Translators read travel books

I am a translator. I also love to read good books. And I like to travel. SO I am always searching for good books. Here is a list of Top 30 Travel Books. Hope you will bookmark this page. =Ostom This is taken from internet:http://www.worldhum.com/weblog/category/C124/ No. 1: “Arabian Sands” by Wilfred Thesiger No. 2: “The Road to Oxiana” by Robert Byron No. 3: “The Great Railway Bazaar” by Paul Theroux No. 4: “The Soccer War” by Ryszard Kapuściński No. 5: “No Mercy” by Redmond O’Hanlon No. 6: “North of South” by Shiva Naipaul No. 7: “Golden Earth” by Norman Lewis No. 8: “Video Night in Kathmandu” by Pico Iyer No. 9: “The Innocents Abroad” by Mark Twain No. 10: “In A Sunburned Country” by Bill Bryson No. 11: “The Snow Leopard” by Peter Matthiessen No. 12: “The Songlines” by Bruce Chatwin No. 13: “Travels with Charley” by John Steinbeck No. 14: “Riding to the Tigris” by Freya Stark No. 15: “Europe, Europe” by Hans Magnus Enzensberger No. 16: “City of Djinns” by William Dalrymple No. 17: “A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush” by Eric Newby No. 18: “All the Wrong Places” by James Fenton No. 19: “Hunting Mister Heartbreak” by Jonathan Raban No. 20: “River Town” by Peter Hessler No. 21: “Road Fever” by Tim Cahill No. 22: “When the Going was Good” by Evelyn Waugh No. 23: “Behind the Wall” by Colin Thubron No. 24: “Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere” by Jan Morris No. 25: “A Time of Gifts” by Patrick Leigh Fermor No. 26: “Baghdad Without a Map” by Tony Horwitz No. 27: “The Size of the World” by Jeff Greenwald No. 28: “Facing the Congo” by Jeffrey Tayler No. 29: “Venture to the Interior” by Laurens van der Post No. 30: “A Turn in the South” by V.S. Naipaul

Things to do before you become a freelance translator

Things to do before you become a freelance translator If you are providing for freelance translation services there are a lot of things that are supposed to be kept in mind. Do not take the risk of ignoring these, as these are actually the basis on which your career of a freelance translator is based upon. Here are some of the main things that should be kept in mind. · Have a point of contact with the client. This would help you to get your queries answered. Remember to keep a record of the contact person’s telephone number, email and obviously the name. · Remember always to find out exactly who the client is. This can be very helpful to determine the register of your translation. · There are instances where you are to work under a particular contract on behalf of a company. You should strictly adhere to the style guide if any. There might also be certain rules for the dates of translation that are essential and need to be followed carefully. · Find out whether the client requires any particular word processing software for the translation or not. · There might be text areas that are within certain images or tables. Remember to enquire whether these texts need to be translated as well or not. If you have a grasp over graphic editing programs it would be a definite advantage.

How to keep yourself Motivated?

How to keep yourself Motivated during Freelance Translation Jobs? Any type of work requires self-discipline. But when you are doing freelance translation jobs from home, self-discipline is not sufficient. You need to know how to sustain motivation since it is an essential element in enhancing productivity. You will instantly know that you are lacking in motivation when you lose enthusiasm to work on freelance translation jobs. To regain it back and improve the situation, you must first identify the reasons for your lack of motivation. If the reason is that the freelance translation work is distasteful, then you can try to offer a reward to yourself on its successful completion. You can fit in small breaks of songs and music in between your work schedule and break the freelance translation job into smaller work fragments. By inserting exciting tasks in between the fragmented work, you will be motivated to continue working on translation. Often in freelance translation jobs, you may come across situations when you become overwhelmed by difficult projects. Moreover, the fact that you are not working in an office where you have colleagues to encourage you does not help either. In such situations, try looking for online resources, bookstores and libraries. If that doesn’t help, contact people who are familiar with such projects since brainstorming for ideas can provide new ways. It is best to set goals for freelance translation jobs. If your focus is not clear, you may risk losing enthusiasm and direction of work. Maintain a daily work schedule. This will keep you in a routine and will enhance motivation. Lack of proper exercise and food can make you become lethargic and steal away motivation from freelance translation services. Thus, you should increase intake of essential vitamins and minerals, and re-vitalize yourself through physical workout. Try out the following tips to sustain motivation and improve productivity and efficiency in your freelance translation service.

How to send big documents in internet?

Do you often find it difficult to send files to your clients which are very big? I had many such occassions when I wanted to send the translation before deadline and the email provider refused to carry it. Recently on internet search I have found a good article which shows a way out. Read and use it. Sharing Large Files and Email Attachments Online June 3, 2007 at 12:56 am · Topic: Internet, Tools How do you share large files (anything in excess of 10 Megs) with friends and colleagues over the internet? One popular option is to create a zip file and send that as an email attachment since most web-based email services (like Yahoo Mail, Gmail or AOL) now allow file attachments anywhere between 10-20 MB in size. The email approach works perfect but there may be some serious problems—one, not all ISPs or corporate email servers would accept large email messages and therefore your email may never reach the intended recipient. Second, not all of us are lucky enough to have a high-speed broadband internet connection. It is more of a nightmare for someone on a dialup to download an email message that’s a few megs in size—it will choke his internet connection and if the download breaks, things will have to restart from scratch. Fortunately, there exist some excellent services on the web that will help you share big files (like documents, home videos, audio MP3 files, high resolution photographs, CAD drawings, etc) of any size securely and easily. The other advantage—all these services come to you for free. The basic idea is quite the same behind most of these services —you upload the files onto their servers, set the permission level and pass on the download link to your friend over email instead of attaching the whole file. The most popular service in the file sharing category is YouSendit.com—it allows you email files as large as 100 MB free of charge or upto 2GB if you pay a nominal fee. YouSendIt is like a mini email program—when you upload something through their web-based interface, you can specify the email addresses of the recipients and send them personal message along with a link to download the file. YouSendIt recently introduced a free plug-in for Microsoft Outlook users—as you attach a file to you email message, Outlook will automatically send that file using the YouSendIt service. The YouSendIt icon in the system tray will indicate the current upload status of the file. This seamless integration with Outlook will appeal to a lot of Microsoft Office users. A host of services on the web will help you transfer big files like documents, home videos, audio MP3 files, high resolution photographs and CAD drawings of any size securely and easilyScribd.com is another popular service for sharing PDFs and Microsoft Office documents for one simple reason—it offers recipients a chance to view the contents of the uploaded document online without having to download the files locally. Scribd.com will convert all your uploaded Office documents and PDF files to Adobe Flash paper files which can be viewed inside any web browser that has a Flash plugin. The chances are 99.9% that Flash is already installed in your browser. Most of the solutions mentioned above will allow you to share files upto 100 MB in size but what if you have file that exceeds that limit? Enter XDrive.com, an online file storage service from AOL that offers you 5GB on online storage space for free. The files stay online forever and you can also manage them from the desktop. Another advantage is that if the internet connection breaks during the upload process, AOL XDrive will resume from the point where it broke. If you own a site or a blog and need a solution to share documents, pictures or videos with your visitors, look no further than Box.net—any extremely elegant solution that provides you a Windows File explorer like widget for your website. Visitors can browse the files without leaving your site and even download them for offline viewing. The space available is 1 GB.You may never have to worry about bouncing email messages again. Source: http://www.labnol.org/internet/tools/large-files-email-attachments-download/247/#more-247

Scope of Proofreading

I find that there is always some confusion over the role of the proofreader. Here are some guidelines to clarify this issue. Translation is, in every case, a subjective exercise. Individuals will interpret the language they are working with differently, according to: their experience and interest in the subject of the text, preferred style of writing, dialect, educational background and many other factors. There will be no definitive version of any one text, however the content is undisputable. Translation is an art, not a science- do you agree? The role of the proofreader is to check for: · Accuracy in the language used to convey meaning, in the context of the text (whether it is a legal document, public information leaflet, or personal letter) · Typing and punctuation errors · Key information, such as names, dates and addresses · Translation of the full text – for instance, the translator may have missed a paragraph or page by mistake. In the event of the proofreader identifying a mistake, he/she needs to clearly state this in a different font colour within the document, taking care not to erase any text from the original translation. The comment and if appropriate, alternative word or phrase of translation, will then be fed-back to the translator. In most cases the suggested changes will be accepted by the original translator, but in the event of a dispute (for instance over a disagreement regarding the meaning of a word or phrase) the issue will be negotiated until all parties can agree on the final translation. Source-Internet

Quote for the day

Quote for the day "The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy." ~ Martin Luther King Jr.~ ----------------------------- Want more direct clients? join my yahoo group. I will alert you when there is new tip posted in my blog. To subscribe just send a blank email at TipsforTranslators-subscribe@yahoogroups.com ____________________________________________________________________________________ Pinpoint customers who are looking for what you sell. http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com/

What are the Factors that Influence Freelance Translation Rates?

What are the Factors that Influence Freelance Translation Rates? An essential requirement for all types of freelance translation jobs is to set the translation rate accurately. It may appear a bit difficult when you first start out since there are a number of translators who are reluctant to disclose their rates to others. However, the task may not seem so difficult if you keep a couple of factors in mind that influence freelance translation rates. To begin with, freelance translation jobs can be charged by the total number of pages you worked on, the number of words used or even hours spent on translation. However, since the amount of words per page can vary, and clients generally want you to fit in more words in a single page to cut down their cost, it’s best to charge by the number of words. Another key factor to keep in mind is that freelance translation rates fluctuate depending on the language pair you select for translation. Usually a unique language pair will command better rates than the widespread ones, like English to Spanish. The type of content that requires translation is also an influencing aspect in shaping rates. You can charge more for translating a technical material than the more general content. Engineering translation papers, scientific reports and medical translation charges are generally more than sheer generic content translation. You reputation as a freelance translator and the experience you have acquired in this business also plays a crucial role in chalking out the freelance translation rate. Rates are set anywhere between .08 to .15 cents per word or more for freelance translation services. Visiting some freelance translation websites and keeping the above factors in mind will aid you to bid for a fair price, thus catering to your need and keeping the clients happy. More on rates here