Want to know how to put more of your revenue in your pocket AND free up time to do the important things for your business? All business owners can save time and money if they properly leverage the Web through Web services. What I am referring to is replacing recurring tasks that take employee time to accomplish with web-based services that do it automatically.

If you are a small business owner, you probably do many day-to-day tasks that take up a lot of your valuable time. Your time is better spent doing the things you’re in business for than regularly completing every little business administration chore. A common complaint I hear among small business owners is that they spend too much of their time on “business” issues like accounting or mailings instead of the “fun stuff” that their expertise is in.

"We're trying to build something lasting." - Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com founder

"In all of our activities, we take a long-term view." - Bill Gates, Microsoft Corporation founder 

Vision, innovation, wisdom and hard work are but four of the skills and techniques Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates employed from the very beginning of their business experience. Both started as small business owners. They didn't have much capital to spare, and neither did they locate their businesses in prized locations. 

Do you write business letters or other business correspondence?
If so, think about how these questions apply to your situation:

If we were e-mailing a personal note to a friend, most of us would use both first-person pronouns and contractions. If we were writing a report to be sent to a senior executive, we might use neither. So the question arises: How do we decide when to use them and when not to?

Any translation company, whether it consists of a single person or has a large translators' staff on the payroll, needs a strict and clear project management procedure to determine the exact work flow for all stages of a job, from the moment the source document is received to the moment the translated file is sent back to the client. The larger a company is, the greater detail is required for each phase description in order to make certain that all team members have a complete and similar understanding of the work scope and purposes.

Unlike a freelancer, a translation company acts bidirectionally: it receives documents from clients and distributes them between freelance subcontractors with the project management and quality control tasks performed in-house. A freelancer, even if he or she is very successful and has an immense number of clients, does not normally receive more work than he or she can handle and therefore does not need to subcontract regularly.

“Our technical team has just changed the spec for the camera slightly so, we need to change a couple of words on the packaging - the changes are quite minor - are we still ok for Friday delivery as we need to go to print over the weekend” ?

BANG! You are off and running!

The following week, you are happily working on this exciting project and your phone rings. It is your great new client...wanting to make a slight change to the project. Hmmm...

Being the wonderful and oh-so-easy-to-work with consultant that you are, you agree, hang up the phone, and get back to work.

One of the first decisions that you will have to make as a business owner is how the company should be structured. This decision will have long-term implications, so consult with an accountant and attorney to help you select the form of ownership that is right for you. In making a choice, you will want to take into account the following:
- Your vision regarding the size and nature of your business.
- The level of control you wish to have.
- The level of structure you are willing to deal with.
- The business' vulnerability to lawsuits.
- Tax implications of the different ownership structures.
- Expected profit (or loss) of the business.
- Whether or not you need to reinvest earnings into the business.
- Your need for access to cash out of the business for yourself.

In one specific case, a client made a presentation at a major industry conference, where her name and company were included in the conference program and promotional literature. During the time since her presentation, she has received as many as twenty calls a day from vendors and her mailbox is full of unsolicited vendor email. A few persistent salespeople call and email her almost every day, even though she has said “NO” to them numerous times. In one particularly unfortunate case, two different salespeople from the same company contacted her repeatedly without knowing that the other person was also calling her. So, she doesn’t answer her phone, she has an impenetrable SPAM filter, and she doesn’t respond to your email. Despite the annoying calls, messages and relentless salespeople, today she has a more serious, but related, problem.

To the uninitiated, joining an association with dozens, even hundreds, of your competitors, could seem daft, to say the least. As for openly sharing information with them, well, you'd have to be nuts, wouldn't you?

Magic mirror on the wall, am I not the best salesperson of all?

I recently returned from a trip to Barcelona to attend what was supposed to be The Greatest Localization Show on Earth. I had arrived in town a few days earlier to visit some clients and attend a meeting, which after a two-week delayed honeymoon through Portugal and Spain put me back in the “professional” mood. By the time Localization World started, I had the stamina, I had my mojo and… I had a new suit!

The latest addition to the Ccaps team, Cassius Figueiredo shares his industry experience in this interview-style article.
CCAPS: How would you define Global Project Management (GPM)? How does it differ from Local Project Management?

CASSIUS: The GPM’s work in project management involves production centers in different countries. One of the main differences between the work of a GPM and that of an LPM is that the GPM is in direct contact with the end client. Therefore, it is his or her responsibility to define all procedures, ensuring that the client’s needs and expectations are fully met upon project finalization. He or she is also responsible for sharing project information with all the parties involved, serving as the focal point for communication and guaranteeing the consistency of the information used for all languages.

The balance necessary to become an excellent project manager

A good deal is being discussed about project management these days, both in academic and professional circles. But to what extent can the activity of managing a team toward a specific goal with a fixed deadline be considered a discipline? And if it is not in fact a discipline, how can we aspire to teach it through management improvement courses or certifications? Which is the most important variable when conducting a project: technical and methodological knowledge or the so-called interpersonal skills of the one managing it?

Like many many other Arab states, UAE is a male dominated society. This meant,that as a female I recognised that I would have to work harder than my male counterparts to overcome the prejudices against female businesswomen.

Have you ever been to a job interview and been asked to spell the word “team” on a piece of paper? You are supposed to use cursive so all the letters are connected. If you don’t, the interviewer will say you don’t understand the meaning of “team.”

Team collaboration is important for the success of all translation and interpretation projects. There are many linguists out there that are not capable of collaborating and will sacrifice or jeopardize the success of a project. It is the project managers’ responsibility to ensure the selection of right linguists that will work together as a team.

There is no shortage of translators who take the plunge and set up shop as self-employed freelancers, but few have the ambition or the spirit to start up their own all-round translation agency. This is not surprising, of course, as the establishment of a full- scale translation agency is a quantum leap compared with what it takes to launch a viable freelance practice. Nevertheless, the intellectual and financial rewards of business ownership can be substantial. Below I will discuss various aspects you will have to take into account should you consider beginning your own professional and all-round translation business.

There are countless languages in the world, most of which have many thousands and some even billions of monolingual or bilingual speakers. The laws of statistics would seem to dictate, therefore, that any attempt to set up a translation business is futile, if only because the number of potential competitors is overwhelming. However, once you have begun your translation business you will realise that serious competition – i.e., from rivals with business acumen and the nerve to question translation myths – is in fact comparatively scarce.

Whatever your company’s product or service, preparing to globalize it requires collaboration with a localization vendor. Your chosen vendor will begin by focusing on the specific project specifications, but soon thereafter, the vendor will need to determine which translators are properly qualified to localize your content.

Outsourcing is when you hire outside professionals or services to take on part of your business workload. You may want to outsource part of your work because you don’t have the room, you need an expert, you have periodic busy periods, or you need more production to get orders out on time etc. You could outsource accounting, secretarial tasks , factory help, computer training, web design etc. Below are ways to use outsoursing to beat your competition.

"Success depends upon previous preparation, and without such preparation there is sure to be failure." Confucius (Chinese teacher, philosopher, and political theorist, 551-479 BC)

Anyone who undertakes a project, regardless of its size or nature (personal or secular), does so with the hope that, at its completion, the project is overall successful.

As indicated by the wise words of Confucius, such success depends on preparation. The same rings true for translation projects. Proper preparation and planning are essential.

Based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Echo International provides expert solutions in the areas of intercultural training, technical translations, multi-language content management, software localization, and Web globalization. Echo helps clients to be globally fluent, globally aware, and globally successful.

When retailing giant Wal-Mart entered Germany in 1997-98, few would have predicted the immense struggles the retailing giant would incur in its efforts to conquer the world’s third-largest retail market. But last month the company sold its 85 stores to a competitor. After nine years of futility and roughly a billion dollars in losses, Wal-Mart beat an inglorious retreat back across the Atlantic.

“It seems unbelievable that this huge project was accomplished on time. I was asking a lot of you and you did a great job. Not only did it get done, you managed to make me feel like it really could be done, which made me calm in a sea of mounting pressure from my senior management. I have realized the comfort of using professional services like yours. It really is true that when you turn a big job over to the best, you can let some of your worry go.”

Our Bylaws could not possibly be any clearer about the primary purpose of the ATA: "to promote the recognition of the profession." It is in fact the very first policy statement this document contains. Yet this simply-stated goal has eluded us over thirty-five years of ATA history. How can this be the case? I will try—as tactfully as I can—to explain the reasons why this objective has not yet been reached. But I will also attempt—more importantly and more positively—to outline some truly useful steps we can take to remedy previous failings in the immediate, mid-term, and long-term future. In so doing I also hope to clarify what the objectives of a truly active and effective ATA could be.

The New Zealand Society of Translators and Interpreters Incorporated (NZSTI) was established in 1985 as a representative body of practising professional translators and interpreters in New Zealand.

NZSTI is a nationally representative body of translators and interpreters that provides a networking forum for its members, represents members' interests, and promotes continued professional development, quality standards and awareness of the profession within government agencies and the wider community.