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Although I’ve spent my holidays in Norway, some parts of this country (deprived of adjectives on purpose) made me think of the Netherlands.

It was all about houses. In Norway, you see, houses are tall and very often stand on concrete pillars, just to keep them safe in case of heavy rain or muddy floods. That’s the way the Norwegians were building their houses centuries ago, and that’s how they are going to build them in the future.

In the Netherlands, houses have all another particularity: huge windows facing streets, letting passers-by peek inside. Why? The Nederlands have always been a country of sailors. Families were torn apart for months, or even years, brave men conquering the land or simply transporting necessary goods overseas. Women were left alone, in charge of children and the household. Tough job, isn’t it? Just as precaution, just to make sure no-one gets hurt or unhappy, all houses had these huge windows introducing “neighbourhood policing”. And even though most of men in the Netherlands are not sailing anymore, even though it’s up to a women now how they want to perform their household duties, houses in this country still have these huge windows and always will.

Take another example. Think of London, or Paris, or Rome, or any other mercantile capital city in Europe that comes to your mind. Think of the last time you were shopping on your high street. How do houses look like? They are all the same. Shops on the ground floor, flats on the first and upper. Why? Before the industrial revolution in the 19th century, most of the goods were produced by “small and medium enterprises” or simplier, family-run businesses. It was very cost effective to have your shoe shop and shoe manufactory just below your house. You could save on travel, save some time and make sure that your shoe business is safe at all times. People got used to it and that is why we still have shops on the ground floors and still build new buildings following that model.

Ok, you see my point now. But I still haven’t proven that all that really matters and why it matters.

Industrial revolution brought about huge factories, specialised companies and great concentration of production. A shoe factory needed lots of space to pack all the machinery and people in. Factories moved to suburbs, making employees commute to work. It was no longer possible to accomodate any factory on your ground floor. Specialised machines and processes involved people travelling to the communal place. This is when our languages reacted: “to go work”, “have time off”, “working hours” weren’t present in the previous model. There was no going to work down the stairs, there was no time off as your business was intervowen in your daily life, there were no working hours as you worked as long and as often as your business needed.

Sounds familiar?

Freelance translators are perhaps the first profession that showed the theory work. We don’t need to travel as our manufacturies are right in our houses. We don’t usually have a set or certain time off, we work different and weird hours. A lot of professionals work from home, even in traditionally in-person domains. We have online conferencing, instant messaging, mailing secured documents in seconds, not to mention telephones and computers at home. The general trend in the workspace theory is to go back to the old, shoe shop model, where you have your office close (makes you cut out commuting), it’s really YOUR office (makes you more efficient), you’re in charge of it (makes you more engaged).

Why does it matter?

Knowing theories is not only about learning the past. Theories allow us to predict future with a great degree of certainty. We have seen translators come back to the traditional model, we will see many other professions doing the same.

There is another thing to that. We tend to be a bit shy or even ashamed when we tell people that we work from home. There is a bit of undervaluation and low self-esteem bound with that. The history and the theory show us something entirely different. Freelance translators working from home are one step further than other professions. Freelance translators are actually pioneering in the development of workplace.

So print this article out and show it to everyone who thinks that there is something wrong with not going to your office and not working nine to five.

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Marta Stelmaszak

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