Is it Marketing or is it Heart? A posting written from the heart

As more and more of the translation business is machine generated or just plain carried out virtually, have personal relationships been lost in the madness? This thought came to me as I stopped by a local farmer’s market, a small business I go out of my way to patronize. Why go here rather than Wal-Mart or Kroger or whatever large grocery stores are in your area? Since this little business...

10 Reasons You’ll Never Succeed as a Freelance Translator

There are a lot of naysayers and pessimists out there, especially in the translation business. The economy will never recover. There’s too much competition. The industry is too slanted toward “big” businesses. If you listen to it all, it is quite discouraging. I choose not to listen to any of it. My world looks pretty good and I see opportunity at every corner. If you are having trouble in...

Poor misunderstood Google….

I found this article in the New Yorker and thought to post it not only because it is amusing but because we all have a kind of love/hate for Google and the like, especially in the translation business. It is titled “Don’t be Evil” by Simon Rich. Here goes: My favorite Google feature is Google Dictionary. Whenever I need a word defined, I just type it into the search box and the meaning pops...

So many translation RFPs, so little time!!

My company has spent the last two weeks working on a few projects that are serious business for us. One of them is a government RFP. There are a lot of opinions out there about RFPs, one that has been voiced loudly to me by the owner of a major NY translation company (whose opinion I value and respect a great deal!) is that RFPs are unwinnable. This owner has repeatedly told me that RFPs are...

Spiritual Principles and Business

“As you are, so is the world” Ramana Maharshi For a variety of reasons, I have been thinking a lot lately about the role of spirituality in businesses. I am a firm believer that there are many reasons a person or an organization is or is not successful, even if some of the reasons are not apparent on the surface. Why is this important to me? I want to be happy and run a great...