posted 29 November 2002 12:52            

My name is Sorana Lupu, I am Romanian (native speaker), living in Romania, and have recently been thrown into the deep end of the translation business "pool".
I got "downsized" mid-October and have immediately registered as a self-employed professional, doing translations. My problem is (surprise-surprise!) finding work.
I subscribed to tranfree more than a year ago, but I have since been unable to gather the necessary money to actually get a copy of Alex Eames's marketing tool. Now this might soung cheap to you, but over the last 2 years I've been in and out of work, without the possibility of getting together even "survival" money (no doubt most of you are familiar with the current transition situation in Eastern Europe). I'm not looking for compassion here, I'm just trying to outline my situation.
I am a University graduate (BA equivalent), having English language and literature as main speciality, with French as secondary speciality.
I have done translation and interpretation work (into and from English, French and Romanian) in the past 12 years - and quite a lot of it, especially while working with a British charity. I can claim social work as an area of expertise, alongside with marketing and human resources management (training and evaluation); I have worked in a bank as a secretary, and have thus become familiar with the language used in bank services (the bank was a foreign investment in Romania); the MBA I did around the same time further introduced me to the workings of financial institutions and to the principles of running a business in general (unfortunately, it didn't teach me how to practically run my own business ).
I guess my experience would qualify me for doing "commercial" translations.
So, you see, the "beginner" in the subject line describes my status on the market. I don't know where to start; I've always relied on "word-of-mouth" referrals, but they seem to be more and more scarce. I'd go to a local agency to look for work, but the agencies here charge very little - you can guess how much of that goes to the individual translator!
I've had a look around the Internet and signed up on ProZ - but I have mixed feelings about it, since I have seen both kudoZ questions posted, whose answer could have been found in a simple dictionary and jobs that called for the intervention of the bidder not only as a translator, but as a promoter as well...
Is there anybody out there who has been in a similar situation? Can anybody give me a word of advice? Send some work my way, perhaps?
Thank you for listening, anyway!

Sorana