It’s still a little early for New Year’s resolutions, but in this post I want to look ahead at four areas I plan to work on in 2016 and beyond. I’ve been freelancing full-time now for over two years (and working as a translator for over seven years in total). Throughout that time, I’ve improved a lot with experience, but I’ve also recognised that there are some areas that I need to consciously focus and reflect on so that I can move beyond honing my existing practices, and develop new skills and knowledge.
1. Proofreading
I trained as a proofreader at the same time as training as an in-house translator, and as a freelancer I’ve continued to offer proofreading alongside translation. Initially, my plan was to gradually phase out proofreading in favour of concentrating on translation, especially in view of the lower rates available for proofreading. However, I’ve subsequently realised that it makes more sense to broaden, rather than narrow, the range of services I can offer, especially as several of my main translation clients also need proofreading, and have also discovered that clients are prepared to pay hourly rates for high-quality proofreading that ensure I’m not out of pocket if I accept proofreading rather than translation work. Proofreading also offers me an opportunity to engage closely with English-language texts from subject areas that I also translate in (especially academic texts), hence feeding into my translation skills too.
However, having concentrated on translation in my professional development, I feel less connected to industry norms, debates and networks in the field of proofreading. The most obvious first port of call seems to be the Society for Editors and Proofreaders, who – if nothing else – certainly have a very informative and entertaining presence on social media.
2. Copywriting
Within translation, there is a sliding scale in terms of how much leeway you have to adapt the content of the text to suit different audiences, contexts of use and stylistic norms. I tend to work in areas (marketing, media, creative texts) where there is a very high degree of freedom, including the “transcreation” of marketing texts. However, further along the sliding scale transcreation moves beyond adapting source texts and more towards free-form writing in which the source text increasingly serves only as a point of reference. At some point along the scale, this form of transcreation blurs into copywriting.
I have less experience of producing texts down the further end of the scale (at least in a professional context), but I expect this is an area that will become more and more important as companies increasingly require texts that are fully tailored to international audiences. As an added bonus, developing my copywriting abilities would improve my translation work in the areas I already work in too.
3. Marketing and advertising subject knowledge
A lot of my regular translation work comprises marketing and advertising texts, as this was the area of translation I was originally trained in in-house. As such, I have a solid working knowledge of this area, far more so than in other fields of translation specialisation such as technical or medical. However, much of this knowledge has been developed primarily within the context of translation and German texts, without a direct connection to work or developments in this sector in the English-speaking world. As social media and the Internet continue to transform the advertising and marketing industry, I want to look in future at ways to stay abreast of new concepts and terminology.
4. Exchange with translator colleagues
Last but most certainly not least: as I recently discovered after someone at the swimming pool pointed out a flaw in my swimming technique, without input from other people it’s possible to continue in a bad habit for years that is invisible to you but that would be plain to see from somebody else’s point of view. Working as a freelance translator, primarily with clients who are not native speakers of English, this external input can sometimes be lacking. So I’m looking at ways to learn from the perspectives of other translators. I am already involved in a number of groups where I can discuss individual translation problems, but moving forward I also want to find ways to obtain direct feedback on and suggestions for my work, whether through mentoring programmes (like that offered by ITI’s German Network) or second-reader arrangements (where translation texts are read by a second translator – within the bounds of client confidentiality agreements, of course) or something in between.
I trained as a proofreader at the same time as training as an in-house translator, and as a freelancer I’ve continued to offer proofreading alongside translation. Initially, my plan was to gradually phase out proofreading in favour of concentrating on translation, especially in view of the lower rates available for proofreading. However, I’ve subsequently realised that it makes more sense to broaden, rather than narrow, the range of services I can offer, especially as several of my main translation clients also need proofreading, and have also discovered that clients are prepared to pay hourly rates for high-quality proofreading that ensure I’m not out of pocket if I accept proofreading rather than translation work. Proofreading also offers me an opportunity to engage closely with English-language texts from subject areas that I also translate in (especially academic texts), hence feeding into my translation skills too.
However, having concentrated on translation in my professional development, I feel less connected to industry norms, debates and networks in the field of proofreading. The most obvious first port of call seems to be the Society for Editors and Proofreaders, who – if nothing else – certainly have a very informative and entertaining presence on social media.
2. Copywriting
Within translation, there is a sliding scale in terms of how much leeway you have to adapt the content of the text to suit different audiences, contexts of use and stylistic norms. I tend to work in areas (marketing, media, creative texts) where there is a very high degree of freedom, including the “transcreation” of marketing texts. However, further along the sliding scale transcreation moves beyond adapting source texts and more towards free-form writing in which the source text increasingly serves only as a point of reference. At some point along the scale, this form of transcreation blurs into copywriting.
I have less experience of producing texts down the further end of the scale (at least in a professional context), but I expect this is an area that will become more and more important as companies increasingly require texts that are fully tailored to international audiences. As an added bonus, developing my copywriting abilities would improve my translation work in the areas I already work in too.
3. Marketing and advertising subject knowledge
A lot of my regular translation work comprises marketing and advertising texts, as this was the area of translation I was originally trained in in-house. As such, I have a solid working knowledge of this area, far more so than in other fields of translation specialisation such as technical or medical. However, much of this knowledge has been developed primarily within the context of translation and German texts, without a direct connection to work or developments in this sector in the English-speaking world. As social media and the Internet continue to transform the advertising and marketing industry, I want to look in future at ways to stay abreast of new concepts and terminology.
4. Exchange with translator colleagues
Last but most certainly not least: as I recently discovered after someone at the swimming pool pointed out a flaw in my swimming technique, without input from other people it’s possible to continue in a bad habit for years that is invisible to you but that would be plain to see from somebody else’s point of view. Working as a freelance translator, primarily with clients who are not native speakers of English, this external input can sometimes be lacking. So I’m looking at ways to learn from the perspectives of other translators. I am already involved in a number of groups where I can discuss individual translation problems, but moving forward I also want to find ways to obtain direct feedback on and suggestions for my work, whether through mentoring programmes (like that offered by ITI’s German Network) or second-reader arrangements (where translation texts are read by a second translator – within the bounds of client confidentiality agreements, of course) or something in between.
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