tessamyers

Hi everyone

Just joined the forum and looking forward to getting to know you all. Am wondering if anyone has any advice regarding getting work as a translator in abruzzo? Or via the net? is it better to send out cvs to locla companies offering my services or are tere agencies where you can sign up?
Appreciate all advice!

Lorna at Vicenza

There was an agency in a town near me (might have closed down now) but they paid less than I can get by myself. I also know that they used to give three different tests to do but the joke was that the agency was not run by any English people so if you used a word that was different to what they thought it should be they never knew if it was right or wrong.

Even the people who do the subtitles for tv get it wrong sometimes.
"Quick the pigs are coming" (police) was translated as "maiale".

Queen has often been translated as 'regina' when it clearly meant 'gay'.

Do you have any free local rags where you can advertise for nothing?

tessamyers

There are no village papers but I am going to ask futher afield for advertsising. Do you advertise in the paper?

Lorna at Vicenza

No - what work I get is usually through word of mouth.

I once got a lot of work just from writing an email to an Italian company telling them that the English homepage on their new website was a load of twaddle and didn't make sense. They actually contacted me and asked if I wanted the job of putting their new on-line catalogue together in English.

Tell you what - I do get some work from Internet and web page designers. If any of their clients want their website in English as well they pass the job onto me. I don't do any of web page stuff .......... just translate the text.

You could always print out a few simple flyers or cards and send them to design studios, graphic design etc.

Sasserina

i have received quite a lot of translation work through the good old pagine gialle. Go to their website and look for all the translation agencies there are. Then write a simple email explaining who you are and attach your CV. A lot don't write back for AGES but those that do tend to have quite regular work.
Good luck!

tessamyers

Thats great - I will try both the pagine gialle and leaving cards out and about. Fingers crossed i come up with something!

Mr Posh

I translated for prodi and he lost the election......he said "voglio abbassare le tasse" I thought he said "they want to lower your pockets" never got asked back...ha well back to window washer for me..

sellymack

Hi there, I did a lot of translation work last year for the British School in Pavia and that led on to some exam invigilation work at the university which was well-paid and interesting. I was happy to see the work flying in, but after only 6-7 months I stopped working for them because it was absolutely impossible to get paid for any of the work I did on time, in fact I had a struggle at each month end because they didn't see anything untoward in delaying payments for 2-3 weeks until they received payment from the client! I have since heard that this is quite common with translation work, so you should bear that in mind if you rely on getting paid on time to pay your rent or anything. Call me old-fashioned, but I think that most people who work actually do so because THEY NEED THE MONEY, so this attitude really annoys me. Take care about the tariffs as well, they usually pay per "cartella", which is in the region of 1500 "battute", without counting the spaces and does not take into consideration the complexity of the work you are translating.
Anyway, good luck with your search!
Ciao.