Maybe I should try saying a bigger number anyway if I don't expect to actually take the job, just to see what happens.

So maybe that's the core question: Is it worth it to take a pay cut and a leap of faith like this in the current market? Maybe this is particularly relevant for my language pair (JPN-ENG) but I am curious to hear what people think.

If you read all this, thanks. Would appreciate any advice/insights/opinions!

Hey guys! I'm gonna get straight into my questions so I won't waste anyone's time here.

1-can people study translation by themselves? are self taught translators able to land remote online jobs?

2-what resources would you recommend me to get started with learning translation?

3-how much per hour/year can translators make working a full-time remote job?

Fuckfuckfuck, I just graduated was actually offered a project and they asked for my hourly rate (don't wanna say to much but it's basically marketing content) - what do I tell them? lol, sorry, I am panicking, I need an adult.

Hi. 

I was doing OCR on a PDF, and when I went to recognize the page and save it, this error pops up and it doesn't let me save the document:

Internal program error:
C:\Build\TeamAgent_work\1\s\OCRT\TextLayout\src\Text\LocalStyleStorage.
cpp. 294.

Please help!

Hello eveyone! I'm new on this area and had never received an translation service hiring email before. Anyone else here knows this company? They contact my using this email: talent.beehappy@gmail.com

They told me that them would pay $20 per 1000 sentences. All i would need to do was read the sentences provided and record with my smartphone. They send me an form to be filled, asking phone number, full name, age, gender (one of the requirements was to be a man!), if i had a smartphone, where i was from, if i was willing to receive the payment within 45-60 days after the task was deemed passed by the client and if i had a paypal account.

The last email contain two docs, one called "Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA)" and the other "Translator agreement". In both had a signature filled and one space to i sign.

I live in Quebec and foreign languages is one of my interests. I understand everyday written and spoken Mandarin Chinese very well, though my writing in French is stronger. Therefore, I am thinking of becoming a translator in these two languages in Quebec. Are translators translating both languages in demand? Do they earn a decent income? My present job gives me a stable income, but I doubt whether I am able to cope with its challenges. That is to say that if I cannot stay in my present job, translation will very probably be my plan B.

Thanks for answering if you know about the market.

I do have a collegial degree in foreign languages (lower than a BA degree), taken a course on translation in Cegep. That's all I have taken in this field.

I really want to do translation as a job [KR->ENG] and at the moment I’m translating videos as a side hobby, but apart from that I would love to translate webtoons and books, amongst other things. Is there a way I could do this without much official experience? I thought it might be possible to contact authors who aren’t that famous(? Can’t think of the right word) or are still in the process of writing and give them a sample which I could also use for my portfolio, but I’m not sure how to go about doing that, and it’s pretty hard to contact webtoon authors. I’ve also tried to contact YouTubers who have a lower amount of subscribers but it’s hard to get a reply

Hi there, I'm really just looking for advice, as i have no idea where to start.

I read a looot of BL. i spend my entire 9 to 5 work day reading manhwa, to the point that my own boss says it should be a source of income by now. And to be honest, I'd love for it to be that way. My question is, how long does one have to study Korean to be actually fluent? and even then, is there even a job market for that? any pointers are appreciated!!

I've decided to translate a book from Japanese to Spanish for my final university project. When I asked one of my teachers, who mainly translates books for a living how I should go about translating a book and what software is most useful for the task she told me she doesn't use anything other than word. She says the nature of how CAT tools segment the texts limits your ability to modify the order of the original. I too have a tendency to alter the order of the text sometimes, so I have to agree with her on this. On the other hand, when I asked another of my teachers, who is on the opposite end of the translation industry (managing projects for an agency, doing web translations and so on) she told me that not using CAT software in this day and age is just foolish. I see the advantages of using a CAT software, namely consistency, quality checks, and even a better interface and faster workflow as you don't need to have the source and your TL open at the same time and constantly switch your gaze between the two. But I think not using tools that are at my disposal and are going to improve the final quality and consistency of my TL is not a wise thing to do. What are your thoughts and opinions on this?

Hi everyone, I need your help. I work in customer service and as interpreter with people around the world. I must work only with headphones on plugged into my laptop. Without headphones I always use voice translator to understand accents better. It works without headphones. I just record what people say. But how to use it with headphones on when my voice translator doesn’t hear them? How can I use voice translator with my headphones on? Is there’s a way for my translator to hear what they say when I’m with headphones on. Hope I explained it correctly. Sorry if it sounds confusing.

Is it worth being an interpreter or translator and pursuing a master's degree? I mainly want to know about financial aspects

I'm still in high school and I think this career is really cool, but I'm afraid of graduating, doing a master's degree and in the end earning the same as a barista

I don't think about making loads and loads of money, but I wonder if it's possible to have a comfortable life, a good house, a few trips a year and an acceptable car :P

Has anyone worked as a freelance interpreter for Seaside Interpreting before? How’s the working experience at there like payment, workload, training and that kind of stuff? I just got an opportunity to know this company but I haven’t seen many reviews about working there.

My name is Doug, and I am a professor at the University of Strasbourg(France). We are excited to announce a new online certificate program titled Localization and Digital Communication, designed for professionals in translation, marketing, software development, and related fields.

The program is fully online, flexible for working professionals, and starts on February 3rd, 2025. Interested individuals can contact us directly at [lge-tcloc-contact@unistra.fr] for more details.

I'd attach the pdf but I can't so here the copy paste ;)

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Why Choose This Program?

The Certificate in Localization and Digital Communication,delivered by the University of Strasbourg (Unistra – one of the most important public universities in France)offers specialized training to professionals in translation, marketing, software development, and related fields. It is taught entirely online, providing a flexible structure for working professionals.

Program Modules

• Localization Processes, Tools, and Techniques
• Mobile App Localization (or software Localization)
• Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Language Resource Management
• Web Tools and Languages
• Localized Project Management
• Usability and UX Design

Program Structure

• Participation in synchronized live sessions via a web conferencing tool organized once or twice per week.
• Completion of assignments through a combination of online resources,lectures, videos

Program Director | Dr. Renate de la Paix |:delapaix@unistra.fr

Key Takeaways and Skills Acquired

• Gain foundational skills in localization, including translation techniques and quality management.
• Gain specialized skills in software and app localization, with a focus on creating seamless experiences for global users.
• Explore NLP tools and language resource management techniques that enhance efficiency and accuracy in localization.
• Acquire technical knowledge in web languages and digital tools relevant to multilingual content.
• Develop project management skills specific to localization, enabling them to lead cross-cultural and cross-functional projects.
• Understand usability and UX design principles that ensure content is accessible and engaging for diverse user groups.

Career Relevance

All classes are taught by leading professionals of the industry based in the United States and in Europe. Graduates of this certificate program will be prepared for roles such as localization project manager, language resource manager, UX designer in localization, localization engineer, language technology specialist. These skills are applicable in a wide range of industries, including software development, e-commerce, marketing, and media.

Target Audience

This program prepares professionals in translation or technical writing to embrace new career opportunities in the fast changing language and communication industry. The curriculum combines technical and strategic aspects of localization and digital communication.

Key Features

|| || |Duration 10 months - 210 asynchronous Teaching hours |Program Start Date: February 3^(rd) 2025|

Program Format and Requirements

The Certificate in Localization and Digital Communication is structured to be flexible for working professionals as it is taught fully online. Assessment is fully online, too. All content is provided on a learning platform (Moodle), available 24/7. Non-mandatory live sessions for different time zones are organized about once a week to allow the learning community to check in and discuss their challenges. All live sessions are recorded. Each module is designed to be completed sequentially, and students are encouraged to apply their learning through practical projects and case studies. The program coordinator is available during working days.

Admission and Enrollment process

To apply for the program, candidates must submit a CV and a motivational letter to lge-tcloc-contact@unistra.fr. Afterward, an interview with the selection committee will be conducted to assess eligibility. Once accepted, students can proceed with enrollment and pay the fees in installments.

EDIT:

you asked...and I listened. I just finished this

https://mastertcloc.unistra.fr/online-certificate-localization-and-digital-communication/

you can find it by going to
https://mastertcloc.unistra.fr/
>
program
>
online certificate

i hope i proved i am not out to scam you :)

maybe see some of you soon

Hello, I'm currently in the process of writing my BA thesis where i compare the polish version of shrek to the original, looking mainly at domestication. I wanted to ask for recommendations of material that i can cite and use in my theoretical chapters about domestication and audiovisual translation. Do you know any books or articles that I may use? It would be perfect if the books were available online.

I just took the oral exam a couple of weeks ago and had to pay $350. Since tax season is coming up I was wondering if I can deduct it. I work as an interpreter directly for my state’s Supreme Court, I’m not a freelancer. Not sure if that matters.

Good evening folks! My name is Marco, and I'm a fresh graduate in translation studies who is currently on a job hunt. I was thinking of getting started by joining Translators without Borders, and I would like to ask you guys if you've worked for it in the past and how it was like. The idea really entices me, as it's a very valid way to build your portfolio and you can come into contact with big organisations; however, I know that translators are always given ridiculously tight deadlines, and things only get worse if you have little experience and/or you're not paid. I would still like to look for sources of income in the meanwhile and have enough time to breathe, so I'm afraid that the workload may be too big for me to do both things at once. Let me know what you guys think!

i’ve got a test on interpreting for french in a few weeks. i find translating english into french to be fine, not too much of a hassle but french into english is a whole other thing.

you have to translate word for word and i can get by in conversational french (upper B1/low B2 level) however i find it super hard to not get panicked and just actually guess what they’re saying without listening to every single word. does anyone have any experience with this and how might i practice and try and improve? it’s stressing me out SO much.

i understand this skill takes ages to master but for university we’ve only been practicing for max 5 weeks and we have to do an exam on it.

I have recently produced a translation of a book from 1855 which is in the public domain, and referred solely to the edition on Gallica (BNF). The translation is in one column, but in the facing column, I have the source text, which I copy-pasted and edited from the OCR data on Gallica. Does this usage prevent being able to sell it without asking/paying for permission? For this particular work I do not mind either way but it would be nice to know for future reference.

edit: from what I'm reading on other sources, Gallica has no claim to any public domain content on their site, and has no justification for requiring fees and permission... but I'm still worried they would try to come after me regardless so idk what to do

What programs do you use for translation to keep the DTP of documents specially official documents like passports, diplomas....etc?

#translation #translator #translationservices #freelancer