[JITF2020] Finding Your Place in the Premium Market

Chris Durban

Chris Durban is a US-born freelance translator based in Paris, where she translates business texts from French into English for demanding clients. She translates every day and enjoys it immensely. Chris regularly gives lectures/workshops on writing, specialization and working with direct clients, and has published many articles emphasizing the benefits for both clients and translators when linguists take a proactive approach.

Every two years, she co-organizes the SFT’s “Université d’été de la traduction financière” (UETF) for financial translators and interpreters. She is a co-founder and instructor on the “Translate in…” training seminars for FR<>EN translators.

She is also the author of “Translation, Getting it Right,” a short guide for translation buyers now translated into 19 languages (including Japanese!), its companion piece “Interpreting, Getting it Right”, and a contributor to The Prosperous Translator and 101 Things a Translator Needs to Know, both available at www.lulu.com

Professional associations: Chris is a member and past president of SFT (France). She is also a Fellow of the Institute of Translation and Interpreting (UK) and in 2018 was awarded ITI’s John Sykes Memorial Prize for Excellence, which recognizes outstanding contributions to the world of translation and interpreting over a long period.

Finding Your Place in the Premium Market

The Eternal Refrain of the Unhappy Linguist—unreasonable clients, absurd deadlines, low prices, cut-throat competition—is alive and well on social media. And the pace of commoditization is accelerating, even as Covid-19 tips the world economy into recession.

But the premium market crowd is pushing back. Good clients are out there, they say, with attractive projects and healthy budgets. (Yes, even now.) This session examines concrete strategies for joining them.

Japan Interpreting and Translation Forum 2020 (Japanese only)