ATA Webinar: Messenger Marketing for Freelance Translators
Upcoming ATA Webinar: Professional Liability Insurance for Translators and Interpreters
April 5 / 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EDT
Join this free webinar to learn about the benefits of having a professional liability insurance policy to protect yourself and your business from potential claims!
Are you a professional translator or interpreter? Have you considered the importance of professional liability insurance to protect yourself and your business from potential claims?
In this 60-minute presentation, you’ll hear from an industry expert about the nature of professional liability insurance, what it does and doesn’t cover, and other important policy terms. You will also gain insight into the types of claims that can be made and how to avoid or mitigate them.
Using examples of actual situations that have arisen, you will learn about the benefits of having such insurance and what to do in a claim or potential claim situation, including what is required by the terms of the policy. You will also learn about the features and availability of the insurance program available to ATA members.
This presentation is designed for both translators and interpreters and will be presented in English.
By attending this webinar, you will:
- Get a better understanding of the nature of your professional liability insurance coverage.
- See what types of claims you might face.
- Learn or reinforce ways to avoid claims or mitigate them.
- Learn or reinforce what to do and how to respond to claims when made.
- Hear about what coverage is available to you as an ATA member.
About the Presenter
Martin Ween, Senior Counsel at Wilson Elser, the law firm that works with the Underwriters at Lloyd’s, London, has been involved in the field of professional liability for 50 years, including extensive experience with the liability of translators and interpreters as a result of more than 20 years of responsibility for claims made under the professional liability program provided by the Underwriters at Lloyd’s to members of the American Translators Association. This has included handling and resolving claims; receiving and responding to inquiries from ATA members; and providing seminars, webinars, and materials to ATA and its members on a variety of topics related to their insurance coverage, liability, and ways to avoid and mitigate claims.
Register Now!
Upcoming ATA webinars in April: Branding Basics and Doing Business with Law Firms
Several ATA webinars are coming up in April, and we thought that these two would be of interest to SLD members!
“Personal Branding Basics”: a Back to Business Basics webinar with Ben Karl on April 6 at 12:00 pm Eastern time. This webinar is free to ATA members but registration is required. All registered participants will get a handout and a link to the recording.
Register at https://www.atanet.org/event/personal-branding-basics/
Developing a personal brand is a classic “work smarter, not harder” technique. When done well, it will showcase your specific expertise and skill set, bringing focus to your marketing and targeting your ideal clients. Far more than a logo or a slogan, your personal brand will tell your story, from who you are and what you do to why you are the right person for the job.
“Doing Business with Law Firms”: a webinar with Paula Arturo on April 14 at 12:00 pm Eastern time. Registration is $45 for ATA members and $60 for non-members (including 1 ATA CEP and a link to the recording)
Register at https://www.atanet.org/event/doing-business-with-law-firms/
Legal translators are expected to master both law and language in a market with its own unique, and often rigid, set of rules. This is not a field you jump into unprepared.
So how do you know if this field is right for you? How do you prepare to cater to this demanding market? Should you sub-specialize? If so, in what? How do you get your foot through the door with top law firms? And, once inside, how do you keep them happy and coming back?
Presenter Paula Arturo will draw on her 20+ years of experience and current role at a top law firm to help get you on track for doing business with law firms.
Emergency Preparedness and Contingency Planning for Freelancers
A new webinar is coming up in ATA’s popular Back to Business Basics series!
On March 2 at 12:00 pm Eastern time, Karen Tkaczyk will talk about Emergency Preparedness and Contingency Planning for Freelancers.
As with all webinars in this new series, it will be free to ATA members (but you must register to attend). The recording will be available to members at no charge (non-members can access it for a small fee).
What happens if you are hit by the proverbial bus? Or have power outages after a weather event? Or have to spend unplanned time in the hospital? Sensible contingency planning is not only your responsibility but also a gift to whomever will be handling the business in your absence.
In this seventh episode of ATA’s Back to Business Basics webinar series, presenter Karen Tkaczyk will walk attendees through implementing a basic emergency plan, including office infrastructure, crisis communications, and business continuity.
What will you learn?
- Where to start in making a plan
- Which tools can help keep this simple
- Whether to have instructions and message templates in all your working languages
- How to reduce stress for those handling your affairs
- How a business can smoothly restart operations after an emergency
Registration is open: https://www.atanet.org/event/emergency-preparedness-and-contingency-planning-for-freelancers/
December 14: New Back to Business Basics Webinar
ATA is closing out the year with another Back to Business Basics webinar: Entrepreneurial Habits for Freelance Translators and Interpreters by Corinne McKay on December 14 at 12 pm Eastern. As all webinars in this new series, it will be free to ATA members. Recording will be available to members at no charge (non-members can access it for a small fee).
Succeeding as a freelancer will always involve some factors you can’t control—like a global pandemic—but it also involves daily, positive habits and a business mindset.
In this fourth episode of ATA’s Back to Business Basics webinar series, presenter Corinne McKay will examine two kinds of business habits that can help you make the transition from “throwing it against the wall” to an actual business strategy!
What will you learn?
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- Why the entrepreneurial mindset is important
- The non-entrepreneurial mindset that most freelancers have
- Business processes that contribute to entrepreneurial habits
- Mental processes that contribute to entrepreneurial habits
- Simple changes you can make right away
Registration: https://www.atanet.org/
SLD Podcast: Episode 16 with the Black Squirrel Collective
In this latest episode of the SLD Podcast, Veronika and Ekaterina talk to the members of Black Squirrel Translator Collective (BSTC)! In 2016, Victoria Chavez-Kruse, Mary McKee, Jamie Hartz, and Elizabeth Nelsen established Black Squirrel Translator Collective, a working group that provides many tangible and intangible benefits. Tune in to learn how they did it, what working together means to them, and how you can partner up with your colleagues to take your business to the next level!
Just one day left to register for the SLD’s webinar on English>Russian editing on July 31! The more people sign up, the more reason there will be for ATA to continue with language-specific “division webinars.” Don’t miss out!
SLD Podcast: Episode 15 with Chris Durban
Translation Scams, Part I. Recognizing and Avoiding Scams (SlavFile Reprint)
By Olga Shostachuk
This article is reprinted with permission from the latest issue of the SLD newsletter, SlavFile. You can find the current issue and an archive back to 1999 at https://www.ata-divisions.org/SLD/slavfile/.
You would think that after decades of attempting to scrupulously identify and combat the Internet’s oldest hustle, namely email scams, there`d be a fix for them by now. Alas, there is not. Internet access, social media, and the convenience and anonymity of email, along with the capability these provide for easily contacting thousands of people at once, enables scammers to work in volume. Although translators are generally aware of scams these days, even experienced, savvy translators get duped on occasion. The fraudsters continually refine their techniques and expand their targets, so it is crucial to stay alert.
This article describes some of the many email-based scams targeting translators (and often other types of freelancers as well). We hope this information will help you to better recognize potential traps and avoid them. The Federal Trade Commission (https://www.ftc.gov) is a great resource for further information on new and “recycled” scams and how to avoid cybercriminals.
Common types of scams
Many scams fall into a few broad categories, described below.
419 Advance fee fraud
This type of scam is also known as the Nigerian Prince scam, the Spanish Prisoner scam, the black money scam, Fifo’s Fraud, and the Detroit-Buffalo scam. These schemes are quite elaborate and, despite their somewhat preposterous appearance, they manage to hook a surprising number of victims. The classic 419 advance fee scam attempts to entice the victim into a bogus plot to acquire and split a large sum of cash. The translator variant of this scheme is usually one in which a translator is asked to perform a translation, paid in advance for the work, and then asked to refund an accidental overpayment.
Here is how it works. Once you’ve taken the initial bait, i.e., responded to the original job message, you will likely receive a sizable document to translate (usually 3,000-5,000 words) and an offer of payment. If you go on to accept the job, you will soon discover that the client has sent payment in advance (even if advance payment was not among the agreed-upon terms) and has “mistakenly” sent a check for a much larger amount than the agreed-upon fee. The scammer will ask you to return the excess funds, usually by bank wire. Alas, because of the length of time it takes to process a check, particularly one from overseas, by the time your bank informs you that the check is fake and no funds have been credited to your account, you will have long since sent the bank wire and had the money pulled from your account and transferred to the scammer. Thus, you are out whatever effort you put into the translation as well as the funds you wired to cover the “overpayment.”
Phishing emails
Phishing emails have been crafted to look as if they were sent from a legitimate organization, when in fact they aim to fool you into visiting a bogus website where you inadvertently download malware (viruses and other software intended to compromise your computer) or reveal sensitive personal or account information. Phishing emails usually contain a link that appears to take you to a legitimate company`s website to fill in your information, but the website is a clever fake and the information you provide goes straight to the crooks behind the scam.
Subscription scams
Subscription scammers approach translators (and other freelancers) with the promise of well-paying work, but they want you to pay for the leads or subscribe to their services for a fee. All they want is your money, not your skills. You might as well throw your money away.
Resume (identity) theft
In this scenario, fraudsters pluck a translator’s resume from a website such as www.proz.com, set up an e-mail account in the translator’s name, and send (often poorly crafted) e-mails posing as the professional translator and soliciting work. It is unclear how exactly this profits them, although they might get paid; but certainly it damages your reputation.
SlavFile editor Jen Guernsey warns of another scam in which the scammer impersonates a legitimate company. If a new company contacts you be sure to look closely at the website and domain name.
Recognizing and avoiding email scams
The screen shot below contains numerous red flags indicating that this email is likely a scam:
Source: www.webroot.com
1 and 2. The email is not addressed to the recipient by name. Here, the addressee is “you” and “Dear customer.” Either the fraudsters don`t know your name, or they are using a template and not bothering to customize it.
3. The email doesn’t make sense. In this instance, it might reference an account that you never created. Or it states that you have exceeded the number of login attempts allowed, when you haven’t even been trying to sign in to that account.
4. The email contains a surprising number of grammatical or spelling errors, even though it ostensibly comes from a professional entity such as a bank or a translation company.
5. The email encourages you to confirm that the email is legitimate by clicking on a link provided in the email itself.
6. The email contains a link to a site or an email address that does not match the text of the link. To see the link destination, simply hover your cursor over the website link (without clicking), or click on the email address link, and you will see that the website or email address does not match the email originator or the purported destination. In this example, you can see the true link address displayed along the bottom of the screen.
Here is another typical example of a fraudulent solicitation. In November 2017, an email from George Boucher, georgyboucher@gmail.com, landed in my mailbox. It read: My dear! I’m in need of your service to translate the attached English content document. However, I have some questions such as:
1.How much would you charge per page, word or for the entire
translation?
2. Specialized language/s.
3. Preferred mode of payment, though I would like to propose cashier’s check or
bank certified check and do not hesitate to confirm if this is okay by you.
Project deadline is 1 month starting from 12/20/2017.
What are the warning signs here?
1. First of all, no client, especially a new one, is likely to call you “My dear.”
2. Grammar, style, and register are all off.
3. If a “client” found your info somewhere online, he or she would already know your language combination(s). No legitimate client reaches out to a translator without specifying the required language pair.
Tips to help you avoid being taken
The following recommendations can minimize your chances of falling victim of an email scam.
1. Utilize good general cybersecurity practices:
- Filter spam
- Don`t trust unsolicited email
- Treat email attachments with caution
- Don`t click links in suspicious or unsolicited email messages
- Install antivirus software and keep it up to date
- Install a personal firewall and keep it up to date
- Install and activate a web tool that identifies malicious sites (every standard browser now has a tool you can turn on to alert you if a website you are trying to access appears malicious)
- Configure your email client for security.
2. Never share your banking information with somebody you don’t know. If your overseas clients insist on paying you via wire transfer, or this is your preferred method of payment for overseas clients, you may set up a separate secondary account in your or any bank which you would use only for wire transfers for your overseas clients and transfer the money to your regular bank account right after the transaction. This is a great way to safeguard your regular account in case your bank info is hacked. 3. Ask as many questions as you can. If a “client” tells you that she has a 30-page article to translate, ask for the subject, style, details, background, and the like. A legitimate client will be able to give you all of this information in a blink, whereas a scammer will avoid the answers or will give you answers that seem off or simply don’t make sense.
4. Be suspicious if an email says that they found you on https://www.atanet.org/, for example. People generally make reference to institutions, not domains.
5. If you receive a link to a site or a downloadable file from a known colleague but your colleague has not communicated with you in advance and/or you don’t know why you’re receiving the link, do not click on it. Instead, contact your colleague and ask him or her about the matter. Do NOT respond directly to the email. Create a new email, or better yet, call.
6. Use your own link. If you receive a message supposedly from a legitimate company, go to its site directly from the web using any search engine but not through the email you received . This is the ONLY way to guarantee that you land on the legitimate site of a known company.
7. Hover before you click. Whenever you receive an unsolicited email asking you to “click here,” beware – even if it sounds like a legitimate company. The same goes for social networking links that take you to what appear to be login pages. These may in fact be sites designed to steal your information.
8. Google the named company or individual. Try keying in their name as well as an excerpt from the message text. Crooks often use the same wording and names for multiple translation scam attempts.
9. Ask for an advance fee. If the job is large, ask to be paid in installments and ask for a retainer. If at any stage the “client” suggests they’ve overpaid and asks you to wire back part of the payment, don’t! It’s a scam. Do not begin working until the payment fully clears. Be prepared to pay a bank fee if the check is fake.
10. Set up a PayPal or Square account, or any alternative thereof, (https://www.merchantmaverick.com/top-7-square-alternatives/) to be able to take a full or partial payment in advance from a new or unknown client that you find suspicious.
11. Pay no commissions or subscription fees. Translation is a large, fast-growing field, so you shouldn`t have to pay to get work. Try to be creative in finding your own clients.
Valuable resources:
https://www.proz.com/about/translator-scam-alerts
https://www.translator-scammers.com/translator-scammers-directory.htm
https://www.proz.com/forum/946
Olga Shostachuk is a PhD Candidate in Translation Studies at Kent State University, Kent, OH, where she previously completed her M.A. in Translation degree. She also holds an M.A. in Education and Linguistics from Lviv National University in Ukraine and a paralegal degree from the Academy of Court Reporting in Cleveland, Ohio. Ms. Shostachuk served as the Vice Chapter Chair for Ohio IMIA and currently is a Ukrainian editor for SlavFile, the newsletter of Slavic Languages Division of the ATA. She is also a Ukrainian into English grader for the ATA certification exam. Her research focuses on legal and medical translation, computer-assisted translation, psycholinguistics, localization, pedagogy, and assessment. She can be reached at olgalviv27@yahoo.com.
SLD Podcast: Episode 13 with Alaina Brandt
The 2019 season continues on the SLD Podcast with Alaina Brandt, a business owner, Spanish-to-English translator, and expert on project management and processes. Ekaterina and Veronika chat with Alaina about best practices in project management, sources of communication failure, and the state of localization training in the US.
Listen now on Soundcloud, iTunes, or Google Play, and be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode!