How do translation professionals often find work?
Both traditional ways and information society ways. The online groups, such as Translators Café, Proz, GTI, and ATA all have some sort of a translator bidding and/or referral services. New school: hang out your shingle on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter—especially LinkedIn. Old school: put an ad in the yellow pages. Get a small local paper to do a human interest story on you and your business: you’ll have to find something that might be the hook for them, but if you make things interesting for them, you’re off and running. Old school: run an ad in the ATA journal. New school: pay for Google ad placement. Both schools: contact as many agencies as you can, with your resume, cover letter, sample translation, etc. Old school would be via snail mail; new school via email. Agencies are ALWAYS in need of good, competent translators. Old school: look for big multinational firms that might have a translation department. Contact them. Possibly ask the head of the department to mentor you, if it’s in a field you really want to work in and you have some kind of connection that might help. The list is endless.-By Adriana Tassini
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