FAQ #2: What About Scripts?

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Image of the letters FAQ with a magnifying glass over the F.

Time for a couple more frequently asked questions! Two that I get often are about scripts for the anime shows/films that I translate. When you do an anime do they send you a script or do they send you the episode? The short answer to this one is “yes.” Or rather, yes, the licensor sends … Read more

Backing Up Your Records in TO3000 Version 10

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Image of a CHKDSK scan result showing that an unspecified error occurred.

Most of us translators realize that one of the worst things that could happen to our businesses is a hardware failure, theft, or other event that wipes out all our data. We’ve all been told, “Back everything up, because you never know.” We know we need backups for our business security and our own peace of mind. Some of us are even paranoid enough to have both a physical backup and a cloud backup (of any data not too sensitive for one).1

I’m not a perfect person (ask my family), so when my computer’s hard drive died recently, I didn’t have everything backed up, but I had the essentials: my term bases, my translation memories, my personal photos, my financial records… However, when I got a new hard drive, reinstalled all my programs, and attempted to restore everything, I hit a couple of snags.

Quicken data? Fine. MemoQ resources/projects? Fine, if you know where to put everything. TO3000 Version 10? Tears of blood.

So here’s what I learned about backing up and restoring those records… Because it is a whole world of not-fun to be missing them at tax time.

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Demon Parades and Career Beginnings

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Though I didn’t manage to post about it before due to computer issues, I had two public speaking opportunities in January that were pretty fun. First, I gave a workshop at Texas A&M University’s Stark Galleries. They’re hosting an ukiyo-e exhibit called “The Floating World” through next month, so part of their family-friendly event series … Read more

FAQ #1: How Many Languages Should I Study?

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Image of the letters FAQ with a magnifying glass over the F.

Here’s a truth of my life: I get a lot, lot, lot of emails from aspiring translators with questions. That’s cool, in that aspiring translators should ask questions! That’s a lot of why I wrote So You Wanna Be a Translator etc., which many read before asking. But the thing is, I just can’t personally … Read more

2013 in Review, Part 1 – Filthy Lucre

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Learning from the past is good for us! Which is surely part of why one of the popular topics each January is the “Year in Review” post, like those I recently read by fellow translators. Two favorites: Corinne McKay uses some questions to take stock—”what went right in 2013, what needs to go better in 2014, and where do you want to be a year from now?” and Carolyn Yohn looks back at the goals she set for 2013 and evaluates where she is now in relation to them.

These list-format posts are popular for some very good reasons, and it’s not just that we human beings love lists (though we do). It’s because:

  1. We humans love lists!
  2. Actively summarizing things helps us understand them. Just like a recap at the end of an essay helps the reader understand it, the very act of summarizing events in your own life helps you, the writer, to understand them better.
  3. Learning from our past = good. Hopefully we’ll do more of the things that had good results and remember not to do some of the things that had bad results. And we can tell ourselves it’s for the readers, too: maybe they can avoid some of our mistakes or repeat some of our successes!
  4. Knowing where we are in the present = crucial. It’s pretty hard to honestly confront where we are in life, which is why it can be painful to get on the scale at the doctor’s office or terrifying to see a financial planner. But if you don’t know where you are, you’re less likely to get where you want to go.

So, okay! I will follow my colleagues’ example and figure out where I am. What the heck did I do in 2013, anyway?!

Read on for Part 1, the money side of things, or stay tuned for Part 2, the professional development side.

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What Good Is Literature?

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Today, one of my advanced and highly motivated students embarked with me on his first foray into Japanese literature: we started reading the short story 「神様」 (“Kamisama,” or “God”), by Hiromi Kawakami. It’s the second time I’ve taught this story, which features a walk to the river with a delightfully polite bear. It was hard … Read more

New simulcast: Nobunagun (FUNimation version)

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A new year, a new anime season, a new simulcast. Just started my new show, Nobunagun. If you’re thinking, “That sounds like it’s probably about Oda Nobunaga’s soul being turned into a semiautomatic machine gun”… yep, that’s pretty much right! But wait, there’s more: it’s also about Oda Nobunaga teaming up with Gandhi and Jack … Read more

Translator as Holiday Navigator

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We translators spend most of our working time critically examining the question, “What did this person mean by these words?” Maybe that’s why over the years I’ve noticed myself at company meetings or music rehearsals or parties saying, “Fred, I think what Jane is trying to say is…” In other words, interpreting not between languages, … Read more

Life Dreams (Translator-Goggles Edition)

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A photo of my hand. I am wearing the Rose Crest ring on my ring finger, and the image says "Revolution" in stylized font.

I expected my next post to be about ATA 54 from a freelancer’s perspective, but a recent Intralingo post spotlighting literary translator Peter McCambridge sent me in another direction.

Mr. McCambridge, a Canadian translator, mentions a specific moment with a specific book—Bestiaire by Eric Dupont—where “as soon as I put it down, all I wanted to do with my life was translate it.”

Reading that, I felt such a jolt of recognition. Yes, that’s what the world looks like through Translator Goggles! You may not even realize you’ve put on the goggles, but from that moment on, an almost visceral urge to translate certain works you’ve experienced is inevitable. You see a work of art through those goggles, and you realize you’re seeing what you need to be doing. It’s happened to me a few times over the last 15 or so years, but perhaps the very first life dream the goggles gave me was a dream I knew deep down could never come true.

…Until it sort of did.

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ATA Conference Notes from a Buyer’s Perspective

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I saw and learned so much last week at my first American Translators Association conference that it will definitely take some time to process it all! But I had the unusual experience of attending for the first time both as a translation vendor and as a translation buyer, and there were definitely some things I noticed from a buyer perspective that I found fascinating.

So, all you freelance translators out there: here are four things that make you leave a good or bad impression on a potential client.

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