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Lesson 139: What can a professional translator learn from translation students?

If you think that I nearly became a teacher, some of the elements of my career may make more sense. I present or blog because there must be a bit of a teacher in me. This is also the reason why I called my blog and course the Business School for Translators. So when a couple of years ago I was offered the opportunity to teach a handful of translation and interpreting students, it was a challenge I definitely saw myself stepping up to. With my background as a professional, I also believed I could bring the much sought-after practical insights into the profession to the classroom. Of course I knew I would learn a lot myself in the process, but reflecting on this experience a few days ago, I was surprised by how much a professional translator can learn from teaching the craft to others.

Teaching just an odd hour or two on average, I had to rejig my professional life quite a lot. First of all, committing to being in one place at the same time every week, even if only in the late afternoon, turned out to be quite a challenge for a freelancer. Second, I got to experience the dreaded commute. And of course, I was faced with the amount of admin work that my freelance experience can’t really compare to. So what did I learn?

1. Translation is a rational decision-making process

And if it isn’t for you yet, teaching will force you to be much more organised and thorough in your processes. You know, telling your students “it has to be this solution because it just sounds better” doesn’t quite cut it. Time and time again, I had to justify my decisions and rationalise my choices. And believe me, it’s useful, only if to coherently explain to clients why this way of translating is better than what their internal editor suggested.

2. Translation research is useful

Not that I didn’t know that before, having done my BA in translation, but revisiting translation theories and progress in translation research now, with a bit of experience under my belt, I appreciated the academic side of our profession even more. Reading academic articles may not be your favourite, but there’s actually a fair bit of insights and solutions to a range of problems that the academics have looked at. While this won’t eradicate the divide between the academia and industry, I can heartily recommend looking into academic publications on translation and interpreting.

3. Success in translation is ultimately about the skill

Students like asking what to do to be successful. I thought to myself that if I ever get asked this question, I have a wealth of resources to point students to, and that I know which skills to emphasise. But when it got to it, I surprised myself a bit telling my students that to be a successful translator or interpreter they have to practise at least 250 words, a 5-minute speech, even 20-30 minutes a day. This is an important lesson for professional translators as well. It’s easy to think that we all need to spice up our websites, get better at business skills, or go to a yet another conference. Truth be told, honing our core skills should always come first.

4. Despite what they say, translation is alive and kicking

Professional translators seem to be often surrounded by gloomy ideas about the future of the profession and prophecies of impending doom. If you hear it one time too many, you may just start believing it. There’s no better antidote than being around a group of translation or interpreting students. They’re enthusiastic, gifted, passionate. They find jobs, they get their careers off the ground, they carve their niches, as if the translation industry was far from extinction. Perhaps this unspoiled attitude is also something professional translators could take away and adopt.

5. Professional translators have more responsibility than they think

Perhaps the most important conclusion from my teaching experience is that professional translators hold a lot of responsibility over the profession as a whole. Students’ experiences are shaped by encounters with professionalism and skill. It’s not only about meeting and greeting them at professional events or sharing tips, but also displaying excellent quality of work. Showing your own work to anyone may make you feel exposed and examined, and this also holds true when you present your own translations or interpreting skills to a group of ever-questioning students. It’s a lot of responsibility, but it also makes you look at your own work with a more critical eye.

I’m sure you’ve heard the saying that those who can, do, those who can’t, teach. Give teaching – in any form – a try, and you’ll be surprised how much you can learn. I’d like to think that perhaps those who can, do, those who can’t teach, find it harder to do.

Anything you’ve learned while trying to explain translation?

Lesson 138: A letter to my younger self as a translator

I recently gave a talk at my Alma Mater to a group of translation students. Seeing my lecturers, the building I knew so well, hearing questions I swear I had when I was on the other side… All this made me reflect and go back in time to the days when I was a student. I put all these thoughts together in a letter to my younger self as a translator. This is what I’d say to myself. What would you want your younger translator self to know?

Dear Marta,

Thank you so much for your message. It’s wonderful to see a young and dedicated student working hard with the aim of ultimately entering and succeeding in the translation and interpreting profession.

You asked me for some advice and I’m glad to share my experience. I think it’s great that you approached a more established translator for their insights – we all benefit from learning from our peers and those with more experience. Thanks for also outlining your background, as that makes it much easier for me to respond. Now to get to your main question: “Which things do I wish I knew or did back when I was starting my career?”

First, I wish I had translated more from day one. I read somewhere that if you are a writer you write, and I think the same applies to translation. You are a translator if you translate, and I wish I was stubborn and persistent enough to translate a short text, any text, of around 200 to 300 hundred words, every day, even at the start. This is an excellent exercise that grants you experience and exposure to a variety of texts, while also helping to improve your confidence. Better still, I’d have tried to find people to join me in this, and regularly meet up to discuss our respective translations and opinion of the text. Not only is this fun (I chose translation for a reason – I do enjoy it!), but it helps to establish good practices and improve your skills, even before you’ve “gone professional”.

Second, and somewhat related, remember that you should be striving to get better every day, with every job. Don’t settle once you’ve finished your degree and think that’s it, and you don’t need to keep working on your skills. Quite the contrary, you should be working more and more to get better over time. This is necessary if you want to move upmarket.

There is no course, no webinar, no book, no professional association, and certainly no Facebook group that will turn you into an established translator overnight. No level of business or marketing expertise can ever make up for deficiencies in core skills. By all means, work on getting better at the business side of things, but never ever stop working on becoming a better translator.

The other thing I wish I’d known from the very beginning is the value of my work as a translator. You will get belittled by big business people, you will be asked to work at borderline offensive rates, and you will see surprised faces when you say that yes, you entered this profession intentionally and it wasn’t an unfortunate accident. Don’t let any of this affect you in any way other than making you stronger and more determined. Translation plays an important role in the world of business and it’s up to all of us to make this clear – to ourselves, our clients, and the economy at large.

Don’t be afraid if you are not a perfect fit to the “ideal” profile of a translator, if there is such a thing. Make the most out of your passions and talents, and if you have a related skill and are in a position to offer this service professionally to your clients, go out there and see if there are any potential clients looking for this service combined with translation. Don’t feel that there is a rigid job description that you have to fit. There isn’t one, and this is part of the beauty of this profession… But at the same time, don’t ever promise you can do something that you can’t, and don’t ever stop asking for feedback. Accept your limitations, admit mistakes, and most of all – keep learning.

One thing I acknowledged from the very beginning was that it is hard work starting out and getting established. But it’s a different kind of hard work to the work we did at university, or in any standard 9-5 position. There are no grades, no promotions, and (usually!) no bonuses if you do a good job. You work very hard and your reward is your freedom. First, the freedom to leave commuting and the office environment behind. Then, the freedom to travel and live wherever you like. And the more established you get, the more time you win back, having freedom to do what and when you choose. But yes, you have to put the work in.

Finally, listen to your colleagues, but listen to your clients even more. They’re the ultimate indicator of how good you are – or not – and whether your educational efforts, marketing, branding, website, attitude and so on are really working for you.

I hope you’ll find this feedback useful, and good luck! This is an exciting time to enter the translation and interpreting industry. I wish you all the best – and let me know how you get on!

Marta

Thank you to Rose Newell for the brainstorming session.

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Lesson 137: Seeing your translation business from the process perspective - useful or over the top?

Like many linguists, I really like studying and discovering new fields. It’s part and parcel of our job. What works really well with me is to set goals in my learning. And by that I don’t mean aspirational timelines or ephemeral end points, but real, concrete goals. Most of them take the form of official examination. I guess this is how I ended up with a certificate in IT and business analysis. In the past few weeks, I’ve been studying modelling business processes and of course, I took the exam today.

As always when getting my hands on a new piece of business-related knowledge, I immediately think of ways to apply it to my business and by extension – to every freelancer’s business.

Seeing your translation business from the process perspective is exactly this: you recast your business as a set of processes that happen inside the business to deliver value to customers. To be able to do that, you need to identify your inputs, outputs, how they get transformed from one into another and your value proposition. But before we get into it, let’s take a step back and go through the steps of process mapping.

At the highest level, any modelling exercise will involve looking at the context in which you operate. One of the tools I found most useful to grasp the context is Harmon’s alternative view of an organisation, see below.

In this view, you can see how your business relates to the external environment (and a very good idea in here is to conduct a PESTLE analysis!), but also you can map out your customers, competition and perhaps suppliers. Of course, the number of insights you get from this exercise will be plenty.

A step lower, you’re encouraged to draw a process map, which is an outline of processes that make up your business together with dependencies between them. In here you can see a rough draft of a process map of my business which I drew today.

What have I learned from it? Mapping my processes out has definitely helped me to realise that I need all of these elements to function properly as a business (ok, not that I didn’t realise this before – it reminded me of this fact). But I was definitely forced to think whether I was neglecting any of these core processes…

At an ever more granular level, process modelling gets down to documenting the flow of specific tasks within each process. Such a view, also called a swimlane diagram, outlines all actors, key decisions and business rules, as well as step by step tasks that need to happen for each project to finish.

I’ve just started drawing my swimlane for Acquire Customers from above. It will take me a while to document it, but I’ve already noticed some interesting elements, for example inefficient communication and handovers between me and my assistant and – the horror – bottlenecks that I was creating myself!

My next step will be to document the Translate and Proofread Texts process. Why do I think it’s important? I believe in documenting undocumented processes. This is how I do business and it’s important for me to be clear on the next step, but I can also use a process diagram to explain to clients how working with me looks like. That way I can also ensure consistency, especially when working with others. I can also look for potential problems or see how I can improve my customer service. If you work with others, documenting your processes is likely to improve collaboration and bring efficiency gains. Of course, my article barely scratches the surface here, but I gave you an idea and a few keywords to carry on researching.

Or am I going over the top here? Do you see yourself mapping your business processes in such a rigorous way… or am I alone in my madness? 🙂

Lesson 136: The shoemaker’s children. Do we apply the rules of successful communication?

I’m quieter than usual on my blog and social media, perhaps slowly turning into a lurking type. I committed to switch to listening instead of talking and I’ve observed (and at times been dragged into) some interesting exchanges, both online and off-line.

One of my “favourite” theories on communication is Paul Grice’s cooperative principle focusing on how people interact with one another. Phrased prescriptively, the principle tells us to “make your contribution such as it is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged.” According to Grice, this lies at the foundation of successful communication.

You may or may not be familiar with Grice’s principle, but you surely know how to create pieces of text successful at communicating ideas. It’s an essential skill for a translator. What’s been puzzling me for a couple of weeks now is how a group of language professionals making their living on communication can sometimes be so notoriously bad at communicating with each other. The number of misunderstandings, rows and criticisms only confirm that something is not quite right here. Let’s see if Grice’s maxims can be of help in analysing this situation.

Maxim of Quality: try to make your contribution one that is true

According to Grice’s first principle, we should not say what we believe is false and – more importantly – not say that for which we lack adequate evidence. Of course, adequacy is disputable, but basing statements, complaints or sometimes formal allegations on hearsay or someone’s interpretation of a situation is dangerous, leave alone unfair. I think this applies in particular to public spaces, such as for example dubious Facebook discussions presenting mere guesses as hard truth. Insinuations, wondering and pondering have space in private discussions, but throwing them out there as contributions to public debates seems to violate the maxim of quality.

Maxim of Quantity: make your contribution as informative as required

But don’t make it more informative than needed. Sometimes simple questions need simple, short answers, without the need to belabour the subject. What you’ll often see online is a real flood of responses, often repetitive and therefore unhelpful. What Grice would probably suggest is checking what others said or wrote on the topic before contributing and if still deciding to contribute, making the response informative but not overbearing. The same goes the other way round. If I send a professional, 10-line email asking precise questions and suggesting a solution in a particular situation as our first email exchange ever, replying in two words clearly violates this maxim.

Maxim of Relevance: be relevant

I’ve seen many discussions like this – and I think you’ll agree – where the curious inquirer asks a precise question and in return receives dozens of contributions either missing the point, or simply offering unwanted and unasked for advice or criticism. This is tiring (or readers, and even more so for moderators) and unproductive. Grice would suggest separating threads and discussions and keeping them to the point. Otherwise, how can we have a dialogue if we’re constantly changing the topic? I feel strongly about this maxim and I think this is the reason why mass chat platforms such as Whatsapp never did it for me.

Maxim of Manner: be clear

Although Grice’s original maxim refers mostly to the clarity of expression, I think there’s much more that falls under manner here. Having witnessed a variety of discussions recently, I feel like the maxim of manner should also include: don’t discriminate against interlocutors, don’t throw racial abuse, don’t swear excessively, don’t be rude, don’t attack, don’t hide facts for your own advantage and use them against your interlocutor later, don’t act with superiority… I’m sure you could add a few to this list.

I’d risk saying that sometimes, in some circles and some situations (now, this is a caveat!) we, translators and interpreters, are like shoemaker’s children going barefoot. Do we really use up all of our communicative capacity in client-facing situations and there’s so little left for other modes of activity? To what extent is this just fine? Or perhaps there’s something we should remind ourselves following Grice?

Lesson 135: 5 mistakes more experienced translators make

I’ve recently been invited to moderate a panel on social media networking at Translating Europe Forum in Brussels. This was one of my last presentations for a while. Plus, Translating Europe’s goal this year was empowering young translators, so the room was filled with students and recent graduates. Put these two together and you’ll inevitably end up reflecting… At least I did.

It’s easier to give advice and point out the mistakes of younger colleagues (wannabes, newbies, however you decide to call them). Been there, done that, went through similar issues so I can share my experience. And I certainly was very grateful to receive pointers when I was starting out.

But what about the more experienced translators? Maybe we’re not making mistakes anymore after we’ve been around for 3, 4, 5 or 6 years. Maybe we have our own, trusted sources. Or maybe we don’t ask for this sort of advice anymore?

In my pondering, I did a bit of an introspective journey to try and uncover what I thought some of the mistakes I’ve been making (or observing) were. And no, this article isn’t a list of things more experienced colleagues are failing at but an honest conversation with myself – and maybe, just maybe, you’ll find some aspects resounding with you.

Relying too much on your memory or experience

Of course getting more experience in an area speeds us up, makes us better translators, results in higher per hour income, but what if we become too reliant on memory or experience? I’ve seen this word before, I remember how I translated it, I’ve worked on a similar text – all of these can be positive and tricky at the same time. Overreliance on how I did something in the past makes me less vigilant, less curious, less attentive. I gloss over a text perhaps without giving it the right attention.

And what about proper text analysis? We learn about it as translation students, but with time we tend to skip it. What happens with this powerful tool? Does it get internalised as we’d hope it to, or does it get… blunt?

Not following developments

I remember when I was a new translator, I followed everything: read all magazines, subscribed to all newsletters, went to all events I could. Of course, you shouldn’t be doing that forever. But what I noticed now is that I’m less and less likely to read an industry magazine, I’m less likely to catch up with a colleague’s blog, I’m less likely to focus on what’s going on.

Well, all these sources are still somewhere there, in the periphery, but I don’t pay as much attention to them as I used to. I’m telling myself that I’m too busy working, that I’ll catch up with newsletters over the weekend, that next year I will go to this or that event – and I never do. What I can do these days is, at most, scroll through subject lines and titles to get the gist of what’s happening. Of course, I’m still up-to-date with the major developments, but I don’t have the drive to go into details as much as before.

Been there, done that attitude

After being in the industry for a few years, it’s quite easy to get the ‘been there, done that attitude’: you’ve read similar articles, heard similar discussions, been to similar events or even worked on similar projects, so it’s nothing new for you, you no longer see why anyone would be excited about a conference, an opportunity or a project, it’s all becoming very casual, almost pedestrian. Nothing surprises you anymore, very few things really get you interested and inspired.

To a certain extent, feeling like this is normal. But sometimes we can go a step too far and discourage a younger colleague or undermine their enthusiasm by insisting that everything’s the same. It’s hard to get the same novice-like attitude, but letting this ‘been there, done that’ approach influence your thinking is likely to make work less fun for you. Or sometimes we may end up even neglecting the useful ideas with could add to our repertoire because they’re hidden in the midst of things we already know.

The curse of knowledge

Something I’ve noticed I was doing myself was throwing acronyms, names, ideas, people, companies assuming that everyone knows what I was talking about. This insider knowledge is often a source of pride, a sign of belonging and possessing privileged information. It’s easy to forget that getting to the point of understanding all this and seeing connections in the industry takes ages – it certainly took me a few good years. All of a sudden we expect everyone around us – from another colleague to a newcomer to the industry – to be getting the same acronyms, names and concepts. And when they don’t, we often remark that they must have been living under a rock…

What I’ve realised over the years is that I’ll be in a much better position if I assume that my interlocutors don’t have this privileged knowledge — that is, if I want to communicate, not impress them. And of course, it’s up to me to share information with them.

Rosy retrospection

Don’t we all get the feeling that things were better in the past every now and then? I’m certainly guilty of that. Rates used to be higher, we were treated better, translation agencies used to be nicer to work with, and everything that we have now is worse or somewhat lacking. The same principle applies to some bigger mechanisms in the industry: we’re now threatened more than ever, it’s now easier for unqualified people to claim they’re translators, and so on. It’s a fallacy – in general things are getting better but our sentiment tells us we’re in a worse and worse situation.

This thinking affects us in a negative way, but sometimes it can also lead us to discouraging younger colleagues: things aren’t as good as they were before, so maybe you want to think about it twice.

At the end of the day, we should know that aging is inevitable, maturing is optional. Hopefully, by being aware that we sometimes make these mistakes, we become not only more experienced translators, but wiser ones as well.

Any other “mistakes” you can think of?

Lesson 134: Slides from my past presentations and talks for translators released

The first public speaking appearance I’ve ever made was a webinar I delivered for eCPD Webinars in 2012. Lucy from eCPD Webinars approached me following the publication of my ebook and asked if I was interested in giving a talk on this topic. At the time, I thought of it as a one-off. Always the quiet person at the back of the room, I didn’t see myself giving talks and presentations. And yet between then and now, I was invited to a few conferences and events. Always with the same thrill and excitement (as I learned from public speaking guides you should never call it “stress”) these talks left me with (good and worse) memories and several slide decks.

Since I’m not going to be around much next year, I thought I’d release most of my slides on Slideshare. Here’s the first slide deck I’ve ever delivered:

Don’t comment on design – at least I tried! The questions on the last slide still hold true.

I’ll be releasing a slide deck a day and embedding them in this link, so do come back if you’d like to learn more.

Lesson 133: 7 ways to grow as translators: where can you take your business after it’s plateaued?

Sooner or later, we all get to grow as translators and reach a point in our careers where things are going satisfactorily well, we have a large and diverse pot of clients and we’re generally happy with the business and career. It’s often referred to in business as “plateau”: after climbing up for a while and building solid foundations, you reach a safe haven and calm waters. But equally, things just keep being the same when you’ve reached your plateau.

“The sameness” of things may be a relief for many freelancers. No more restless pursuits of customers, no more heavy marketing campaigns, fewer financial worries. Yet at the same time, in business sense, it’s not a good place to be. It means your business is no longer developing and it’s on the path to its end of life.

Don’t get me wrong, it feels sooo great to enjoy your plateau for a while (go on holidays, release the pressure, cut down working hours, etc.), but planning to stay there forever is not a viable business approach.

What can you do after your business has plateaued then?

1. Change nothing.

Of course, you can just keep doing what you’ve been doing and enjoy your stability. It will work for some translators in some language pairs in some niches. If you’re one of them and you’re enjoying “the sameness” there’s no need to change anything.

2. Move up market.

For the majority of businesses, a plateau is a place where they re-group and think of strategies to give them a boost to jump upwards in terms of sales and revenue. While as a translator you can’t really work more hours, the only viable way of increasing your revenue is to start charging more. This is where all the conversations about the premium market come in.

3. Develop another specialism.

While I’m personally not a fan of developing more specialisms (I’m one of those who’d tell you go deeper into the topic you already know), it’s a viable strategy that could spur your growth. If you’ve spotted a lucrative, promising niche and need to train up, go for it.

4. Diversify your services.

Another way to tackle it is to keep working within your specialisms but diversifying the range of services you’re providing. For example, I’ve been translating online content for the Polish market for years, and in the beginning of this year I added content marketing, copywriting and A/B testing services to my portfolio, just to name a few.

5. Work in a team.

Where you can’t break in as a freelancer (and many companies have valid – or less so – reasons why they can’t or won’t work with freelancers), you may have a better shot at it in a team. Getting together with the right people and branding your team services can get you where you couldn’t have gone by yourself. This includes forming teams not only with translators, but for example with web designers or programmers, or DTP specialists.

6. Start outsourcing.

Some colleagues, when overflowing with work, start outsourcing translations to others and then proofread them before delivering to their clients, paying the actual translator and keeping a margin for themselves. My personal preference in terms of outsourcing is to outsource non-core tasks in my business (since my unique style and knowledge is what I’m implicitly selling in my translations) to free up time to translate more. In the past, I’ve outsourced: accounting and taxes, administration, market research, some marketing, social media, DTP, website creation and maintenance, file organisation and cleanup, among others.

7. Morph into a translation company.

If you feel like you have an appetite for risk, management and even more problem-solving, setting up a translation company may be the best way for you. A translator as an agency owner can bring a lot of value, but what I’ve been hearing from colleagues is that they often go into it thinking it’s not much different from being a freelancer, just doing it on a bigger scale. Well, just a word of caution: running a translation agency is very much different from being a translator and you’re definitely spending more time as a business administrator than anything else.

Can you think of any other potential avenues of growth?

Lesson 132: 7 translation business paradoxes that are surprisingly true

Though the business world may seem paradoxical, especially if you’re facing tough and puzzling situations at various stages of your career, I’ve identified some translation business paradoxes that are in fact true. Even more so, they’re true and helpful. Sometimes looking at sentences that make you think twice forces you to reconsider your beliefs and convictions.

So in this article I wanted to share 7 of such paradoxes with you hoping they’ll provide some food for thought.

1. The more you fail, the more likely you are to succeed.

As business people, as translators, as perfectionists, we’re very tough on ourselves when it comes to failure. We’re often doing all we can to avoid it or even putting ourselves in situations where we may be risking failing. And of course, we’re doing that because we want to succeed, not fail. But what if failing more equals, in fact, succeeding more?

2. The more something scares you, the more you should probably do it.

Of course marketing is scary! Of course going to client events is intimidating! Of course giving a talk gets you out of your comfort zone. What I learned with time was that the more scared I feel in business, the more I should do it. And it pays.

3. The more you try to argue with someone, the less likely you are to convince them of your perspective.

As seen on social media, endless arguments make both sides only more adamant about their own views. One of the most important lessons in business for me was to understand that letting go may not be the quickest, but it’s by far the surest way of getting heard.

4. The more choices you have, the less satisfied you are with each one.

Applies to me, but also my clients. The sooner I “get” the client before he or she looks at several providers and collects quotes from a number of them, the happier they are. It’s subconscious. This one is for the ladies: a few weeks ago I really wanted a new clutch (as in: REALLY). I found the perfect one online and went off to get it at the weekend. Of course, when I got to the department store and I wandered around looking at all the other bags, I ended up liking my perfect bag a bit less. Not that I liked any other one more. I just had too much choice. Simple psychology.

5. The best way to learn how to become a better translator is to become a client.

Believe me, one of the most important lesson in business for me was to buy a few translations from others. You can learn the bad sides, of course, seeing colleagues you trusted before miss deadlines or make typos, or just behave “unprofesh”. But the amount of positive learning experience you can take away from seeing marvellous work is worth it.

6. If we want to educate our clients about translation, we must first educate ourselves about our clients.

Over the years, I’ve heard many colleagues claim that we need to educate clients. Of course, it’s true, but we shouldn’t attempt at doing it knowing very little about clients ourselves, or we’re risking boring the other side or worse – misadvising them. If we want to educate, we need to know the audience first.

7. If we want to make money as a translator, we must concentrate on the work — not the money.

Perhaps quite controversially, in the light of the heated debate on translation rates, I’d like to reiterate: if you want to make money as a translator, concentrate on the work, not the money. Of course, I’m the first person to tell you that you need to do your maths, have your financial goals and track them, but don’t let that make you loose sight of the actual work. Time and time again, analysing my income, I see that I make much more when I focus on translation than when I focus on chasing big bucks.

What about you? What are your paradoxes?

Lesson 131: Paradoxes in a freelance translator’s career

As part of my recent presentation in Rotterdam, I did a small experiment and I applied some of my favourite social science approaches to a freelance translator’s career. We talked about paradoxes, wicked problems and messes. The translation profession is full of them, you can’t deny that!

Our working definition for the talk, and how I invite you to see paradoxes in the light of this article, was a mind-boggling, surprising statement contradictory in its nature or in contradiction with common or individual knowledge. We agreed that some situations or sentences are so puzzling that we instinctively feel they’re causing an internal (or sometimes indeed external) conflict.

I think it’s extremely important to acknowledge these paradoxes because… they need to be understood, analysed, acted upon or accepted. I divided paradoxes I came across in my career into four stages, from still being a student to running an established business.

Stage 1: Paradoxes in translator’s training

• If there’s no one right solution, why is my solution wrong?

You’ve surely came across this one if you ever had your translation checked by a tutor. If you’re being told that there’s no just one good translation, how come all you can see when you get your text back is red lines?

• Sometimes the simplest translation problems are most difficult to solve.

One of the first thing I’ve learned as a translator was that the simplest words or expressions would often pose the biggest challenges. This explains the sheer complexity of the process but also causes lots of frustration to a newcomer.

• If there’s no one right solution, how do I know I’m doing it right?

One of the most puzzling thoughts I’ve been faced with, and I think it’s essential in establishing one’s confidence as a translator. How do you know you’re doing the right thing? How to verify it? Or is it even possible?

• The first step in the translation process is to read the brief. Wait, what?

It was an important lesson for me and I think it still remains a real shock to any graduating translation student. Many aspects of what we’re being taught at universities or courses doesn’t really happen in the real life. For example, getting translation briefs.

Stage 2: Translator transition

• You need to get some experience before you start working but you need work to get experience.

If you’re just transitioning into freelance translation, you’ll surely be faced with this unsolvable conundrum. At a first sight, you can’t really break the cycle. Many newcomers are indeed stuck and give up. Is there a way out of it?

• If you want to find work, start working at lower rates and raise them with experience.

False! One of the most credible paradoxes because from the outset, it kind of makes sense. If you’re hired, you’re usually earning less as a newcomer and then progress through the stages of your career, earning more and more. However, it’s a fallacy in business. If you start charging less now, you’ll never break out of this pattern.

• I don’t have money to invest but I won’t have money without investing.

If you’re not investing, you’re less likely to make more money. If you’re waiting to invest in a new PC, CAT tool or training, hoping you’ll soon start earning more, you’re falling a victim of this fallacious thinking. Invest first, reap rewards later.

Stage 3: Establishing business

• Though I’m great with other people’s words, I’m bad at communication.

Something that I noticed in the second or third year of running my business (and haven’t fixed until a couple of years later) was that though I was great with translating other people’s communication materials, I myself wasn’t a great communicator. How did that happen?

• I do lots of outbound marketing but I don’t pick up the phone when it rings.

Guilty as charged a few years back, much better now. Maybe this pattern is familiar to you, too: go out there to an event, hand out business cards, follow-up and then just dodge a hint at meeting up. Or just don’t pick up the phone. Isn’t that the most paradoxical of behaviours for a business owner?

• The narrower I specialise, the more jobs I get.

It usually takes a while to let it go and understand that narrowing fields of expertise down doesn’t mean there will be less work – quite the contrary! Though it’s paradoxical with what the gut or common sense tells you, it’s true.

• The busier I am, the busier I am.

As paradoxical as it sounds, being busy can only mean you’ll get busier.

• You need to see the value of your work to make others see the value of your work.

Just thinking that clients need to value/appreciate/reward translation work more is hardly ever going to work. It takes being convinced yourself first.

Stage 4: Business-as-usual

• I need technology; technology threatens to replace me.

Some colleagues (let me know if it’s not you in comments below) seem to be caught in this tricky situation where they do realise they cannot work without technology and at the same time are afraid it’s going to replace them anyway. How to balance these two? Or is this position justified at all?

• Experienced translators are good. Good translators are experienced.

An example of fallacious thinking which took me years and years to realise. I lived convinced that all experienced translators, those who’ve been working in the industry for years, are always good and conversely that good translators are always those who’re the most experienced. Life has proven me wrong.

• The more I give back, the more I have for myself.

Giving back to the profession, something you usually start thinking about a few good years into stable business, is perhaps the most enriching of experiences. Every little thing you do for your colleagues gives you satisfaction and what goes round, comes round, also by way of recommendations.

• The more you criticise someone for something, the more likely you’re to be guilty of it yourself.

This is perhaps one of my most recent lessons learned. We often see, especially on social media, certain groups criticising others for doing this or that, or failing to do this or that. It also boils down to individuals. It has only dawned on me recently that those who criticise the loudest sometimes (not always) are those who’re guilty themselves.

What are the paradoxes that you came across? How did you manage to solve them?