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If you're following this blog, I've set up a new one, specifically for freelance translators. The Success by Rx blog is dedicated to providing resources and information for translators. You'll find the same blog posts there in addition to some great new posts.

Check it out here: http://www.successbyrx.com/blog

See you there!

Automation: the Key to Translation Speed

Translating faster isn't about rushing. It's about saving time on everything else. As translators we perform so many time-consuming tasks without realizing it that it is all too easy to wonder where your day went. Here are some tricks I use to help automate what I can so I can spend my time translating.

Time-consuming Task	Automated Task
Typing replies to each job request/e-mail	Use voice recognition software and create templates so you can say a keyword like “booked day” and generate an entire e-mail. If you find yourself typing very similar e-mails, create a template. You can also create templates on mobile devices so you can accomplish more when you’re out and about.
E-mail dialogue involving 2,854 e-mails before you’ve even accepted the job	OK, I might have exaggerated a little but the point is, don’t treat e-mails as instant messages. Be as comprehensive and specific as possible about how you can help your client solve his/her problem. If you’re booked, maybe include when you are available to begin new work. Predict the questions he/she is going to have and answer as many of them as possible in advance. Instead of “thank you but I’m booked” maybe try “thank you but I’m booked through February 3rd at 9 am PST so I could complete this job by February 5th at 11 am PST.” Consider using a Google calendar with your general availability that your clients can access and include a link to it in out of office messages.
Finding resources and opening them in browser tabs	Organize frequently used resources into folders. For example, legal translation folder, medical translation folder, Spanish translation, French translation, etc. Use the “open all in tabs” feature.
Navigating to job folder and opening files	Create organized shortcuts to anything frequently used. Fewer clicks = less time! I have one for my spreadsheet that lists all of my jobs/job numbers, one that goes to my “working jobs” folder, etc.
Navigating through references (glossaries, reference files, etc.)	Invest in monitor space. The less minimizing/maximizing/finding/losing you have to do the better. Fewer clicks!
Invoicing	If you’re using Word or Excel for this…you are wasting oodles of time—that’s right oodles! I use QuickBooks but there are many other software programs to choose from.
Bookkeeping	See “invoicing.” I actually invested in a bookkeeper because math/accounting is not my strong suit and it is worth every penny. Calculate what you make per hour and how long it takes you to do it yourself. That’s how much you’re losing. If the cost of a bookkeeper is less and you’re usually booked up, get one immediately…right now…I’ll wait.
Extensive research	Specialize. You still have to research, but if you are willing to translate everything under the sun, each translation takes quite a bit longer to research before you can even begin, making it difficult to automate anything but the most mundane tasks. Remember, no one pays you for that time.
Terminology checking/in-process research	Create glossaries. This is another argument for specialization as it is only useful to have glossaries if you translate similar documents. You can also set up translation memories for each subject or document type so that you can draw on previous translations you’ve done of that type. Just make sure you’re not violating your clients’ policies and agreements as some of them may prohibit this. Learn the ins and outs of your computer-assisted translation tools…they are more powerful than you think!
Reading	Learn to speed-read. No, you cannot speed-read and translate. However, it is useful for the following: ·         Reading a long source before you begin. ·         Unconsciously speeding up your slow and careful reading too. ·         Reading a lot of resources very fast, speeding up research and improving quality as you’re able to draw from more resources and take in more information in less time than your slow-reading counterparts. Speed-reading is more than skimming but please, DO NOT speed-read your translation and call it “proofreading.” Speed-reading is to obtain information while proofreading is to ensure quality.
Typing	Voice recognition software. Note that in order to use Dragon (I’m not sure about other programs) to generate template e-mails and create other commands, you have to buy the professional version.

What are some other time-consuming tasks you do and do you have tricks for handling them?

Feel free to comment and let me know if you’d like more information on any of the above as well.

Dragon NaturallySpeaking: Twice the Product, Half the Effort.

Dragon Naturally Speaking is gaining ground in the translation industry. I attended a session on Dragon given by Tom Fennell and Andrew Levine at the last ATA conference in October, which really made me realize how much I am under-utilizing the program. Then in December, Mario Chávez reviewed Dragon in the ATA Chronicle from the perspective of medical translation and handling PDF documents. After recently editing a few documents obviously done with dictation software, I started pondering how this tool fits into a translator’s workflow and how it is best used to increase productivity while avoiding the pitfalls.

I’ve noticed more and more translators using Dragon when I edit. Keep in mind that this fact should not be obvious to an editor or a reader. This tool is relatively new to the industry and I think many translators aren’t used to proofreading texts produced by Dragon and so they miss things like “March to” instead of “March 2” because their brains simply don’t expect it to be there.

Don’t run away yet. Dragon is definitely a wonderful addition to your toolkit…IF you think faster than you can type, as was mentioned in the ATA conference presentation. With that said, I know a lot of people who think that they are such speed-demons on a keyboard, Dragon is useless for them, but Dragon does more than just accelerate typing.

The advantages:

·         Lighten your load. First and foremost, it just makes translating easier. Plus, if you put forth less effort to translate the same number of words, in theory, you can translate a few more of them…or just take the afternoon off!

·         Focus on the source. If you’re translating a PDF document, you’re usually forced to go back and forth looking at the source then the target, then the source and then target, etc. Dragon virtually eliminates this problem. This was also mentioned in the ATA chronicle review of the software.

·         Hear your translation. We’ve long heard that reading a translation out loud can help eliminate things that just don’t sound right and with Dragon, this is not a separate step.

·         Translate faster. I think most people translate much faster with Dragon. It makes lists of phone numbers or lab values and especially dates a breeze. Even on complex medical documents, I am still faster than I was before using Dragon, even though I often do a lot of research.

·         Work faster. It’s quite easy to set up automatic shortcuts with Dragon so, for example, when you receive a job request and you’re all booked up, you can say “all booked up” and have it write an entire e-mail for you just as if you had created a shortcut to insert a paragraph at the push of a button. Not to mention, you can update your Facebook status, close and open windows and programs and lots more.

·         Translate consistently and translate better. The more I use Dragon, the faster my brain seems to be able to translate and remember previous translations accurately. That may sound questionable, and maybe it is. I can only speak from my own experience. I’ve certainly at least noticed that increasing my translation speed and saying my translations out loud has resulted in fewer instances of having to go back and see how certain terms and phrases were handled.

·         Multitask. Dragon eliminates the absolute requirement that you must be looking where you are typing. For example, I might use Dragon to type in a search on Google or in a dictionary while I’m reading my source. Or, I might have looked something up and be reading the information I need as I’m dictating my newly found terminology into my translation.

The pitfalls:

·         Tomato: tomayto or tomahto? You need to know how to pronounce what you’re typing. You might think you know how to pronounce it, but Dragon might not agree with you. Don’t worry, either you or Dragon will learn.

·         Proofread differently. You have to proofread for mistakes that you know that you never would have made. I recently had Dragon decide that when I said “NM” I meant “New Mexico.” I didn’t. It was an acronym for an institution.

·         Heavy program. If you’re using a computer that is on its last leg, it probably won’t be able to handle Dragon, but most decent computers don’t seem to have problems.

·         No distractions. Yes, that is a pitfall…and an advantage. No listening to music or other sound. However, I do sometimes manage to listen to music through the headset and it doesn’t seem to affect Dragon.

How much can Dragon increase your productivity? Well, that depends. I can say that just by adding Dragon to my own workflow, I’ve increased my speed by about 25% on highly technical jobs and by up to 100% on less technical jobs, including careful proofreading. There’s certainly no doubt that the software is now on my list of absolutely essential tools but remember, don’t be afraid to test yourself and Dragon and you might be surprised, but in the end, proofread carefully.

Note: I am in no way affiliated with Dragon and there are several other dictation software programs available, it just so happens that my experience has been with Dragon.

OCR Tools: Coping with PDF Files

As a medical translator, I work with a LOT of PDF files. I probably use my OCR tool up to 10 times per day and I’m fairly certain that at this point, I couldn’t work without it. However, it took some time before I figured out exactly how to get the most out of it and I’m certain that I haven’t even scratched the surface. In case you are not familiar with OCR, it stands for “Optical Character Recognition” and is basically used to turn “dead” (not editable) documents of all kinds (including pictures and PDFs) into editable Word documents preserving the formatting of the original. This sometimes works better in theory than in practice since a bad fax can ruin the OCR tool’s ability to properly recreate formatting. 

Fixing the strange formatting produced by an OCR tool can be more difficult than recreating the formatting from scratch. With that said, it still has plenty of uses. I use the text from an OCR file pasted as unformatted text into a new clean file which I format from scratch. I find this to be the easiest way to get around the strange formatting the files can create while still taking advantage of the benefits.

Quality: When editing translations from PDF documents, I often find that translators omit text. Although this is an unacceptable translation error, it does happen. OCR helps ensure all of the text gets translated, just like using a Word file.

Computer-Assisted Translation tools: OCR enables you to use your favorite CAT tool with a dead PDF file. This helps speed up the translation process by taking advantage of the matches and repetitions that are generally inaccessible in PDF translations. You can also increase consistency by always ensuring that segments and terminology are translated the same way throughout a document.

Numbers, names and lists: Have you ever waded through pages and pages of a lab report? Ever painfully retyped tables full of numbers? An OCR tool will recreate all of those numbers for you. That means all you need to do is proofread them! Or, how about a list of names with phone numbers? Don’t type the whole list from scratch—OCR the list and proofread instead!

Tables: Although OCR tools can create strange formatting, they are great with simple tables and lines that they can read well. You may just need to correct the cell alignment and font. 

Word counts: Most translators estimate how long a project will take based on the number of words in the document. With a PDF, the word count is usually estimated a variety of ways, but the accuracy varies. I recently had a client ask me to translate a very technical medical document with 2,000 words in 24 hours. No problem, right? It looked a little longer than that to me so I sent the file through my OCR tool and it turned out that the file was 7,000 words. No, I’m not kidding. That would have been a long night. 

Flat rates: Having an accurate word count also allows you to give clients a flat rate if you so choose and/or helps provide a more accurate quote up front so no one is surprised.

Just remember that OCR tools only give an estimate. If you use it to check the word count of a document, be sure to scroll through and make sure that all or most of the text was picked up by the OCR tool. If it can’t read something, it will be inserted as a picture and maybe a picture is worth a thousand words, but not to a translator!

How do you use your OCR tool?