Sarah's Archives

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

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A chance to prove yourself

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The soon-to-be-updated National Occupational Standards* in translation look pretty exciting (in a way that only a standard can be) and a great opportunity to prove your worth as a newcomer to the industry.

At a session at the recent ITI Conference, Gill Musk from CILT explained that these standards have been developed by professional translators for professional translators, and are designed to describe two levels of expertise. In this way, they meet the needs of both end users and translators themselves in establishing clarity and transparency on the skills required by a good translator.

This will be helpful in a range of situations and can only serve to increase visibility of the profession. Those considering careers in translation can establish a realistic idea of the skills required before embarking on studies. Employers of translators can appraise staff, write job descriptions, assess candidates and create development plans. Providers of translator training can map their courses to an approved set of criteria. Finally, because they define competence, are a distillation of best practice and are updated on a regular basis, translation professionals can ensure their skills remain sharp.

So how do I plan to use these standards once they’re released? I’ll use them to:

  • identify my strengths and weaknesses (eek! always scary – but necessary :))
  • highlight opportunities and priorities for my CPD
  • reflect and develop skills by assessing my own work
  • get a clear understanding of current best practice

Bring it on!!

(BTW, Gill also mentioned that there is such a severe shortage of native English speaking Spanish interpreters, that EU bodies are forced to cancel conferences and meetings on a daily basis. Encouraging for anyone considering a career as an interpreter then! 🙂 )

*(Not to be confused with the CEN standards for translation, which focus more on procedures and procurement practices)

ITI Conference – Coming of Age!

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I had a great time at the ITI Conference in London over the weekend. Not only was it jam-packed with interesting contributors, but the interesting mix of participants was worth the cost of attending on its own. I’ve been to a couple of these now, and this has definitely been the best. Saturday night’s drinks reception on the terrace of the Houses of Parliament, followed by dinner in the private members’ dining room wasn’t so bad either 😉

Watch this space for notes on the sessions I attended over the next few days.

Throw your career plan out the window

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I was offered a set of passes to attend this event way back in March, and writing it up in my CPD booklet the other day reminded me of how inspiring it was. I’d never been to a networking event of this sort before, let alone one for International Women’s Day, and I really wasn’t quite sure what I would make of it. But wow! The speakers were just fantastic and I don’t think there was a single man or woman who didn’t leave feeling excited and energised about their career, regardless of the field they worked in.

I found Susan Hooper, a Managing Director with Royal Caribbean Cruises, especially inspiring. I loved how she advocated the importance of doing what you truly enjoy, even when that leads you off a more traditional or safe career path. She also said that NOT having a career plan was the best thing she’s ever done as it’s left her free to seize new opportunities that she’d otherwise never have considered. That gave me great food for thought as it’s contrary to received wisdom, and gave me confidence in the choices I’ve made.

So what has this got to do with translation? Well, most freelance translators will probably tell you that there is no such thing as a traditional career path into translation. I happen to disagree. Yes, there are plenty of translators in the UK from a range of backgrounds who have turned to freelance translation as a second career. But for every one of these, there is also a translator, either freelance or inhouse, who has slowly and steadily worked their way up the industry ladder (again, I’m referring to the UK here. A native English-speaking translator living in say, Germany, would have a very different set of options available to them). First, an inhouse position as a proofreader, checker or production assistant. Then, a promotion to project manager. Eventually, after several years, they may get some translation work. Finally, the time is right to go freelance.

Of course there is so much to be gained from this path – not only do you take the big leap to freelance with the benefit of several years’ worth of industry experience and contacts behind you, you also probably have a guarantee of work from your former employers. But attractive as it sounded, I just didn’t feel this was right for me.

I spent a lot of time speaking to those already established in the industry and even successfully interviewed for a few really great companies. But I never really felt any of these roles enabled me to make full use of my transferable skills and experience. What’s more, I just couldn’t see a way of creating just such a role inhouse either. I knew I’d be bored and I knew the excitement and buzz of working for myself was just what I needed. But this went against the advice of everyone I spoke to. So, wary of putting my long-suffering hsuband through yet another financially unstable couple of years, I chickened out after graduating from an MA in Specialised and Technical Translation and took a corporate job for a while. The plan was to work hard and gather a tidy little nest egg, before turning my attentions back to freelance translation.

Needless to say, it was a mistake and I very quickly realised it just wasn’t for me. In a way, that forced my hand and with a big gulp and very little savings I struck out on my own. And the rest, as they say, is history. That’s not to say it has been easy, or that I haven’t made mistakes (oh! the mistakes!), but going against the grain and throwing my career path out the window was the best thing I could have ever done.

By the way, the other speakers were Mary McPhail from WAGGGS, Minister Margaret Hodge, John Rendall from HSBC Business Banking and Jo Salter, Britain’s first female fast jet pilot. If you ever get a chance to hear any of them speak, I’d recommend it (er… except for maybe the Minister, who arrived late, rushed her speech then left as soon as she finished… happy International Women’s Day indeed!)

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 🙂

Websites for Translators

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I recently attended two training sessions run by the West Midlands Group of the ITI – one by Nick Rosenthal from Salford Translations on Sustainable Customer Relationships, and the other by Vernon Blackmore from Ambit New Media on Websites for Translators. Excellent stuff, even if I did miss a very exciting rugby match on Saturday when my radio couldn’t get reception on the train home…

Websites for Translators

Vernon gave us an excellent run down on what exactly is involved in getting a website up and running. As the second session of the day, I didn’t envy Vernon his task – it was already clear that we were a bit of a motley crew of participants with varying degrees of internet knowledge, from those who had already established professional websites to those who hadn’t yet mastered the features of a Google search. However, he really managed to hit the nail on the head.

Vernon offered practical advice and useful tips, stressing, for example, the importance of retaining control of content on your site so you can still use the text and images if you ever decide to host it somewhere else. He also touched on how to get your hands on good quality, royalty-free images and outlined the pros and cons of buying a CMS outright vs licensing it. Vernon was refreshingly upfront about cost on all the options he discussed, and despite being in the business of web design himself, his advice was admirably impartial, not at all salesy and very valuable as a result.

I especially liked the way Vernon described a “spectrum” of options available to freelance translators interested in establishing their web presence. He explained that where you stand on this spectrum depends on the resources you are willing and/or able to commit (i.e. time, money and knowledge of web design). This was such a realistic assessment of the differing circumstances that us freelancers find ourselves in, and each person in that room could have had a professional website up and running by Monday as a result. (In fact, WMG are thinking of running a follow up session for participants to discuss the progress they’ve made following the day, testimony to the power of both speakers)

Vernon reenforced Nick’s message when he reminded us that the aim of a website should not be to bring in new business, but to authenticate your other marketing efforts. Like Nick, he also thought it valuable to use images of yourself on your site, to add “warmth” and to help your clients visualise the person behind the HTML. Now, while I agree that clients are attracted by a relationship and not just a service, the jury is still out on the value of personal pics as far as I’m concerned. I think I’ve been scarred by hearing the amount of ridicule that was heaped onto translators who dared show their face on their marketing material. (It wasn’t unheard of to have those pictures attached to the office notice board for an impromptu game of darts or pin the moustache on the translator…)

Knowledge is power, but only if we can see a way to apply it in our daily lives. Many techies pitch training sessions to impress rather than to enable, maybe with the notion that this will spur us on to research the area a bit more (or give up and call in the professionals). I’ve left many sessions more painfully aware of what I don’t know rather than what I do, but not this one. Now if that’s not a great way to build client loyalty, I don’t know what is!


Sustainable Customer Relationships

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I attended a two training sessions run by the West Midlands Group of the ITI last weekend – one by Nick Rosenthal from Salford Translations on Sustainable Customer Relationships, and the other by Vernon Blackmore from Ambit New Media on Websites for Translators. Excellent stuff, even if I did miss a very exciting rugby match on Saturday when my radio couldn’t get reception on the train home…

Sustainable Customer Relationships

Nick compared the relationship we have with our clients to the one we have with our partners, and made the really interesting point that dealing with clients doesn’t have to be so different from the way we already deal with our family and friends.

I got most value from the advice he offered on how best to present yourself as a freelance translator, and how you don’t have to pretend you’re running a giant multinational out of your back room. A really interesting point – so many freelancers believe they have to hide the fact that they they are the only person in their office, and in doing so, unwittingly set themselves up as competitors to the very people who are likely supply them with the bulk of their work, i.e. translation agencies.

There’s still a fine line to be tread, of course. I’ve worked in the kind of corporate environment where translation buyers were happy to work with individual suppliers, but where a “premium” image was everything. Setting yourself up as a maw and paw operation (I’m sure that’s the technical term!), complete with 5 cats and a penchant for crosswords was not going to get you on their list of preferred suppliers. I guess it comes down to finding a professional, as opposed to a personal, “voice” for your online presence, and I’m not entirely sure I’ve found one that I’m comfortable with yet… but Nick’s comments certainly gave me food for thought (another day’s post, perhaps?!)

It was probably a tricky session to pitch given the rather patchy IT skills of some freelance translators, but I think Nick underestimated the degree to which many of us already use the web to sustain our customer, and indeed private, relationships. Rather than focussing on an explanation of the resources available to do this, I’d like to have heard more about how he was using these resources, and indeed had seen them being used, in his own career.

Finally, Nick gave some excellent answers to questions from the audience, and I think this where he really shone. For example, in answer to how best a freelance translator might present their quality assurance processes, he suggested stressing how quality assurance starts at the very beginning of the translation process by accepting work only into your mother tongue and in areas of specialist expertise. It then continues right through to quality control in the form of checking, proofing, etc. Based on these nuggets of specific advice and anecdotes relating directly to freelance translators, I’d definitely consider attending a training with him again.

Thanks ITI WMG!

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!