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tranfree issue 17 - 1st August 2000 "Commercial Idleness"
How's Your Summer?I hope you are all enjoying a nice summer. I'm in Poland at the moment staying with Malgorzata's relatives. It's a change of scenery rather than a holiday. Unfortunately the weather's been pretty bad for summer. The nice thing is, on days when we don't want to work, we just switch off the mobile phone (stress machine) - and then WE'RE CLOSED! Yes it's possible that we'll lose a job or two like this, but you can't work 365 days of the year. It's very tempting to not have proper breaks when the money starts rolling in. But you are a walking disaster waiting to happen if you don't! What we tend to do is carry on working, but scrupulously avoid stressful and difficult jobs and a... If you are going to be available for work, the important thing to do is tell all your main clients before you go. Also give them your contact number(s). We're here for a month, so it would be a dangerously long time to close down the business. We had some great feedback about the PowerPoint article in last month's edition. Many people wrote in with their agreement about not accepting work in PowerPoint or charging by the hour for it. One translator wrote in to say that she had virtually built her entire business around PowerPoint work for a large multinational. In this case she charges a fixed cost per slide, which became more and more profitable as she got better and better at PowerPoint -- to the extent that she now earns much more per hour working on PowerPoint than any other activity. This was a direct client situation, which is great if you have
the time to develop these types of relationships. The downside of
direct clients is that it's harder to take a holiday. They can be
less forgiving than the agencies! But if you develop the right
relationships anything is possible Have a good summer and don't work too hard! Alex Eames
this tranfree contains...
Letter of the Month"Alex, I must say that without your help and great info I would have never been able to do what I am doing and do so well. It all seems to work like magic. Now maybe I need to get some people to translate for me. It's been 4 months since I started from scratch and I can not believe it. All the best and thanks again. Hasta pronto" Thanks Cora - it's always great to get good feedback! eBook How to Earn $80,000+ per Year as a Freelance Translator tranmail - system for applying for work by email at 1400
translation agencies around the world (soon to be 1700) Alex Eames, tranfree editor
This tranfree's Feature Articles...
translatortips.com Linkers FREE Prize DrawI am keen to get as many of you as possible who have your own web sites to link to the translatortips.com web site. To encourage you all to put a link to translatortips.com on your own site, I am holding a monthly prize draw for everyone who does this. Each month all those people who have put a link on their own web site to the translatortips.com site (and let me know about it) will go into a ballot and the winner gets a FREE translatortips.com product of their choice from the following:
this winner is Helen Floropoulos - please contact me within the next 3 months to claim your prize from the above selection. If you wish to put a link to the translatortips.com site on your site you can find instructions at the bottom of this edition.
Translation JokeMore foreign travel funnies... GREECE In a hotel in Athens: In a Rhodes tailor shop:
Christian Faucheux runs META the spiritual linguist newsletter which contains a lot of language and translation related jokes http://www.all-languages.com/bulletin.html I saw both of these gems in Zaragoza in Spain:
Mandie Donaldson
***End of issue 17*** |
...heavy workload.
