Translator Productivity: Dictation, Shortcuts & Throughput

Measure your real words per hour, learn dictation properly, exploit your CAT tool, protect your attention, and quote from data instead of hope.

Most translators guess at their throughput, optimistically, and then quote deadlines from that guess. This course starts with two weeks of measurement, because your rate per hour rather than per word is your real income, and because measurement reveals the one job category that consistently pays you half your average. Then the gains: dictation, which is the largest single available improvement and which most people abandon during the two weeks it feels slower; the CAT tool features you are paying for and not using; and working conditions, since most lost productivity is lost attention rather than lost keystrokes. It is honest about where AI slows you down, and ends with a capacity model that lets you quote and decline professionally.

What you'll learn

• Measure real words per hour by job type and find your loss-making work
• Adopt dictation properly and survive the adjustment period
• Exploit shortcuts, predictive typing, concordance and project templates
• Protect attention and set up a workstation that lasts a career
• Judge honestly where AI adds throughput and where it costs you
• Build a capacity model, quote from data, and decline work well

Course content

1. 1. Know your real numbers first (15 min)
2. 2. Dictation: the biggest single gain (15 min)
3. 3. CAT tool speed: shortcuts, predictions, and reuse (15 min)
4. 4. Working conditions and attention (15 min)
5. 5. Where AI fits, and where it slows you down (15 min)
6. 6. Capacity, quoting, and saying no (15 min)

Related courses

• The Translation Quality Framework — Adequacy vs fluency, error typology, and a repeatable self-QA: the foundation every translator needs.
• CAT Tools Essentials — Get productive in Trados & memoQ, translation memory, termbases, match rates, and tags, so agency work stops feeling intimidating.
• Terminology & Style at Scale — Build and use glossaries and style guides that keep a big job, or a whole team, reading like one confident voice.