Bio

Chris Durban is a freelance translator (Fr>Eng) specializing in business and finance. Based in Paris, she has over 35 years’ experience working for a portfolio of demanding direct clients, primarily in the private sector. She is a popular speaker at translator conferences in different countries, on themes ranging from specialization and pricing to writing skills and business development. In July 2015, she completed Seth Godin’s altMBA course.
Chris has written a range of client education materials, as well as the "Fire Ant & Worker Bee" advice column in Translation Journal (online). In October 2010 she published a revised compilation in book form as “The Prosperous Translator” (www.prosperoustranslator.com) and in 2014 she contributed to 101 Things a Translator Needs to Know (www.101things4translators.com).

She is co-organizer of SFT’s biennial Université d’été de la traduction financière, and since 2009 has been an active contributor to the “Translate in…” series focusing on writing skills for translators (www.translateinthecatskills.com, www.translateinchantilly.com, etc.)

Golden Notes: a back and forth for two voices

Presentation in:

An improvisation exercise with a difference.

The presentation is structured as a dialogue between Chris Durban and Allison Wright about key money issues facing freelance translators. It’s not about turning straw into gold—alchemy is not sustainable. Rather, it’s about how to make a good living from translation.

The conversation will center on insights that started out as notes scribbled on bits of paper. These notes grew into advice offered in presentations, into The Fire Ant & Worker Bee column (with Eugene Seidel) in Gabe Bokor’s online “Translation Journal”, and later into “The Prosperous Translator”.

Translator takeaways from these past events and writings led to notes scribbled on their own pieces of paper, or sticky notes for their bulletin boards—a cascade of note-taking that has never stopped.

It’s time we collected up a few notes and decided which ones are worth developing for the decade ahead.

To ensure a lively dynamic, a set number of these “golden notes” will be prepared in advance and placed in a hat. Topics will be drawn from the hat at random. Chris and Allison will then attempt to join the dots, moving seamlessly from one topic to the other.

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