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SETTING YOUR STALL OUT
Michael Benis takes a break from translation technology and draws on his experience in advertising to take a look at how you can use specialisation and marketing to help get your career into top gear.
NO MAGIC BUTTONS
I'm often approached by people who hope that translation technology can transform their careers overnight. The bad news, I'm afraid, is that it can't. It can certainly transform the way we work, increasing our comfort and productivity while protecting us against the possibility or effects of "Repetitive Strain Injury". But it can't, on its own, guarantee us more customers, higher rates or a higher income. If that's what you're after, specialisation and marketing are what you need to focus on.
Even then, there are no magic buttons or overnight transformations. All is not lost, however, because with a little thought, planning and regular action, transform things you can. It just takes a little time. But then, if you want worthwhile long-term results, you should be prepared to spend a little time getting them.
This short guide aims to consider both these inseparable aspects of career development. It does so from the perspective of a freelance, although many of the arguments are equally valid where translation companies are concerned as well. No doubt many an experienced interpreter or translator will find that much of the advice herein simply echoes the insights of their own experience, but hopefully even they will find something, however small, that is of use in furthering or consolidating their ambitions.
IT TAKES TWO TO TANGO
Specialisation and marketing are not only the two aspects most likely to make a significant impact on your career, but they go hand in hand. That's because we're not talking about a quick one-off marketing initiative designed to bring in a new client or two. What I aim to propose here is a long-term strategy designed to take you from where you are today - whether that's as someone fresh out of a postgraduate course, or an overworked generalist of ten years' standing - to a more satisfying position several years down the road.
WHO ARE YOU?
For interpreters and translators, specialisation and marketing go together like a new cola drink and an advertising campaign. I'll admit that I'm using the term specialisation fairly loosely here, but bear with me for a moment. If you were in advertising and someone asked you to come up with a campaign to successfully advertise a new cola drink, you'd want to think long and pretty hard about the image it needs to stand out from the many other faces on the market - including some very well-known names. It's exactly the same for us. If we want to make our marketing successful, we have to find a distinctive if not unique image for ourselves. But that's not all. We can refine the "product" in the same way as a cola manufacturer would if they, for example, suspect that they can create a niche market for themselves by coming out with a more strongly-flavoured but less sugary beverage for the adult market.
In short, if we want to develop a successful medium and long-term marketing strategy for ourselves, we have to start by looking at who we are. What's more - as if that weren't enough to plummet us into an identity crisis that dissuades us from taking things further (which is what it usually does), we also need to think about how we might want to develop our "product" to make it more successful. That's essentially what I mean by specialisation: taking what works for you and making it work better. We need to start here for the obvious reason that until we've defined the "product" and how we want to develop it, we're not going to be able to get very far with marketing it successfully.
THE THREE PHASES OF A FREELANCE CAREER
Just like every good story (or magazine article), every successful freelance career seems to have three phases: a beginning, a middle and an end. Looking at ourselves in this light can make it easier to start working out "who we are".
In the beginning, we don't have an established client base or - in most cases - an in-depth knowledge of any particular field. Above all, we don't have enough work. It's not a pleasant situation and it will generally take us at the least two years of hard work and hard marketing to get out of it.
In the middle things start looking brighter. We find we're getting more work than we can cope with but we're still frightened to ever turn anything down, worried that if we say no we may lose an existing or prospective client and hit that dreaded "dry patch" a couple of days or weeks down the road. Our income has increased to comfortable levels, but the stress is far from comfortable since this has mainly been achieved by increased productivity through increased familiarity with our subject areas, systems and work procedures.
In the third phase (which we are to hope is the end of the beginning and not the beginning of the end), we are likely to have restricted our subject areas and refined the types of clients we work with. Our income is still dependent upon working relatively long hours, but we are able to command a premium due to the value-added we offer thanks to our specialisation and experience. We also tend to be more relaxed about refusing work because we know the chances are we'll be in demand tomorrow anyway (although the fact that we've already paid off a large chunk of our mortgages certainly helps as well).
There are a number of important lessons we can learn from this "natural" career progression. The first is not to panic. It all takes time. Specialisation is not an overnight transformation. The second lesson comes from asking ourselves why our peers almost inevitably end up specialising anyway. The reasons they tend to give are all very convincing:
Specialisation means you spend more time working and less time researching and poring over dictionaries
Specialisation ensures you keep abreast of new developments in your field
Specialisation consequently increases your productivity
Specialisation generally helps you increase your rates
Specialisation makes you more memorable (you are that charming Inukituut translator specialising in sun loungers rather than that charming translator who does half a dozen languages and subjects - what were they?)
A LITTLE OF WHAT YOU LIKE DOES YOU GOOD
This brings me onto another very good reason for choosing a given specialisation: you find that there's no shortage of work in that field, that it pays well and above all that you like it! Everything being equal in terms of rates and potential market, you're bound to do better in a field that you actually enjoy - and you're also more than likely to achieve higher productivity (whether or not you use translation memory software and speech recognition!). Boredom never helped anyone work better. So, one could also say:
Specialisation is more fun
DEVELOPING YOUR SPECIALISATION PLAN
First of all, you need to be brutally honest. It isn't necessary to work in eight different languages to achieve success. Indeed, this could be perceived as dilettantism and work to your disadvantage. So just because you've studied them all, doesn't mean you don't have to make a choice. You may love Russian literature, but if you don't come from a Russian family, have never lived in Russia, and still don't feel half as confident with the language as some others you have studied, you really only have two options: go and live in Russia for a few years or narrow your list down to seven.
The same goes for subject areas. There's no point in getting all excited about the income prospects of working in a growing field - such as software localisation for example - if you can barely get to grips with Microsoft Word, can't set your video recorder, and come out in a cold sweat every time your printer runs out of paper. But the converse is also true. You may be an avid birdwatcher of many years' standing who can name practically every species both surviving and extinct in five languages, yet you still won't be able to make a living out of this specialisation if it's the only string to your bow (unfortunate as a hunting metaphor may be here).
So, the first thing is to take a realistic look at our own abilities and the market. The earlier we are in our careers, the likelier it is that the most realistic decision will be to target those clients who can help us a build up sufficient general experience to make an informed decision about specialisation in the future. If you're young, single and mobile, you couldn't do better than to try and get an in-house position or placement with a large translation company or multinational in the country of your foreign language of primary interest. The cultural exposure and wide-ranging translation and interpreting experience you acquire will be invaluable in the future.
Likewise, it can make all the difference if you take an additional specialist course of study. Doing so in your "source language" country would put you in a still stronger position. You may even be able to combine your studies with part-time work in a translation company.
If this isn't an option, networking always is. Translators' associations like the ITI have regional and language/specialist groups where you can make contact with and gain valuable tips from colleagues working in your languages and fields. You may even find yourself a mentor - whether or not within the official framework of the ITI Mentoring scheme. Don't be ashamed to milk people for information: each and every one of them was in your position once, and hopefully they'll remember it.
THE BEST LAID PLANS OF MICE AND MEN GO OFT AWRY
Taking things a little later on in the "natural progression" I've set out, we come to the interpreter or translator who has already acquired experience in a number of fields and has decided they want to concentrate on just a few. That's right, you read that correctly: not one, not two, but "just a few". We may be aiming to specialise in even fewer fields come judgement day, but let's not get too carried away by our plan-making fervour. As Marx put it (not aiming to dampen our capitalist ambitions), "Man may make history, but he does not always make it as he pleases". Allow me to translate that. Deciding that you're going to "specialise" immediately in just one or two fields could simply be a merry recipe for disaster. Plan your career like an angler: set out several rods with bait and see how things develop before deciding you're only going to fish in one pond and (perish the thought!) start refusing jobs in "old" fields.
A good trick when you're sure of the direction you're taking, is to remove old "specialisations" from your CV, but not turn down existing clients' requests for old gems. What's more, if demand for some of these old fields keeps increasing, you may want to re-evaluate your choice unless you've developed a profound aversion to them over the years.
Last but not least, you should as ever be wary of putting all your eggs in one basket. If you specialise in one field only and there's a downturn in your specialist industry, the chances are your business will suffer. Similarly, even some specialist freelances like to maintain regular "generalist" contacts with two or three favourite agencies just so they can continue to have a little diversity in their lives, convinced they'd die of boredom if they always worked in the same subject all the time.
MONEY MATTERS
One factor influencing your choice of languages and specialist fields may well be the rates they command. You will also need to consider how rates vary from country to country. Some markets, such as Luxembourg, North America, Scandinavia and Switzerland, pay significantly more than others. Establishing a client base in these countries can enable you to gradually increase your rates, including in your country of residence. Similarly, if you are resident in your "mother-tongue country", you may be able to capitalise on this by exporting to clients in those fields where being able to render the latest style is as important as accuracy of content (e.g. advertising, journalism, management theory, public relations etc).
Collecting information about rates can, however, be very intimidating. It is notoriously difficult to get many colleagues to talk openly about their rates (never mind their income), irrespective of whether they are freelances or translation companies. There are two ways round this.
The first is to consult the rates and salaries surveys published at irregular intervals (unfortunately) by the Institute of Translation and Interpreting and the Institute of Linguists. At present, the former (ITI 1998) gives a wide range of information on related factors, such as the influence of experience and productivity tools on income, while the latter (IOL 1999) contains the most up-to-date information on rates themselves.
The second way around the problem is quite simply to talk about it anyway. Ignore any neurotic comments about the state of the market or whether "certain people" claim boastfully exaggerated rates to impress their colleagues. Indeed, don't concentrate on the figures that people quote so much as the accompanying information they provide on their client base, how they position themselves and the services they offer. And don't forget, the more established and confident a freelance or agency is, the more likely they are to be quite happy to discuss rates openly.
Although it is possible to generalise and say, for example, that Italian will be towards the lower end of the scale and Finnish towards the higher, or that advertising, legal, medical and telecommunications tend to pay more than the average, you also need to take other factors into account to understand whether these higher rates will actually mean higher income. A legal translation, for example, may require considerable research and very careful wording. Conversely, a patent translation charged at a lower rate may actually work out more profitable because productivity is higher.
In addition, the way you position yourself on the market and the type of clients you work with can have as big an effect on your income as the languages and fields you work in. That's why it's so important to talk to people as well as simply collecting facts and figures. The context of these figures is in many ways more important than they are themselves.
[Panel]
Money map
For rates and salaries surveys, contact:
Institute of Linguists Saxon House 48 Southwark Street London SE1 1UN Tel: +44 (0)20 7940 3100 E-mail: info@iol.org.uk
Cost of 1999 survey: £15
Institute of Translation and Interpreting 377 City Road London EC1V 1ND Tel: +44 (0)20 7713 7600 E-mail: info@iti.org.uk
Cost of 1998 survey: £11.95
You can also find a free but slightly out-of-date survey of translators working on the Internet that I conducted in 1997 at: www.michaelbenis.cwc.net/survey.htm or http://www.users.totalise.co.uk/~michaelbenis/survey.htm
[End of panel]
POSITIONING YOURSELF
This is where you bring the various different pieces of the mosaic together to form a picture. What complicates matters is that we're looking at a moving picture, which takes in where you are today and where you want this all to take you in a few years time.
You will hopefully have carried out a brutal assessment by now of which languages you really excel in. Bear in mind that many clients, especially prestigious translation companies, will be suspicious of anyone offering more than two or three. This is definitely a case where "less is more". Anyone who knows what they're looking for in a language expert will not only insist on a thorough knowledge of the language concerned, but an intimate understanding of its culture. It really isn't possible to offer this with half a dozen languages.
As we all ought to be aware, translation often has much less to do with words or syntax than with deploying a possibly very different cultural equivalent. In order to achieve this level of effectiveness, we have to be able to offer and combine a wide range of different skills: writing skills, an ability to bridge cultures, and the depth of cultural knowledge one can only really acquire by living in a country for at least several years. Then, of course, we also need subject knowledge (what would a target-culture specialist actually say?), research skills, interpersonal skills (tracking down a specialist to pick their brains and actually getting past the switchboard), not to mention IT skills and all the rest.
Don't take these skills for granted. As far as you're concerned, it may all just be a strange quirk of fate that you studied a particular language, went to the country in question on holiday, met the love of your life and lived there for ten years, doing a variety of jobs that led to translation and/or interpreting. It may well be charming for you to be modest about this in conversation with friends and colleagues, but not when it comes to business. You have probably acquired a unique combination of skills. If you focus and develop them well, you will be able to sell them at a premium.
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First published in ITI Bulletin, 2001. Provided here in five parts! This is part one. |
