Category: Translation

Partners in translation: why you need a translation buddy¬ and how to find one

Posted on by drawingboarddesign in Field, Industry Tips, Inspiration, Interpretation, Translation

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Even though you might love flying solo, you need a flock of like-minded translators to support you through your journey. Forming strong professional bonds is an investment in your growth. Not only that, a safe space where you can be frank about your struggles and successes is beneficial for your mental health and can lead to a greater job satisfaction.

And every flock begins with one bird, one reliable translation buddy you entrust with sharing your path. Just like any successful partnership hinges on respect and shared values, a strong professional union is grounded in honesty and compatibility. While it’s easy to fall victim to the fiercely competitive job market dominated by the individual rather than the collective, a work confidante you respect, get along with, and can trust with work projects can accelerate your success and improve well-being.

Here’s why every translator needs a buddy, and how you can find one:

1. Because you will need a change at some point.

Your freelance translation business might be at its nascency, or you might be handling your full-time workload with ease. Chances are, your client base will keep expanding as you get established in your field. With economic volatility, unforeseen shifts in translation trends, and your ever-evolving values and priorities, a professional safety net can provide the much needed sense of security and internal peace. No matter where you see yourself in five years—at the helm of a global translation firm, supporting a few select clients, or exploring a completely new territory—you will need a trusted partner to help you navigate change.  

2. Two minds are better than one. Imagine if you could tackle many of your translation hurdles with a reliable partner. Or have a trusted buddy to offer advice and a fresh set of eyes to review your work. In a creative, often monotonous field such as translation, you almost can’t do without an outside perspective to get out of translator’s blocks.

4. Learning from others is just as valuable (if not more) as reading professional development books. Experience and failure, when shared with others, can offer just as much insight into the profession as workshops and textbooks. If you find someone you can open up to without any fears of being judged, they can help you overcome from any career impasses.

5. Do it for your social and mental well-being. Translation can be an isolating profession, especially if you work from home with little to no contact with the outside world. Even if you hold an office job, most likely you spend your days communicating with a computer rather than humans. Forming strong relationships with a work partner will enhance your feeling of connection and belonging.

6. You will learn to work in a team environment. Collaboration and team work are currently in high demand in the workplace. As translators, we are often surrounded by professionals who have a very vague idea of how we operate. In many cases, you might be the sole translator on a team. Working with a buddy might help brush up your team work and project management skills.

One of the best ways to form a trusting and lasting professional partnership is by investing your time and effort into finding your people. Many diverse people co-exist under the unifying umbrella of translation and interpreting—by attending as many professional development events, conferences, and workshops, you will increase your chances of finding a true translation buddy.

4 reasons why you need to learn to let go of your translations

Posted on by drawingboarddesign in Field, Industry Tips, Inspiration, Professionalism, Translation

Translators, similar to writers, often get attached to the fruits of their creative work, the words they’ve crafted, creative solutions they spent hours pondering. That’s why handing over a project to a client can elicit mixed feelings—on the one hand, you’re thrilled to take on new challenges; on the other hand, you’re parting with your brainchild that, in a way, carries parts of you. Translation offers a glimpse of your personality, reveals your thought process, exposes some of your biases, beliefs, and values. Even the most technical of translations has your unique style in it, your choice of words, your voice.

While it’s rewarding—even necessary—to take pride in what you do, holding your work too close to your heart can undermine it.  Pouring your heart into what you do and leaving a piece of you in every project won’t go unnoticed and your clients will appreciate your passion. It’s about finding a healthy balance between dedication and detachment that will help you carry your signature throughout your work and get better with every word.

Here’s why letting go of your translations will make you a better and happier translator:

1. Letting go of your words will make you more receptive to criticism. Distancing yourself from your translations will help you take feedback and potential criticism constructively, and transform them into improvements to the original text. If a translation is an extension of you, then any form of criticism, even the most benign and well-intentioned, is going to feel as an attack on you. If you happen to work with an editor or peers who scrutinize your work, knowing exactly where you end and your translation begins will save you from unnecessary self-doubt. An adequate distance between you and your work where you focus on quality and solutions that best suit your context will help avoid tensions within your team.

2. It will help you think critically and grow. Be proud of what you do. Yet keep your mind open to better ideas. You can only take a step back, evaluate your work, and question some of your decisions if your translation is loved from a distance. By cutting ties with a text, you’ll see rationale behind your decisions and know why you did what you did, and how you can do better next time.

3. Acknowledging your mistakes will be easier. Typos in early drafts are inevitable. Did you miss a footnote? Or did your editor point out an inconsistency? If you detach your work from yourself, you will find that owning mistakes and correcting them will become easier.

4. Do it for your self-esteem and emotional well-being. Distancing yourself from the work you do for your clients will help sustain a healthy self-esteem and shield from forming a negative perception of yourself with every comment you might receive about your work. Waving good-bye to your translations will never become easy, especially if you truly love what you do. Don’t let your dedication, zest, and love for translation get in the way of professional growth and job s

Life after translation: easy add-ons that can set you apart

Posted on by drawingboarddesign in Field, Industry Tips, Professionalism, Translation

So you finished translating a text—now what? What extra mini services can you offer to your clients without compromising the scope of the work and within your professional and personal comfort zone? While translation already involves multiple steps—from initial research, terminology checks, drafts, and revisions—there are ways to increase the value of your services and enhance the overall quality of your work. Going the extra mile will strengthen your relationships with clients, add variety to your professional life, and push you to explore adjacent fields. In a competitive globalized economy, the extra “icing” you put on top of your translation work might be what will set you apart.

What does “going the extra mile” for your clients might mean in the language of translation? What are some organic ways to enhance quality of not only your work, but also your skills?

1) Review, edit, and proofread your work. Hone your copy-editing skills or work with professional editors. While this service might already be included in your client package, many translators overlook the value of a good edit. As we already spend hours—or days or weeks—dissecting volumes of information, researching terms, scrutinizing words, our eye get accustomed to the text at hand. As a result, we are more prone to skipping letters, skimming, or glancing over typos. Plus, by the time a translation is editable, you’ve already seen it a million times—no chance a mistake snuck in, right? Wrong!

Although translation and editing go hand-in-hand, not all translators study editing. And even if they are naturally gifted at it, they might put it off until the very end of the transition cycle or skip the step altogether.

Handing over a typos-free, clean, well-organized, and consistent copy to your client is just as important as getting the translation right. A good way to ensure editing and proofreading are integrated into your approach includes making a list of steps to check off before you fire away your translation: is the tone in your document consistent? Are page numbering, indexing and heading correct? Do you adhere to the established style guide? Are proper names spelled correctly? Build a database where you list your clients’ preferences including anything from fonts to their opinion on the Oxford comma.

2)  Offer a summary of the translated text, a bulleted outline, a presentation based on the content of the translated document as an extra service. Put yourself in the shoes of your client: will they need to present the thick manuscript you just translated to their teams? Would they want a summary of the translated file? What will the future of your translation look like? Don’t hesitate to ask your clients how they will be using the translated document, or what their future usage might be and if you can help them adapt to those needs.

3) Is your document image-heavy? Are you skilled at photo-editing software? Any way to make the translated text more visually digestible for your client? Discuss any possibility for information hierarchy, fonts that might work better to communicate the message, text placement options. If images communicate just as much information as the text you’re translating, learn how to enhance as needed.  

4) Be open to receiving feedback: if your client has comments or questions about the translated file, encourage them to reach out to you. Keep all lines of communication open and offer to revise your work in case your clients receives feedback.

6 qualities that set a translation professional apart from an amateur

Posted on by drawingboarddesign in Client Zone, Interpretation, Translation

After hours of scrolling through online profiles of prospective translators, flipping pages of portfolios and references, how do you land on a top few? Or maybe it’s your first time engaging a translator in a project, or you’re partnering up with a new person. What qualities and experiences beyond the professional platitudes found in resumes signal real professionalism?

Before committing to a candidate, get to know them and learn about their approach to translation. Try arranging an informal chat or a call to discuss the nuances of a job and determine if it’s a fit. In preparation for your first conversation, review these hallmarks that can help tell a seasoned translation professional from an amateur.

1) An adept translator will take time to understand your needs. Rather than saying yes to a project from the outset, they will take the time to delve into the details, discuss timelines, and expected outcomes. Discussing a job should look like a full-blown conversation rather than a monologue—not only will it give you reassurance that a candidate is in fact qualified, but also that they are keen on engaging with you, collecting information, and learning more about your business.

2) A professional might not be a Jack of all trades. In other words, if a legal translator is willing to take on an academic paper on trenchless technologies in engineering, they might be overly-ambitions. While a legal translator might be perfectly suited to tackle accounting documentation, if they claim a full mastery of two drastically different fields, be sure they are not exaggerating.

3) A master translator will know their approach to translation. Even though you might not know much about translation theory, ask a prospect how they go about translating a complex, heavily technical documents, where they search new terminology, and how they keep track of the jargon they specialize in. Let their personality come through as they share some of their professional challenges and successes.

4) An accomplished translator possesses specific topical knowledge. On top of fluency in at least two languages, they can hold an educated conversation on the topic of your translation project, and have a firm grasp of the topic.

5) A skillful translator takes interest in the field and is genially passionate about translation. They invest time in honing their skills, growing, and learning. They are members of professional organizations, frequent workshops, and seminars.

6) A professional asks for more context, as needed. With experience comes the confidence to admit that our knowledge is limited. An expert translator might ask for more background information on a project, additional resources, or a contact who might be able to help. They won’t shy away from sharing their concerns, doubts, or dilemmas.

While your initial search might not screen out translation dilettantes from experts, have your questions ready to make the right pick. Even though a prospect might not have the most experience in the field, they might demonstrate superb knowledge of their field, great research skills, attention to detail, a well-grounded approach to translation, professional honesty and integrity—all the key elements to translate your project right.

Picking sides in translation: foreignization or localization?

Posted on by drawingboarddesign in Field, Opinion, Translation

The relationship between the source text, reader, and the target culture has always been at the forefront of the minds of the greatest translation scholars. How integrated into the receiving culture should the source text be? Does translation entail cutting all ties with the language and culture that produced it? Can two cultures meet halfway in a text that is foreign yet local?

There are volumes written on the topic; nonetheless, today’s translation studies courses have not yet let go of the intricate balance between foreignization and localization. The debate remains open: in the linguistic context of today, which is the preferred direction for practicing translators?

Foreignization is a translation approach that relies on preserving the source language features – such as sentence structure, vocabulary, certain grammatical features – in the target language. Although rendered into a different language, a foreignized text celebrates its foreignness by letting it permeate the fabric of the new translated product.

A translation process that relies on localization, on the other hand, usually produces a text that seamlessly enters the target culture, reinvents itself, and claims the new literary ecosystem as its own.

Let’s take a newspaper article that needs to be translated from French into English as an example. A foreignized translation would feature words of the French origin rather than their English counterparts, longer sentences, idioms that might challenge the reader’s imagination, or French cultural phenomena. A localized translation, conversely, would follow the traditional English language newspaper style in terms of the syntax, vocabulary, and grammar.

As a translator working for one employer or a freelancer juggling multiple contracts, take some time to look into the benefits and shortfalls of the two approaches – and everything in between – and decide what technique suits you best.

1. Know thyself. Which side do you gravitate towards: localization or foreignization? Where do you stand in the debate on the approaches to translating a foreign text? Maybe you’re neither a die-hard localizer nor a devoted foreignizer but a translator who modifies their approach based on the context and audience? As you get a fuller grasp of translation studies and grow in your role, pick a side that aligns with your beliefs, experience,technical expertise and the shifting needs of your clients. Further, know the pros and cons for each approach according to the field you are working in – global business translation work tends to prefer localization whereas some literary translations can prefer to hold onto some of the original nature of the text.

2. Know your text and audience. Spend just as much time studying your contract and the audience it’s intended for as you would deciding what kind of a translator you are. After all, everything that you produce has to satisfy your client and get the message across despite the inherent linguistic and cultural barriers. Ask your clients how they envision the translated text, how it will be used, who the target audience is, and if they have a preference for a translation method.

3.  Be vocal about your preferred approach. While taking note of your employer’s instructions, inform them of your standpoint, what you’ve learned through your experiences, and if you have a better solution for their project. As much as your client might know about translation, they hired you as an informed and trusted advisor.

The age-old debate around the approaches to translating a foreign text is not only pertinent to the theoretical field of translation studies, but also every translation job that comes your way. Picking a side – or sides – is essential for professional consistency and your reputation in the field.

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