How to Present Your Freelance Translator Resume to Small Translation Agencies – From an Agency Perspective Have you sent your freelance translator resume to numerous translation agencies but have never heard back? Are you starting out as a freelance translator and are trying to market your services to translation agencies? Would you like to work with a translation agency but find it really hard to get your foot in the door? How translation agencies process freelance translator resumes Sending out resumes to translation agencies can be daunting. You’re likely to send out a lot of applications and only receive a few replies. Translation agencies receive hundreds of applications every week and many of them don’t take the time to respond. When you finally do manage to get in touch with a vendor manager, it’s best you don’t get your hopes up. Your resume may be piled up among many others and you may not hear back with an actual job for a while. Are you wondering why? The truth is that there may be nothing wrong with your freelance translator resume, expertise, education or rates. One of the simplest reasons why you don’t hear back is that a small translation agency has scarce resources to handle vendor management. Therefore, processing your application may be at the very bottom of their list. Until they really need somebody very particular for a very specific translation job. And that could be just you! So make your freelance translator resume stand out! Whilst the purpose of this article is not to source new translators for our company LingoStar in Canada, we wanted...
How language affects online user behaviour Translating your website has never made so much sense and here’s why. Did you know that: 90% of online buyers will ignore what you have to offer or say if it’s not in their native language? Most internet users don’t speak native English? English speakers only make up 25% of internet users? 2020 has seen the online world grow exponentially and with Chinese, Spanish, Arabic, Hindi, Portuguese, Indonesian, Malaysian, French, Japanese, Russian and German in the top 15 most popular languages online, can you really afford not having a multilingual marketing strategy? Translation is all around us We all benefit from translation in one way or another, we just sometimes don’t realize quite how much we do. Take booking holidays or event tickets for example. We all love to travel but would you risk booking your next holiday destination if you didn’t understand the description or couldn’t compare different trips? What about playing the latest video games, or binging on the latest trending series? Not nearly half as enjoyable without the required dubbing or subtitles! But it doesn’t stop there. From being able to read food labels to ensure you can make the right choices to suit your own diet requirements to sourcing reliable personal protective equipment, or helping people access critical health information in a language they understand… The list is endless. From entertainment to culture, healthcare to food & drinks, right across the spectrum. These industry sectors could not reach their audiences the way they do without translation. The truth is that translation helps us stay healthy, keeps us safe, informed and...
Writing a foreign language blog post: now you don’t need to put it off any longer with these 5 simple steps. Do you speak a foreign language well? Do you have thousands of ideas for your foreign language blog posts or articles? You may be thinking about writing a foreign language blog post in other languages every time you meet a new client. Do you think it’s about time you made your website available in a foreign language?. Do you keep trying to get it done but work always gets in the way and your foreign language website ends up at the bottom of your to-do list again? Is your website already available in foreign languages but you struggle to find the time or motivation to actually start writing articles in those languages? If you’re a frequent blogger, then your English articles are most likely very popular. Naturally, you want your foreign language blog posts to be popular as well! At the same time, are you a little worried that your foreign language writing may not be perfect? Writing a foreign language blog post does not need to be your worst nightmare. You don’t need to hold a university degree to start writing. A sound knowledge of a foreign language is usually sufficient. Sometimes, you can even do without it! The secret is to know a few tricks about how to do it right. WATCH OUR VIDEO ON HOW TO PUBLISH A BILINGUAL BLOG POST ON OUR YOUTUBE CHANNEL >> Once you do, you’ll finally get a sense of pride when hundreds of readers suddenly visit your...
Speak Foreign Languages – Learn from the Perfect Country where Precision Rules Picture a country where everything is perfect. Trains run on time. People speak a number of foreign languages fluently. Most of the multilingual information is available publicly. You can communicate in local languages but also very well in English. Food ordered at any place tastes like a meal in a top-notch restaurant. Customer service is second to none. The countryside is breathtaking and you enjoy every minute of it while gasping for air when hiking up yet another majestic mountain. Small picturesque towns are sparkling clean and mountain chalets so cute when covered with flowerbeds wherever you look. If you have visited this country, you already know which one I’m talking about! If you have not yet, go there soon! Make it before they close the borders – again! Switzerland is truly amazing. Travel Issues During the Coronavirus Crisis During my 2-week-long trip in the Swiss Alps, I was looking forward to finding out how this mountainous country functions in several official languages. It does so very well! Since I live in Canada, and Switzerland is not exactly around the corner, I had planned my trip for summer 2020 far ahead. However, when the coronavirus crisis came, it became very uncertain whether I could travel from Canada to Switzerland. So many things happened! Switzerland closed its borders. People were not allowed to travel, plus they were worried about travelling. Air travel between Canada and Europe was cancelled. There was a great deal of uncertainty in regards to border closures. When Switzerland opened up to EU countries, Canada...
How to Differentiate European Spanish and Latin American Spanish? After English and Chinese, Spanish is the third most-spoken language in the world. At LingoStar, a lot of our projects involve Spanish translation. However, these translation projects can be in either European Spanish or Latin American Spanish. Depending on whether a European Spanish or Latin American Spanish translation is needed, different translators will handle the project. We take pride in the fact that we make sure our clients are happy with their translations and recordings, and that our final Spanish translations are accurate. Latin American Spanish Translations and Recordings One thing to keep in mind is that there is not just one Latin American country with a Spanish speaking population. There are twenty individual countries where Spanish is the official language. Each country has different expressions and accents. Depending on whether you are targeting the whole of Latin America or just one country, it is important to ensure the right variety is used. We have dealt with a lot of Latin American Spanish projects recently, one of which was a voice-over project. The voice-over part is interesting because you can clearly hear the differences between the Spanish varieties. Indeed, a Spanish person can distinguish in seconds whether a recording comes from a European Spanish or a Latin American Spanish speaker. Therefore, depending on the version the client is looking for, it is extremely important to choose the right voice artist. What About European Spanish Translations? As mentioned above, selecting the right variety of a language is vital if you are looking to get into a certain market. And even though...
How to Differentiate French European and French Canadian? Apart from English, French is the only other language present on every single continent of the world. As a bilingual country, Canada is the perfect place for a translation company. At LingoStar, most of our projects involve French translation, even though we are located in English-speaking Vancouver. However, these translation projects can be in either French European or French Canadian. Among all these projects, we can differentiate between the French Canadian and French European projects, which have to be handled by different translators. We take pride in the fact that we make sure our clients are happy with their translations and recordings, and that our final French translations are accurate. French European Translations and Recordings First, let us talk about French European projects before we tackle the French Canadian ones. One thing to keep in mind is that France is not the only country to use the European version of French. You can also find it in Belgium, Switzerland or Luxembourg. Each country has different expressions and accents, but the vast majority of the language stays the same. We have dealt with a lot of French European projects recently, one of which was a translation and voice-over project. The voice-over part is interesting because you can clearly hear the difference between the two French varieties. Indeed, a French person can distinguish in seconds whether a recording comes from a French European or a French Canadian speaker. Therefore, it is extremely important to choose the right voice artist depending on the version asked by the client. What About French Canadian Translations? As...
