Sarah's Archives

an archive of content from ≈ 2005 - 2015, relating to international business, translation, freelancing, and working online.

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The Great TM Debate

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“Which TM should I use?” It’s a question I often hear translators ask. But we’d be much better served if we asked ourselves what we needed a translation tool to do, and then worked backwards from there. That way, we know we are getting a tool that we’ll actually use and not leave sitting on our virtual shelf gathering cyberdust. Jeffrey Treem over at Inside the Cubicle put it nicely when he says:

… communicators need to be channel/tool agnostic – Stop getting hung up on names and technology and start with business goals and work backwards. Do not paint yourself into a corner where you need to fit the tools you are comfortable with into your work environment.

Hear, hear. (Of course, he was speaking about how companies are using social media as part of their communications strategy, but I reckon it’s relevant to technology adoption in any field.)

Thanks Jeffrey.

Theory Vs Practice

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It’s an age-old argument, and one which I hear voiced far too frequently among translators. But even so, I must admit to being left more than a little slack-jawed with shock at a letter in the most recent issue (as of May 2007) of the Chartered Institute of Linguist‘s journal, The Linguist.

The writer of this letter (who shall remain nameless) requested that fewer academic articles be included as “the majority of readers will not find them particularly relevant to their working or cultural lives”.

WHAT??!! I may not be a majority all on my own, but I certainly take umbrage with this guy claiming to speak on behalf of the majority of my colleagues.

I sincerely hope that this comment does not go unchallenged in the forthcoming issues of The Linguist. I just can’t believe that a profession which is fighting so hard to be recognised (recent chartered status, industry standards, CEN norms, etc) could allow this kind of ignorance to go unchallenged. Needless to say, the editor has already received my Strongly Worded Response 🙂

Translation theory has very relevant applications in translation practice, and it’s important for any practising translator interested in professional development to keep abreast of developments in academia. Whenever I hear someone claim otherwise, I immediately move them several places down my private “does-this-person-know-what-they-are-talking-about” scale. Granted, I may not immediately grasp of significance of a piece of research, or find a day-to-day application for a theory, but key findings do eventually filter through the layers of the profession and have a direct impact on my working life. So an intelligent but easily readable summary of developments in academia is the very least I would expect from a chartered association claiming to represent professionals.

At the recent ITI Conference in London, Dr Jean-Pierre Mailhac very rightly pointed out that this lack of interest in theory and new developments would be most concerning if demonstrated by practitioners in fields such as medicine or law. Do you feel you would get the best treatment from a doctor who didn’t see the connection between theory and practice? So why should translation be any different?

Do we want to be taken as serious language professionals, or don’t we?

Small wins…

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I’m really excited. I’ve recently had a couple of jobs in from the kind of client I’ve dreamed of having for a long time now – a direct client, an organisation I admire, interesting work, extremely pleasant to deal with so far. It’s early days yet and I won’t make my millions just yet, but it feels great. How did I find them? I got chatting to one of their directors at a networking event and I asked whether they had any use for someone with my skills 🙂 I’d done pro bono work for a similar organisation before and I think that’s what prompted this contact to offer to put me in touch with the right person.

Yipee!

Spring has sprung

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I saw two things today that put a spring in my step. They are:

1. an article in New Scientist on why multitasking is not all it’s cracked up to be (subscription required – but The New York Times has also run a piece on it here.) As a professional paid for the volume of my output, I’ve read endless books, articles and studies on how to increase my productivity. It’s such a relief to see solid scientific evidence to support what I’ve already discovered the hard way – hooray! Juggling several things at once leaves me feeling like a headless chicken. And I still can’t even begin to translate until I’ve cleared my mind of every last bit of clutter, so I can focus 100% on the text (I’d hoped this process would get easier with experience, but I’m still waiting 🙂 )

2. a blog post on Slow Leadership about the positive aspects of procrastination. So just because I don’t rush off the first couple of thousand words of a job just as soon as it arrives in my inbox doesn’t make me a lazy disorganised bum, doomed to failure – yipee!! Does this also mean it’s OK if I find myself working long hours the day before a deadline?? I’m not so sure about that one 🙂

All in all, it seems the slow movement is continuing its irrepressible crawl into the world of work. This can only bode well for translation, don’t you think?

Building your client list: words of advice

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There’s an interesting article in today’s FT about Transperfect, the biggest privately owned translation company in the US and the third biggest in the sector. I have a friend who worked for them inhouse, and know several others who’ve worked for them freelance.

I think Transperfect is unusual in that it’s such a big player in a sector which tends to be dominated by smaller entities. I love hearing how translation companies were started, and especially about the backgrounds of the founders. This article does not disappoint and is well worth a read.

Now, if I were a newcomer to the profession, I’d see this article as a great excuse to contact the company and perhaps see whether they were interested in adding me to their list of suppliers. However, as a slighty more established translator with a hefty 4 years (or so!) of experience under my belt, I’m a bit more cautious and always follow these words of advice before signing up with a new work provider:

ALWAYS check a potential client out with fellow translators BEFORE taking on a job with them (this includes test translations).

You can do this via personal contacts or even better, through the well established payment practice groups that are out there. These usually require you to sign up for membership, but are well worth the hassle. Chances are someone will have worked for them before. If they haven’t, take the view that “no news is good news”and proceed with caution – assuming you’re not ignoring any glaringly obvious warning signs, of course.

So why is this necessary? Ask yourself if you can afford NOT to be paid for this job and it becomes clear. I’ve spoken before about how it can be tempting to take every job that comes your way, and this is yet another reason to be choosy. Industry payment terms already leave little room for maneouvre and are stacked against the freelancer. Payment in 30 days net is pretty standard, and means you may not get paid for up to 2 months following the date you invoice for your work. Even the slightest delay or hiccup can severely affect your cash flow, especially in the early days… Trust me, there are plenty of more enjoyable ways to get translation experience.

10 questions on translation as a career – Part 2 of 2

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Continued from this post…

6. What do you find challenging about your job?

Keeping to a relatively “normal” routine. I love owning my own business and working from home, but it can be very, very hard to just switch off. I joke about lolling around in my pjs and watching daytime TV, but the reality is that I work very hard, and much longer hours than most people I know. Plus, I’m naturally a night owl and could easily work all night, every night, but then I have trouble sleeping during the day. So I have to be strict with myself and try to keep a relatively “normal” work routine, or else I’d find myself getting very isolated from the rest of the world!


7. Have there ever been times you wish you¹d picked a more “conventional” job? Or not a freelance one?

Yes! Usually when I have a lot of non-work things to do but I’m also busy with my actual “paying” work. I sometimes think, “If I worked for someone else, I could easily do my photocopying/printing, book my holiday, surf the internet, email my friends etc. on the sly, and no one would be the wiser!”. But when I’m my own boss and I get paid for the work I produce instead of the number of hours I’m sat at my desk, I see the direct effects of these kinds of non-work tasks on my bottom line and it hurts.

It’s also frustrating when friends and family think that just because I work at home, I don’t really work, and expect me to be constantly available to do these kinds of tasks!

And my office Christmas party is usually pretty dull 🙂


8. What’s the best advice you’ ve ever been given?

Do your best, then don’t worry about it – you can’t do any more than that. My mom always used to say that to me when I was fretting over something as a child!


9. Is there anything you’ve learned during your career that you’d want to share with others?

Practical work experience is the best way to figure out what you want do and do not want in a job, try and get lots of it. If you want to do something badly enough, then go for it, no matter how far out of your reach it seems. Take advice from those who’ve gone before you, but make your own mind up – there will always be naysayers and critics. Formal education is not the only way into most careers, but it often helps. Finally, never worry about not being able to find the right job, I guarantee it’s out there somewhere – but you need to know what you’re looking for before you can find it!


10. Plans for the future/ultimate goals?

I’d like to run my own language services business in the future, but on my terms – small enough to still be flexible but big enough to allow me to try my hand at managing other people.

10 questions on translation as a career – Part 1 of 2

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I was interviewed for a magazine yesterday and thought it might be interesting to post an edited version of some of my responses (link to follow when published). The target audience is teenagers/young people considering careers in different areas, which I think (hope?!) explains why I come across as being some kind of wise old owl who has already “made it” to the pinnacle of my profession 🙂 (I’m on my way, certainly, but not quite there yet 😉 ) It gives a bit more of a glimpse into how I got into translation and the challenges of being a freelancer, so links in nicely to the issues discussed here.

I answer the following:

  1. How did you get into the job you’re doing? (training, job experience etc)
  2. What led you to it/what excited you about this profession?
  3. Tell me about your day to day work.
  4. What’s the best things about your job?
  5. What’s your daily motivation?
  6. What do you find challenging about your job?
  7. Have there ever been times you wish you¹d picked a more “conventional” job? Or not a freelance one?
  8. What’s the best advice you’ ve ever been given?
  9. Is there anything you’ve learned during your career that you’d want to share with others?
  10. Plans for the future/ultimate goals?

It was a very interesting exercise for me. It made me take a step back and think about what I do day to day, and measure it up against what I thought I would be doing when I set out to go freelance almost 5 years ago. I think there are two kinds of people who might benefit from thinking about how they might answer these questions – those considering making a career out of freelance translation, and those who have been at it for a while but are getting dangerously close to forgetting why they ever thought it would be a good idea! As a freelance translator, you really do have a lot of control over the work you do and the way you spend your working day, sothere’s really no excuse for poor job satisfaction!

PS – I’ve broken the interview down into 2 posts to make it a bit more user friendly and would appreciate hearing what you think – does that make it easier to read??

1. How did you get into the job you’re doing? (training, job experience etc).

I did a 4 year BA in languages and was lucky enough to spend almost 3 full years of that time living and working in each of France, Germany and Spain, so I had already had some great international experience (and adventures!) by the time I’d graduated. I travelled and worked in a couple of different jobs for a few years after that, but it was an MA in translation that really set me up for becoming a fully-fledged freelance translator. It was excellent, very hands-on with practical work placements modules, and also gave me access to practicing translators already working in the industry. These contacts proved invaluable when it came to setting out on my own.

They say the ideal career path for a translator is to get a degree in something completely unrelated to languages, say medicine or engineering, work for 15 years in this area while becoming fluent in another language, then marry someone who speaks your second language and go live and work in that country for another 10 years or so. Finally, you need to move back to the country of your source language… and you are you are ready to become a freelance translator!

Needless to say I didn’t follow this path (I’m didn’t have the patience… or the non-English speaking boyfriend!). It’s true that many translators tend to get into it via a career change in their later years, but it’s certainly not the only way in. Many people start off working as an in-house translator for a few years, but there’s a real shortage of good translators who have the business skills to manage themselves as freelancers. I guess the most important things are a thorough understanding of your target language(s) gained through in-country experience, combined with competence in a field other than languages – after all, languages are only useful if you have something to say.

Also, many people don’t realise this, but professional translators work only into their mother tongue, no matter how fluent they are in their other languages, so your written English has to be top notch too!

2. What led you to it/what excited you about this profession?

Despite doing a first degree in languages, translation wasn’t something I was at all interested in initially. I was more interested in interpreting actually, as I thought it seemed a lot more glamorous (translation is working with the written word, interpreting the spoken word). But I have some friends who worked for big institutions like the UN and the Council of Ministers at the EU, and I could see that it wasn’t for me. I always knew I wanted to work for myself, and so after graduating from my first degree I spent quite a lot of time thinking about how I could have the kind of flexibility and work-life balance that I wanted, while also doing a satisfying job. Once I’d decided on freelance translation, I went about finding the best training course I could, and the rest is history. I suppose I went about it in a very analytical way, but that doesn’t make me any less excited by it!

The fantastic thing about translation is that you really never stop learning. It’s such a diverse profession – you can work with anything from scientific research, to reports on human rights abuses to automotive manuals… and it’s your job to convince the reader of each documents that you are the author, the expert in that particular field and not just someone who speaks a foreign language.

It’s essential to specialise if you want to make a living from translation these days. Sometimes I find myself reading something in French, German or Spanish that I wouldn’t even understand in English, say the details of how an engine part works, or complex information about market shares and stocks for example. So I have to go away and make sure I have a full understanding of it (in English!) before I can even begin to think about translating it. And unlike interpreting, where the spoken words often go in one ear and out the other, your words are there in black and white for everyone to see, so they have to be exactly right – no waffling when you’re not sure of a meaning! Every day there’s a new word, phrase or concept that you have to carefully research and then quickly master, as dictionaries don’t have the answers you need at this level. And as a freelancer you can really steer your career too, and work in the areas that genuinely interest you.

3. Tell me about your day to day work.

It’s such a cliché, but every day really is as different as the job I’m working on. My jobs tend t
o last an average of two weeks, but a reasonably typical working day involves getting up about 8.30am, wandering into my little home office and responding to a few emails while I wait for the kettle to boil. I’ll have a quick breakfast, then return to my email where I’ll invariably get sucked into something for another hour or so. I’m lucky in that I’m always booked up for work about 6 weeks ahead at any time, but it’s important that I keep on top of my admin – chasing overdue payments, keeping my accounts up to date, issuing invoices, paying bills, responding to queries from potential and existing clients, and so on. Plus, the reality is that I never know if the work will stop coming in, so I have to have a contingency plan for if that ever happens.

About 11am I’ll take a break for a couple of hours and go to the gym, take a walk, do some shopping or watch some trashy daytime TV (if I’m feeling really lazy!). Then I’ll work solidly on whatever translation I’m working on until from about 1pm until 7pm, when my husband comes home. I try to have weekends off, but I usually end up spending at least 6 – 7 hours either catching up on my never-ending admin, or attending training events. It’s really important that I stay up-to-date with developments in the industry and training tends to be organised at weekends to prevent us losing out on earnings.

4. What’s the best things about your job?

Being able to do my shopping and go to the gym when it’s nice and quiet, no Saturday or 5.30pm queues for me! I also love that I never clock watch. My days fly by so fast but if I’m not feeling productive, I don’t have to try and look busy for the benefit of my boss. I can go out and do something else, I know what my deadlines are and I’ll get the work done when I need to.


I also love the mix of pure translation work and the completely different job of running a business. I get to do a little bit of everything – admin, sales, accounting, IT and so on (not forgetting office cleaning!)

5. What’s your daily motivation?

Being able to pay my bills without having to work hours that suit somebody else! I love translation, but let’s just say I wouldn’t hesitate to throw it all in and travel the world if I won the lotto 🙂

Feast or famine: why 'quiet' days don't bother me

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Freelance work tends to come in peaks and troughs, and while there are lots of up-sides to being freelance, a definite down-side is that if you don’t work, you don’t pay the bills. In my early days however, I quickly realised that there are some very good translators who really do work 24/7, regardless of industry ups and downs, never say no and never EVER turn down a job (within their capabilities, of course). I chewed over this quite a bit, but decided early on that while I would work my hardest to get up and running, I would also be unafraid to enjoy the “quiet” times, and purposely build in breaks if I had to.

A big part of what I love about translation is the continuous learning curve, and in order to fully benefit from this and continuously improve my performance, it’s important that I have the time and the space to make the most of all the new things that come my way every day. It may not be the quickest way to make money, but I consider it to be a marathon, rather than a sprint – after all, I’m in this for the long haul!

Even if you are one of those people who require less time for “digestion” and no matter how passionate you are about what you do, it’s always important to recharge your batteries and allow fresh ideas and energy to emerge. How are you going to motivate yourself or attract new customers if you are edgy with fatigue? (And trust me, motivation is very important when you work for yourself.) How are you going to know whether to continue with a particular line of work if you don’t take time to step back and think about it?

So take that break, or to reverse a well known saying: Don’t just do something, sit there!

Today's Female Entrepreneur – Do You Recognise Her?

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This short piece by Sue Stockdale seems to be in line with a lot of what I’ve been reading lately. Is there really such a clear division between entrepreneurs of either sexes? And why are issues relating to work-life balance always discussed in the same breath as female entrepreneurs or businesswomen??! I’d love to know if there is anything out there on work-life balance as it relates to professional men…
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How would you describe today’s woman entrepreneur? Is she a focused individual driven to work all hours in the pursuit of profit? Or is she a woman who wants a lifestyle business with the minimum of stress?

There has been a lot of research into the characteristics of women entrepreneurs. This research has been borne out bythe interviews I carried out with ten of today’s leading female entrepreneurs in the UK. These women include Michelle Mone, creator of the Ultimo bra and Penny Streeter OBE, Founder of Ambition 24 Hours recognised as the fastest growing unquoted UK company in 2002.

It shows that today’s woman will have a strong need for achievement and a passion for her product or service. Shewill have carried out some research into her market but also relies on intuition and her existing business knowledge tojudge whether her business idea is likely to be viable.

She is also driven by the need for autonomy. A confident focused individual with self-belief and tenacity, today’s woman entrepreneur has a clear vision of what she wants to achieve and strong personal values by which to drive the business. These values are founded on respect, integrity, ethics, honesty and a passion for excellence.

Whilst she will encounter challenges on the way, including access to finance and balancing work and life requirements; her determination and tenacity to succeed will shine through.
She will lead her business in a manner that promotes genuine concern for others, team-working and openness. Amongst her measures of success are interaction with people and helping others and she is open to sharing her learning andexperience.

This profile applies to both women who are growing large businesses and also those who are running lifestyle businesses. So do you agree with this description? Do you know women who have these characteristics or maybe different qualities and are equally successful? How do you match up?
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Sue Stockdale is a motivational speaker, successful business woman and record breaking explorer. Buy her latest book, “Secrets of Successful Women Entrepreneurs” at BookShaker.com http://www.bookshaker.com/product_info.php?products_id=111
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