You got faster. You read more. You took the specialist courses. You built up ten years of domain knowledge - the kind that lets you move through a dense clinical outcomes assessment without stopping to look anything up. And here's what that earned you: less money per project. Not because the market doesn't value expertise. Because you're pricing by the hour. The billable hour has a hidden logic that works against you every time you improve. A junior translator takes six hours to work through...
5 days ago • 3 min read
There's a conversation happening before you even open your mouth. Before the scouting call. Before the proposal. Before the first e-mail exchange where you talk about the project, the timeline, the complexity of the terminology. The moment a potential client sees your rate, they draw a conclusion. Not about your price. About you. And here's the uncomfortable part: they're usually right. A low rate doesn't just signal low cost. It signals low stakes. It tells the client that you're not sure...
10 days ago • 3 min read
There's a conversation happening before you even open your mouth. Before the scouting call. Before the proposal. Before the first e-mail exchange where you talk about the project, the timeline, the complexity of the terminology. The moment a potential client sees your rate, they draw a conclusion. Not about your price. About you. And here's the uncomfortable part: they're usually right. A low rate doesn't just signal low cost. It signals low stakes. It tells the client that you're not sure...
12 days ago • 3 min read
There's a thing I learnt at med school about scar tissue that stayed with me. It's stronger than the original. When skin heals after a wound, the body doesn't simply repair what was there - it rebuilds with denser collagen fibres, cross-linked in multiple directions. The resulting tissue is tougher than what it replaced. The body doesn't recover to its previous state. It exceeds it. I've been thinking about that in the context of your career. Every translator, interpreter and copyeditor...
19 days ago • 3 min read
I grew up in Birmingham, central England not reading. Not properly, anyway. Every book penned by Enid Blyton - who which doesn't count - and not much else. Books felt a bit like homework. Something other people did. What got me though was language. The precision of it. The way one word in the wrong place changes everything, and the right word in the right place stops you cold. That obsession has never left me. It's why I became a translator. It's probably why you did too. At some point - I...
23 days ago • 2 min read
You're not a better translator. You're just a different kind of professional. Five thousand years ago, copper was all over the shop. Useful. Workable. But soft. It bent under pressure. You couldn't make a blade that held an edge. Nobody figured out how to fix copper. They didn't iterate their way to a solution. Then some smart soul went for a combo with tin, another ordinary metal, and created bronze. Harder, sharper, categorically different. The Bronze Age wasn't an upgrade. It was a new...
about 1 month ago • 1 min read
The Two-Weight (Barbell) Strategy There's a chart making the rounds online that should stop every online language professional cold in its tracks. As you know I use Claude pro daily. Here's what its own parent company Anthropic just published. Research mapping two things side by side: what AI can theoretically do across every occupational category, and what people actually use it for. The gap between those two numbers is this week's story. Taken from the March 2026 Anthropic Research Paper -...
about 2 months ago • 5 min read
The Two-Weight (Barbell) Strategy There's a chart making the rounds online that should stop every online language professional cold in its tracks. As you know I use Claude pro daily. Here's what its own parent company Anthropic just published. Research mapping two things side by side: what AI can theoretically do across every occupational category, and what people actually use it for. The gap between those two numbers is this week's story. Taken from the March 2026 Anthropic Research Paper -...
about 2 months ago • 5 min read
Hi Reader Last week, I held an exciting discovery call with a consulting prospect who was struggling with something surprisingly common in personal branding. Expressing his authentic voice. He knew his industry had a major problem. He had the experience and insight to address it. But he hesitated to say it out loud — afraid of being “too much,” or rubbing people up the wrong way. Sound familiar? Here's the truthbomb. The founders who truly stand out are the ones brave enough to speak up...
about 1 year ago • 3 min read