Nov 25, 2020 | Blog, Communication, Tips for Translators
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...
Mar 2, 2020 | Blog, Communication
Effective Communication: what is it? Effective communication consists of information that is well shared. It could be verbal, non-verbal, written, etc. One considers emotions, the ability to speak, engaged listening, etc. What makes effective communication tricky? Semantic barriers. The misunderstanding between the sender and the receiver. They are due to the different meanings they give to words. People use symbols or words that can mean more than one thing. Or, also, a technical jargon. Organizational barriers. Obstacles in the flow of information. For example: among parents and children, teachers and students. And also employers and employees, etc. Emotional barriers. Lack of attention and premature evaluation. But also poor retention and distrust. Firstly, people are interested in other things and do not listen with attention. Secondly, they jump to conclusions without considering all the information. Thirdly, the brain retains just the information that could be helpful in the future and nothing more. The sender and receiver have to trust each other. If not, the communication will be meaningless. And there are also personal communication barriers… Personal barriers. Life experiences, attitudes, emotions, and behaviours. These lead to a lack of listening, attention, knowledge, and vocabulary. The receiver listens with his ears but not with his mind. He hears only what he wants to. The sender and receiver do not have the same knowledge of a specific topic. The sender uses words that are difficult to understand. We should also mention barriers related to disability. For example, how to make a visual message accessible to the visually impaired? And how to make an oral message accessible to the hard of hearing? These...
Oct 31, 2019 | Blog, Communication, Tips
What is Public Speaking? Public Speaking in Vancouver or in any part of the world is the way by which we connect with a live audience. We are living in a world where we need to prove ourselves by our actions. Some people are really extroverted and some are introverted. Also, some people have good communication skills while others are nervous when speaking in public. Communication is the very first impression a person makes on another person. At the same time, public speaking plays an important role in the professional or business environment. All successful job interviews are based on the communication skills and confidence of the interviewee. Ways to Overcome a Fear of Public Speaking Know your topic and audience: Before going in for a presentation or speech, it is important for the individual to know well what they are speaking of and who they are speaking to. Knowing this will help the speaker to present with confidence. Good posture: To look confident, it is important to have good posture while speaking to a group of people. It shows that you have perfect knowledge of the topic and are comfortable with the audience. Relate with personal life: It is always beneficial when you relate the topic to your personal life. In that way, you can express your words or feelings in a convincing manner. Begin and end strong: Always make sure that your introduction and conclusion have a strong impact on the audience. As a result, the audience will understand the topic from the very beginning and leave with a good impression.Add visual aids: While doing public speaking, visual aids play...
Jan 7, 2019 | Blog, Communication, Tips
How to get started New year, new website? Launching a new website can be a stressful experience for the creator. Many questions and concerns can arise, as there are a lot of elements to take into account: content, marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), analytics, design, images, etc. In this blog post, you will find useful tips to get you started in creating an inviting and resourceful website for a successful website launch! Keywords, Keywords, Keywords First of all, bear in mind that you should apply and review the following suggestions regularly. Doing it just once before your website launch won’t be as effective. To start with, you have to think of the content and the design of your website. Who do you want to address? Is your content interesting and relevant enough for your audience? But most importantly, and before writing any content, look out for the best keywords to use and work with SEO. You want to go for balanced keywords that have a high ranking in volume but a low ranking in difficulty and competition. Selecting the right keywords is one of your most challenging tasks. They determine how high your website comes back in the search engine results. If you’re interested in SEO and global websites, check out our post about it! Design and Social Media As for the design, you should test it with browser emulators. See if it works well with major search engines like Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari and Opera. You also have to think about your potential clients, find a good strategy to get noticed and make your website stand out....
Dec 5, 2018 | Communication, SEO, Tips, Worldwide
Global Websites for International Audiences If you have a website, it surely is one of your priorities to make it to the top of search engine results. To achieve this, having an excellent SEO strategy is essential. How about expanding your website to international audiences? Do you have to adopt a similar strategy or does it have to be different? Have a look at this article to create global websites! The Importance of Search Engines SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is a straightforward concept consisting in making sure a website comes up at the top of search engine results for terms and sentences relevant to the website’s content. In other words, SEO allows users to find the best websites on the web depending on the keywords used in the said search engine. If you have a good SEO strategy, you are most likely to have a successful website! But what if you wish to expand your website to foreign language markets? Your Target Search Engine in a Foreign Country First, you have to ask yourself, can your website be in the target country’s language? You also must not forget to consider the culture of that country, their consumers and most importantly what search engines they use. Yes, Google is not the only search engine. Let’s take China for instance. The main search engine in China is Baidu. In Japan, it is Yahoo. Another example, in Russia Google.ru is not the main search engine. It is Yandex, for the good reason that the latter is built around the Cyrillic Alphabet. So of course, if you have, let’s say, a Chinese website,...
Jan 10, 2017 | Blog, Communication, Language Services, Tips, Translation, Worldwide
Trends for multilingual websites in 2017 according to numerology (Claim your free gift for a Happy New Year) 6 things to concentrate on while doing business in foreign markets in 2017 Dear friends, So there you have it. The year 2016 has ended and 2017 has begun. Thank you for following our blog, Facebook page, and newsletters in 2016. We believe that this year we will continue to learn something interesting about languages and translations. According to numerology, with the year 2017 a new 9-year-long cycle begins, wherein we build something new, invent new things, develop new projects, set up new initiatives, and sow the seeds of adventure that we will nurture for the next 9 years. What is your next business venture? Are you thinking of reaching out to global markets and expanding your business internationally? In this post, we’d like to introduce you to trends in foreign language websites and how to market them effectively to foreign speaking audiences in 2017. We have a small gift for you: a translation of Happy New Year wishes in 15 foreign languages. Please download it at the end of the article! What are the trends for multilingual websites in 2017? If it is your intention to create an online business in another country, you will need a website in a foreign language. It is important to build a global website with a local focus. If you wish to succeed in a foreign market while doing business online, do your best to act locally, however, think globally. When writing texts and launching products via a foreign language website, write...
