GUIDELINES TO KEEP YOUR PC TIDY

- For a Freelance Translator -

by Maria Antonietta Ricagno (A.T.S. Anto Translation Services)©

Working is not enough: you should work optimising your resources, with the aim of
saving your time and efforts, as well as avoiding being overwhelmed by all the stuff stored
in your PC: working files, invoices, reference documents, application and program
manuals, etc: believe me, they pile up very rapidly and cause a real chaos, if not kept
under constant control.

E-MAIL
First of all, unless you keep in order either incoming and outgoing e-mails in a timely
and appropriate manner, they will turn to be a real problem. Since we all work almost
solely via e-mails, we should organise them so to be able to track back the relevant
communication quickly, if needed.
First step: create separate folders, each dedicated to an 'important' customer, i.e.
those whose working relationships are frequent and well-established. After creating such a
folder under 'Incoming mail', you should create some redirection rules for the e-mails, each
for each customer, so that every time you get an e-mail from a certain address, it will be
automatically redirected to the relevant folder.
That way, you will also get a visual order, as you will see all the new incoming e-
mails marked as non-read and contained in their folders.
All the rest of the e-mails not redirected to any folder, will remain in the generic
incoming mail folder.
Now, you should get rid of spam, a real trouble: it is not a 'mission impossible', you
should simply install an anti-spam program (e.g. Cloudmark – I tried it and it is very
efficient). It works using the mail redirection method: each time you get an undesired e-
mail in your incoming box, you have the option to block it using the Block feature of
Cloudmark so that next time you get an e-mail from the same IP address, it will be
automatically sent to the Spam folder, from which you can simply delete it. Besides,
Cloudmark detects spam through certain words contained into the e-mail Subject line, so
you would not even need to redirect these e-mails, as the program will take care of them
automatically.
 Now, you can proceed to review the remaining e-mails contained in the generic
incoming mail box, deleting those you are not interested in - even if they are not spam -
and leaving as Unread those you intend to review later.
As already said in a previous article (see 'How valuable time can be to a freelance
translator and how to organise your workday and life' downloadable from my website and
from Proz.com and TranslatorsCafè), it would be a good idea to organise your e-mail
program by setting an automatic reply message so to provide a reply to anybody
contacting you during your PC shut-off times, or anyway when you cannot attend the
incoming e-mails immediately.

In conclusion, every now and then – maybe each end of the year - you should clean
up the e-mail program storing all incoming/outgoing e-mails on the PC or a removable
hard-disk device. That way, you will not delete them, and you can always track and consult
them in case of need in any moment to rescue important information. To do so, you should
simply install a program such as DBxtract – I installed version 3.8 last year, but now also v.
3.10 is available. This program allows you to extract e-mails from Outlook Express, for
example, and to backup them for storing purposes.

WORK FOLDERS
Order is important for the work folders as well. So, the basic operation you should
carry out is the same already described for the e-mails, that is first of all to create a Main
work folder, then a customised sub-folder for each client to save your incoming and
outgoing translations.
After that, I recommend to create two further sub-folders under each client's folder,
one for the original job and the other for the job to translate/translated. It is always
advisable to save at least one copy of the original file, in case of any 'disasters' or crashes
(e.g. file containing corrupted tags that Trados cannot handle, so you often have to delete
the corrupted file and use its original copy.) Besides, sometimes you need to create
additional sub-folders to save a Translation Memory supplied by the client, or some
reference and consulting files, etc.
Do not forget to create a Quotes folder, where you will save all the jobs without a
definitive PO and that you need to have temporarily at hand in order to prepare a word-
count and a quote.
Anyway, with this simple operation you can keep everything under your control,
without the risk of mixing different files and/or losing anything.
INVOICES

Of course, you have to create as many sub-folders as your clients for the Invoices
folder as well, as in the case of the Work folder. All invoices issued during the year are to
be stored there.
First of all, you should create two main folders named Issued invoices and
Received invoices. The former will contain any invoices issued for the jobs made, while
the latter will be intended for any invoices you receive from collaborators who worked for
you.
As for the folder containing the issued invoices, I would recommend to prepare
some customised invoice templates containing all the client's data, such as the header
and the address, leaving a blank space for the lines/boxes indicating the job number, the
word-count and the unit rate calculated on a word/page/hour basis and, of course, the total
amount of the invoice.
The Invoice main folder could also contain a PO sub-folder dedicated to the job
orders received from your clients. Effectively storing the PO's consists in the immediate
filing of the order as soon as it arrives, and then printing and saving it on paper so you
have it on hand either for consulting purposes during the translation process – PO's often
contain specific instructions - and to recover data for invoicing at the end of the month.
While you usually do not consult issued/received invoices and PO's very often (so, it
is sufficient to store them), a somewhat useful operation is to keep a synoptical table
summarising your invoicing status. The table for the issued invoices should contain the
invoice number and the client's name, the issue date, the invoice amount and a blank
column for any notes (e.g., paid, pending, etc.). As for the received invoices, you can
follow the same scheme.

Talking about archiving, it is a good idea to keep an e-archive for the payment of
taxes. As soon as you have carried out an online payment, you can save the relevant
receipt on your PC. To do that, you have to create a folder named, for example, Tax
receipts.

SAFETY
Archiving, by means of periodical back-ups, all your material – either work files and
invoices, PO's, payment receipts and TM's – is the first step to guarantee your work is
safe; of course, it would be advisable to backup the entire system every now and then.
You should carry out these procedures as an overall disaster recovery policy on a regular
basis.
 Backups can be carried out in several ways: removable hard-disk drives, fpt areas
physically outside your house - in case of fire, at least your work will be safe - CD-ROM's
and USB keys.
It is advisable to browse your folders on the PC and 'clean them up' - that is, zipping
the files and deleting any useless copies there contained - before proceeding to trasfer
them to any backup drive.

Daily Backup:
at the end of each working day, you should backup the ongoing works and the
relevant TM's.

Weekly Backup:
once a week, you should backup the files of the works made in that week and their
TM's.

Yearly Backup:
once a year, you should archive all the invoices issued/received and any payment
receipts of the year just finished.

As for the backup ftp areas placed outside your house, it is a good idea to use them
to carry out the backup of the whole system, in case of any irrecoverable damages to
your PC. Google, Yahoo, Gmail and others provide many offers of backup space.

When talking about PC safety, all of us immediately think in viruses, trojans 'et
similia'. Therefore, we need a good antivirus (such as Norton Pro) and set it on an
automatic daily scan, for example at 8:00 p.m. once finished working, so the scanning will
not slow your work.
Another way to protect your PC from outcoming attacks is to install a program
such as ZoneAlarm, that performs a continuous scan it – especially if you have an
Internet non-stop connection. Acting as a firewall, ZoneAlarm blocks any incoming
intrusions.
Finally, there are many anti-spyware programs, some of which freeware (eg. Ad-
Aware); you need to run them at least daily in order to eliminate from the system any
spywares - more or less dangerous - that entered your PC.
If you use Linux instead that Windows, the entire issue of viruses etc. is simply non-
existent!
Of course, keeping your PC tidy also involves operations such as the physical
elimination of useless and duplicated files. To that aim, it is sufficient to run a weekly disk
cleanup to eliminate any backup and temporary files stored during the week.
Less frequently, at least once a year, it would be advisable to carry out a
defragmentation, which reorganises the hard-disk and recovers valuable free space.

I hope these brief guidelines may help you and invite you to send me a feedback
indicating any missing or not completely developed points in addition to the ones here
exposed.