Image courtesy of ehow.com

Hello blog, it’s been a while! The main reason for my woeful silence is that I recently moved home and office, and have been focusing on the practicalities of setting up and running my business from a new location.  I know, I know, excuses, excuses!

I thought I’d share with you some tips for ensuring a home office move goes as smoothly as possible while juggling translation deadlines, so that you can get up and running again in no time.

1)      Planning ahead early: this might sound obvious, but when you know you’re moving make a list of all the companies and services you will need to notify. I’m a big list-maker, and found that a making a quick list on a Google docs spreadsheet which I could tick off was the best way of keeping the information somewhere I could not lose it. This will save a lot of headache. Don’t forget to let your clients know your new office address and update your website, as well.

2)      Stay easily contactable by phone: my clients needed to know that I would be unavailable for a couple of days while I was getting my new home office unpacked and set up, but I wasn’t sure if I would have a landline immediately. I had already planned ways of making sure they knew how to get in touch with me via my Smartphone (which of course did not change), but I also have a subscription to an online number through Skype which allowed them to continue to call me on a landline number which I could provide them with well in advance of the move, making the transition easier.

3)      Don’t even try to live without broadband: I really take broadband internet access for granted now, and the thought of trying to get anything done without it sends shivers down my spine. If you can’t get your broadband set up in your new office immediately (or as soon as you plan to be back at work), you will need to have a Plan B. My Plan B was a pay-as-you-go mobile broadband stick which I had purchased a while ago as a back-up. Remember the benefits of having your own domain email address not linked to your ISP as well (rather than @btinternet.com, @aol.com etc.), so that you can be reached from any computer connected to the internet.

4)      Contingency planning: it’s a fact, things can go missing or get broken in moves, so make sure that if the worst happens (and by worst I mean something untoward happening to your trusty main office computer, and/or the room you were planning to use as an office being less suitable than you initially thought), you won’t be reduced to a quivering wreck because you have that Plan B ready and waiting. For me this means having a back-up laptop (or 2) available for me to work on anywhere. Again, in this scenario, the mobile broadband stick and online landline number will come in handy.

5)      Pack strategically: I didn’t actually pack my office until the night before the removal men arrived, because I need to be working on a job right up until then, although I did pack some books I was sure I wouldn’t need the weekend before the move. When I did do the final pack, I made sure that everything I would need first the other end was at the top of the boxes, and clearly marked to avoid those situations involving crazed rummaging through boxes, packing paper and cardboard flying in all directions.

6)      Focus above all on getting organised: moving home and office at the same time can be a recipe for frazzled nerves, so if it all leaves you feeling beleaguered, then just take your time to move past that by getting yourself organised – get any admin you’ve let slip in order, locate those dictionaries buried at the bottom of the last unpacked box and generally help yourself to feel at home and in control of your new office.  Hey, you could even indulge in an office spa day.

By following my own advice, happily the transition to working from a new location was as smooth as I could have hoped, with all the messy stuff out the way within a couple of hours so that I could get back to my translation work.

Portsmouth Spinnaker Tower, courtesy of virtualtourist.com

Last month I spent a Saturday down in Portsmouth at the university’s Ninth Translation Conference, entitled ‘The Translator as Writer’. It’s incredible that I’ve never made it to the event before now, as I’ve always noticed the high calibre of speakers every year (a combination of practitioners and academics), and I’m pleased to say that having finally made it this year, the event lived up to my expectations.

It seemed to me that the event had a very similar theme to other translation conferences I’ve attended in the past 12 months: the translator beginning to take a more strategic and proactive role in the text (aka the product) production process and to bring other skills they offer to table in their role as intermediaries between cultures and as professional writers.

Here are some of my takeaways from the event:

Jody Byrne’s plenary lecture on technical translation:

* The traditional distinctions between the work of translators and writers are rapidly fading

* Technical translators have traditionally not been viewed as needing or possessing excellent writing skills in the same way as translators of more ‘creative’ types of text have been, but this is changing

* Customer expectations of technical translators are changing: technical expertise is often needed as well, with the translator assuming a greater role in the overall usability of a document.

Practical workshop by Fiona Harris on localising and editing press releases for the EU:

* EU press releases translated into English often need to be extensively edited and localised to ensure they are relevant to the everyday life of the people in the target country

* In the case of the UK, the press releases need to appeal to a British audience. For example, they are often adapted for a Eurosceptic press, in order to get the best coverage.

Luc van Doorslaer’s lecture on translation and journalism:

* Globalisation tends to emerase /emquestions of translation in the news media

* Fast communication needs do not pay attention to translation and will rather tend to make it invisible.

* Through this reduction in multilingual diversity, the world is often falsely conceived as being monolingual.

* National image-building in the media: do the media express or create cultural proximity? Reconstruction of a constructed reality?

Neil Bartlett’s inspirational keynote address on ‘Inspiration’:

* How can a translator facilitate the ‘breathing’ of a sentence?

Denise Merkle’s lecture on translating and expert writing in translator training:

* There are misconceptions among some translation students about what translation actually involves

* Many translation students have poor reading and writing skills, and tend to read less in general (I am still not convinced of this myself – is this measurable?)

* How do we define quality?:  a lot of LSPs focus mainly on their quality procedures in their promotional material. For example many make a lot of their Quality Assurance (QA) procedures and turnaround times, competitive rates etc., rather than selling the quality of the writing they are offering.

On the last point, I have since wondered how much of this was a sign of the times, where businesses in just about every line of work seem to be placing great emphasis on procedural aspects such as safety and reliability, sometimes over and above their actual product offering. I’m curious about why this might be. Do we live in such a complaint-fearing world that we feel we must set out these types of parameters to armour us against any risk of grievance? Are we not confident enough to place a bigger emphasis on selling the quality of the product we are offering, and to be able to defend it?

I’ve written a replica of that case study for my blog:

Job title:

Freelance Translator

Languages:

French, Spanish and Portuguese (into English)

Company/location:

My cosy home office in London!

Background:

I translate from French, Spanish and Portuguese into English (my mother tongue). I started off by doing a BA in French and Spanish at Cardiff University, then went on to do an MA in Translation and Linguistics (Spanish and Portuguese) at Westminster University in London.

After my studies I managed to get a job as an in-house translator, and this gave me the opportunity to really hone my language skills. However, after a few years I decided that freelancing was for me and so I launched a new career beyond cubicle life.

A typical day for me:

I’ll usually be at my desk quite early in the morning, since my commute only involves a short walk to my desk! I often start my day in the same way as most other people, by checking my emails. There may be urgent requests from clients that I need to respond to. I will also typically do some reading of industry-specific newsletters and foreign press or listen to podcasts in my source languages. When I start working on a translation project, I will need to consult with the client for any background references and will need to carry out my own research into the subject matter and terminology. The finished product will then need to be thoroughly edited and proofread before delivery to the client.

Working from home, I get to manage my own workload, but I generally try to work a standard 8 hour day, although I sometimes need to work evenings and weekends to complete urgent or large jobs.

What’s the best thing about your job?

Without a doubt, being my own boss!

So you want to be a professional translator?

You’ll need excellent writing skills in your mother tongue and of course fluency in the languages you translate from. You’ll also need to acquire sound knowledge of one or two specialist fields, for example medicine, law, IT, engineering or physics. I work mainly in the fields of law and marketing, so I need to maintain my knowledge in these areas through ongoing training.

You’ll also need to bear in mind that if you’re freelance, you’re effectively running your own mini-business, so take some time to check out what that entails.

*Psst! If you’re tempted by translation but would like to have a taster before committing, I notice that London Metropolitan University are hosting a Taster Day for Linguists as Mediators, through the UK National Network for Translation.

Attendees of the event who are new to my blog may be interested in reading a little more about how I got into translation, as just one example of how a freelance translator begins their career. Well, if you’re wondering, read on…

For me, translating freelance was something I’d aimed for since starting my MA in Translation and Linguistics at Westminster University over six years ago. Completing the course 9 months later, I realised that freelancing lark would require planning, careful consideration and funds (not to mention paying off various bills and loans). So, quite early on I started looking for in-house translation jobs in London, eventually accepting a job as a full-time in-house translator in the public sector. My plan was to stay in this job for about a year, save up and then launch my freelance translation business.

I remember that I was fairly overly confident about my abilities as a translator at that stage, despite not having much real-world experience of it. Embarrassing to think about it now! A year passed quickly and I realised that I still had a long way to go before I felt ready to go it alone, both in terms of my translation skills and my ability to run a business. I still felt that I was much more suited to freelancing than to cubicle life in a rather uninspiring air-conditioned office, but the value of what I was learning was too great to just ditch it so quickly. I decided to set myself a target of at least 3 years in the job, and then to go for it freelance.

So, apart from translating diligently, squirrelling away my pennies, making my escape plan and daydreaming about a fantasy life as a freelance translator, what else was I doing during those years? Well, because I was serious about becoming freelance, and felt that if I put my mind to it and got support from the right people I could really make a go of it, I spent a lot of my evenings online researching how others were doing it, what sort of hardware/software/ancillary skills I might need for my business etc. Like many translators, I did regular voluntary translations in my spare time in order to hone my translation skills. I joined several ITI groups, and started reading the e-group threads after work. I attended steadily more ITI and CIOL events (networking is a long-term activity so I thought it best to get started on that ASAP), and I started a blog. I had been reading other translation blogs, and realised that I was gaining so much from reading about the experiences of other translators that I wanted to contribute something of my own. This led to more networking and becoming part of a dialogue with other translators in order to share our experiences.

Eventually, I felt the time was right to finally go freelance. If anything, though, I felt even more terrified at the prospect of freelancing at that point than I did when I graduated years before, when I was blissfully ignorant about what it involved! But I was still determined to do it, and resolute that in-house translation was not for me at that point in my life. I needed something to make me take the plunge, but I also needed a security blanket. So, I hatched another plan. I started attending a TESOL course for 3 hours each evening after work to qualify to teach English as a foreign language – a sort of back-up plan just in case freelancing didn’t work out, or if it took a lot longer than expected to get going. I also sat the ITI exam to become a qualified member (MITI).

Happily, I passed both the TESOL course and the ITI exam and no longer had any excuses to put off going freelance. The next thing I needed was the ITI’s Professional Support Group course, as after years in the public sector I was still seriously lacking any business skills. So, one week after leaving my in-house job for good I started the PSG course and was at my new desk in my home office. I got a short-term part-time teaching job in central London to help pay the bills, and also some locum teaching and private tuition in Business English. By October 2008 (6 months after going freelance), I was finding it too difficult to fit all this in with what was by then a full-time translation workload and felt secure enough to stop the teaching altogether.

I think it’s fair to say that each freelance translator will have taken a slightly different route, and the length of time it takes to get to the point where you’re earning a decent full-time income with regular, valued customers will vary considerably (depending on your language combinations, experience, marketing material, and often just sheer good luck). However, hearing how other people did it and how long it took them is one of the best ways of getting a realistic picture of what to aim for. I started my career in-house, and I’m not suggesting that’s what everyone ’should’ do. However, I do think that however you do it, careful planning is one of the best routes to a successful, sustainable freelance career. Running your own business is very fulfilling but can be scary, and so ultimately, the crucial qualities are determination and the ability to be brave when it’s needed!

]]> http://blog.philippahammond.net/2009/10/22/getting-into-translation/feed/ 1 http://blog.philippahammond.net/2009/09/23/guest-post-an-introduction-to-seo/ http://blog.philippahammond.net/2009/09/23/guest-post-an-introduction-to-seo/#comments Wed, 23 Sep 2009 08:18:36 +0000 rob http://blog.philippahammond.net/?p=335 Today I’m publishing this guest post by Rob Hammond, Account Director for SEO at OMD, who gives some basic pointers on Search Engine Optimisation for translators.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) deals with optimising websites for people who use search engines such as Google, Yahoo or Bing. If you’re wondering what this has to do with translation, read on…

What is SEO?

SEO is centred around the ‘natural’ (or ‘organic’) search listings shown in a search engine results page. This is distinct from ’sponsored’ results (coloured red below) also seen on a search results page.

Sponsored results can be paid for by companies that want their website to appear when someone performs a search for a particular word or phrase. However, natural search results are determined by proprietary algorithms, and companies cannot pay to appear in the listings for these search results.

SEO can help websites to improve their positions in the natural results for certain search phrases (or ‘keywords’), which can significantly increase the number of visitors coming to a website.

So why is this important to translators?

As members of the translation industry know better than most, translating from one language to another is not simply about copying a text word for word into another language. As content on the internet grows, the need for quality translation services naturally grows with it.

As with any other discipline, writing for the web requires certain skills that may not be immediately obvious. Firstly, usability is an issue – usability guru Jakob Nielsen sums it up perfectly under the heading How users read on the web:

They don’t

Although this study was undertaken 12 years ago now, the fundamental principles hold true; you can’t write content for the internet in the same way as you do for paper. On the web, reading habits are vastly different, and this must affect the way we write or translate.

Secondly, findability is a consideration; if nobody can find your translated content on the internet, why was it translated? This is where even a basic knowledge of SEO can come in handy. Beyond the technical aspects of a website, SEO also deals with linguistic aspects of a website’s content.

One of the first processes SEOs undertake when optimising a website is keyword research, which analyses the language people use when searching for a particular product or service. By focusing the language used on a website to what people are actually searching for, the website’s content becomes more likely to appear in the natural search results and attract visitors.

As a starter for ten, a couple of free online tools that translators may find useful when translating online texts can be found with Google Insights and Google Trends.

Google Insights for Search

Both of these tools offer international data on searcher behaviour over the last 5 years. Data can be narrowed down to country and city level, and may be useful when researching terminology usage. For example the image above shows that more people are using the phrase “mpv” than “people carrier”, although the gap between the two phrases has narrowed since 2004.

Further reading

There is a huge number of free resources available on the net if you’re interested in learning more about SEO. Unfortunately the quality of information found on a the majority of blogs and forums is at best poor at often misleading if not wrong.

However, the links below are some of the best places to start:

• Official Google SEO Starter Guide – a useful reference to the basics, available in 40 languages.
• Google Webmaster Central blog – a must-read blog for anyone running a website.
• Search Engine Land – leading search engine news website.
• Matt Cutts’ Blog – Google’s head of Webspam blogs about a number of issues that affect webmasters.
• SEOBook – leading SEO blog; highly recommend buying the book for a detailed guide for anyone learning about SEO.

What have been your experiences of SEO? How much do you know about the inner workings of Google? For more discussion on SEO, check out Rob’s blog at robbiehammond.com. Feel free to leave any SEO-related questions in the comments below and Rob will answer them.

In case you hadn’t guessed from the name, Rob is my other half

12 September, ITI London Regional Group Marketing Workshop, University of Westminster, London.

This is an all-day event with talks and workshops on a variety of marketing-related subjects, including:

- marketing yourself as a freelance translator or interpreter

- website dos and don’ts

- a practical workshop on how to write good promotional copy

- assertiveness and negotiation skills.

Speakers include Heidi Kerschl MITI, Keren Lerner of Top Left Design, Eamonn O’Rourke (freelance copywriter) and little ol’ me, MITI. I’ll be tackling assertiveness and negotiation skills, for example dealing with stressful client relationships, setting boundaries and finding a happy place between being a doormat and a prima donna.

This is an excellent opportunity to learn more about how to market and promote yourself as a freelance professional, network with with colleagues and make new contacts.

17 October, Novotel, London City South, ‘Starting out as a Translator & Specialised Translation’.

In the morning session, I’ll be giving a presentation especially aimed at newcomers to the profession, although it will also be of interest to established translators. I’ll also be following this up with a CIOL webinar later in the year.

The afternoon session will be devoted to “Specialised Translation”, a subject of ever increasing importance to translators. Ricardo Martínez Perales, a sworn translator, will talk about legal translation and Noemí Rey, a long established technical translator, will give a presentation about the mechanical engineering field.

And don’t forget the ITI Annual Translation Workshop at the University of Westminster, London, on 18 October! For more information, follow @ITIEducation on Twitter.

Image courtesy of http://www.backup2go.com.au/dataloss.php

Céline over at Naked Translations wrote a post yesterday about back-up systems for freelancers, and invited others to share how they guard their businesses against data loss. Céline, if you’re reading, this post is my answer!

I actually have what some might call a fairly paranoid approach to how I back-up my work, and have a few solutions. It took me a long time (too long) to fully realise just how important it is to make sure important documents can be recovered in the event of computer failure/other business disaster. I’ve never experienced the anguish of losing a humongous translation hours before a deadline, but last week I did experience major data loss. I think we can all identify with how it feels at that moment you realise something important has just gone ‘poof!’ and disappeared into thin air.

My first solution, similar to Céline’s Dropbox solution, is to use online syncing. I use Sugarsync. Essentially, as I’m typing, each document is then automatically backed-up on their servers, meaning I can access all my updated files from any computer that is connected to the internet (whether it’s a PC or a Mac). I can do this remotely via my profile on the Sugarsync website or via the downloadable Sugarsync file manager. Sugarsync also offers a number of advanced features, including an intriguingly named ‘magic briefcase’ and a secure ftp location for sending large files. For anyone worried about data security and backing-up in ‘the cloud’, files are encrypted with 128-bit AES – can you say that about email?

I love Sugarsync, but it’s certainly not my only solution. I also use a more traditional back-up and storage tool called ZenVault that stores my important files at a remote location. The data loss I experienced last week illustrated exactly why I use back-up as well as syncing: as soon as I managed to lose the crucial files on one computer, that change was automatically synced across all my computers, so there was no chance of recovery. However, instead I was able to go into my ZenVault terminal and recover the documents from previous back-ups. So, I have a way of taking a static snapshot of all my documents and past documents, as well as a way of making the latest versions of my documents available across all my computers.

Another key back-up for me is having alternative computers to work on in case my main PC fails. I also use the über-traditional method of backing up to an external hard-drive on my desk, which is the preferred option for most freelancers. At this year’s ITI conference, there was a lot of chatter about using ‘the cloud’ to store data, but people seemed to assume that storing it in offline was automatically more secure. What would you do if your home was burgled or burned down and your one and only back-up solution was inside? Is that really any more of a secure solution than using an encrypted online back-up service to store important files at a remote location?

The possibilities really are endless for the paranoid, and my view is that these contingencies are not likely to happen at the same time. However, it’s really does pay to be too careful when you’re freelance (i.e. without IT support on hand).  Essentially, the only (almost) fail-safe solution is to have more than one contingency planning solution.

To learn more about online back-up and syncing, have a read of this article.  Warning – the review is rather long, but if you can scan it and pick up the salient points it’s a good starting place for contingency planning. The key message is not to rely on just one solution.

The response to our presentation has been really positive, with many people wanting to learn more or see the slides again, so we decided to take our little 2 person roadshow online for the big wide world to see. We are now pleased to unveil a stripped down, re-recorded version of our presentation available at Slideshare.net. You can view the show within this post (below) or by following this link to Slideshare if you have problems hearing or viewing the embed.

The event was particularly useful for translators working on creative texts, such as marketing copy, but most of the tips provided can be universally applied to other specialist fields.

Here are my take-aways from the event:

Top tips:

• Remember that as a translator you’re also a professional writer
• Trust your instincts
• Imagine yourself as an actor, giving the text a voice
• If you’re struggling, look at each paragraph in turn and break them down to establish what each is talking about
• Careful of ‘translationease‘ such as the phrase ‘in terms of’ – look for ways to re-word this
• When editing, remember to keep the text snappy by pruning superfluous words (particularly applies to Latinate languages)
• Always take a break before the final read-through of your translation
• Try printing out the text in a different font for your proofread, to create distance and objectivity
• Try reading your translation aloud, paying attention to rhythm
• Invest in a style guide
  
• Four eyes are better than two!

Book recommendations:

• Stephen King ‘On Writing’
• William Zinsser ‘On Writing Well’
• Jack Lynch ‘Online Usage and Style Guide’
• The Global English Style Guide: Writing Clear, Translatable Documentation for a Global Market (Perfect Paperback)

One thing that particularly struck me during the group activity was that as translators we have a reputation for getting obsessive and overzealous about what we perceive to be mistakes in a text, but which may simply be a newer term, or a term used by a particular industry. The way I see it, our role is to be linguists observing language and how it changes, not prescriptive grammatarians. Each industry tends to have its own dialect, and sometimes our role is also about speaking our clients’ language.

Happy writing!

First up was ‘EU Terminology and other EU Reference Material‘, jointly organised by the ITI office and Fiona Harris from the DGT. I attended this course yesterday afternoon at the European Commission Representation office near St. James’s Park.  On the agenda were presentations by Professor Margaret Rogers of Surrey University, a well known terminology expert, and Timothy Cooper, senior terminlogist at the DGT, and chair of the committee that oversees IATE. We discussed topics such as the importance of maintaining a terminology database, even if it means investing a little time in maintaining it. Professor Rogers argued that not only is it important to maintain a well organised terminology database, but that each entry should ideally also contain ‘metadata’ (e.g. definitions, context, register etc.) in order to be truly useful for a translator.

Most of the attendees were already very familiar with IATE, so Timothy Cooper focused on introducing some of its finer points, such as its quite powerful search and star functions. He also gave a brief history of IATE and how it was developed, in addition to the DGT’s famous style guide, and the ‘Fight the Fog’ style guide, which many attendees hadn’t seen before.

I’m now on my way, as I write, to the ITI Scotnet’s ‘Style Matters’ workshop in Perth. This event offers an opportunity for creative exploration and exchanging ideas with some of the best names in the business. It always surprises me how much I can learn just by working with colleagues on a translation – there’s not always a ‘right’ answer in translation, after all. The tutors are Chris Durban and Ros Schwartz, so we’re guaranteed a first class workshop. Next week I’m attending City University’s ‘Commercial and Corporate Law’ course, to hone my legal translation skills and general knowledge of this area of law. I think I can safely say I’ll have covered quite a few CPD bases by the time the month is out! I’ll write a couple of short posts about these events too.

If you’re a translator on LinkedIn and/or Twitter, you’ve probably noticed that a bit of a firestorm broke out earlier this week after LinkedIn put out a survey to professional translators with profiles on its site asking whether they’d be prepared to help translate their website into other languages for free (with a token amount of PIE – not the edible kind – thrown in). Within minutes, the Twittersphere was ablaze with fury and a group called ‘Translators against crowdsourcing by commercial companies’ was rapidly set up within LinkedIn itself, where members vented their increasingly angry thoughts about the very suggestion that LinkedIn would crowdsource free translation of its site from among its members. A couple of translators have already written very well-argued blog posts about it here and here.

This mini-drama has made it clearer than ever that as a professional community we are concerned about having an image problem, about being taken for a ride, about being the ‘little man’ against big business. I couldn’t agree more that offering our translation services for free is really only appropriate for a client with a very good cause but minimal budget – the latter is certainly not the case with LinkedIn – but perhaps we should now turn our considerable collective energy to showing The Big Wide World just why they would get  a better service from a professional translator paid a professional fee. It’s not enough to complain and say “pah, you obviously don’t know how great we are as professionals”, we must *demonstrate* this somehow. A professional service really is worth its weight in gold, so let’s focus on the positives and on all the great things we *can* do for the money we charge. We really showed what we can do when we unite as a professional community this week – let’s put that to good use.