I remember the olden days, when we translators had to wrap our cuneiform tablets in mammoth hide and saddle our saber-toothed tigers to deliver … well, not quite. Yet the business of receiving files from agencies and direct clients and delivering finished translations to them has changed somewhat over time.

Gone are the days when the fax machine (preferably on a separate fax line, so you could be reached 24 hours a day) was the main conduit of information. I actually retired my trusty fax machine, as 95% of the incoming faxes were junk faxes.

Now I use a web-based faxing service named Trust Fax to send and receive the few faxes that are still needed. The fee for this is much lower than the cost of keeping a separate fax line and buying toner cartridges for the fax machine, and it actually offers a toll-free number for clients to reach.

In many cases, though, agencies might state that they want contracts signed and faxed to them, but they are perfectly happy if I convert the files to PDFs, sign them digitally and then e-mail them as attachments.

Most translators, of course, use e-mail for file transfer these days. If you have a broadband connection, with its greatly increased transmission speeds, this works so much better than in the case of dial-up.

Just remember that compressing your files with a program such as Winzip or Filzip can shrink them considerably (depending on the file type) and also makes life easier for the recipient who won’t have to deal with 37separate attachments.

Yet even with increased mailbox sizes and compression programs, e-mailing files sometimes is not always an option, as some files, such as PDFs or graphics, might simply be too large to send this way. Many agencies have reacted to this problem by setting up FTP servers (FTP stands for file transfer protocol) and will send you instructions containing FTP address, username and password that allow you to download these files.

While you could use Internet Explorer for this purpose, it is much more convenient to employ a dedicated FTP client such as Core FTP with its more user-friendly interface. However, a direct client might not have an FTP site available for file transfer. What do you do then?

There are a number of free or low-cost web-based file transfer services available. I have used YouSendIt that allows transfers of up to 100 MB. Other services of this type are Big Upload and Send This File. The client will then receive an e-mail with a URL that allows for the download of the large file you sent.