There’s Something About Translation — Page 11

5 Qs with Renato Beninatto, Common Sense Advisory

With nearly a quarter-century executive-level experience in the localisation industry under his belt, Renato Beninatto has been researching and leading the consulting practice of Common Sense Advisory since 2002. Here he offers us a business consultant’s view of freelance translation practitioners, and language service providers (LSPs) in general.

Sarah Dillon: You’ve worked in localisation for many years, and in many different roles. How do you see the role of the translator changing within the industry? What kinds of new tasks or jobs are they taking on?

Renato Beninatto: The role of the translator is the pillar of an important production chain. Nothing happens without the translator. Good translators do not grow in trees. Good translators are scarce and becoming scarcer. Research from storage companies shows that content grows at a rate of more than 50% per year. If you assume – like we at Common Sense Advisory do – that the demand for translation grows at a lower rate of 15% to 20% per year, you would need tens of thousands of translators to come into the market every year, which is not the case.

That brings me to what is changing within the industry. Productivity. LSPs are searching for ways to deal with the dearth of good translators, and therefore investing in technology. Translators will have to find ways to produce 10 thousand words a day, even if that requires them to work with more advanced translation memories and machine translation.

Notice that I always say “good” translators. You can compare translators to wine: There are thousands of varieties of wine, but only a few of them are really good, mostly those that age well and get better as time goes by.

As to what tasks they are taking on, my answer would be that it is irrelevant. Translators are in the service business and they should provide the tasks that their clients request. The mistake is to accept to do tasks for free. If the task or job that you take on reduces your productivity, charge for it. If it increases your productivity, celebrate it. As for the new jobs in the translation business, I would say that telephone interpreting and post-editing of machine translation are up and coming requirements. However, I would avoid asking good translators to do post-editing. That’s something that can be done by non-linguists more efficiently and with less frustration.

SD: I heard you speak at an ATC conference in London once where you said that, when it comes to selling translation, quality doesn’t matter. Can you tell us what this means for translators?

RB: Quality is a given. That’s why I don’t like to talk about it. In my seminars I propose a new paradigm for the translation industry in which everybody is responsible for perfect quality at every stage of the process. It is hard to explain a two hour workshop in a couple of sentences, but in a nutshell today’s model is based on catching errors and on translators expecting that someone is going to review their work and correct mistakes. This is counterproductive, costly, and inefficient. Good translators deliver excellent quality, always. Issues are solved before the job is delivered and the review phase becomes unnecessary. As soon as people understand this, they can start charging more.

SD: What are some other typical business mistakes that you see being made by language service providers in general?

RB: The most typical mistake made by LSPs is to talk too much about themselves. Once LSPs understand that selling is not telling clients about TM, about cents per word or about the translation process, but asking questions about how the client is going to use the translation and how much value the translated version is going to add to the company’s bottom line, then they will see conversations switch from price to value.

SD: Any tips on how owners of ‘micro’ translation businesses could differentiate themselves from their larger counterparts?

RB: One of my favorite comeback stories is from the salesperson from a small LSP with 12 employees that was confronted with the fact that the large LSP that they were competing against had thousands of employees. “How many project managers are you going to work with in the large LSP?” the salesperson asked. “One,” said the client. “Well, that is the same number of project managers you are going to work with at our company.”

This story falls into the sales principle that says that you have to make yourself equal before you make yourself different. Think of that.

SD: Finally, what one piece of advice would you give to freelance translators interested in growing their business?

RB: Value your product and mentor your colleagues. In line with the saying that the rising tide lifts all the boats, if the quality of work of all the players in the market is improved, the image of the market as a whole is improved. One of the characteristics of a good translation is that it is invisible. If the translation is bad, however, everybody notices and talks about it. So, protect your work by educating your peers.

A really interesting perspective on things, Renato – thank you!

24 hour Read-a-thon: progress reports

by Sarah Dillon

This is my Read-a-thon progress report, which means that rather than bombarding the cyber-wires with lots of new posts, I updated this one regularly over 24 hours. I posted new stuff above old, so if you’re checking in for the first time on Monday morning, you might want to start from the bottom and work backwards. 🙂 Click here to read details of my mini-challenge. [Read more…]

24 hour Read-a-thon: mini-challenge

by Sarah Dillon

I’m taking part in my second 24 Hour Read-a-thon today. It starts at 1400 GMT / 0000 AEST and is being run by the rather amazing Dewey over at the hidden side of a leaf. Click through for all the details on the who, the what, the where, and of course, the why (assuming it’s not immediately obvious!). For a list of everyone participating, [Read more…]

Word nerds of the world unite (Blog Action Day)

by Sarah Dillon

I was fascinated by a recent ABC Lingua Franca interview with Suzy Wilson, bookseller at Riverbend Bookshop in Brisbane and founder of the Australian Indigenous Literacy Project.

Now it really doesn’t take a genius to see the gap is pretty wide between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians here. In fact, some human rights organisations have reported that compared to indigenous populations in the USA and Canada, the socio-economic gap between Australian indigenous communities and the general population is widening.

But facts and figures are one thing, hearing the story as it relates to language, and more specifically reading, is another – all the more so because I heard it around the time I was celebrating all things wordy as a volunteer with the excellent Brisbane Writers Festival.

In the interview, Suzy Wilson explains that she found herself concerned a few years back when she heard somewhere that boys’ literacy levels were two years behind girls’. This set her thinking about what she could do, as a bookseller, to help close that gap. So when she attended an industry conference in 2003 and heard that only 7% of Aboriginal children were meeting English literacy benchmarks in remote communities of Australia, she was well and truly horrified. Spurred into action, she set up the Indigenous Literacy Project, working with education foundations, teachers and community elders to set up a range of schemes and initiatives to foster English literacy in Australia’s poorest communities.

Incidentally, Wilson also explains why community elders asked that English, instead of community or Creole languages, be the focus of the literacy project. She also explains the kinds of projects they are running to ensure support is truly effective, so have a listen if you’re interested in that aspect of it.

But a couple of years on and after huge support from the book industry and the reading population, we’re still only seeing the most basic of advancements in literacy levels. Wilson recounts how how only last year, on visiting a remote community they were horrified to learn that only 5 children out of a class of 75 had reached minimum literacy levels set for their age group. For their teachers, however, it represented a massive improvement – in past years, only 2 children out of 75 were reaching the benchmark.

Now, on what planet is this considered an acceptable level of education in a so-called developed country? Is it any wonder that compared to the general population, indigenous Australians report unemployment rates 3 times higher, infant mortality almost 4 times higher and life expectancy 20 years lower than other Australians? These are the statistics that show that poverty is a very real problem for Aborigines in Australia today.

Up to 2007, the previous Australian government was refusing to acknowledge a problem even existed. Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s apology in February this year brought hope for many Australians that the gap in health, education and living conditions might finally be addressed.

I’m wondering how soon it will be before volunteers at the Brisbane Writers Festival will see this whole new section of ‘word nerds’ coming through the State Library doors.

Blog Action Day 2008

Social Media for Freelance Translators

by Sarah Dillon

I first wrote this post in 2008. A lot has changed since then but it is still one of my most popular posts. I believe this is because shows that platforms may come and go, but the principles of a sound social media strategy stands the test of time. Read it with this in mind, and enjoy!

I went to a conference for solo business owners recently and the question on everyone’s lips was ‘Do you blog?’ Well, yes, I do actually. Micro AND macro, as it happens.

There seems to be a lot of mystery around the business benefits of social media, including the ways in which it can be applied to meet various professional goals*.

So in an attempt to contribute to the discussion, here’s how this humble translator uses WordPress (macroblogging), Twitter (microblogging), LinkedIn, Proz, and a whole raft of other online bells and whistles in her day-to-day work.

(Bear in mind that this process often changes as I tweak, measure and experiment.)

I converse with other people, both inside and outside my field, via this blog and by regularly following and leaving comments on other blogs. I use Google Reader [now defunct: try Feedly instead] as a feedreader to subscribe to other blogs, which means I can see at a glance when a new post has been added to one of my ‘favourites’.
I ‘flesh out’ my online persona even more by participating in relevant blogging communities. Tools like Technorati and MyBlogLog help with this, although there are plenty of others which do the same job.
I use the likes of LinkedIn, Ning and Proz as relatively ‘static’ shop fronts, with links back to my website. I’m not worried that keeping a lower profile in these communities will lose me clients, because I’ve discovered that my target clients don’t tend to look for their translators in these places anyway. This won’t be true for everyone, of course.
I share snippets of interesting content with other professionals via Del.icio.us, StumbleUpon and Twitter. This is for when I don’t have the time or inclination to write an entire blog post on an issue but I’d still like to guage reactions, or when I want to share something that doesn’t really fit the scope of my blog. And it’s fun!
I occasionally contribute to relevant group discussions on various Google, Yahoo and Proz forums. I’d like to make this more of a focus in the future, but generally I’m trying to move away from email and lengthy discussion threads which take a long time to sift through (unlike the RSS feeds in my feedreader). Translating involves enough keyboard pounding and text trawling as it is…
Twitter is my watercooler. I can eavesdrop on chatter in areas that interest me, get quick answers to certain kinds of questions or thow out ideas to test the waters for reactions. I like the perspective I get on things here because it’s not just translators, and best of all, it’s all kept to 140 characters or less 🙂 Oh, and this is fun too.
As all roads lead to my website, I use Google Analytics to measure the impact of the online tools I’m using. I’m very conscious of not wasting my time and this means I know exactly what return I’m getting in terms of interest in my services, etc. I’m working at improving this all the time.
For me, Facebook is strictly friends only. I’ve made a decision not to bring work into it because it annoys me to see other people tarting themselves about in my downtime. Likewise, Bebo is family only. And yes, my family is large enough to warrant an entire online networking application dedicated to staying in touch 🙂 [update: Facebook has refined its targeting features and the division between friends and colleagues has become less clear. I now have a Facebook Page for my business]

Most importantly, I see these tools as a simple compliment to my overall online and offline activities.

For example, my ultimate marketing goal is to make it easy for various interested parties to find me. When they do find me, I want their positive image of me to be reinforced across a range of channels. Then, I want them to be able to contact me directly and quickly so we can do the deed, so to speak 😉 As a plan it’s far from perfect and there’s lots I’d like to do differently. But let’s face it, it’s not rocket science either. (I have similar goals around being part of a community of like-minded professionals.)

My advice to translators on making the most of social media, and indeed web 2.0 in general?

First, be clear on what you want to achieve for your business overall. Then, dive right in and give it a try.

If you get stuck, read this. If you’re still not getting it, or if you get it far too well but still lack a valid business reason to surf the web all day, then read Read Brian Solis’s Essential Guide to Social Media. Keep experimenting and referring back to your original business goals. Above all else, ignore the conspiracy theorists, new-technology scaremongers and social networking naysayers and have FUN!

WANT TO READ MORE ABOUT THIS?

If you want to read some more about making social networking work for you, check out:

– a great post from Scot Herrick’s Cube Rules: Joining social sites – the criteria

– an excellent podcast called Facebook for Professionals from Duct Tape Marketing. It’s not exactly how I like to use Facebook (as outlined above), but Mari Smith has plenty of practical examples to explain how small businesses can make effective use of social media.

* This post is based on a couple of discussions I’ve contributed to recently. See:

– Jill Sommer’s asks some great questions over at Musings from an Overworked Translator: Do you Twitter?

– Nick Pawley’s query on LinkedIn prompts some interesting discussion about using SEO / online marketing to increase your translation business

– Flying Solo article Is social networking for us? captures the mood of many

Image by laihiu via Flickr

5 Qs with Marc Prior

by Sarah Dillon

Based in Germany, Marc Prior is a freelance translator with over 20 years’ professional translation experience under his belt. By day, he translates from German, Italian and Dutch into English, specialising in occupational health and safety and environmental engineering. By night, he’s a mentor on the very popular ITI Professional Support Group and is also active on support forums for a range of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) tools. Read on for Marc’s take on life without Windows and getting started as a translator.

Naked Translator: Hi Marc. What is the one piece of advice you wish you’d had earlier in your career?

M: This is a very difficult one to answer, because looking back I’d say that there is very little that I would have done differently. I had already decided in my mid-teens that I wanted to go into translation, and I planned my moves accordingly. Combined with the fact that I was in the right place at just the right time on several occasions, things worked out well.

I sometimes wish I’d had the confidence to take certain steps earlier than I actually did: I’d been working as a translator for ten years before I joined ITI, for instance, because I doubted that I would satisfy the membership requirements. Like many other translators, I also seriously undersold myself in my early days as a freelancer. If I could summarize aspects like these, the advice would be to have more confidence in oneself as a business person. Not more confidence per se, though: I was without a doubt over-confident as a translator in the early years, and I think this is a common trait among fledgling freelance translators, and the reason for many problems: over-confidence in their translation ability, under-confidence in themselves as independent business people.

NT: Your website Linux for Translators is a really fantastic how-to guide. Could you give us a general overview of the IT tools you use in your day-to-day activities as a translator? How might this change in the future?

M: Office suite: OpenOffice.org, but I don’t do much translation work within the office suite itself. I also have Microsoft Office, running on Crossover Office so that it will run on Linux. I use both for more general housekeeping tasks, such as converting MS Office files to OpenOffice format for translation in OmegaT, and for tidying up the minor formatting glitches that result from the roundtripping process.

I’ve tried other word processors, notably Textmaker (nicer to look at and much faster than OpenOffice) and Applixware (which has a very powerful integral macro language), but neither comes close to OpenOffice’s conversion filters from/to Microsoft Office, which is by far the most important aspect.

CAT tool: OmegaT. This is the environment in which I do almost all my actual translation work. I’ve tried other CAT tools but at the moment, there is nothing available for Linux to match OmegaT‘s combination of functionality and ease of use.

I use Firefox as my browser and Thunderbird as my e-mail client. I have a range of utilities that I use less frequently for web-related tasks. One of these is Konquerer, the integral file manager/browser utility of the KDE desktop environment. I rarely use it as a browser but I find it very practical as an FTP client (e.g. for uploading new or modified files to my website). Then there are command-line utilities such as wget (which can be used to download an entire website, preserving the structure) and w3m (which is a text-based browser). These will sound very geeky to non-Linux users, but they are very simple and therefore – and this is something that is difficult to appreciate fully without having experienced Linux – they can be combined very easily with other tools for custom functions.

I use Adobe Reader (the Linux version of course) and Kpdf to view PDF files and extract the text from them; both have their strengths and weaknesses. There are also a range of other tools available for converting between different file formats (e.g. PDF to HTML).

The list goes on, with utilities that I use less and less frequently. There is a little program called Winston, for instance, that I use to submit my monthly VAT returns (German law requires them to be submitted electronically). I also have a number of utilities that I wrote myself in the tcl/tk scripting language. In saying this, I am probably also confirming preconceptions (or prejudices) about Linux users all being – and having to be – programmers. This is only one side of the story, though. Linux is a very programmer-friendly environment, and there is huge body of command-line tools, mostly free. It’s surprisingly easy to learn a little programming, especially using a scripting language such as tcl/tk or Python, sufficiently well to “glue” these tools together to perform certain tasks.

How might this change in the future? Well, I don’t anticipate any major changes in the near future. Firefox and Thunderbird are established applications, so their availability and continued development is fairly well assured; at the same time, my requirements are not particularly demanding, so I don’t envisage switching to different applications here. I would not be surprised if we were to see more CAT tools for Linux in the medium term; Swordfish, for instance, has been well received so far, and there is a standalone version of Wordfast on the horizon which will also run on Linux. Development of Anaphraseus, a Wordfast-style CAT tool that works from within OpenOffice, is also coming along nicely. However, my commitment to the OmegaT project means that I’m unlikely to switch to a different CAT tool, at least for routine work.

An area in which we might see some changes is that of office suites. Two interesting recent developments are that MS Office 2007 is now supported by Crossover Office, which translated for the benefit of Windows users means that it can be made to run on Linux; and that the default MS Office file format has now changed over to an accessible XML-based format. In other words, the latest version of MS Office runs on Linux, and quite separately from that, its native files are in a form that can be edited relatively easily independently of MS Office. Translators generally (perhaps reflecting the mood among their clients, as ever) seem to be resisting adoption of both the new version of MS Office and the associated file format, but these developments are a major step forward for Linux users, since MS Office texts can now be edited on Linux either in the native application (i.e. MS Office) or by working directly on the file in another application without conversion and the associated risks of formatting loss. It should also enable OpenOffice to improve its conversion filters. In the longer term, I would certainly expect this to shake up the market for CAT tools a little, though quite in what way, it’s probably too early to tell.

NT: Any advice for other translators who may be interested in dipping their toes into open-source software?

M: Try it! People quite often ask me for advice, and I describe the benefits as I see them but am also honest about the drawbacks. That, it seems, is usually sufficient for people to decide on the spot against even trying Linux. Linux has much higher visibility now than it used to have and my impression is that many people are worried that they might be missing out on some major development. When they hear that life isn’t all rosy for Linux users, either, the response often strikes me as one of relief! Then they go back to using Windows.
Linux doesn’t require any great commitment. It’s out there and can be downloaded free of charge, in dozens of different flavours. All you need is an old (but not ancient) PC, and you can try it out to your heart’s content at no cost.

Something else that I would recommend, now that they have become available, are the new netbook products that are supplied with Linux preinstalled. By these I mean the Asus Eee PC, MSI Wind, Acer Aspire One, and similar products – there are now something like forty different models to choose from, all of which have appeared within the 10 months since the product category was born with the introduction of the original Asus Eee PC. These mini-laptops typically cost between 200 and 400 euros and are excellent second (or more probably third) computers for those occasions when you want to be productive for an hour or two despite being on the move. With its lower cost and more efficient use of hardware resources, Linux is the operating system of choice, at least at the lower end (price and performance-wise) of this product category.

NT: You’ve been a mentor on the hugely successful ITI Professional Support Group for several years now. In your experience, what is the most common misconception held by inexperienced translators hoping to start up in the profession?

M: This one is easy! The mistake most new freelance translators make is to overlook that they are in fact setting up a new business. Some still think of translation as an academic exercise, but the more common mistake is to think of customers as “employers”, and to think that the business side, particularly the definition of their own services and the marketing of them, will take care of itself. Certain translators’ portals, which offer an all-inclusive service to translators including jobs apparently for the taking, exacerbate this impression.

NT: What do you read — in print and online — to keep up with developments in your field?

M: On a regular basis, I read the industry periodical International Environmental Technology, and VDSI Aktuell, the magazine of the VDSI (the society of German safety engineers), of which I am a member.
More generally, though, I keep in step with developments simply by going “the extra mile” when researching. If I face a terminology problem, I try to avoid the temptation of doing just enough research to resolve the particular term. Instead, I read up on the subject, in both source and target languages, which thanks to the Internet is now very easy. This is not only a more reliable way of finding exactly the right term, but also provides a better understanding of the subject as a whole, and therefore improves the quality of the whole text, besides enhancing background knowledge generally which may come in useful in future.

Thanks for sharing your experience with us, Marc – lots of tips and ideas for translators at all stages of their careers.

Happy International Translation Day

by Sarah Dillon

September 30 is International Translation Day (ITD) and this year’s theme, according to the International Federation of Translators (FIT), is Terminology: Words Matter.

St Jerome – a man as relevant to translators today as he was in 420AD!

International Translation Day has been promoted since 1991 by the FIT. The day coincides with St Jerome’s Day, who was recognised by the Catholic Church as the patron saint of translators, scholars and editors, as well as libraries and librarians. Check out my post from last year for a full run-down on the man who was “no admirer of moderation, whether in virtue or against evil.”

Finally, here’s a brief round-up of what’s happening in the blogosphere around ITD this year:

Abigail gives us a write-up of an ATA event she attended in Kansas
Jill Sommer has a great post on St Jerome here
Corinne McKay encourages us to thank a terminologist here
Aquí un artículo sobre San Jerónimo para mis amigos hispanohablantes
Read the FIT’s press release about the day here (pdf)

By the way, it’s a double whammy this year as 2008 is also the UNESCO International Year of Languages.

Image via Wikipedia

Hello to SmallBizPod readers

by Sarah Dillon

A big hello to readers linking through from SmallBizPod.co.uk to put some words to the voice following my recent audio review . You might find these articles of particular interest:

The royal we: why small is the new big – a perspective on why setting your sights low can also work
4 tips on pricing to attract clients you’ll want to keep – some conventional and not-so-conventional things I’ve learned from running my own small business
Portfolio careers deserve a closer look and 6 tips for building your portfolio career – a business case for the dilettantes among us 🙂
Is Skype over-rated for business use? – weigh in with your opinion
Write-ups of two of my favourite career books: Working Identity: Unconventional Strategies For Reinventing Your Career by Herminia Ibarra and Laura Vanderkam’s Grindhopping: Building A Rewarding Career Without Paying Your Dues.

Plus, anything from the freelance workers category.

Enjoy!

5 Qs with Orla Ryan

by Sarah Dillon

Orla Ryan has hands-on experience of a range of different roles within the translation industry. She has set herself up as a successful French and German freelance translator and project manager, added Irish to her working languages and made a move back to inhouse work. Today she is based in Dublin with a major international translation company, working closely with Irish, European and other international government bodies. Read on for Orla’s take on managing your career, spotting gaps in the market and moving between the freelance and inhouse worlds.

Sarah Dillon: Could you tell us about your current job? What does this involve day-to-day?

Orla Ryan: Essentially, I am the point of contact and support for the translator and client for all linguistic issues (prepare translation memories / glossaries / translation guidelines for projects, as well as collating reference materials). My previous role as a translator has been an asset in helping me plan and organise translation support for a project because I can see it from a translator’s perspective (If I were a translator, what kind of support would I want for this project, would I need help with certain terms). I look after all requests dealing with Irish Gaelic, but I cover other EU languages where required.

Another important aspect is quality control – tracking feedback from customers and reviewers. I work side by side with the project manager in the pre- and post-production stages of a project. I also work with vendor managers in recruiting and testing potential translators for new projects. I also compile and check translation tests, support the sales team and project manager if they need stats or information about various language resources and vendors. I have a couple of other projects going on too. 🙂

SD: I’m always interested in hearing about how self-employed translators cope with moving back to the world of employment. Could you tell us a little about how you made this transition, and what advice you would have for others considering the same?

OR: I suppose I had a slightly different attitude to this compared to other freelance translators, because I never saw freelance translation as my “Job for Life”. My plan was to do it for about 4-5 years to get more industry experience and then move into a translation project co-ordination / management role. I didn’t just do translation though; I also worked as a freelance project manager for a client for about 3 years. I really enjoyed doing that, because I had a great camaraderie with them and it was a fantastic experience. I sometimes found it dull translating all day long, so doing PM work was a welcome diversion.

The transition to in-house work was very easy for me. I had worked in-house twice before, so it wasn’t a big culture shock. The “worst” part, if you could call it that, was updating my wardrobe for an office and learning everyone’s names! I’m still involved in the industry and I’m working with a similar client profile as before, but from another angle. It is the nature of the translation industry, of course, that many of us have freelanced at some point; it certainly hasn’t been a drawback for me.

If a translator wants to go back to the office, it depends on where they want to go – continue translating or move into doing something else. If they want to do something else, do they have the skills for that job or not? I think it also depends on the office culture as well and you should get a good feel for that when you are there for an interview. I think if you want to go back to the office, it shouldn’t just be for the money.

SD: I’d love to hear how you picked up your study of the Irish language again after studying French and German for your first degree. Any particular challenges with this?

OR: I found I had passively retained a lot of vocabulary from school and TV, but my grammar had become very rusty since the Leaving Cert! It is very difficult for English speakers to get their head around Irish syntax because we have no direct equivalents to lenition, noun mutations, prepositional pronouns or the copula.

Originally, I started off translating DE-EN technical/historical texts and was busy with that. After a while, I noticed that more and more clients were asking me if I could do Irish translation as well – “You’re Irish; you do speak Irish, right?” This was just after the Official Languages Act came into effect here in 2003. There was talk of Irish becoming a working EU language around that time as well, so it was clear that there was going to be a lot of action in this area in the next 2-3 years. Hard to believe, but there were very few people doing Irish translation work back then! I think only two universities offered Irish in their translation courses when I was in third-level. Irish translation was just seen as a nice little earner for retired teachers at the time.

In 2004, I did a refresher course with Conradh na Gaeilge and then I heard about the new two year part-time Dioplóma sa Ghaeilge course in NUI Maynooth. I applied for that and started the following year. At the time, I figured if I got my Irish up to speed and really worked on it, I would be able to get more work in that field by the time the legislation kicked in. I also visited the Rathcarn and Aran Gaeltacht areas as part of my studies.

People think it is strange, but the vast majority of EN-GA translators are not native Irish speakers (albeit with a high standard of fluency of course). Whenever I’ve spoken to native speakers about it, they say they wouldn’t go into translation because they think you need a fancy degree or loads of experience. Or they just don’t feel comfortable doing that kind of work, which I can understand – this kind of work isn’t for everybody. Foras na Gaeilge launched an accreditation scheme last year to encourage fluent Irish speakers to go into translation. There are also a number of new Irish-language translation and interpretation courses now, so I should expect supply will meet demand in the next year or two.

SD: Any advice for aspiring translators?

OR: When I started, I gave myself a year to make a go of it and if it didn’t work out, then I would go back to the recruitment agencies and sites and get some other job. I used to work as a project assistant in a small translation agency before I went freelance. Through that, I learned how to pitch my rates and present my services in such a way that I would soon get work. I picked up some fantastic customers within the first couple of months and was almost always booked for work in advance until the day I stopped. So what I would say is, if you’re going to do it, make a plan, work out your targets (professional, financial etc) and do it properly.

Do not say you can do all kind of jobs in all kinds of languages, because you can’t. Think about what you are good at; it doesn’t have to be legal, medical or whatever. If you enjoy sports, then why not highlight that? There is a nice niche market for sport translations, for example.

Keep regular hours. You don’t need to be a slave to your email or phone, but if you do want to take a couple of day-time hours off, set up an “out-of-office” message for your email. Get an email account that can handle large attachments.

I would recommend a newcomer to get an accountant or do some kind of basic business/entrepreneurship course so they learn how to price their time, create invoices etc. Many new translators have no idea how to charge for their services or are bashful about negotiating rates with customers. As regards general administration, I used Translation Office 3000 and I found that great for overall file management, reports and accounts. There are books and basic courses on Accounting & Taxation for self-employed people and I’m sure there is similar material available online. I have friends who are accountants and they were able to help me out with the basics when I started.

I wish translation courses had some kind of freelance business module. If I were teaching a translation class, I would get students to treat their homework like a real-life job. I would email them a job request and purchase order as their homework, they accept and translate it, then return the translation to me on time with an invoice. Maybe some courses do that now, I don’t know for sure. I really think translation students should be taught soft skills like time management, basic office administration, marketing and communication skills etc as part of their course. Too many graduates finish their translation degrees and they have no idea how to get started as a freelancer and they have little business-savvy.

While I was freelancing as a project manager, I used to receive unsolicited CVs from newbie translators and most of them were rubbish. If I had to outsource a German-English job, for example, I would receive plenty of emails from people who didn’t have this language pair. They would send me their CV on spec “Please consider me for future jobs if you ever have a job in my language pair”. What a waste of time – it just made them look desperate and I don’t think that was the impression they wanted to make! So if you are going to send your CV on spec, then put some thought into it and only send it to those who will definitely have work in your languages!

This may sound incredibly obvious, but do not use txtspk or a low register when approaching clients. You are selling your writing skills. You are supposed to be a professional language expert, so don’t let yourself down by leaving stupid spelling mistakes in your emails, invoices, application forms etc. I know I sound like an old fuddy-duddy saying this, but if you cannot write an e-mail to a client in an appropriate and professional manner, then how do you expect them to place a translation order with you? It is the simple things that will trip you up.

Specialisation is how you will make good money as a freelance translator. I originally trained in technical translation, where we had to take Physics for the first two years of the degree. I also gained specialist knowledge in various areas mainly through my practical work as a translator. A common problem with translation graduates is that they often don’t have enough real-life commercial/specialised experience. So where do you go from there? It is a vicious circle. You have to think long-term here, but a graduate could consider getting a job in a field that interests them, where they can also use their languages. It cannot fail to help when you do go freelance, because you’ll have real-life industry experience by then and you are in a better position to command higher rates. You’ve got to create your niche. For example, I worked for a computer company for two years after graduating, I had been involved with my University’s computer society and was one of the very few Irish Gaelic translators who could handle IT texts, who owned a CAT tool. I was almost certainly the only freelancer who could do small Gaelic voiceover jobs from home! 🙂

SD: Finally, can you recommend any other resources, websites, etc. for translators or advanced language learners?

OR: Proz.com for starters! They’ve really made an effort to become the top support site for language professionals. However, I notice that people join the likes of Proz and TranslatorsCafe.com and expect the site to do all the work for them. That is not how it works. Paying for a subscription is like taking a large boxed ad in the phone book. It makes stand out, but it doesn’t automatically mean you’ll pull more work in, if your presentation isn’t up to scratch. At the end of the day, these sites are just one method to help you build up your reputation and credentials. It worked for me; it may not work for someone else.

There are loads of ways you can get some free advertising for your business. For example: I participated regularly in the Proz forums, I used to organise translator meetings in Dublin and I mentored a second-year translation student as part of a University & Business programme. You should get involved in your local business community and go to associated events. You can never know too many people.

With regards to language learning, I read Gaelport.com every day, to keep up to speed with events in the Irish-language community. I also pop into www.beo.ie, which is a monthly online magazine in Irish. I also have the French channel TV5 at home and I speak French with native speakers at work.

Actually, I think podcasts are a brilliant way to learn languages. I subscribe to An tImeall and BBC Uladh’s “Blas” show for Irish. I also download ProSieben’s “Galileo” show for German.

I used to subscribe to the “Laura Speaks Dutch” podcast for a while. I would absolutely love to master Dutch. I can read it up to a point, thanks to knowing German, but putting sentences together is another story. I’m still at the stage where I recycle German vocabulary with an exaggerated Dutch accent 😉

Definitely lots of good tips and advice there, Orla. Thanks a lot!