Molly, funny you should ask! Just yesterday I had a conversation with a colleague who is dealing with a potentially devastating financial hit from a client changing its practices.

I think we always need to keep in mind that any particular client may drop us at any time for any reason, and may never hear the reason. So… diversifying is really important. However, you have to be prepared to do this!

Here is what I am doing and what I have done. Pick something you are interested in. I love a couple of fields: economics and medicine. So… I’m subscribed to the Financial Times and América Economía (the Spanish equivalent, which is not a translation at all, but a regional financial magazine in Spanish). I also recently subscribed to to explore what is going on in the medical world. That keeps me reading articles of interest in those fields, and when a translation in them comes along, I’m ready.

One of my uncles told my kids this, back when they were about 14: “Study something you love. Don’t study something for the money. You will never be good enough to make money at something you aren’t really interested in anyway, and you will just be frustrated.” This uncle was a very successful accountant, and had worked as an auditor for a multinational company in several countries. He had seen many frustrated accountants, who got into it because of the money and utterly failed.

So… read up on things you are interested in! When you get an offer to do a translation in an interesting field, go buy some books about the subject, just for kicks! I just got some books in the mail because I’m exploring epidemiology issues. I got something right away as an e-book, but today I got some cool stuff in the mail:
·¡±è¾±»å±ð³¾¾±´Ç±ô´Ç²µÃ­²¹ Básica, by the Organización Panamericana de la Salud (mostly a translation)
·¡±è¾±»å±ð³¾¾±´Ç±ô´Ç²µÃ­²¹, published by Eudeba (the University of Buenos Aires publishing house – original material in Spanish)
While I was browsing the Eudeba site, I couldn’t resist these books:
Fausto (a gaucho version of Faust that I read in school. Lots of fun!)
Las culturas precolombinas (just because history is fun)
Escribir: Apuntes sobre una práctica (as a translator, refreshing some ideas to improve my writing skills might not be a bad thing to do!)

This looks like a long response, but I hope you got some ideas out of it. Take advantage of your downtime to explore some of these things, as long as they are fun. Then you’ll be ready for whatever you want to do!