First of all, it goes without saying that every translator needs to have a website. (OK, if you've already got enough steady clients to keep you busy until you retire, I guess you don't need one) but for those who are always looking for new clients, a website is a must.

Owning a website, however, doesn't necessarily get you anywhere closer to having people find you. One of the ways you can get others to your site is through linking with other websites related to translation. Are there any resources you find particularly helpful in your translation work? Why not link to them and let others benefit from the resource.

Another way you can build links in and out of your site is to link to the webpages of other translators. Now whenever I mention this, translators usually start to get a little nervous and think (erroneously I might add) that they are going to lose business when linking to other translators.

Nothing could be a bigger myth. First of all, if you are a Spanish-English translator, for instance, what harm is there in linking to a fellow translator whose language combination is Swahili-Russian? Are they going to steal business from you? I don't think so.

Even linking to another translator with the same language combination is many times OK when the translators have different areas of specialty.

So what good can come from this? Well, first of all, your (potential) clients will trust that you are confident enough in your work to pass it along to someone else when it doesn't fit your particular skill set. Secondly, you are passing work to someone you (hopefully) trust and thus making the client that way. When they need work done in your language combination, they are more likely to come back to you. Finally, by collaborating with other translators, you might get some work sent your way from another translator linking to you from his/her site. It really is a win-win for everyone.

It just takes some willingness to overcome this selfish desire that we have as translators to keep everything for ourselves.

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