Fresh Content
Learn how to grow your translation business and more...

• Translation is Affected by High Context and Low Context Cultures
  There are two different cultures when it comes to language. One is high-context culture which is how much of the communication in a society takes place using context specific cues which aren’t nece...
• Why Agencies Should Provide Full TMs with Jobs
  Agencies often refuse to deliver a full TM with a job, preferring to insert 100+% hits only or perhaps the highest TM hit into the xliff file delivered to the translator. This short article expl...
• How to Translate Top Quality Foreign Subtitles
  Foreign subtitling is a highly specialised field, and one that is seeing constant growth and development with the explosion of online video content and new regulations coming into place around vide...
• TM-Town API Use Cases for Translation Agencies
  Recently TM-Town has received inquires from various language service providers asking how the TM-Town API can be used in their own TMS or online tool. In today's blog post I'll detail some potentia...
• Real Translation Job, or Scam? A Simple Checklist for Translators
  As cyber criminals are getting more sophisticated every year, freelance translators need to remain just as cautious in order to stay safe from financial, and other, risks. In this article, let's t...
• 6 Tips To Be a Reliable and Professional Language Project Manager
  I have been working as a translator for over seven years now and as soon as I finished my Masters in Translation I was hired and then promoted to Language Team Leader in an online travel agency. T...
• 10 Qualities Only Professional Translators Can Add to Your Project
  Translation is thought of by many people as a field which anybody with bilingual or multilingual ability can handle. This is not a very accurate way of thinking about the profession, however. This...
• Hire the Artist and the Engineer: How Professional Translators Work
  Do you use the spellchecker when you are writing a text? Nearly everyone does. It is possible to eliminate any spelling errors from your text by carefully reviewing every word of it. But it is ver...
• English to Bengali Translation Online: Some Critical Thoughts and Cases
  Well, let me introduce myself, at first. I’m a Bangladeshi, and my mother tongue is Bengali. There are people in India too whose mother tongue is Bengali. Actually, thanks to the politicians, Benga...
• 7 Pitfalls for the Freelance Translator
  The best kind of working relationship (or indeed any relationship) is one in which the parties involved are aware of each other’s concerns and problems and can adjust attitudes and demands accordin...
• 4 Questions to Answer Before You Hire a Professional Translator
  You don't hire a history teacher to help you with math or an engineer to write product marketing brochures. The same way, you don't hire an excellent technical translator to translate your website ...
• Should You Specify Your Rate Range on Your TM-Town Profile?
  On your TM-Town profile, you have the option to set a rate range (both a per word range and also a per hour range). This field is optional, and when a translator does choose to show their rate rang...
• Hire a Professional Translator by Starting out on the Right Foot - Part 2
  In Hire a Professional Translator by Starting out on the Right Foot - Part 1, Nate summarized advice on what to do (and what not to do) when making an enquiry to a potential translation service pro...
• Hire a Professional Translator by Starting out on the Right Foot - Part 1
  Finding a translator – or rather, a service provider willing to translate your content – in today’s world is most definitely easier than it was in the past. Hiring the ‘right’ professional transla...
• 2016 Year in Review
  Happy New Year everyone! It has been a long time since our last blog post...too long. Our resolution for 2017 is to restart the TM-Town blog and keep it active. As you haven’t heard from us in a fe...
• Subtitling and Closed Captioning Plays a Very Important Role in Our Lives
  Subtitles and captions are widely relied on by viewers. The deaf and the hard of hearing need captions. People also rely on captions for low quality mobile speakers on TV’s or laptops, noisy enviro...
• What Are You Working on Now?
  Translators - what are you working on now? TM-Town has a new feature wherein TM-Town Starter and Professional members can conveniently share descriptions of the projects that they are working on. T...
• 10 Reasons to Upload Your Prior Work to TM-Town
  OK, so you've taken the first step and signed up for your free TM-Town account. Awesome! You may have also already added a profile image, spent some time deliberating over a great tagline, and comp...
• Help Us Spread the Word About TM-Town (and Earn Some Rewards)
  Today we are releasing a new referral program on TM-Town wherein you can earn some great rewards for helping to spread the word about TM-Town to your fellow translators. It's super easy - just vis...
• A Translator's Worst Fear
  “Gather round the campfire, children. I have a story to tell...” “... a story about losing it all.” “And the worst part is...” “It’s all true...” The old man’s knees and spine cracked as he slo...
• The Long Tail Translator
  On April 19th and 20th I had the privilege of attending the TAUS Tokyo Forum. It was an interesting conference with presentations on a wide range of topics. The one thing that really jumped out at ...
• TM-Town SDL Trados Studio 2015 Plugin
  TM-Town has a new plugin available on the SDL OpenExchange which allows you to leverage your personal TM-Town TMs and glossaries right in Studio 2015. You can download the plugin from the SDL AppS...
• TM-Town Plug-in for Trados Studio 2022
  TM-Town is excited to announce the release of our updated plug-in for Trados Studio 2022. This new version brings all the features you love from the previous versions, with improved compatibility a...
• TM-Town has joined the ProZ.com family
  We have some huge news! We're joining forces with ProZ.com to further our mission to create a better translation world through technology and specialization. Don't worry though, TM-Town will not ...
• TM-Town's User Settings Page Gets a Huge Makeover
  TM-Town has been chugging along at an alarming rate (from a developer’s standpoint) for the last few months. And while that means lots of new features and better user experience on many areas of t...
• 8 Experts Share Their Best Tips On Translator Contracts
  When you're just starting out as a freelance translator, it's hard to think of anything else besides wanting to get as much work as you can, as quickly as possible, right? So you put yourself out ...
• Finding Freelance Translators Keeps Getting Better at TM-Town
  Raise your hand if you’d like the process of finding freelance translators to be as easy as copy-and-paste… Well, with our translator search engine, Nakōdo, that’s exactly what we’re seeking to ...
• New User Dashboard, Document Manager, and Better Job Messages on TM-Town
  In addition to the new game changing desktop application we released, we also worked hard over the last couple of weeks to rethink how your user experience on TM-Town could be better. The result? ...
• Making TM-Town Accessible for All Translators
  Analyze your work offline, get discovered online. In a previous blog post back in September we promised to take steps to make TM-Town better even for those translators who do not have work to load....
• For Translation Jobs, PDF = Pretty Darn Finicky
  I am surprised by the number of discussions in the ProZ forums about how to convert PDFs to an editable format such as Microsoft Word. In my opinion, the short and best answer is: it cannot be done...
• 10 Steps to Become a Professional Freelance Translator: Ultimate Resource Page
  Isn't it amazing how many people believe translators are just human dictionaries? Becoming a professional freelance translator is no easy task, even if you have managed to memorize an entire dicti...
• Search Terms in the TM-Town Terminology Marketplace
  The TM-Town Terminology Marketplace has just been updated. In addition to some design changes the marketplace now also has a brand new term search feature. Search a term and you'll be able to see i...
• Introducing Membership Tiers
  Starting today TM-Town is introducing two paid membership tiers to complement our free plan. By offering these new paid tiers we believe we will better be able to serve professional freelance trans...
• The Lighter Side
  At TM-Town we spend a lot of time on design and user experience. Just in the past few months we have launched beautiful new profiles, a redesigned homepage, and a brand new directory search. While...
• 6 Ways Our Translator Directory Search Just Got a Whole Lot Better
  Raise your hand if you want more freelance translation work… Or let me rephrase, more translation work that pays you what you’re worth and is in your field of expertise. As part of our commitment...
• Document Alignment Tool Update
  TM-Town's document alignment tool just received a makeover! It still has all of the functionality you loved about the previous version but it is now faster and works better even for longer alignmen...
• Set Your Translation Rates
  Rates can sometimes be a contentious topic for translators, but on TM-Town we make it simple for you. Starting today, if you so choose, you can set a public rate range on your TM-Town profile. This...
• Freelance Translators Can Now Develop Professionally by Directly Asking the Experts
  Why are people so timid to seek help? If you aren’t, you may be in the minority. Even though we live in the most globally connected age ever, we still struggle to swallow our pride and admit we ...
• Freelance Translators Have a New, Beautiful (and Free) Online Home
  Building your freelance translation business is tough, right? I mean, you’ve worked hard to learn the skills you need to turn your translations into an art, and if being a top translator alone wer...
• Dragon Professional Individual
  Dragon is a software that allows you to dictate your translation while it does the heavy lifting, i.e., typing. In my opinion, if you aren’t utilizing dictation software of some kind, you’re really...
• 7 Freelance Translation Job ‘Monsters’ and How to Defeat Them
  There's a rite of passage that every freelance translator must go through. That is, learning how to spot and avoid potential ‘monster’ clients. If you constantly find yourself in bad situations w...
• What Photography Can Teach Us About Translation
  While there are many freelance translators who embrace technology in their daily lives, I often come across a certain segment of the freelance translator community that tend to take a negative view...
• The 4 Step Proactive Approach to Getting Translation Work
  There are many advantages to the freelance lifestyle, but one particular challenge is that your next paycheck is usually never guaranteed. As a freelancer, you need to continuously work hard to bui...
• Welcome Nate Hill to TM-Town
  Hi everyone, this is Kevin. I'm excited to announce that TM-Town is growing! Nate Hill is joining TM-Town as a developer and today is his first day. Nate is a very talented and hard working individ...
• Is TM-Town for Me?
  When translators come across TM-Town for the first time, it often takes some time to understand what exactly TM-Town is and what TM-Town offers translators. TM-Town is rather unique - it is not a t...
• TM-Town to Provide Additional Ways to Demonstrate Expertise
  One goal of TM-Town's translation enablement platform is to help match clients in need of translation with the best subject matter translation expert(s) for the job. Since TM-Town launched at the ...
• Productivity Tracking for Freelance Translators
  TM-Town is releasing a new feature today to help you, the freelance translator, easily track your daily productivity. In less than 5 minutes you can record your day's work and TM-Town's tool will v...
• Nakōdo Preview for End Clients
  TM-Town is releasing a new personalized Nakōdo search preview page that you can send to potential clients to help differentiate yourself from the crowd. This feature was requested by a TM-Town memb...
• Give Your Documents a Public Title
  After you load a document in TM-Town's system you now have the option to give that document a public title. The idea behind the public title is to give potential clients a feel for the type of proj...
• Sample Source Texts
  For some translators, loading work into TM-Town's system is not possible due to non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) or similar restrictions. For these translators, TM-Town now has a new feature that m...
• Introducing Nakōdo - A Translator Search Engine
  One of the main goals of TM-Town is to help you - the freelance translator - get found when someone needs translation in one of your fields of expertise. Today TM-Town is releasing a first-of-its-k...
• Embeddable Badges
  Today TM-Town is releasing embeddable badges. These personalized badges can be used on your website, blog, email signature, or other translation profile (for example your ProZ.com profile). Your T...
• Document Declaration
  Starting today on TM-Town you will be asked to declare your document when you load it into TM-Town's system. Document declaration - what's that? When you a drag a document into TM-Town's uploader...
• Sharing Files with Collaborators
  On TM-Town it is easy to share documents with other TM-Town members. This may be useful if you are collaborating with other translators on a project or in a team setting. Shared documents can be s...
• Upload Excel Translation Memory Files
  It is now possible to upload Excel (.xls, .xlsx) translation memory (TM) files into your TM-Town account. TM-Town accepts both bilingual Excel translation memory files as well as multilingual Excel...
• Sell Your Glossaries
  Over the past few weeks many translators have expressed interest in selling glossaries on the TM-Town Terminology Marketplace. Today I'm excited to announce that it is even easier to get started se...
• Uploader and Alignment Redux
  The art of simplicity is a puzzle of complexity. - Douglas Horton. This quote really resonates with me. One of my goals with TM-Town is to make the user experience as simple, intuitive and user-fri...
• Feature Updates
  In today's post I'll go over some recent changes to TM-Town that will hopefully help to improve your TM-Town experience and increase your efficiency as a translator. Better Search TM-Town's search ...
• Build Your Presence on TM-Town
  Today's post will cover some recent changes I've made to TM-Town that will help you, the freelance translator, more easily get discovered in your language pair(s) and field(s) of expertise. I'll al...
• TM-Town Terminology Marketplace Launch
  Back in March I wrote a blog post about the idea of a Terminology Marketplace. Today I am excited to announce that the TM-Town Terminology Marketplace is now live and features glossaries available ...
• Additional Terminology File Upload Formats Now Available
  TM-Town has added additional terminology file formats for uploads. Now you can upload Excel glossaries (.xls, .xlsx), CSV (.csv) glossaries, or TSV (.tsv) glossaries. Previously if you wanted to u...
• Getting the Most out of Your Translation Memories
  Last week I gave a free webinar about TM-Town hosted by ProZ. In this webinar I presented about the different features of TM-Town including the new confidential information redaction feature. If yo...
• Confidential Information Redactor
  TM-Town is releasing a new feature today that provides translators with a convenient way of redacting confidential information from a document before saving it into TM-Town's system. This new featu...
• CafeTran Espresso Integration
  I'm excited to announce that TM-Town is now integrated into the recently released CafeTran Espresso 2015 CAT tool. Translators can search and download TM-Town terminology repositories directly with...
• Webinar Recordings
  Last week I gave two free webinars about TM-Town - one hosted by TAUS and one hosted by ProZ. In both webinars I presentated about different features of TM-Town and how to get the most out of your...
• Upcoming: Webinar Week
  Next week TM-Town will be presenting in two separate free webinars - one hosted by TAUS and one hosted by ProZ. In both webinars I will demo different features of TM-Town and how to get the most ou...
• Search Your Translation Memory
  It is now possible to search your personal translation memory files and terminology files on TM-Town. This powerful new feature will search any documents you have uploaded to TM-Town and break out ...
• A Terminology Marketplace
  Recently TM-Town launched Terminology Repositories. Terminology is at the heart of what translators do and Terminology Repositories is an effort to create a central location where professional tran...
• The Fuzziness of Fuzzy Matches
  Most translators have probably heard of fuzzy matches (a similar, but not identical, match to the source segment found in a translator's translation memory; however, few understand exactly how a fu...
• Deconstructing Word Count
  Does this situation sound familiar: your client's (or your agency's) tool reports one word count, and your tool reports a different word count? As your pay as a translator is most often based on wo...
• Enhanced Profiles
  Today's post will take a look at how to get the most out of your TM-Town public profile. TM-Town profiles are a little different than what you might be used to on other translation sites. The bigg...
• Translation Enablement Platform
  Is TM-Town a CAT tool? I am often asked - "What is TM-Town? Is it a CAT tool? Is it an online translation agency? Is it a translation memory solution?" The answer is that TM-Town is something new...
• Introducing Terminology Repositories
  Today TM-Town is launching a brand new feature that allows translators to download, search and share terminology files. Terminology is at the heart of what translators do and this feature is an eff...
• A New Way to Browse Translators
  In my pursuit to upgrade the client and the professional translator’s work environment, I have launched a new section of TM-Town that allows a visitor to browse translators across language pairs or...
• Is Segmentation a Solved Problem?
  Many in the translation industry seem to think that sentence segmentation is a solved problem; however, I tend to disagree. While there are tools that can obtain high accuracy in specific languages...
• Uploading Files to TM-Town (video screencast)
  On TM-Town it is easy to upload your translation files. By uploading your previous translations into TM-Town’s system you get a safe and secure way to manage, back up and share your linguistic asse...
• Unlocking the Black Box of Translation Memory Files
  Did you know that a translation memory (TM) file is just a text file with structure? Maybe you saw the file extension (*.tmx or *.xliff) and imagined it can only be opened with special software. In...
• What is TM-Town?
  Welcome to TM-Town! TM-Town is a new translation enablement platform that rectifies so many of the hassles translators experience in looking for and securing jobs. My name is Kevin Dias and I am t...
• Creating a Multilingual Termbase is Now a Simple, Stress-Free Process
  In a past post we discussed the benefits of TM-Town’s easy automatic alignment tool. Today’s post will go over some additional features you can take advantage of when you align source and target do...
• Your Productivity Data and What You Can Learn From It
  Many translators I speak to manually keep rough track of how many words they translate per day, though it is time consuming and cumbersome. Others are not aware that the CAT tool that they are usin...
• Alignment the TM-Town Way
  TM-Town's translation enablement platform is designed to help translators get the most out of their linguistic assets. TM-Town's system can help you unlock the value of your prior translations in m...