Busy, professional freelancer websites

October 6, 2008 2:25 PM

Looking for freelance translation/editing resources

Hi all!

I am researching the field of freelance translation and/or editing but a cursory google brings up lots of agency stuff and empty websites.

Can anyone recommend any good resource sites about editing and/or translation with busy message boards, up to date info and advice - sites that are used by professionals and are not just full of questions from newbies about starting out? (Although that's helpful too. :-)) A previous answer brought up www.proz.com, which is fantastic - are there any other sites like it?

Thanks!

posted by low_horrible_immoral to Work & Money (7 answers total)

American Translators Association
posted by PY at 2:46 PM on October 6, 2008

Some of the various language divisions have their own newsletters and yahoo groups - so maybe not exactly message boards on site, but some sort of info and advice flow is going on.
posted by PY at 2:49 PM on October 6, 2008

Best answer: The big daddy of translation-related mailing lists is LANTRA-L. It's mostly focused on European languages, I think, and because of the diversity of languages, subjects, etc, it's got an elaborate subject-line protocol.

I get the impression that most translation discussions are on mailing lists oriented towards a specific language pair.

There are also a bunch of translation-oriented blogs out there. Here's a few:
http://thoughtsontranslation.com/
http://aboutranslation.blogspot.com/
http://maskedtranslator.blogspot.com/
http://jillsommer.wordpress.com/
http://ginstrom.com/scribbles/

Sorry, too lazy to link all of them. Anyhow, you'll see still other translators commenting in those blogs, and will be able to connect to the community that way.
posted by adamrice at 2:49 PM on October 6, 2008 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Céline Graciet's blog Naked Translations (in both English and French) has a good list of resources too.
posted by ceri richard at 4:06 PM on October 6, 2008

Best answer: Would you take a busy mailing list populated by professionals rather than a forum? If so, Copyediting-L is what you want for the freelance editing side of things. I don't know about the translations, but I bet someone there would point you in the right direction.
posted by Stacey at 4:15 PM on October 6, 2008

Seconding PY. I've had success with finding translators through ATA's website. There aren't any message boards, but the ATA-certified are good at what they do.
posted by tenaciousd at 6:46 PM on October 6, 2008

Response by poster: Thanks - all bookmarked!
posted by low_horrible_immoral at 4:18 AM on October 7, 2008