Why It’s a Good Time to Freelance (And How to Be Good at It)
Freelancing is an appealing option for young people starting their careers and for established professionals alike. For one thing, freelancing offers a flexible schedule.
Leveraging Social Media for Branding
It’s not news that the most successful brands have presences on social media. While it may have once seemed somewhat tawdry and plebian to conduct a serious ad campaign on the same platforms that people use for bathroom selfies, political rants, and cat updates, the game has changed
Friend, Foe, or Frenemy: Technology and Productivity
Waiting in line for your coffee; sitting at a table when a lull in conversation occurs; stuck at a seemingly interminable traffic light (shame on you!); as a distraction or reward after dealing with a difficult client at work; the list goes on, and on, and on. We’re always checking our Facebook, scrolling through our Instagram feeds, Snapchatting mundane occurrences, and texting. Even for less frivolous pursuits, our lives are inextricably tied to technology. Meetings are arranged, spreadsheets consulted, presentations delivered, video conferences conducted, and documents scanned on phones, laptops, and iPads. For all intents and purposes, one or more of these devices are necessities of the modern world.
Writing for a Living
“Your cousin is a doctor, and just look at how nice her life is! She has a big house, sends her kids to the best school in the city, and can afford nice vacations. You can’t do that if you’re a writer.”
How to Improve Your Written and Spoken English
It’s not fair, but it’s reality: to excel in many workplaces, you need to have some command of English. Most young professionals aren’t starting from scratch, given that some amount of English education is now required in most parts of the world. Still, maybe you slept through class, or perhaps it has been so long since you’ve used or studied it that you’ve lost much of your former prowess in the language. When quizzed, all you can come up with are simple verbs like “love,” “eat,” and “drink,” and basic nouns like “tacos” and “coffee” (if so, you picked good words to remember).
Outsourcing Writers
Your business is like your child—well, not quite as important, but there are definite parallels. After you conceive an idea, you spend months nurturing it, and then introduce it to the world. Time and money are poured into helping it grow and thrive, all in the hopes that one day it will be strong enough to function without constant intervention on your part. Perhaps, then, it’s no surprise that many aspiring entrepreneurs are hesitant to delegate responsibilities to those outside of their immediate work circles.
Uncommon Foreign Nouns and Names: To Translate or Transliterate?
Every journalist or writer who isn’t living in a bubble has inevitably come across a foreign name for a person, place, food, custom, or cultural concept that must be translated or transliterated into the target language. Often, it’s difficult to decide whether to leave the word in its source language and/or script, to transliterate it to fit (as closely as possible) the phonemes and letters of the target language and its script, or to translate it. Here’s an informal guide to the ins and outs of each of these methods.
Fun English Words and Their Histories
No list of “fun English words” would be complete without a history lesson. Modern English is a mosaic, having absorbed linguistic elements from several different sources over the course of hundreds of years.
Hardest Languages to Learn: Fact vs. Fiction
“Cantonese is the hardest language to learn—it has nine tones!”
“Arabic has the most complex grammar of all.”
Top 5 Translation & Interpreting Schools
With increasing globalization and inextricably linked economies, cross-lingual communication has become a ubiquitous part of most companies’ daily operations. Statistics support this conclusion. The U.S. Department of Labor projects that between 2016 to 2026, the rate of employment for interpreters and translators will jump by a staggering 18%.
