The ATA Chronicle - May/June 2017 - 18

TABLETS FOR INTERPRETERS continued

Figure 1: A screenshot of an Airtable glossary entry with an attached image

may have already worked on a shared
Google Doc with somebody else online,
but did you know that Google also has
an online spreadsheet tool (aptly named
Sheets) that you can use to collaborate on
glossaries with remote colleagues? (Leonie
Wagener, a Germany-based conference
interpreter, has published a tutorial on
AIIC's website about this.2) The benefits of
this approach are obvious. You can split
up the workload of bigger conferences
(e.g., by speaker or by language), you get
valuable input from others, and there's
a built-in chat to discuss issues with
the team. Everybody contributes, and
everybody ends up with a solid glossary.
Even if you work on your glossary
solo, it's a good idea to add terms during
the assignment. After all, we often get
the best terms from the people for whom
we work, and we know the terms are
relevant. This also means less work when
you get back to the office, as there's
simply no need to go through all the
scraps of paper with scribbles on them
that you usually bring home.

In some ways, using a tablet and
stylus to take consecutive notes
digitally instead of on paper is the
holy grail of "tablet interpreting."

FREELANCE BUSINESS TASKS

Figure 2: Buffer offers social media scheduling across multiple platforms in just a few clicks.
glossary for sign language. There are a lot
of potential uses. If you want to give it a
go, I recommend using an easy-to-use app
called Airtable. It brands itself as a mix of
a spreadsheet and a database, is available
18

The ATA Chronicle | May/June 2017

on the web and mobile devices, and
can be used collaboratively. (See
Figure 1 above.)
There is one more aspect where
electronic beats paper hands-down. You

For freelancers, tablets also offer
a modern way to take care of
administrative functions, even while
you are on the move. Prepare estimates,
invoice jobs, do bookkeeping, and keep
up on marketing tasks-non-billable
work that traditionally had to wait until
you got back to the office-are now
easily taken care of during long lunches
or on the ride home.
For example, interpreters can use
their mobile phone or tablet to send job
invoices before they leave the building
while the job details are fresh in the mind
of both the freelancer and the client. This
encourages prompt payment and cuts
down on email exchanges to correct or
explain invoices. Applications such as
www.atanet.org

http://www.atanet.org

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of The ATA Chronicle - May/June 2017