Mark Sanderson wrote:
Buy and setup a new computer system specifically designed for translation work
Nah. Your usual office or gaming rig will do fine. You may need horsepower for certain applications, but you definitely don't need any specific hardware or combination thereof (other than perhaps an external hard drive or a RAID config for backups).
Learn how to use CAT software such as Trados, MemoQ etc.
I've remained very basic at Trados, I don't even have MemoQ.
Setup financial accounts and payment methods such as dedicated bank, PayPal, and Moneybookers accounts.
Nope.
Write a template bank of letter heads, invoices, rates pages and other important documentation
Someday.
Apply for a paid Proz membership
Matter of clicking away $130 from your account and sending an e-mail or something. No need to make it complicated.
Write a professional resume in both the source and targets languages
Not that hard or time-consuming. Besides, everybody needs to. (Also, there are generators for them, some even pretty neat. Also, there are specialists who assist you with that in exchange for a reasonable fee. I know one who focuses on translators.)
Setup tax information, fill in forms and complete other official registration
Not in the lifetime of me. That's what beancounters are for.
Read appropriate translation theory books
Perhaps but time's better spent actually taking the foreign language to a near-native level. I'm utterly not amused to see how modern translators soak up on some sort of arcane translation theory while remaining on a B2 or C1 level in the foreign language, which prevents them from being able to understand serious stuff.
Read other books regarding learning to become a translator and the translation industry
Yeah, like Game of the Thrones.
Brush up on the target language writing skills i.e. reading style guides and other guidance books on how to write well
Well, yeah, you gotta learn that at some point. If you haven't before, you'll need to before being a really good translator in some fields. (Not that original authors are spectacular writers these days.)
Hopefully once I get fully setup it will feel like less of a burden.
The heaviest burden is how this job is so thoroughly misunderstood and degraded. Translators are scapegoats for when something goes awry, and translators are expected to prepare singlehandedly flawless foreign-language versions of things that require entire teams to create in the source language... but at the same time they are treated like entry-level typists.
There are always flaws in translated texts because no text whatsoever is ever flawless; people see them, point them out, talk about them. This includes professional people from the language industry, by the way. They fail to realise how human brain works – including their own.
Plus the usual race to the bottom. More words, faster, for less.
This is actually different when you do find yourself some smart, unspoiled clients, so don't despair.
Check out Marta's to learn some business basics if that'll make your life easier and give you some confidence. Otherwise you can listen to me brooding.
[Edited at 2014-02-10 20:41 GMT]
[Edited at 2014-02-10 20:42 GMT]