Uncategorized | Work at Home Translation Jobs

This page is a continuation of how to set up your Proz profile for an effective, online resume.

Because presentation is important, it will serve you well to make this section of your profile look nice.

As shown in the image below, this section works with basic html code, some tips of which are provided to the right of their site.

proz-edit-about-me-translation-work-jobs

HTML code to edit your profile – not as difficult as first appears.

To help you set up your own profile, you can view my full code here and compare it to my online profile. Below are some basic explanations of html code to help you, drawn from what I used in my profile above.

<img src="https://001yourtranslationservice.com/me/CV/proz/header.jpg">

The code for top image in the About Me section of my proz profile, repeated here below.

I tried playing around with Flickr and Picasa to get a direct link to an uploaded picture, but could not find a way. If you cannot find a way yourself, for $20 I can host a number of your pictures, translation samples, diplomas and so forth on my own site so that you can use them in these codes. Write to me through the contact form below if you need help with this.

<br>

This means a line break, so having several in succession, such as <br><br><br> would create two blank spaces following the paragraph ending with this string of code.

<img alt="" src="https://001yourtranslationservice.com/me/CV/proz/me.jpg" style="float: right; margin: 4px 7px;" /><br>A <b>ProZ certified member</b> with over 20 years of experience translating from Czech, Slovak and French (samples below). I obtained an <a target="_blank" href="http://001yourtranslationservice.com/me/CV/pics/diploma.jpg">Honours Degree in Economics</a> at Queen’s University in Kingston Ontario, Canada, and I can translate in a broad range of subjects. I specialise in finance-related documents.

The style=”float: right; margin: 4px 7px;” within the <img /> string (where img stands for image), embeds the image in the paragraph so that it floats on the RIGHT hand side of it. Alternatively, you can use Left instead, if you want your image nestled in the top left hand corner of your paragraph. Whether floating in the top right or top left of a paragraph, you would always put this code/script at the START of the paragraph, as shown in the sample above.

Travel while you work – Greek coastline.Greece

The margin: 4px 7px within the Style of your image refers to the space around your picture, the numbers starting like from the top of a clock and moving around clockwise. The px stands for pixels. Therefore, margin: 2px 7px 5px 4px would create a space of 2 pixels above your picture, 7 to the right of it, 5 at the bottom and four on the left. If you only put two values like I did, it will create a space of 4 pixels on the top and bottom of your picture, and 7 on the left and right. Play around with the numbers to get the exact look that you want. When you update/save your changes on your proz profile, use another browser with which you are not logged into your account to view what it will look like to your potential clients. After you save your changes, go to the other browser and refresh the window (F5 in Windows or Command R in Mac) to see the changes. Whenever designing like this, it is always best to view the results in as many browsers as possible, as each browser can render a page slightly differently.

I obtained an <a target="_blank" href="http://001yourtranslationservice.com/me/CV/pics/diploma.jpg">Honours Degree in Economics</a> at Queen’s University in Kingston Ontario, Canada

This code creates a link from any text, in this case Honours Degree in Economics, pointing to the image http://001yourtranslationservice.com/me/CV/pics/diploma.jpg. The link can point to an image, like a scanned copy of my diploma, or another webpage, or an online Word document, if you want to display your previous translation samples, for example.

Pictures of my travels while translating: Vrbovo, Bulgarian Mountains

Within the <a … >.. </a> link code, you will notice target=”_blank”. This code instructs the browser to open the link in another tab or window. This can be very useful, because you do not want your potential customers while perusing your profile to wander away from it and have to press the Back button (Delete on the keyboard) to go back to your profile once they have viewed your diploma etc. Many people might get confused and lose their spot and give up, so it is best to open up your links in a separate window, using this _blank command. They then only need to close that window once viewing it and will end up back at the tab or window showing your profile.

<h4>Translation Samples:</h4>

The H code is for Headings, and like any website, proz has its own default formats. H1 is generally always the largest font, working down to H2, H3 and H4, sometimes more. You can experiment with the different heading formats to get the look you like. Headings are good because they visually separate sections and make reading easier and more pleasant.

A little tip: in html, every special code must be opened, and then closed. So the link code <a …> must be closed with a </a>, the heading code <h2> with </h2> and so forth. One thing you cannot do is something like:

Meaning you can embed code within code, but it must never overlap like the first example.

<b>Czech to English:</b>

B simply represents Bold, while I is for Italic and U for Underlined. If you want bold and underlined, for example, you could use

Remember not to overlap the code!

<ul><li><a target="_blank" href="http://001yourtranslationservice.com/me/CV/proz/CZ2E_Annual-Report_Financial-Statement_2009.doc">Annual Report and Financial Statement</a></li>

The UL creates a section of bullet points, while the LI refers to individual points.

Travel while you work – Greek coastline

This is the section I used to show my previous translation samples, each one using the _blank command to open in a separate window or tab, or in Word or OpenOffice on the person’s computer.

Remember to close each bullet point with </li>, and </ul> once you are done with the bulleted section. As explained above, you can download my full script< to use as an example and compare how the results look when viewing my profile.

<a href="mailto:[email protected]">[email protected]</a>

This is a typical <a> link, but the mailto turns it into a command to activate the default email program installed on the viewer’s computer (with the email address automatically inserted into the To box). But this will not work for those who do not use such software and are used to using an online service such as gmail or hotmail. But no worries, because the address is visible, they can just drag across it with their mouse and copy/paste it into their online email site.

The next page of this section explains how to set up your translation samples.

Write to me if you would like help setting up your proz profile by posting images, documents or other files to my site:

Dear Sir/Madam,

I am turning to you in need of a professional advice. I am having serious problems with a fellow translator/client who ordered a high volume translation from me (obviously he took the order from another client at a larger fee and then he forwarded it to me, so he gets paid however even if he didn’t do anything. The problem is the following. It was a dense technical text, the source words were 24,175 and the target words 25,109. We agreed on a per word rate, but it was indefinite if the count should be done for source or target words (it was up to his client). I was sent a pfd file and I did the “human” translation (I don’t have Trados or any other machine translation program). It was all done in just 5 days and I worked for 50 hours in order to provide a professional, high-quality translation, which I did. When I sent my invoice, the colleage/client has told me that he cannot accept it because the word count is 11,000 !!???

It seems that there was a TM in his (and his cl ient’s possession) of which I knew nothing and that he “forgot” to mention that the count would be done according to “new matches” and “repetitions”, which I obviously did not have, since I didn’t use Trados nor has he ever mentioned anything similar. This is absoulutely unfair and he cannot do this!

I have rejected other jobs and really worked hard on this one and he never, ever mentioned any TM, Trados, repetitions and similar. He says he was wronged too, because he didn’t know anyhting about it, but I find that quite impossible. Now, I really want to get paid for the work I did (not for one third of it!), as I was honest and professional from the beginning, but he doesn’t seem to understand or pretends not to understand that this is just wrong. He should have been honest from the start about all this Trados thing.

What I really need you to do is to tell me (and him) can this sort of word count be done if there was no TM delivered (or even mentioned) to the actual translator. Furthermore, I have no way of confirming even that what they say is true, because I cannot perform that kind of word count.

All I know is that I have translated over 25000 words in 5 days and that we agreed on a price per word. And so it should have been done. I can’t understand why this person, who also claims to be a translator is not able to understand that this is ill-treatment of a colleague and completely unfair. He will get paid, however, just for receiving the file and sending it to me. And all my hard work? Who will pay for that? I have told him that I would get legal help or at least blacklist him, and he responded arogantly that he doesn’t care and that he is “trashing my e-mails”!

This person’s name is: Enrico Honnorat. His e-mail is: [email protected]

What can be done about this? If you provide your professional opinion about the fairness of payment practices and he gets to read it, maybe he will come to his senses. Please, be so kind and help me resolve this. I thank you in advance. Sincere regards, Prof. Nina Feric, PhD, MA

———————-

Hello Nina, you are right, he should have told you the conditions in the beginning. If he made a mistake he should pay for it and not you. In the least he should give you everything and do the management of the job for free. You should definitely post this on various sites, because he is not taking responsibility for his mistake. If he is located in another country than you, there is little or no legal recourse you can take against him, as is explained here:

https://homeworktranslationjobs.com/WP/how-to-make-sure-you-get-paid-for-translation-work/

If in the same country, legal recourse will be very difficult anyway, and generally not worth the effort and costs.

If you do not have legal recourse then it is best to be polite, extract the maximum you can out of him, then pummel him on all the internet forums about translation agency payment reputations. If he wants to start his own business, which is not a problem for a translator to mediate, he has to learn that he cannot do so if he has a bad reputation. So your response to this is important, to warn others, but there may be nothing you can do about it. As the page above explains, you need to carefully research any new client. So you took a chance with a noname and now you paid for it, so you made a mistake as well. But in this industry we simply must take risks sometimes. Best not to take any risks if you already have guaranteed work for which you are confident you will get paid.

Hope this helps, Karel