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Lesson 140: All 139 lessons in one free ebook

After four years of blogging and just under three years in the current form of lessons, I decided to put together a publication containing all 139 lessons published here on the blog.

The ebook version was suggested some time ago by a couple of colleagues. I liked the idea, and I knew it may be easier to access it in this format, since you don’t need to be online to read the contents. Plus there may be articles that can get easily missed while scrolling on the blog. It took me a bit of time, but the publication is now available.

You can access it by subscribing to my blog, and it’s as easy as leaving your details below. I’m looking forward to hearing your thoughts about the publication!

At the same time, I wanted to let you know that I won’t be blogging on a regular basis anymore. Over the years, I’ve shared a wealth of information on this blog and I’m excited about other avenues and opportunities to contribute to the translation profession. Stay tuned in!

Translation telephone game a.k.a. Project Trasiego

Do you remember Project Trasiego which I came across in 2014? It’s a book I found on my trip to Argentina which essentially was a translation telephone game (or Chinese whispers). A text originally in Spanish was translated into English, then back to Spanish from the English translation, then to French, back to Spanish, and so on, for some 20 languages, to finish on the final text also in Spanish. It’s a very creative and beautiful way of showing how language changes in translation.

By the end of 2014, I asked the author for permission, and I called all colleagues who wanted to participate in recording our voice renderings of the telephone game.

After nearly two years, we’ve put the video together. You can see it below and experience the translation telephone game!

I’d like to thank everyone who made this project possible for your participation, patience and perseverance. My special thanks go to Virginia Pastor Martín for putting the video together!

My thanks also go to the wonderful colleagues who participated in the project:

Lourdes Yague
Marie Deblonde
Iris C. Permuy
Gala Gil Amat
Maria Fernanda
Eleanor Bridgwood
Martine Moretti
Elena Martin
Gabriela Mejias
Eleni Voulgari
Nora Ferrer
Nuno Rosa
Maria Torralba
Sarah Henter
Daniela Helguera
Liz Paredes
Florencia Di Stefano
Paula Fernandez
Mercedes Pacheco
Stella Pantofel
Natalia Pérez
Maria Bunlon
Maria-Teresa Zenteno
Michaël Dias
Lucrecia Pons
Virginia Vazquez Vaccaro
Ellen Yutzy Glebe
Juan Escobar

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.

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 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 130: Managing non-translation projects for business development

Thank you for following this series on putting things into practice so closely! We’ve had some great discussions and it’s good to know you’re benefitting from this topic. I wanted to dedicate the last article in this series to managing non-translation projects, that is everything related to running our marketing, sales, business development or even day-to-day operations.

Of course, we know how to manage *translation* projects very well (at least we should!), but very often all the development projects suffer from neglect or under-management. Earlier in the series we talked about making the most out of all the ideas that are floating around and all the inspiration that you draw from events and conferences. In this article I’d like to present some tools and methodologies to actually work on the projects you’ve identified.

Getting Things Done methodology

Having learned about it from one colleagues, I’ve been trying to apply the GTD methodology in my business for a good few months now. If you’re not familiar with it yet, GTD forces you to act upon your ideas and plans. Here’s what GTD recommends:
1) Capture: write all your ideas, to-dos and tasks down on paper or on your device. The idea is that you have to make it easy to capture information so you don’t put things off for later. I use my whiteboard to collect ideas and plans, I just write them down the moment they come to my mind. If I’m away, I use my smartphone or tablet to send emails to myself (the founder of this methodology would probably tell me off for adding to my never-ending pile of emails, but it works for me) to act as reminders.
2) Clarify: GTD puts a lot of emphasis on actually breaking your to-do points into actionable steps. This is often complemented with the 2 minute rule: if you can do it in 2 minutes, do it now, but if it’s going to take longer, schedule some time to do it later. If you can delegate something, do it. I’ve been delegating a range of tasks for 2 years now and this has freed up a considerable amount of time in my diary.
3) Organise: put actionable items in categories and by priority, plus assign due dates and set reminders. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed if you have dozens of plans, ideas and to-do lists, so actually spreading it across a period of time and prioritising can help you get out of the paralysis mode.
4) Reflect: look at to-dos to figure out the next step, improve existing points and pick things you have time and energy to do right now. This is an important step for me as I usually have a variety of tasks on my plate that require different skills and levels of engagement. It’s essential for me to identify what I feel like doing right now and picking the right type of task. On a Friday afternoon, I may not feel like writing a blog article or doing marketing, but I can certainly go through a pile of documents to shred.
5) Engage: choose your next action and get to it. If things are well-described and organised, it becomes much easier to pick up any task, starting with smaller items, to work on them. I usually prepare my list for the day in the morning when I can estimate requirements and my energy levels.

Kanban

With its origins in the manufacturing industry, Kanban has been widely adopted in many project management environments. In its most basic form, Kanban urges you to use cards or post-it notes, something to stick them onto and a pen. Your Kanban board should be divided into: To do, Doing and Done. The idea is to write down all steps in each project on post-its and move them from To do, to Doing and to Done. This gives you a visual representation of what you’re working on and what’s in the pipeline. I’ve worked using my Kanban and a whiteboard up until last year when I started travelling more and it became increasingly harder to keep the whiteboard updated.

Kanban translation

Gantt charts

Beautiful in their simplicity and deadline-oriented, Gantt charts allow for representation of your projects on a timeline showing the logical sequence of all tasks. I personally find Gantt charts great for marketing projects where I know what I have to do first so I can move on to the next stage.

When it comes to overall business management for the whole year, you may also enjoy the article I wrote for CTA blog on getting things done for translators.

PS Voting for best language professional blogs is now open! I’d be honoured if you decided to vote for me (look for Wantwords, bottom of the page).

Lesson 129: How to apply business knowledge to your actual translation business?

Surrounded with a variety of sources (including this blog), we’re exposed to tips and pieces of advice on how to run a translation business on a day to day basis. Add several books and a couple of translation conferences a year and you’ll end up with a great collection of useful bits… on paper. I know from my own experience both on the receiving end and as a business trainer that hearing and learning about business theories, skills and solutions and applying them are two completely different worlds. The problem these days isn’t in limited sources but rather in our limitations in applying what we’ve learned.

How many times have you felt that you came across a really useful suggestion that could work for you but then you get swamped with work and all these ideas just drift away? Or how many times have you attended a workshop, left inspired, but then struggled to put any of it in practice to improve your actual translation business? Maybe even reading an article , you note down a couple of interesting bits, but you never make them work?

I think that business skills, tips and knowledge especially need mechanisms in place to put them in practice. Of course it’s important to find time and make space to learn, but it’s equally or even more important to design implementation. Based on experience, I wanted to share my 5-step guide to applying business knowledge to your translation business.

1. Answer this question: why did I want to learn about it in the first place?

From being attracted to an article headline to jumping and signing up to an interesting workshop, there’s always something that attracts us to this particular new bit of knowledge. Why did you read it in the first place? What made you register? Thinking about and focusing on our motivations helps us discover the pain we’re trying to “heal” in our business. Acknowledging this pain or shortcoming or need is the first step to defining what’s missing or what needs fixing in your translation business. Accepting that something needs a mend or improvement is the first step to changing it.

2. Review what you’re doing now and reflect on it.

If I see I’m reading many articles about time management or that when I see a workshop on improving time management for busy business people, I acknowledge that the area I need to work on is obviously time management. The next step after this realisation is to review your current situation and actions in this area. I need help with time management because I’m accepting too many commitments, I can’t prioritise and I end up being overworked. I work with a detailed calendar but I often consciously overbook myself and expect to do two things at the same time or work on a plane after a very short night. I know what I’m doing right, but I’m aware of what I’m doing wrong as well.

3. Formulate the new approach.

This was exactly the reason why I spoke to Marie Jackson from Looking-glass Translations who kindly offered productivity consultancy sessions to her blog readers. We had a great conversation via Skype and then Marie sent loads of follow-up documents. I also read up on the topic. And of course it all could’ve ended here, with me being painfully aware of my problem and knowing what to do to fix it but never doing it. Instead, I decided to use all of this knowledge to formulate my new approach. I even narrowed it down to one sentence: ‘ignore shiny objects’. This was my new attitude to managing my own time and I created a set of rules that came attached to this approach. I knew that from then on, this was how I was going to manage my time.

4. Set a SMART goal.

Of course, formulating your new approach to a problem, challenge or business area is crucial but not enough. Setting clear SMART goals is what really forces you to use this approach. My ‘ignore shiny objects’ approach manifested itself in me:

• Specific: ignoring all events, conferences and blog articles that didn’t meet the criteria developed within my new approach and creating a 3-month calendar of events.
• Measurable: limiting the number of events I attend to two a month and using the time saved on more scalable promotional efforts.
• Achievable: I respected all previous commitments but declined all new ones or unconfirmed ones.
• Relevant: I knew that my goal was to save time.
• Time-bound: Until the end of 2015.

5. Measure your results.

It’s easy for me to measure my results with the time management example: I can look at my calendar to see if I’m keeping up. It may be a bit more tricky with other tips or business skills, but measuring your success or return on investment is crucial. You may want to decide to measure it in terms of time, money, relationships built, your own satisfaction… As long as you’re measuring results and then can review by the end of your SMART period.

Any tricks on applying what you’ve learned to your translation business?

Lesson 127: What’s behind the scenes of success as a translator?

The topic for the last part of the behind the scenes series has been following me for a while, and I think it’s time to talk about success. The first time I thought about this article, a few months back, it was prompted by a conversation I had with a colleague in a different industry. This colleague, intrigued by my moderately popular YouTube channel and thinking of launching something similar in his line of work, asked me how to get that many views and subscribers in a niche industry (yes, that’s how translation is seen by outsiders).

Well, my response was as follows: First you get really good at what you’re doing, your core business, then you train yourself up in the business side of things, and then you feel the calling to share it with your colleagues, so you think of best ways to share what you know. As you start moving things around, you see there are people around you who want to listen to you, that motivates you, so you work harder. Finally, you get an idea that maybe YouTube videos, not yet very popular in the industry, might be something that could take off. So first you laugh it off (Videos? Me? Seriously?), but then you brace yourself, learn how to do it, get the equipment, get out of your comfort zone, and then KEEP getting out of your comfort zone for a year or two, and there you go.

No, replied my colleague, you didn’t understand my question. I just wanted to know how to get as many views and subscribers as you have.

Cut.

I run the Business School for Translators, among my other activities, and while I’ve been privileged enough to have a group of colleagues around me who may initially ask “How do you become successful as a translator?” or “How do you find direct clients?”, the majority of them would quickly understand that success isn’t built on a checklist of steps that guarantee a specific outcome.

Speaking of checklists, my initial idea for the book was to collect a variety of checklists on business, marketing and sales for translators. Why have I changed this seemingly great concept into 170 pages of theories on business and economics? Precisely for this reason. I grew to realise that if I pretended there’s a list of steps to take to guarantee success as a translator that just needed ticking off, I’d be lying and misleading people.

Yet I received an email from one disappointed reader who commented that translators need practical solutions, not theories.

Or, to give you another example, I’m sure you’ve seen questions asked on various fora along the lines of: “How do I get work from agencies?” or “How do I get started as a translator?”. The majority of responses are sensible pointers towards useful sources, but they don’t usually receive the gratitude they deserve. What’s in fashion is quick solutions and blog posts with lists of ten steps to succeeding in the industry (I know, I wrote one and it was one of the most frequently shared posts on this blog). It all makes it look like success happens overnight if you simply follow a list of steps.

Here’s the truth: success as a freelance translator comes after a few years of the hardest work of your life.

After years of studying, learning and working, I discovered that there are no shortcuts, there are no checklists, and there are no universal keys that open all doors. There are no articles that will genuinely make you successful in ten short steps, there are no logos that will attract a stream of clients to you, and there are certainly no business courses that will turn you into an overnight success.

Of course, the promise of instant success is always more appealing and attracts more attention than the truth. Of course it’s more fun to read an article with five steps to a successful freelance career than, for example, how to use Porter’s five forces for your business. Of course it’s easier to listen to gurus who suggest five quick-solution passive income streams to boost your income than to a patient, more senior colleague who suggests improving your translation skills for the third time.

And what I’ve learned from the most successful colleagues is that they never stop working hard. It’s precisely this attitude that keeps them on top of the game.

If someone ever asks me “How to find direct clients?”, I’ll probably start by saying that first they need to learn how to write well, very well, in their own language, then… Well, see above.

Lesson 126: Where can a translator find the strength and motivation?

Last week we discussed fears and insecurities and to balance things out, I wanted to look at the opposite end of the scale: what motivates us and gives us strength to work as a freelance translator, where can a translator find the strength and motivation. Because it’s “behind the scenes” series, I’m going to draw on some examples and solutions from my own career, but feel free to chime in and add your points in the comments below.

I’m the first one to say that the passion that we have for the profession works as the best motivator, but between you and me, it’s not a magic pill that sorts everything else out. And sometimes even if this passion was great in the beginning, it becomes tarnished with time and some negative experiences. And on other occasions, no matter how passionate I feel about translation in general, I simply don’t get all that excited in a particular period or on a particular assignment.

Feeling low levels of motivation or strength isn’t necessarily a disaster in itself. We all have ups and downs. But it becomes an issue if it takes longer than usual and starts affecting our work. How do we fix it, then? Take a look at some of my solutions, in no particular order.

Take a day off and away from devices

When I’m feeling down or overwhelmed, what usually helps is getting away from my computer, tablet, smartphone, everything. Just taking a real day off out in a park or a museum, reading a book in a café and eating out in a cosy local restaurant. On days like this (now making it into my weekly routine), I don’t check Facebook, Twitter or Skype, or sometimes I don’t even take any devices with me.

Volunteer

If I’m feeling generally uninspired about what I’m doing, I volunteer using my skills to see the real impact of my work on people’s lives. I used to volunteer for Victim Support and now I’ve just finished interpreting as a volunteer at a centre for migrants in need of support. Apart from doing the obvious good, volunteering for those who really need help puts your life into a specific perspective and it’s easier to reconnect with what drives you.

Mentor a newcomer

One of the biggest sources of motivation and strength is sharing your passion with another person and talking about your profession. Helping a colleague out is again a good thing in itself, but it also forces you to think about creative solutions and pieces of advice directing you to a path of self-reflection.

Go to a translation event

I remember a particularly gloomy period when I had lots of rather uninteresting work (or I believe I just lost interest in it because I was feeling uninspired in general) and I saw a reminder in my calendar about a translation duel taking place in London. I went there and it was so amazing to see two translators who worked on the same piece of text discuss each sentence, each preposition, each choice they made with so much passion and dedication. It’s infectious. Going to translation events or conferences gives you that kind of a boost.

Work from a different location

I love my home office, but every now and then it’s a good idea to change the scenery. In the past year, I worked at a several local cafes, in museums, in the British Library, in parks and in the underground (I kid you not). Working from a different place than usual can be a nice change for my mind. As much as I like silence and white walls, different stimuli can provide new insights.

Where do you take your motivation and strength to work as a freelance translator from? What’s keeping you going?

Lesson 122: What is a USP for translators?

The one piece of advice for freelancers you’ll find everywhere is as follows: you need to find your USP, something that makes you different from others.

USP, Unique Selling Proposition, is your differentiator, the quality that makes your offering different from others. It doesn’t mean you’re trying to be better or get rid of competitors, but that you’re providing something of a different value.

But hey, how am I supposed to find something unique when I’m surrounded by other translators in my language pair?! What makes me unique if we’re all striving to provide the best, highest-quality translation, therefore the least visible translation of all? I know these thoughts very well. I’ve been trying to hack this USP for translators thing for years, and here’s my take on it.

Try to complete the following sentences to your best knowledge.

1. All translation service providers (agencies and freelancers) offer translations that are…
2. All freelance translators offer translations that are…
3. Some translators offer translations that are…
4. Few translators offer translations that are…
5. My translation services are different because….

I know that the last question is the most difficult one. When answering, think about the following aspects. What is that you’re adding to the service you’re delivering? What’s individual about your work, style, business? What comes from your personality, education, experience in the translations that you provide?

Here’s how I tackled this for myself.

1. All translation service providers offer translations that are good quality and on time.
2. All freelance translators offer translations that are often better quality than translation agencies, more polished and with more style.
3. Some translators offer translations that are really good because they specialise in a few areas only, so they can really master the topic.
4. Few translators offer translations that are value-adding for specific industries because they’re linked with more comprehensive services.
5. My translation services are different because I provide complex communication services from content authoring to distribution.

Of course, this is just the first attempt and you can see that it needs work, but it’s the first step to developing a USP focusing on my added value. How can this help you? Do you want to have a go at these questions? Try them in comments below.