The translation center powered by ProZ.com offers new features to ProZ.com Business members Reply

New features and tools have been added to the translation center powered by ProZ.com and made available to ProZ.com Business members. 

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Improved reference information

Several new features have been added to improve the availability of reference information available to the service providers assigned to any given job. Among them:

Projects

Projects can now be defined for any given client, and they can include one or more work orders. Among the information in a project you have a field for project instructions, and these instructions will be displayed in all jobs associated with the project. This is a very cost-effective way of conveying your reference information. A project can also be used, for instance, to coordinate the several interpreting and translating activities associated with an event.

Reference files

Reference files can be added when a work order is created, or to an already created job. These files used to be located in a separate tab on the job page, and they have been now to the main job page for improved visibility.

Client files

Client files are files that can be associated with any of your clients, and they will be offered as reference files on the main page of every job created on behalf of that client. A category (glossary, reference, style, TM or other) can be associated with each file.

Improved communication features

New interaction and messaging features

It is now possible for a company to decide if the service providers sharing a job will be able to see each other and interact among themselves. Also, managers can post in any job messages addressed to a particular provider in the job, or to all providers in the job, or only to other administrators. Administrators can also view all comments or only the comments visible by any given translator in the job.

New options for sending emails to providers

The list of providers that can be reached by selecting “Providers → View providers” has several search criteria for defining a subset of translators, and at the bottom of the page there are buttons for sending emails to the translators in the whole search (in particular, to all translators in your system) or only to those in the page in front of you. It is now possible to attach a file to these mails, and to select the particular translators you want to reach within the selection.

 Improved vendor management features

Simplified experience for providers

The translation center as seen by service providers was greatly simplified, eliminating all elements that were not needed for their role of accepting an assignment, getting information and delivering their service. This will facilitate adding extra features and information and move into mobile operation.

You can now leave feedback on providers

Two new job settings will make it possible for your PMs to leave feedback on the providers in your system for each delivered task. You can also decide if this information will be visible only for your administrators, or to share it also with the providers. Posted feedback can range from unacceptable to excellent, and a comment can be also entered. This information is stored for each translator, and it is a very useful tool for documenting the experience a company has with a given translator, especially in multi-PM companies. You can read more about this feature in a dedicated article.

Multiple language pairs in invitations to providers

If you invite translators to the translation center by email, using the options available at “Providers → Invite via email”, you can now select several language pairs associated with each translator. If you prefer to use the directory features to be found at “Providers → Invite from ProZ.com”, once you select the translators to invite the system will offer you for each provider the language pairs they declare at their ProZ.com profile, and you will be able to select one, some or all the language pairs offered. In both cases, the provider profiles at the translation center will be created with the language pairs selected by you.

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If you are a ProZ.com Business member, or consider becoming one, and want to learn more about the translation center powered by ProZ.com, please contact me via email or submit a support request.

CAT tools and directory search in the translation center Reply

The translation center powered by ProZ.com and made available to ProZ.com Corporate members keeps evolving and growing. 

These are a few of the new features:

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Payment settings

The company managing a particular instance of the translation center can use this settings page to define several elements related to payment to providers:

Preferred currency: The one used in the financial reports, and the default option for the purchase orders

Default payment terms: To predefine the payment terms to be presented to the service providers in your purchase orders, including:

• Payment n days after invoice date
• Set payment date when the purchase order is created
• Other: will display “Other, see below” and a box with the custom conditions defined by you, ideal for companies with more complex payment terms
• Pro-bono operation: a condition reserved for Translators without Borders or similar organizations

Payment conditions: to enter your payment conditions or other related information, to be shown to translators in each purchase order

Uses a CAT tool discount scheme: When this condition is selected, a table will open on the same page to let you define your discount categories and the corresponding % of full rate. Also, a new option “CAT tool settings” will be presented in the settings menu.

Purchase orders

Once a job has been defined, you will be able to create a detailed purchase order associated with each task before the job is shared with your translators.

Many of the payment conditions can be predefined for all tasks in the payment settings.

In the form provided for editing the PO, you will be able to define:

• Units: Source words, CAT analysis, Target words, Source lines, Target lines, Pages, Hours, Minutes or Total
• Volume: expressed in the units defined above. When the system manages to determine a word count, it will be displayed here if the unit selected is in source words.
• Rate: presented in the default currency defined in the payment settings, but other currencies are available
• Payment terms: in accordance with the values established in the payment settings
• Payment conditions: the value defined in the payment settings, but this can be edited for each PO
• Custom PO#: A field to manually enter the number assigned by your system to the PO. If left empty, the translation center will enter a unique identifier to identify any particular PO.

Combine preset and local information in your purchase order

CAT tool analysis

As indicated for the payment settings, it is now possible for a company to define their CAT tool discount scheme,  including the name of each category and the corresponding % of full rate.

The CAT tools settings provide a very simple way to map the discount categories used by your company with the different categories used by the CAT tools integrated in the platform.

This information can be used to define the volume of work to be done. This can be done in two ways in the purchase order:

• Manual input: When this mode is selected, you can manually enter the number of words associated with each discount category
• Analysis import: The translation center can now import an SDL Trados analysis (in xml format) and development is under way to import Wordfast and MemoQ information as well

Once the CAT tool analysis information has been manually entered or automatically imported into the purchase order, it will look like this:

A comprehensive Purchase Order form that can include CAT tool analysis

Directory search

It is now possible to invite one or several translators in a single action by using the new Providers → Find providers at ProZ.com feature.

This new feature will let you define your search criteria including:

• Source and target languages
• Whether the candidates should be native speakers of the target language
• Language service required (such as translation, but all options provided at ProZ.com are included)
• General and specific discipline
• Minimum years of experience
• Country of residence
• Software
• Whether participation in ProZ.com Certified PRO Network (CPN) is required
• Minimum positive feedback entries (WWA)

Once you submit this request, a set of results will be provided including, for each candidate, information such as username, picture, tagline, country of residence, native language, local time, number of WWA entries and PRO KudoZ points in the pair and field of expertise requested.

You will be able to select one, many or all of these providers and send them an invitation to your instance of the translation center, including a personalized message to be written by you.

Translators who accept this invitation will be directly incorporated into your instance of the translation center.

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If you are a ProZ.com corporate member, or consider becoming one, and want to learn more about the translation center powered by ProZ.com, please contact me via email or submit a support request.

What are translators working on? New ProZ.com feature Reply

ProZ.com has just released a new “What I am working on” feature designed to enable translators to share with colleagues descriptions of the projects they are currently working on. More…

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Confessions of a Freelance Translator: An interview with Gary Smith 3

“Welcome to one of the best jobs in the world!” screams the back cover of Gary Smith’s new book: Confessions of a Freelance Translator, Secrets To Success, a book offering practical, easily applicable tips to make a successful living out of freelance translation.

Gary Smith, a ProZ.com member, Certified PRO, trainer, event organizer and conference speaker, is an experienced proofreader and translator from Spanish and Catalan to English. A British native, he has lived in Spain for over two decades, offering webinars and talks internationally and around Spain.

Gary Smith, author of “Confessions of a Freelance Translator, Secrets To Success”

In today’s post, I had a chance to speak with Gary about Confessions of a Freelance Translator, Secrets To Success, the motivation behind the book, the process of writing it and the usefulness of the tips and tricks he provides throughout the book to translators starting out or who wish to make the leap to better earnings and work.

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The interview

Me: What inspired you to write this book?

Gary: This is the kind of book I wish I’d had many years ago, so I could have avoided mistakes! Back then I would have loved this book with plenty of practical, applicable tips on freelance translation to start out or move up to higher earnings and productivity.

I think today in general there’s a generally positive attitude in the freelance translation community and a good example of that is Erik Hansson’s cathartic Facebook page “Things Translators Never Say” (TTNS) (voted winner of the ProZ.com Community Choice Award for best Facebook Page), which looks at frustrating situations with clients with humor and inspired this book’s title (there is a section in the book with funny situations with clients). It’s far better to laugh about such things with our colleagues around the world than to bang your head against the desk!

Even so, I felt there was a need for a book with this positive attitude that also gives a great deal of realistic, useful advice for translators about how to improve their situation. The Things Translators Never Say group gave me plenty of examples of typical problems faced by freelance translators, which helped me understand what they need and produce a book for them, all with a dash of of humour. And here it is!

Me:  What was the hardest part of writing this book?

Gary: Strangely, the same kind of things we come across as translators, since translators themselves are writers! In other words: organisation, editing, revising, reviewing, proofreading, layout, design, etc. Then, as our translation clients sometimes do, I’d discover something new or realize I’d forgotten to mention something, so I’d have to add it in a logical, coherent way. Sometimes I thought I’d never finish it!

It’s taken about three years to write and I’ve used material from my own talks as well as studying successful small businesses and listening to advice from my experienced translation colleagues, of course.

Me: How much of the book is realistic? Are experiences based on someone you know, or events in your own professional life?

Gary: All of it! But the difference with this book is that there are lots of examples we can all relate to from service providers we come across in everyday life, using similar “tricks of the trade” that are in fact relevant to all professions and applying them to translation services to help attract and keep good clients.

There are also many examples from my own experience in the profession and from translators I have known over the years. Too many good translators are let down by a lack of simple, practical business nous that doesn’t seem to get taught enough in formal education. Whether we like it or not, most translators have to be freelancers and therefore entrepreneurs to a certain extent to make a good living.

Me: Is there a message in your book that you want readers to grasp?

Gary: Hmm…I’d say above all the message is that you can definitely make a good living out of translation by being a good professional and that the pros definitely outweigh the cons. It’s a great job if you get it right!

Me: Did you learn anything from writing your book? If so, what was it?

Gary: Well, as I’ve found when preparing my talks for congresses and webinars, when you want to teach something well and clearly you always end up fact-checking and learning something yourself, yes. I learned a lot from small business experts and even about sales psychology. And I also listened to some of my successful translation colleagues, of course! But with this book in particular, I observed service providers of all kinds, learning how they deal with their customers.

Me: Can we take a sneak peek at the book before its release?

The book, through Gary: “…First, let’s put ourselves in our potential client’s shoes. The monolingual, monocultural client needs a text translated but knows nothing about translation, how to find a good translator, or how much they may reasonably charge. Their idea of a human translator may be a studious hermit sitting at a desk piled with paper dictionaries, holding a quill poised in the air as they muse over a mixed metaphor. On the other hand, the only translator everybody in the developed world has heard of is Google Translate. Everybody has used the famous word cruncher once in a while to see what their Chinese tattoo actually means or get the gist of a foreign news article or recipe. So our potential client knows of Google Translate at least. They also know it is capable of translating thousands of words per second for free. And then they turn to you and discover that it will take days and cost several hundreds or thousands of euros. Understandably, they may well be taken aback.

To understand their predicament, imagine your car breaks down in a town you don’t know and you have to find a decent mechanic to repair it. At one garage they nonchalantly tell you it’s going to cost € 5‌‌‍0 and take half an hour. At another, they shake their heads sagely and tell you it’ll cost € 1,000 and take a week. Who’s telling the truth? Who knows what they’re doing? Who’s trying to rip you off? In order to gain a potential client’s confidence, there are little strategies that mechanics and other service providers from lawyers to doctors can and do use to allay our fears and convince us to choose their services. We, too, can apply such strategies to gain our clients’ trust. We shall look at them throughout this book.”

Me: When will the book be released and how will readers be able to purchase it?

Gary:  The book will be made available any time now at Lulu.com.

The book

Confessions of a Freelance Translator is divided into easily digestible sections relating to: finding, keeping and dealing with clients, setting fees, visibility, guiding the client through the translation process, freelance organisation in general, specialisation with some useful tips on scientific and technical translation, a general discussion of hot topics (e.g. machine and crowd translation), some tips on small interpreting jobs and of course some hilarious examples of confessions of a freelance translator!

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Get this book →

ProZ.com community book: share your knowledge and stand out as a published author Reply

ProZ.com has launched the ProZ.com community book project, an initiative to help language professionals to spread useful information among potential clients and colleagues, while promoting themselves as experts in a given field or topic.

The ProZ.com community book will feature articles written by site  members on topics of interest to the translation community that may range from machine translation, cloud-based translation tools and new translation technologies, to rates, training and  work-life balance, among other topics.

The initiative does not only give language professionals the opportunity to promote themselves as seasoned professionals, but also to become  published authors and enjoy  the benefits  this offers, including:

• Visibility: published authors become visible among peers and this creates an advantage for them, especially when time comes to attract the attention of clients.
• Credibility: book authors and collaborators get instant credibility and authority in connection with the field or topic in which they publish. This in turn translates into becoming not only a source of information, but also a resource for anyone in need of  specialized information.
• Permanence: books are born to stay regardless of the format in which they get published and a book that goes around  is also a book that keeps promoting  its  content and author(s) at no extra cost!
• Opportunities: many times names associated with books result in invitations to speak at events or offer training, and eve n to participate in further publications.
• Networking:  the discussion of a book is a good  way to break the ice!  Published authors may be invited to participate in discussions with their readers  via email,  in social networks and at  events.
• Clients:  published authors know their field, a quality searched for by good clients. And because they are seen as  experts, clients will  rarely try to get discounts for their specialized  services.

All ProZ.com members are invited to submit an article to be reviewed for possible inclusion in the community book until February 29th, 2016, 23:59 GMT. If you are not a ProZ.com member, become one today and start enjoying  all the benefits the site has to offer, including the community book.

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Are you a published author?  Share a link to your material below.

‘Giving Tuesday’ year-end donation drive: thank you all who donated! Reply

From December 1st until December 3rd, ProZ.com, Dutch translator and copywriter Pieter Beens and the rest of the ProZ.com community joined forces in a ‘Giving Tuesday’ year-end donation drive and collected over $1,800 USD to be donated to Books For Africa, Concern Worldwide and SOS Children’s Villages. In turn, ProZ.com matched dollar for dollar the collected amount and over $3,600 USD will now benefit these three non-profit organizations.

Funds were collected through ProZ.com membership sales, training purchases, as well as from direct donations, and the translator community also shared their translated version of a very famous quote by Mother Teresa:

Click here to see translated versions or suggest your own.

Special thanks go to…

• Pieter Beens for proposing this initiative and spreading the word.
• ProZ.com professional trainers Claudia Brauer, Anneta Vysotskaya, Konstantin Kisin and Samuel Sebastian Holden Bramah for donating their time and knowledge.
• ProZ.com users and members who donated through membership and training, or by making a direct donation.
• ProZ.com users and members who proposed their translation of Mother Teresa’s quote.
• Everyone who helped to spread the word!

Thank you all who joined ProZ.com’s 2015 celebration of Giving Tuesday!

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How did you celebrate Giving Tuesday? Share below.

Guest post: The importance of translators for charities 2

This is a guest post by Pieter Beens in promotion of ProZ.com’s ‘Giving Tuesday’ year-end donation drive. To find out more about this initiative and learn how to contribute, visit the drive’s main page: http://www.proz.com/pages/drive

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#GivingTuesday is an international phenomenon to raise funds for a host of charities. In the spirit of this event, ProZ.com is hosting the #ProZcomDrive, a special campaign to raise funds for three non-profit organizations: SOS Children’s Villages, Concern Worldwide, and Books For Africa. All proceeds from the ProZ.com ‘Giving Tuesday’ year-end donation drive will benefit these programs to help families in need, raise funds for emergency response programs, and support literacy initiatives.

Although fundraising within the translation community is a major aspect of the campaign, there is much more to say about the importance of translators for charities. In this article I will mention a few.

Translators often do not associate themselves with charities professionally. Of course many of us are involved in volunteer jobs, varying from caregiving to supporting political parties, but there are few translators and translation agencies that continuously support charities for free.

That is nothing to blame translators and agencies for: supporting charities is not the most obvious choice when it comes to sponsoring or even to corporate sustainable development. At the same time many charities do not ask translators and agencies to help them out with translations for free. One initiative to connect charities and translators for free translations is Translators Without Borders.

Translators can play an important role for charities. First of all, they can offer free translations (also outside Translators Without Borders), so charities can do their lovely jobs and reach their goals with a minimum of resources. However, free translations should not be the main objective for charities when collaborating with translators. Indeed, translators can offer much more than just financial help.

Language professionals, and in particular native translators who live in the countries where charities are active, have actual knowledge of the country and culture of the language in which they translate. They can be the “eyes and ears” of the charities they work for, and know how these organizations can be most successful in reaching their goals. At the same time, they can inform charities about local developments, and even point out new goals and locations where their efforts are needed.

Translators can also contribute their commercial knowledge to these organizations to help them better deliver on their mission. For example, they can share best practices in reaching out to the public or in translating different types of texts. They can help educate charities as to how they can be successful in motivating volunteers or raising funds. Translators can also apply their knowledge from particular areas of specialization, like healthcare or technology, in translating texts for non-profit organizations as well.

A final important role of translators in the non-profit sector is the role of networker. Charities often do not know where to find the right translators for a particular language or where to go in a certain country to get help, subsidies or support. Language professionals can guide them to local authorities or centers that can help the charities to realize their goals.

The #ProZcomDrive

All proceeds donated by the translation community from December 1st to December 3rd as part of ProZ.com’s ‘Giving Tuesday’ year-end donation drive will benefit SOS Children’s Villages, Concern Worldwide, and Books For Africa. In turn, Pieter Beens is also donating 10% of his income for the entire month of December to a fourth initiative: Project Jedidja, a project to fight illiteracy and discrimination among disabled children in Guinea Bissau.

Learn more about Project Jedidja here: http://veldwerkers.kimon.nl/jedidja

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Are you considering donating translations to charities? Read Pieter Beens’ tips at http://www.vertaalt.nu/blog/tips-for-translators-when-supporting-charities/