How to Succeed as a Freelance Translator (3rd Edition)
by Corinne McKay · Two Rat Press
Practical guide to starting and running a freelance translation business: training and certification paths, translator CVs, rates, marketing to agencies and direct clients, finances, and common pitfalls, plus a chapter on translation technology by Jost Zetzsche. Covers the career/business side.
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More resources on Translation & Interpreting
Is That a Fish in Your Ear? Translation and the Meaning of Everything
Best accessible entry point that frames the whole field before the textbooks. Essays for general readers on what translation is and does: literal versus free translation, dictionaries, machine translation, subtitling, legal and EU translation, simultaneous interpreting at Nuremberg, and why untranslatability claims mostly fail.
Note-taking for Consecutive Interpreting: A Short Course (2nd Edition)
Note-taking is the core trainable skill of consecutive and this is its standard workbook. Step-by-step course in consecutive interpreting notes: speech analysis, layout, verticality, links, symbols, abbreviations and fine-tuning, with exercises, sample speeches with annotated notes, and a comparison of other authors' note-taking systems.
Introducing Translation Studies: Theories and Applications (5th Edition)
Theory complement to Baker's practice coursebook; covers the field map anyone moving beyond hobby translation needs. Survey of the major theories of translation, from equivalence and translation shifts through functionalism, discourse analysis, systems theories, cultural and ideological approaches, to audiovisual translation and new technologies, each chapter illustrated with case studies.
In Other Words: A Coursebook on Translation (4th Edition)
The canonical practice-oriented translation textbook. Coursebook working upward from word-level equivalence through grammar, thematic structure, cohesion, pragmatics, visual-verbal interplay and ethics, explaining each translation problem with authentic multilingual examples and exercises. The 2025 edition adds digital genres and technology.
SCICtrain: Training Modules for Interpreting Students
Free nine-module video course from EU interpreters covering what interpretation is, how it is learned, consecutive and note-taking, simultaneous, retour into a B language, the EU accreditation test, and mock conferences, with demonstrations across several language pairs. Best free structured on-ramp to conference interpreting; pairs naturally with the Speech Repository for practice.
Speech Repository (European Commission DG Interpretation)
Public library of over 5,000 video speeches in about 30 languages for practising consecutive and simultaneous interpreting, filterable by language, domain, difficulty level and speech type, including pedagogical speeches recorded by EU interpreters and trainers. The standard free practice bank for interpreting students; nothing else offers graded, multilingual speech material at this scale.