It's been a very long time, and there is an explanation for that: I may be a journalist, but I do occasionally get stung by writer's block, particularly when I'm not working to a deadline!
At one point in recent weeks, I even felt somewhat guilty about not posting anything in my blog. I wanted to write, could not come up with anything mildly interesting to say... and before I knew it my mind had twisted all that into, "Oh, I'm not doing anything!"
I once heard or read somewhere that people who keep a diary occasionally get so caught up in writing about their lives and analyzing them that they forget to actually live them to the full. And I think I experienced a reverse case of that! I took "I can't think of anything to write that my readers might be interested in" to mean that I wasn't doing anything of interest to myself. That, of course, triggered a couple of alarms, fortunately enough to prove that it simply was not true.
I sat back and counted. Over the past two-odd months, the period over which I have not written a proper blog post, I have actually done quite a few things to advance my translation career.
I have for one thing completed my Introduction to Translation course at NYU, the first of what I hope will become my online Certificate in Translation. I did well at it, and I have signed up for a second course in the fall.
I have also registered to sit the DipTrans exam in late January, which I hope will be a crucial milestone in my budding second career.
Further, I have finally made the decision to drop French from my CV! I am now formally a bilingual translator with English and Spanish as my target languages and with those two plus German as my source languages. This may look easy, but the decision has taken me many months, and I am quite proud of it. I started freelancing a year ago with eight language pairs and a broad background. Based on my experience over this year, on lots of reading and research and on the helpful comments of several veteran colleagues, I am now down to four language pairs, with a clear focus on financial translation. The whole process feels somewhat like growing up professionally, and despite the inevitable growing pains it is something I am very happy about.
Also, largely as a consequence of my first NYU course, I finally got my act together with glossary-building. I have been translating forever, but I never developed a consistent habit of actually writing down for future reference and use the words I had to look up as I worked. Now it is finally happening. That is probably yet another aspect of growing up professionally, and it is definitely something else to be very happy about.
In recent weeks I have read 1.5 books on translation (nothing good enough to recommend it here, I'm afraid, but interesting reading nonetheless). I have updated my website and drafted a classy brochure (about to go to print as we speak!) to hand out to potential clients. I have built the foundations of a couple of very interesting working relationships with colleagues that I hope to work with again in the future.
And I even took a great holiday... and did a few translations!
Being a freelance professional in the Internet age is quite a handful. It is exciting and fun but... wait... you have to blog, tweet and post about it! That is usually also exciting and fun, but sometimes it is just too much. Please bear with me when that happens!
A linguist's leap into the world of professional translation: of languages, training, marketing and how a hobby became a profession that works for me and my clients.
Showing posts with label non-degree courses for translators. Show all posts
Showing posts with label non-degree courses for translators. Show all posts
26 August 2013
17 May 2013
Credibility as a crucial asset for freelance translators
As I become more and more engaged in discussions with fellow translators in forums like LinkedIn, it strikes me how much veterans play down the importance of credibility. It is like so many other things in life: they have it, so they do not value it much. They say things like, "If you're good, you're good" and "You cannot learn to be a translator, you need to have a gift for this profession."
While it is probably true that translating takes some form of a natural talent that one cannot learn, it is at least as true that beginning translators, even if they are fantastic at their job, start out without an asset that is crucial to the exercise of their chosen profession: credibility. And that is definitely something they should work on.
In fact, as an aspiring translator, an aptitude for translation itself is a given. We all assume that you are at least good at the core task of the job, that you know your source and target languages well enough and know the dynamics of both to transfer meaning from one to the other. The problem, of course, is that there are thousands of people for whom we assume the same, and you need to differentiate yourself to show that you are better than the next person. That is the only way you can actually get paid to translate and earn enough doing it to make a reasonable living, and there is clearly nothing innate in that.
It seems to me that there are two ways to acquire professional credibility. The first and most reliable is experience. That is second to none: you work for a client, you do things well, your client is pleased and comes back for more or tells her friends and acquaintances who may need a translator's services. In fact, it can also work out more informally, with a friend who has never worked with you and does not actually know how good you are at translating (that is, after all, a given) triggering the same process in the assumption that, since you are a serious, reliable person with sensible conversation and a common-sense attitude to life, you must also be all those things in your professional capacity.
The second path to acquire credibility is your educational background. Certification works this way, and so does training, which appears to be particularly important as you specialize. It gets harder to make assumptions about a translator when subject matter becomes more specific. And while you may indeed be familiar with a lot of terminology from, say, reading the Financial Times and The Economist since the age of 10, it will most likely be tough to use that to your advantage in convincing a potential client that you are just right for a project on economic policy. This task will be easier if you have a degree or have taken a set of courses in this particular field, of course.
Small details will also contribute to building up your credibility. A website is one of them, but of course not just any website will do. You need to think long and hard about the kind of translator you want to be, and about how your website, and your brand more generally, can contribute to positioning you as such a professional. The same goes for a blog, and for any participation you may have in social networks. Anything you say there will probably be readily available to any potential clients - in fact, that may be a large part of the reason why you write it in the first place - so you need to be sensible and make sure it reflects well on you as a professional.
In a globalized online world, professional credibility is a 24-hour issue and draws on your personal life too. When a potential client googles you, they will see your website, but they may also find your personal Facebook page the photos in which a friend tagged you and so on. You cannot really control everything they have access to, so you should at least really look after the things you can give a direction to. Your professional online presence has to be, well... very professional.
This week I dropped Italian from the source languages I mention in my profiles. One veteran translator suggested that I drop my multilingual professional identity altogether, arguing that, while I may be good at all those things, they could lead people to think that I am spreading myself too thin or that I am in fact not good enough at any of them. I think she is right. The sensible thing to do would probably be to also drop French, for the sake of credibility: it looks like I am not very credible as a French translator, since I don't have any specific qualifications, and according to one observer at least it actually detracts from my overall credibility as a translator. I resist dropping it, because I love French and I am very good at it, but the truth is I find it hard to convince clients that I am as good as I say I am and it may well be that it is probably not doing me any favours.
As a freelance translator, you can acquire credibility over time, of course, perhaps even fairly easily if you do the right things. However, you most certainly were not born with it and you did not learn it in your French, German or English lessons. It will take conscientious work over years and years, on- and offline, and a lot of finetuning. Veteran translators who already have it may not remember how hard it was to attain that status, or perhaps they just went about their business diligently and gained credibility without actually seeking it. For those of us who are starting out, however, the strategy to become a credible professional is worth at least as much thought as the allegedly innate aspects of a translator's profession.
While it is probably true that translating takes some form of a natural talent that one cannot learn, it is at least as true that beginning translators, even if they are fantastic at their job, start out without an asset that is crucial to the exercise of their chosen profession: credibility. And that is definitely something they should work on.
In fact, as an aspiring translator, an aptitude for translation itself is a given. We all assume that you are at least good at the core task of the job, that you know your source and target languages well enough and know the dynamics of both to transfer meaning from one to the other. The problem, of course, is that there are thousands of people for whom we assume the same, and you need to differentiate yourself to show that you are better than the next person. That is the only way you can actually get paid to translate and earn enough doing it to make a reasonable living, and there is clearly nothing innate in that.
It seems to me that there are two ways to acquire professional credibility. The first and most reliable is experience. That is second to none: you work for a client, you do things well, your client is pleased and comes back for more or tells her friends and acquaintances who may need a translator's services. In fact, it can also work out more informally, with a friend who has never worked with you and does not actually know how good you are at translating (that is, after all, a given) triggering the same process in the assumption that, since you are a serious, reliable person with sensible conversation and a common-sense attitude to life, you must also be all those things in your professional capacity.
The second path to acquire credibility is your educational background. Certification works this way, and so does training, which appears to be particularly important as you specialize. It gets harder to make assumptions about a translator when subject matter becomes more specific. And while you may indeed be familiar with a lot of terminology from, say, reading the Financial Times and The Economist since the age of 10, it will most likely be tough to use that to your advantage in convincing a potential client that you are just right for a project on economic policy. This task will be easier if you have a degree or have taken a set of courses in this particular field, of course.
Small details will also contribute to building up your credibility. A website is one of them, but of course not just any website will do. You need to think long and hard about the kind of translator you want to be, and about how your website, and your brand more generally, can contribute to positioning you as such a professional. The same goes for a blog, and for any participation you may have in social networks. Anything you say there will probably be readily available to any potential clients - in fact, that may be a large part of the reason why you write it in the first place - so you need to be sensible and make sure it reflects well on you as a professional.
In a globalized online world, professional credibility is a 24-hour issue and draws on your personal life too. When a potential client googles you, they will see your website, but they may also find your personal Facebook page the photos in which a friend tagged you and so on. You cannot really control everything they have access to, so you should at least really look after the things you can give a direction to. Your professional online presence has to be, well... very professional.
This week I dropped Italian from the source languages I mention in my profiles. One veteran translator suggested that I drop my multilingual professional identity altogether, arguing that, while I may be good at all those things, they could lead people to think that I am spreading myself too thin or that I am in fact not good enough at any of them. I think she is right. The sensible thing to do would probably be to also drop French, for the sake of credibility: it looks like I am not very credible as a French translator, since I don't have any specific qualifications, and according to one observer at least it actually detracts from my overall credibility as a translator. I resist dropping it, because I love French and I am very good at it, but the truth is I find it hard to convince clients that I am as good as I say I am and it may well be that it is probably not doing me any favours.
As a freelance translator, you can acquire credibility over time, of course, perhaps even fairly easily if you do the right things. However, you most certainly were not born with it and you did not learn it in your French, German or English lessons. It will take conscientious work over years and years, on- and offline, and a lot of finetuning. Veteran translators who already have it may not remember how hard it was to attain that status, or perhaps they just went about their business diligently and gained credibility without actually seeking it. For those of us who are starting out, however, the strategy to become a credible professional is worth at least as much thought as the allegedly innate aspects of a translator's profession.
10 May 2013
Finding out where you stand as a freelance translator
This has been a fantastic week: I may have been a little slow to write, but I have done lots of research and come upon some great stuff I am now ready to share with you!
I have given a lot of thought to where I stand as a freelance translator. I have been doing this for eight months now, and while I hugely surpassed my own expectations from the start, I appear to have stabilized since then.
I did not actually set out to assess my position. It all started quite indirectly. I came across New York University's online M.S. in Translation and thought that might be a good medium-term plan. So I emailed NYU, looked at the brochure and then emailed them again to clarify exactly how much the programme cost. It seemed ridiculously expensive, but I got lost in per course fees and thought I might as well ask for the real figure. And NYU staff told me it cost 57,000 dollars! Yes, no typos: 57,000 dollars!!!
The good thing about such a staggering amount, of course, is that I couldn't even feel tempted! Once I got over the shock, however, I went about finding out two things.
The first thing I wanted to know was how much a decent translator can hope to make per year. I mean, if there are people willing to spend $57,000 on a two-year Masters programme, there must surely be translators (hopefully those who did the NYU masters at the very least!) who are making very serious money from the profession!
My research (actually the ATA's) showed that the average US-based freelance translator makes about $60,000 per year in pre-tax income. A non-US-based frelancer makes around $56,000 per year, the ATA says.
This put the NYU figure into perspective, but it showed I am light years away from that average! So I made the most of a LinkedIn debate to ask ATA colleagues when I, or any other newcomer, might hope to reach that level. I got a reply from no less than ATA director Corinne McKay, so let me quote her here because I found her answer hugely interesting:
"I think that everyone probably has their own metric, but I normally say to expect an intense startup phase of 6-12 months, meaning that you're marketing most of the time without a lot of work necessarily coming in. After that, I think that it takes most people 1 1/2 to 3 years before they're fully established, meaning that they have a good base of regular clients and are earning at least what they would be earning from a 'regular' job."
I am so thankful to Corinne for those numbers! It really helps to know where you stand.
The second thing I wanted to know was whether there were any reasonable alternatives to the NYU Masters programme. By reasonable, of course, I mean cheaper! Or, to put it more elegantly, I mean real value for money.
I set out to look for an online Masters that I could afford and which gave me a good specialization in finance and a title from a reputable university that people would acknowledge anywhere in the world. I asked around and heard about the University of Texas at Brownsville and the Universidad Autonoma de Barcelona, among others, but nothing really suited my needs. These were cheaper, of course (eg. 4,200 euros at the UAB), but they were not what I was looking for.
So I switched to looking for specialized non-degree courses rather than Masters. And, to make a long story short, I wound up back at NYU. It turns out that they have a Certificate in Translation that is much more affordable (6 courses, at $695 each) and that would allow me to focus entirely on financial translation. So it is cheap (anything looks cheap after you read $57,000!), I can do it online at my own pace, it is from NYU and so is recognizable around the world, and it allows me to really focus on what I want to specialize in. Bingo! I am hoping to start within a few weeks.
In line with this, I want to mention the most exciting piece of advice I got this week, courtesy of Marta Stelmaszak. The post is actually a few weeks old but I only read it now. Marta blogged on specialization, and wrote something I found simply brilliant:
"There's something I do for money (legal), something I'm skilled in (business), and something I really enjoy (IT). That's a good starting point, and I have the balance I need."
For me, this was a real eye-opener, a fantastic wake up call to really focus. So I filled in the brackets for myself and thought that, when I grow up, I will translate financial documents for money, business because I'm skilled in it and Social Science because I love that.
I told you I was in a position to pack this post with food for thought for an aspiting translator! Enjoy!
I have given a lot of thought to where I stand as a freelance translator. I have been doing this for eight months now, and while I hugely surpassed my own expectations from the start, I appear to have stabilized since then.
I did not actually set out to assess my position. It all started quite indirectly. I came across New York University's online M.S. in Translation and thought that might be a good medium-term plan. So I emailed NYU, looked at the brochure and then emailed them again to clarify exactly how much the programme cost. It seemed ridiculously expensive, but I got lost in per course fees and thought I might as well ask for the real figure. And NYU staff told me it cost 57,000 dollars! Yes, no typos: 57,000 dollars!!!
The good thing about such a staggering amount, of course, is that I couldn't even feel tempted! Once I got over the shock, however, I went about finding out two things.
The first thing I wanted to know was how much a decent translator can hope to make per year. I mean, if there are people willing to spend $57,000 on a two-year Masters programme, there must surely be translators (hopefully those who did the NYU masters at the very least!) who are making very serious money from the profession!
My research (actually the ATA's) showed that the average US-based freelance translator makes about $60,000 per year in pre-tax income. A non-US-based frelancer makes around $56,000 per year, the ATA says.
This put the NYU figure into perspective, but it showed I am light years away from that average! So I made the most of a LinkedIn debate to ask ATA colleagues when I, or any other newcomer, might hope to reach that level. I got a reply from no less than ATA director Corinne McKay, so let me quote her here because I found her answer hugely interesting:
"I think that everyone probably has their own metric, but I normally say to expect an intense startup phase of 6-12 months, meaning that you're marketing most of the time without a lot of work necessarily coming in. After that, I think that it takes most people 1 1/2 to 3 years before they're fully established, meaning that they have a good base of regular clients and are earning at least what they would be earning from a 'regular' job."
I am so thankful to Corinne for those numbers! It really helps to know where you stand.
The second thing I wanted to know was whether there were any reasonable alternatives to the NYU Masters programme. By reasonable, of course, I mean cheaper! Or, to put it more elegantly, I mean real value for money.
I set out to look for an online Masters that I could afford and which gave me a good specialization in finance and a title from a reputable university that people would acknowledge anywhere in the world. I asked around and heard about the University of Texas at Brownsville and the Universidad Autonoma de Barcelona, among others, but nothing really suited my needs. These were cheaper, of course (eg. 4,200 euros at the UAB), but they were not what I was looking for.
So I switched to looking for specialized non-degree courses rather than Masters. And, to make a long story short, I wound up back at NYU. It turns out that they have a Certificate in Translation that is much more affordable (6 courses, at $695 each) and that would allow me to focus entirely on financial translation. So it is cheap (anything looks cheap after you read $57,000!), I can do it online at my own pace, it is from NYU and so is recognizable around the world, and it allows me to really focus on what I want to specialize in. Bingo! I am hoping to start within a few weeks.
In line with this, I want to mention the most exciting piece of advice I got this week, courtesy of Marta Stelmaszak. The post is actually a few weeks old but I only read it now. Marta blogged on specialization, and wrote something I found simply brilliant:
"There's something I do for money (legal), something I'm skilled in (business), and something I really enjoy (IT). That's a good starting point, and I have the balance I need."
For me, this was a real eye-opener, a fantastic wake up call to really focus. So I filled in the brackets for myself and thought that, when I grow up, I will translate financial documents for money, business because I'm skilled in it and Social Science because I love that.
I told you I was in a position to pack this post with food for thought for an aspiting translator! Enjoy!
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)