Freelancing: Do It Yourself!

As freelance translators, we are confronted with external factors which we cannot influence: a constantly changing market, agencies which are only interested in making a profit, clients who don’t take translation seriously and think they can get a quality translation for next to nothing. The only way to deal with this is to take responsibility for our own business and develop our own strategy and methods to cope with these external factors.

Percy Balemans (Netherlands) (Leader)

Bio: Percy graduated in 1989 from the Opleiding Tolk-Vertaler (School for Translation and Interpreting) in Maastricht, the Netherlands. After having worked with a translation agency as an in-house translator for a couple of years, she switched to the IT business, where she worked as a technical writer and copywriter, information designer, web editor and trainer. Translation, however, has always been her real passion and in 2007 she set up her own business as a full-time freelance translator, specialising in advertising and marketing material (transcreation), human rights, ICT and travel and tourism. She is a member of the Netherlands Society of Interpreters and Translators (NGTV) and an Associate of the Institute of Translation & Interpreting (ITI). Web site: http://www.pb-translations.com ProZ.com member: Percy Balemans

Cora Bastiaansen (Netherlands) (Participant)

Bio: With a near native knowledge of French, after living in France for several years, Cora learned the techniques of translating and interpreting at the ITV in Utrecht. Her professional experience goes beyond the understanding of languages. Nursing, hotel management, and international cooperation are all fields where she was able to learn a lot. Today, Cora specializes in medical, technical, and cultural translations and she is currently studying literary translations at the VertalersVakschool in Amsterdam.Early 2005 she published her first book with travel stories about Burma; in 2007, she wrote the sequel. Her last book was about entrepreneurship for translators. (All books are in Dutch.) Recently she has taken up writing personal life stories.For her personal development and to keep up with the changes in her profession, Cora regularly follows courses in writing and translating. Web site: http://www.linkedin.com/in/corabastiaansen ProZ.com member: Cora Bastiaansen

Marga Demmers (Netherlands) (Participant)

Bio: After having worked in Granada (Spain) for two years as an office manager and part-time interpreter, I decided to take a degree in Spanish and Catalan at Leiden University (Netherlands), where I graduated in 1982. The start of a lifelong love affair with these two languages and cultures. And I never stopped studying. Since 2004 I am an enthusiastic student of Catalan Philology at the Open University of Catalonia, gaining even more knowledge of this language and literature. In my spare time (if any) I try to keep up with the latest novels in English and Catalan, and I also like to translate Catalan poetry into Dutch. As a sworn translator I specialise in legal and business documents for a variety of clients. I alternate this work with interpreting projects which take me from court rooms to television studios as well as prisons. No need to say I am enjoying my job immensely! ProZ.com member: Marga Demmers

Susan van den Ende (Netherlands) (Participant)

Bio: By all accounts, Susan is definitely one of the most passionate PMs in the industry. She studied English and earned minors in German and Indonesian, and is now learning Spanish as well. She never considered a career in translation until she read about a job opening as a project manager at Vertaalbureau.nl. A short three weeks later, she had started her new career in Amsterdam. In addition to her strong language skills, her main asset is without a doubt a special knack for cooperation that gets translators to work with Vertaalbureau.nl, rather than for them. ProZ.com member: Susan van den Ende