Lesson 12: Unforeseen in translation

Most of the time when you get a project, you translate it, send it within the deadline and wait for payment. That’s the 90% of cases. You learn how to plan your professional life, you know how long it will take you to translate or proofread. And then the 10% comes, ruins your routine and you enter the emergency mode. Believe it or not, I had really unforeseeable 2 weeks full of emergencies, surprises and challenges.

1. Access problems

The first thing that happened was the internet. Having way too much devices around, I dreamt of having a better and faster connection. Called them, arranged for the new broadband, got a box and forgot about it. 4 days later they decided to disconnect my old broadband without even letting me know, and I woke up 6:15am to revise and send my project. No, it wasn’t going to happen. I reported problems to my client and waited till all cafes were open. In the meantime, I was preparing for my interpreting assignment for business people visiting London; we were supposed to meet 10:45am. 9am I run to the café, where they tell me they don’t do wi-fi anymore. I live in a rather quiet area with not that much wi-fi places around. 9:30am I’m on the tube. 10:10am I’m in one of the biggest shopping centres in Europe and I simply want to use their wi-fi. No, my laptop wouldn’t connect with BTOpenZone. 10:20am I try to use my 3g to create a portable hotspot, but my phone wouldn’t connect to the internet. 10:33am I catch the train to meet with my clients. 1:40pm I get to the library and send the files, 2 hours overdue.

2. Illness

No, not just being cold and using too many tissues. Sick like enslaved in your own bed and feeling dizzy anytime you want to go further than a toilet. I tried to put myself together and start work at 10am. No, 11am. Well, I’d better get rest first, let’s make it 12. By 3pm I still couldn’t even read because all letters were blurred. I ended up moving the most important things around and I managed to cope, but 3 days are lost. Can’t do anything about that, can I?

3. No resources

A funny little translation that was all very simple and should have taken about 2 hours took 5 because of a bunch of technical words that appeared in the legal text. I’m not a technical translator, I had no resources, no dictionaries, not even a specialist at hand. I’ve spent one hour trying Google Images, than I was trying to describe this item in my own words in Polish, I tried generating label translations, then I moved on to reading tons of reference material. I got it, in the 5th hour. 3 hours lost.

4. Family crisis

Sometimes you just can’t tell your family to have their problems later, after your deadline. They will come up to you partly because they think you work from home so you can be flexible. Especially if you work over the weekend because you were sick during the week, your family won’t wait. Yes, I had a crisis that was about me working too much over the weekend and why-oh-why I can’t do it any other day. And it always ends up in a few hours lost.

5. Reviewing work

One of my clients has this annoying habit of sending me my work back for review with his notes. He is entirely happy with my translation, but he only has a few suggestions to make the text look better. Suggestions such as: “could you make this bit sound more modern?” or “We decided to use different terminology on this occasion, please refer to my comments not to the glossary”. I usually allow some time to implement suggestions, but re-writing takes much more time than any translator would wish for.

6. Too much work

There’s the interpreting assignment for 5 days, 3 other deadlines (translated earlier, only waiting to be signed off), also on Monday you get a call from your friend to translate something for her (a small thing, just a few pages… OF MEDICAL REPORTS), on Tuesday you get an offer from a new agency and they want you to apply as soon as possible, on Wednesday the interpreting assignment takes you much longer than expected, on Thursday you have to write something creative, on Friday there’s this informal meeting with people you’re going to work with.

Homework:

List all possible emergency events that can ruin your work schedule. And then prepare a plan B.

What other unforeseen situations happened to you and how did you cope?

Marta Stelmaszak

Polski - English - Français translator and interpreter with 6 years of experience, specialising in law, IT, marketing, and business. A member of the Management Committee of the Interpreting Division at the Chartered Institute of Linguists and a Top 25 Twitterer (@mstelmaszak) and Top 25 Facebook Fan Page in Language Lovers 2012.

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• Lesson 14: Time planning - the ultimate answer to coping with workload
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• Lesson 5: 7 things you can do today to help another translator