Gaining vital experience

 

Many translators now find themselves in a "Catch-22" situation at the start of their careers. Prospective clients are unwilling to take them on unless they can demonstrate solid prior experience. But then if that is the case, how on earth are they ever going to acquire that experience in the first place? Similarly, if you decide your career would be best served by specialising, how do you gain the necessary specialist experience? Michael Benis offers some suggestions on placements and further training to get the ball rolling and more.

 

Getting a foothold in the profession

 

Dwindling margins in the translation industry have led to a gradual fall in the number of in-house jobs available in translation companies, making it increasingly difficult for new translators to get their careers up onto the first rung on the ladder. While the increasing number of excellent postgraduate courses available provide a basic grounding and in most cases tuition in the basic technologies now required to be successful in the profession, they are all quite simply too short to provide the substantial specialist work experience needed for a prospective client to be confident in a newly-qualified translator's abilities. So, unless you have decided to move into translation with a view to serving a specialist area in which you have already worked for a number of years, you are likely to have to resign yourself to waiting for several years before you are making a steady income - or at least that's what many would have you believe.

 

That's certainly what is likely to happen if you do no more than send out hundreds of e-mails and letters to every translation company you can think of and then sit on your hands waiting for someone to "give you a break". But there are many things you can do to speed things along, especially if you are young and have supportive parents - or wise and experienced and have waited to build up a nest egg before changing careers. Perhaps the most effective of these is to seek out a placement to gain that elusive further experience. A placement is basically a temporary arrangement you enter into with a company to gain unpaid work experience. Considering no one money passes hands for your labour, you'd be forgiven for expecting any company to jump at the opportunity, but since time is money and every placement requires some "babysitting", getting a placement can be as difficult as getting a job.

 

Don't ask too much and you shall receive

 

The success to talking your way into a placement is not to ask too much. Translation companies tend to be high-pressure environments, not least of all because everyone is working to very tight deadlines, often having to fit in demanding jobs that arrive without any advance warning whatsoever. If you come across as pushy and demanding, you are likely to be seen as just another problem to be dealt with and your placement won't last long or you won't be offered one at all.

 

Remember that a placement is not a formal course. If someone provides you with guidance and advice that is a very lucky bonus, but don't go asking for it unless you happen to be chatting with someone during their tea break and they seem to be willing and have the spare time. Ask if you're in doubt and don't push anyone to tell you everything all at once. Likewise, don't go hanging around in the coffee room with the aim of pumping everyone for as much information as possible! The courtesy will be appreciated and a softly-softly approach will make people much more inclined to help.

 

Earn the time and space you have been given by offering to be useful and making suggestions even when you haven't been allotted task, help with the many chores that may have very little to do with translation itself. If you use your eyes and ears, you'll be learning all the time. Pick up on how the project managers negotiate deadlines or discuss what sort of reference material may be needed for a job. Check which dictionaries, encyclopaedias and other resources are used by the translators working in your language combinations. Above all, look to see which ones are the most dog-eared: those are the reference materials you want to put at the top of your list. Try and find out why they are preferred to others and whether for all jobs in a given area or only some. Observe different translators note-taking procedures. Whether they prefer to do all their terminological research before beginning a job or between the first and second drafts. Above all, remember that as a freelance you will be doing the jobs of absolutely everyone you can see. So don't be fussy about where you help or for how long. Simply make sure that you're useful, because that will be the most successful path to helping ensure that your host company is eventually open to the suggestion that you do some translation work there, maybe even on your own laptop if they do not have a free PC of their own. Because the time you spend actually working as part of the team, physically present with the reviser who is checking your work, verifying your terminological choices and so on will be worth its weight in gold. You will be gaining valuable depth of experience much faster than you ever could working on your own, including in many areas - such as marketing and client contact - that tend to be less well covered by academic courses. What's more, you'll be learning to work effectively under pressure in a way that is very difficult to simulate when you're studying, however rushed things may feel when you're coming up to exams.

 

All these benefits make it will worth putting a lot of energy into securing a placement, sending out mailshots, visiting translation companies and, if necessary, being prepared to travel, including abroad. In fact, the latter is by far the most valuable way of gaining experience, particularly if you intend to live and work in the country of your birth and education.

 

The joys of travel

 

If you are able to take yourself abroad for a few months or longer, preferably several years, that would be by far the best thing to do. There are two reasons for this. Firstly, getting a placement - even an unpaid placement - isn't that easy. To maximise your chances, you need to be sure you're offering something that is in high demand because it isn't easy to get hold of. If, for example, you are a newly-qualified English mother tongue translator living in England, you will be one amongst many competing for attention. On the other hand, if you take yourself off to one of your source language countries, you will transform yourself into a much more sought-after resource. Indeed, rather than simply helping out on an unpaid placement, you may find that you are immediately offered a desk and PC to start working with your chosen company as a junior freelance colleague. In many cases, this is easier to achieve that it is in the United Kingdom, with quite a few of Europe's leading translation companies, in particular, being structured to allow their local regular freelance translators to work from the company's offices.

 

But these aren't the only advantages of a placement abroad. The linguistic and cultural knowledge you acquire over a number of months and especially years when actually in a "source language country" will put you in a very different league as a translator. Never forget to include this information in your CV. I'm not the only consultant involved in selecting human resources who values of this kind of experience, in many cases more than formal qualifications. In fact, there's a short but valuable digression to be made on the subject. Many companies boast that they only work with translators who are resident in their native language countries. That sounds quite rigorous and impressive but actually indicates a rather superficial assessment of what is required. Although someone who has been living outside their native language country for many years may be rusty when it comes to all the latest target-language expressions and can be more tempted to leave inappropriate source-language constructions in their translations, they are on the other hand equally likely to have a finer grasp of the linguistic and cultural nuances of the text they are working on. This difference can sometimes be crucial. Consequently, the best solution is often for the translation to be drafted by a translator living in the source language country and then checked and edited by a translator living in the target language country, both of course working into their mother tongues.

 

Getting back to placements, however, that also means you can be quite confident of your value, irrespective of how many years you have been living "away from home". What's more, if you don't put down any special roots where you're staying, you can always get a series of placements around the country, especially if the company you are working with isn't prepared to carry on extending things indefinitely or for as long as you'd like. Many countries have significant regional differences in everything from their language and customs to legislature, meaning there are many learning benefits beyond gaining further experience and observing the varying practices in different companies. In addition, of course, certain translation companies may specialise in given areas, which gives you the opportunity to develop your chosen specialisation/s.

 

Another reason to move can be to negotiate higher than beginner rates (either with your "existing company" or the one you move to) or, indeed, to make sure an unpaid placement lasts no longer than it need to in order to act as an effective springboard to something more rewarding.

 

Gaining specialist expertise

 

While you can gain essential skills and knowledge of the most useful resources on placements in translation companies, gaining similar experience and, indeed, contacts with companies in your chosen area/s of specialisation can prove the key to really getting that specialisation off the ground. This is something that really requires a great deal of persistence (not insistence!). You are really relying upon striking it lucky, contacting a company at the same moment that they have a need which makes it worth their while "experimenting" with the support you can offer them in-house. But if you carry on trying, one day it will happen. Don't be shy about contacting different offices within the same company, or contacting the same offices again several months down the line. Just don't do it too frequently and make your contacts polite, pleasant, very short and very much to the point. This can be particularly successful when you are not in your native language country. The equation then is very simple: you have language skills and powers of expression that they lack, while they hopefully know all the specialist concepts and terminology with which you are, perhaps, only just starting to become familiar. Once you've got a foot in the door, relationships will develop that probably mean they will realise they have more and more work with which you could be helping them, while you will find yourself learning about your chosen specialisation in a faster and more reliably than you could anywhere else.

 

Also, while you're busy ringing people and knocking on doors, don't forget the value of networking as a way of building up contacts. If you can afford to, join the relevant industry associations and chambers of commerce. And don't just join them, go to their meetings regularly and make yourself known.

 

Placements are for everyone

 

Most translators will readily acknowledge that the learning's never over, hence ITI's emphasis on continuing professional development. To that extent there's a place for placements at any stage in a translator's career, albeit for reasons that can differ from those of someone who is only just starting out in the profession. Let's quickly recap the benefits. If you have built on a postgraduate course by getting a number of placements behind you, you will be much more assured in your work, have a much more "seductive" CV and be able to deliver much more polished work under pressure. Your position will be even stronger if your placements were with specialist companies. Indeed, the latter will probably be quite happy to continue working with you wherever you eventually settle, easily becoming your first clients as a fully-that freelance.

 

Casting your "placement net" as an established translator can naturally reap similar benefits in terms of enhancing your specialist knowledge and attracting potential new customers. But the same time, it isn't something you should look on as just being a "soft" approach to acquiring new clients. It can also be an extremely effective way of consolidating and advancing your relationship with existing customers, allowing you to get to know everyone personally in a very different way, while simultaneously gaining a much closer and more detailed insight into the workings and requirements of the company. In addition, never forget that some of the people you get to know in a company are likely to move to other companies operating in the same sector. The better you get to know them, and they you, the greater the likelihood that their move will generate a new customer for you. So the next time one of your big clients commissions a big job, offer to do at least part of it on site.

 

Using placements in this way thus combines marketing, developing customer loyalty and continuing professional development. Don't underestimate it, don't be lazy and make excuses about it and, above all, don't give up just because nothing happens to reward your efforts after just a year or two's fruitless attempts. All it needs is a couple of successes over the course of your career to make a really big difference.

 

Give and you shall receive

 

Don't assume that the only profitable experience you can ever get is with big business. The voluntary sector can offer equally impressive levels of expertise and contacts, while generally being far more receptive to the idea of placements as well, especially if you have already built up a relationship with the organisation by doing pro bono work in the past.

 

Changing career

 

Placements can also be used if you want to change career. Essentially, you adopt a little Machiavellian strategy, using your strengths as a translator to secure a placement in a company in which you don't just want to build specialist experience, but would also like to establish contacts with a view to gaining employment in a field other than translation where you have already established at least some credentials, such as international sales and marketing. This may sound a little far-fetched, but I've known people do it successfully in information technology, international communications, journalism, sales and marketing as well as, in my own case, advertising - though I hasten to add that there was absolutely no Machiavelli and merely an awful lot of luck where I was concerned.

 

One of the things that sparked off this article was in fact a series of requests for bulletin board from people asking me how they could diversify into copywriting. The answer to the question is placements. But, I'm afraid, it's really not much of an answer. That's because breaking into advertising  is exceptionally difficult, particularly as what is called a "creative", meaning a graphic designer, art director, copywriter, illustrator and so on. It is, in fact, now the standard route into the profession and most people who eventually get a job will have worked on unpaid placements for several years. If you are seriously interested, you should perhaps think of taking a course first and at the very least preparing a portfolio of speculative work so as to be able to blag your way into a placement in the first case, since you'll be competing against many eager hopefuls even at that stage. It's also worth noting that it will be easier to get a start in agencies outside London. Be prepared to do a lot of ground work and don't expect instant results. Remember, too, that you need to demonstrate your marketing/selling insight and creative flair with every contact you make.

 

Hopefully I'm starting to get the point across: It would almost be easier to embark upon a career as a brain surgeon having completed a few medical translations. That's not, however, to say that you can't offer your services as a translator on placement at one of the larger international advertising agencies. There'd certainly be less competition that way to getting a foot in the door, and if your primary interest is to take on the "advertising translations" handled by a number of translation companies, you would unquestionably benefit from the experience above all of understanding not just the stylistic niceties but the strategic requirements around which a brief is structured. That way, when a piece of advertising copy arrives on your desk as a translator you will be able to read between the lines in an attempt to reconstruct the brief that is so often not provided, with the aim of achieving a more effective result. And, of course (cue Machiavellian smile), once an advertising agency has got to know you, it will be a lot easier to get a placement in their creative department...

 

If you want to find out more about how placements work (and don't work) in advertising, the subject has just been covered rather well in a recent two-part article in the March and April issues of Creative Review. Each issue costs £5 and can be obtained by ringing the magazine on: 0207 292 3703.

 

The little things count, too

 

There are of course also lots of little things we can do it to develop our experience and increase our qualifications. Most readers of bulletin have already made one important investment in joining ITI, which provides invaluable support in lots of little ways that can make a big difference in the end, whether it's getting reliable information on which tools are worth investing in, gaining from colleagues' experience through the regional, language and specialist subject networks, soaking up the wealth of information provided both formally and informally at conferences and weekend workshops, and simply benefiting from the friendships made through the many opportunities for informal networking. Recently, however, ITI has once again started offering its greenhorn members a very significant opportunity in the form of the new Peer Support Scheme, and is indeed doing so much more effectively than ever before, partly thanks to the Internet and partly thanks to the very hard work of Lanna Castellano and the merry band of experienced and extremely helpful members she has so successfully galvanised into action.

 

The way things work is that the "mentees" enrolling in the scheme go through a number of assignments that they can discuss online before beginning work and which are then marked, with lots of friendly, helpful and practical input. The scheme has not only been an eminently effective practical solution but has also shown itself to be a fruitful networking opportunity as well. As such, it's an excellent starting point that can be planned in a way that a placement cannot, since you never know when someone will eventually take you up on your invitation. What's more, you can benefit from it without ever having to leave home or interrupt your work. Where it can prove absolutely invaluable, however, is when it extends to a period of mentorship with an established ITI translator, offering all the advantages of a placement but in a freelance environment, co-ordinated by ITI.

 

Top up training

 

Last but not least, there are all the courses we can use to hone special skills, or get up to speed on the latest technologies. These should be regarded as combined training and networking opportunities that, moreover, enable participants to demonstrate proficiency in a technology that will both enable them to work more efficiently and could help them gain placements and work in the future.

 

Cocktails are more effective

 

There's no secret to overcoming the "Catch-22" of gaining professional experience, apart from never giving up and never believing that there's only one approach to follow. It's not so much a matter of avoiding the danger of putting all your eggs in one basket, as that - as we have seen - following every one of these approaches increases your chances of success with all of the others. In short, it's one of those "every little bit helps" situations. Which is why it always pays to remember that you quite possibly already have "specialist experience" in the form of your hobbies, which could quite easily help you secure a placement or translation commission. In short, don't be selective, go for the lot, from networking events to the Peer Support Scheme, courses and placements, popping everything into your cocktail shaker and concocting a heady mix that will eventually see you over those first hurdles in every translator's professional life or help you take your customer relationships and the service you offer up another level. And with that, I'll sign off by toasting your success: Cheers!

First published in ITI Bulletin, 2004.