I’m sorry that isn’t a nice way to start a reply to a blog post.

Over 20 years ago, I was working for a company that went bankrupt in the telecom nuclear winter. I saw it coming; I tried to dodge by changing companies; I was still within the blast radius. My second career was vaporized.
I asked myself, “What else can I do now?”

Well, I thought, “I know French.” (I know it so much better now.) I thought, “I’ve written a lot of English.” (I’ve written much more now, lol.) I thought, “I am a specialist in this field, and that field.” (And I’ve learned a few more since then.).

I decided, “I can translate!” How wonderfully naïve! Maybe everyone starts there.

But the translation market 25 years ago wasn’t anything like the market is now.

Hey, back then a warm body could get $0.11/word from a translation mega-agency. You could do a lot of work without Trados. There was still a good amount of work that came in page images and there were even handwritten documents. (How’s “I can read physicians’ handwriting” for a specialization?)

If you go to the ATA Conference in Miami (I haven’t earned enough translation revenue this year to support the expense), look for some of the old-timers (pale skin, bags under their eyes, wrist braces), “How was the translation market when you started?” The real old-times can tell you about IBM Selectrics, fax machines and going to a library to do terminology research.