Monterey Language Services has had a strong partnership with Central Coast Community Energy for 5 years. During that time, we have helped to translate materials so that their customers can have a greater understanding of promotions, bills, and other notifications. Our great service and quality is why year after year, Central Coast Community Energy chooses to work with Monterey Language Services for its language needs.

“Dear Mei-Ling, Happy Holidays to you. We are grateful for our partnership and the important work we do together.” – Peter

“Happy Holidays Mei-Ling! Have a wonderful season” – Lena

“Dear Mei-Ling, Happy Holidays to you and your team! Thanks for all you do.” -Luke

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFTzivdlkXk

We hope that this video gives you some insights into our approach to simultaneous interpretation at events. Non-English speakers blend in very well with other audience because they can receive information simultaneously. The interpretation equipment used in these events is portable. The equipment can be taken anywhere in California to suit your needs.

If opportunities arise, we look forward to working with you in Monterey, Silicon Valley, and other parts of California as well. We hope you enjoy the video!

Let’s start with freelancers. Why would someone want to work as a freelancer rather than an in-house translator? One of the main attractions to being a freelancer is the ability to be your own boss. You can decline the jobs that you don’t like while accepting the ones you do. You are able to set your own rates and your own hours. You have more flexibility to arrange your schedule around your needs versus regular employees who are expected to work a scheduled amount of time each day. In general, freelancers have the potential to make more money than in-house translators as well, so it is a very attractive path for many.

So why would someone not want to be a freelancer? The freedom sounds like it would be enough, not to mention the potential amount of money that you can make. One of the main reasons that some people prefer working in-house over freelance is because of the variance in the work. The frequency of work that you receive is not always guaranteed even if you have repeat clients. You are reliant on people offering you work rather than just having a steady stream of guaranteed work. Also, you need to be able to market yourself and compete with other freelancers for work. If you are unable to set yourself apart from the other translators out there, then you will have difficulty finding work because you will just be blending in and not showing off your skills.

What makes working in-house so great then? One of the biggest draws to working in-house is having structure. If you are hired as a translator or interpreter for a company, you will only have to worry about the work that they give you. You will have a schedule for your work hours, you will have a team to work with, you will have a steady salary, and you will have company benefits. You might even receive training that will help you improve your skills or work better in the company. There will also be opportunities to use new technology or receive benefits that you would have otherwise have had to pay for on your own if you were a freelancer.

The downside of working in-house though is the fact that you are working for a company and have to play by their rules. You have to make sure that you conform to their company culture and values, so that could mean that you lose a lot of your individuality and uniqueness. The translation or interpretation styles that you had in the past might not work at the company anymore. You also have no ability to choose the work you do. If your employer gives you the same kind of work over and over again, then you have no choice but to do it.

First, this might seem very obvious, but make sure to use good headphones. You don’t have to splurge on headphones that people in the music industry might use, but a good pair of headphones can make all the difference even if you are not an audiophile. The types of audio files you will receive from your client will differ in quality. Sometimes they will be pristine quality, but sometimes you will have trouble hearing what some people are saying. This is where having a good pair of headphones will come in handy. The extra money you pay for headphones can be the difference between you trying to listen to a part over and over again and make out what is being said.

Next, make sure that you are in a comfortable environment where you will not be easily distracted or hear any kind of extra sounds. If you buy a pair of noise cancelling headphones, you might not have to worry about extra sounds bothering you, but it is still advisable to work in a place where you will not be disturbed.

You can also try to automate the job. While in the past, this might have not been a viable option, in the present day, there are a variety of tools out there that you can use to automatically catch the words for you and write them down. Of course, these kinds of programs are not without their flaws. There are tools like Zoom that can automatically transcribe meetings as long as you tell it to while the meeting is happening and other tools like Express Scribe that help you to ensure that the job gets done with integrated controls that help you control the recording while still typing.

Also be sure to sample the audio before you begin. This will help you figure out what you are dealing with as well as let you gauge how easy or difficult it will be to get through the audio. If you have to tweak the audio on your side so that you can make out what people are saying, then be sure to let the client know that it will take you about 1 hour to transcribe fifteen minutes. Both you and your client will be grateful if you take the time to go through the audio and make sure that you have an accurate assessment of how long it will take.

Overall, transcription can be a lengthy job that takes specific skills to do well. But this doesn’t mean that you will not be able to do the job well. As long as you have the right equipment and the enthusiasm, you will be able to get transcription done to a level that will be satisfactory to both you and your client.

One way is automating it. Some of the simplest mistakes that translators make involve mixing up numbers, conversions, or names. The easiest way to make sure that you have correctly reflected every instance mentioned in the source in the translation is to use a text compare. Of course, your translation will be flagged as being vastly different from the source, but it will let you know if the numbers, company names, and other words or numbers that have to be the same in the target as they are in the source are the same or not. It also takes virtually no time too. All you have to do is copy and paste then press a button. It shouldn’t take you more than five minutes to go through everything depending on the length of your project.

Another way is to make it hard to make any mistakes from the very start. If you are translating into a new, blank document, instead try translating into the target document itself. You could even enter the strings into a machine translation so that you can see the translation and the source side by side. Doing this makes it much harder for you to make any typing errors when copying whatever needs to be the same in the target as in the source. If the document you have is not easily copied such as a pdf, you can use OCR to help make the text selectable and then copy it into a word document.

The next tip is the simplest and possibly the most obvious solution. Whenever you see something that has to stay the same between the source and target, just copy it from the source to the target. So for example, if you have a number like 1,000,231, then just copy it into the target. If you want to take this a step further, then you should highlight every instance of numbers or text that need to be the same between the two files and then you will be able to quickly identify the places that need to be checked before delivery.

Quality Assurance is a necessary part of the translation process but often not something that is effectively done due to time constraints or other factors. Hopefully with this post, you have learned a few tips about how you can make the process shorter, but without sacrificing any quality. If you are able to submit a translation that avoids minor mistakes can really help your reputation and make you stand out as a translator who can be relied on.

First, it’s good to have a presence on major professional websites or social media. When hiring someone, it is common for managers or recruiters to look at the potential candidate online. It’s a way to get a preliminary look at a candidate and really get to know them better before deciding on whether or not to proceed with the hiring process.

Next, it is good to keep yourself familiar with a variety of different skills. If you have many different skills and are adept at all of them, then you can market yourself as someone who can work in a lot of different fields. However, it’s important if you could commit everything to one field and then promote yourself that way, as someone who is highly experienced in the specific field. Sometimes, recruiters look for people who have the most experience in the field, so if you show that you have more experience than other people in the field, you will be more attractive as a prospective translator or interpreter.

Also, it is important to maintain good connections with the people you work with. Make sure to be as courteous as possible and project yourself as a professional translator or interpreter. Also be sure to make friends in the industry. If you have a network of colleagues, then you can help each other find work. There are a lot of times when translators or interpreters might be too busy with an assignment they are currently working on to take any new client requests. In this situation, they try to refer a colleague, and you might be able to be that colleague that they refer. If that happens, you will establish a connection with a new client, and maybe be able to connect with even more clients afterwards.

Growing your presence as an interpreter or translator is not something that you can just do overnight, it takes time and effort. But if you are able to grow your presence, then it will benefit you in ways that you might not expect. You will reach many new clients, and build your own network of clients that know who you are and would love to work with you on future assignments.

First, how does one become a project manager? There is no specific major or degree that clearly would put you on a path to become a project manager. What is necessary is mostly experience. But what kind of experience, you might ask. Project managers come from a variety of different backgrounds, but the majority of them have some kind of management experience or knowledge of the different moving parts in the translation process. To become a skilled project manager however, takes plenty of time and honing of skills such as attention to detail, organization, great communication, and assertiveness (willingness to take control of situations).

To become a good project manager, it is important to have many different kinds of skills, but one of the most important ones are communication and a passion for the job. With good communication, it will be easier to effectively coordinate with your team so that there are no misunderstandings during work. In addition, with good communication, you are able to effectively converse with the client so that they feel valued and heard. Then, with a passion for the project manager job, it will be much easier to be careful with details, organized, and move things forward. If the project manager is passionate about their job, they will no doubt treat it with a good amount of care and effort.

So what does a project manager do specifically? Project managers are a jack-of-all-trades and help to manage projects from start to end with highest quality and as little issue as possible. Project managers work with clients to clarify project scope and details, so there would be no surprise to any part of the project as it is progressing. By doing this, the project manager promotes transparency and a level of trust that could not be gained without them. The project manager also helps create a single talking point for the client so that communication is simplified.

Project managers also help to oversee all moving parts in projects and make sure that they are operating with the best team within the allotted budget while staying on schedule. This means that the project manager has to have a clear picture of what is happening with each part of the team as well as their capabilities. Without a clear picture of the entire project, it is not realistic to expect that the project will be handled well. To have a quality plan is a key to project success.

Being a project manager can be a very busy and demanding job, but it is rewarding in the sense that you get to work with every part of the process and have control of the final product. With successful planning, the potential downside to a project can usually be avoided. But even if issues or problems did happen, an experienced project manager knows how to solve problems and makes everyone happy or understand. Being a project manager is an exciting experience that is rife with new challenges and people. If you stick to this career path, you will become confident with yourself, your work, and life ahead of you.

The first one is to be sure to have a separate space for your work. This might not be possible for everyone depending on where you are living, but it is important to have a space that you can identify as your workspace for multiple reasons. The first reason is for productivity reasons. Your home is traditionally your place to relax. It is pretty much a “no work zone.” But now, you are bringing your work into that space. This means your workspace and your relaxation space will inevitably mix together, and you will not be as focused when working, and you will be more tense while relaxing. The next reason is that, it will be easier for you to concentrate if you have a separate space where you can be as alone as possible. This will help to replicate you being in an office setting and allow you to focus more since you will be able to physically block distractions.

The next step is to make sure you get up, stretch, and walk around. Staying too sedentary is something very common among translators, and for good reason. But staying in the same spot, doing the same repetitive motions is actually very detrimental for your health. Just getting up and doing a few stretches every hour or so will help to refresh your body as well as your mind. You will also be able to prevent any kind of damage to your body that comes from prolonged immobility.

Next, be sure to have a good internet connection. There are a great deal of ISPs that have data caps on their internet, and if you are living with a family, you might already be getting close to that cap every month. Add in to the fact that you are now working from home and having to download files to translate, you might exceed that cap easily. You should make sure that you can operate within the means of your internet plan, and if you can’t find a better one so that you have reliable internet.

For the last tip, be sure to save your files both offline and online, and save frequently. With modern technology, it is increasingly common for everyone to save their files to a cloud service so that it is easier to share and access by multiple parties, but if there is a problem accessing the internet, then you will not be able to continue work anymore. Likewise, if something happens to your computer or device you are working on, and you are not able to use it anymore, having access to the file online will make sure that you can access it from a different device and thus allow you to continue work.

Remote work is a new work environment for most of us, so it is important to keep in mind what needs to be done so that you can comfortably continue to work from home. Be sure to stay healthy both mentally and physically so that you can continue to sustain this new work life without any problems.