Tips 'n' Tools for Translators and Language Teachers - marketing

A pledge to continue your professional development

nospam@example.com (Carl) — Fri, 31 Jul 2015 18:52:00 +0200

"Continuing professional development", or CPD for short, has become something of a buzzword in business these days, even though it's something translators and interpreters have been doing for donkey's years. In a bid to get their members to commit themselves to ongoing training, some professional translators' associations like the American Translators Association (ATA) have made CPD obligatory and set members a goal of achieving so and so many points or credits for getting relevant training within a specific period. Other translators' associations like the British ITI and German BDÜ recommend CPD, but feel it's a personal choice and should therefore be voluntary.

Various educational organisations offering us videos, workshops and training courses on aspects of our work have been set up over the years, one of which is eCPD Webinars, which I've mentioned here before. This small but dedicated training company based in the UK offers an impressive range of online videos, live and recorded webinars, and courses designed especially for translators and interpreters. Some of these cost a fee, while others are free of charge.

eCPD Webinars is currently running a campaign to encourage linguists to show how committed they are to continuous professional development. You can do this by downloading a kind of virtual badge expressing your pledge to CPD.

You're free to put this on your website, in your e-mail signature, on your business cards and anywhere else where you might draw attention to your professional activity. To get the badge, which is free, you only need to read their CPD Manifesto; if you agree with all the points it lists, you're entitled to use the badge. (You can work on these points, of course, and then download the badge later once you meet all the criteria.)

To help you keep track of your CPD activities, eCPD Webinars is also offering a free log template, which you can download from here (a Dropbox site).

What CPD activities have you taken part in so far this year? Have they been worthwhile?

What do you get out of attending workshops and courses that you don't from participating in online webinars?

Have you thought of doing your CPD activities in a more systematic way? Or recording them in a special file as proof of what steps you've taken? What about developing some new skills that might prove useful in future? Or attending a conference where you can network with lots of other translators as well as attending workshops on topics of interest? CPD can boost your own motivation and open up new avenues of work for you one day, so it's worth investing in.

Regards,

Carl

images: © eCPD Webinars

Topic-related sites

WantWordsTV by Marta Stelmaszak (videos)

Sarah Dillon on CPD (blog)

Jayne Fox on CPD and forthcoming conferences for translators (blog)

Foreign Tongues on ways of obtaining more training (blog)

Training for translators offered by Proz.com

Free translator training at Proz

nospam@example.com (Carl) — Fri, 28 Feb 2014 18:40:00 +0100

Proz, the international translators' portal, is going to run a series of free webinars for registered users in March.

According to the programme of events now available here, the sessions will mainly be covering computer-assisted translation (CAT) tools:

Wordfast Pro 3.3

memoQ 2013 R2

SDL Trados Studio 2014

Déjà Vu X3 (aka "DVX3")

Fluency

and Wordbee Freelancer.

In addition, you will also be able to learn more about utilities like WordFinder, a web-based dictionary suite, and Translation Office 3000, a package for managing your translation and proof-reading assignments, your customers and your accounting. Several of these programs are now available in brand new versions with fresh interfaces.

There are also going to be two sessions on getting in touch with potential customers via Proz's own web platform. At the time of writing this post, places were still available for the session on 20 March.

To participate in any of these events, all you have to do is register to attend them. If you aren't a registered user yet, sign up for free or take out a paid subscription, depending on what features you would like to use.

Proz.com regularly stages training events for translators and interpreters, not just giving them an opportunity to learn about the latest software tools, but also to improve their knowledge of subject areas they work with such as legal contracts, interpreting in court or for the police, medical translation, tourism and travel, software localisation and audio subtitling, to mention just a few examples.

Some of the events are recorded and can be viewed any time, albeit at a small cost. These are known as "on-demand courses".

The training Proz offers isn't just in English, but that does seem to be the main lingua franca used. Sometimes presentations are held in other languages; some of the events in March are going to take place in Spanish, Italian, French, German, Russian or Chinese, for instance.

Quality-wise, the free webinars and "virtual conferences" I have attended so far have generally been reasonable to good. Not brilliant, but generally interesting. Some were a bit too commercial for my taste, but still, you learn to pick out the cherries after a while...

Why not take a look at the events lined up in March and see if there are any that interest you?

Regards,

Carl

images: screen shots taken from Proz.com

Book review: The Entrepreneurial Linguist

nospam@example.com (Carl) — Sat, 23 Nov 2013 15:09:41 +0100

Although "The Entrepreneurial Linguist" by linguists Judy and Dagmar Jenner first appeared on the book market in 2010, I have to admit it took me a while to get round to buying a copy and reading it myself. Fortunately, many of the subjects the book covers are still applicable to freelance translation work today – as the title implies, it's mostly about setting up and running a translation business long-term rather than using specific software tools to get your work done, although these are also discussed briefly.

The book is basically a practical "how to" guide and covers 11 subject areas over almost 200 pages. The choice of topics is a personal one reflecting the two authors' own interests and activities – as translators, bloggers, members of translators' associations and conference speakers. This and the fact that it focuses on ways of doing business soundly and successfully ("the business-school approach" in the title) make it stand out from other works of this kind, which try to be as general as possible. It's also not solely directed at translators in the US market – the two authors actually work in different countries, the United States and Austria. They are also sisters and spend time together in each other's country every year, which gives them a broader perspective on business than usual.

Consequently, the scope of this book is pretty wide. It sets the scene by addressing the way you should see yourself as a freelance translator, namely as an independent entrepreneur who wants to make a living from his or her skills:

"The first thing you need to do is stop thinking of yourself as 'just' a freelance linguist and to start thinking of yourself as a business. You are selling your services; therefore, you are a business."

(p. 19)

This might seem obvious, but it's worth reminding ourselves what we are actually doing from time to time as it's easy to lose sight of sometimes. The Jenners also make a point of putting things into context: "In addition, one-person businesses account for a staggering 78% of all U.S. businesses" (according to figures from 2007; p. 20).

Having discussed the best mindset to adopt, the Jenners turn to organisation and accounting, a section which contains useful tips (including the very wise insight that it might be best to get a trained accountant to help you rather than attempting to tackle the financial side of your business all by yourself, which not everyone's cut out to do). The authors then go into some detail about social media, networking, blogging and marketing (the longest sections, in fact) and subsequently talk about strategies for developing your business (in a nutshell, "no pain, no gain" and "yes, you can"!).

This is followed by sections on pricing, negotiating, professional development, getting actively involved in an association and starting up a local chapter, and getting the right balance between your work and private life. A recap in the final chapter conveniently sums up the most important points made in the book.

As I've said, this is a personal selection of topics; the sections on blogging and "giving back" won't appeal to every reader as we are all under time constraints and things like blogging and playing an active role in a professional association are time-consuming and may involve travel as well as background research. But still, there's something of value for every translator in this book. In fact, much of what's said applies to anyone who wants to set up a business of their own. A worthwhile read.

Regards,

Carl

Links

Judy and Dagmar Jenner's website on "The Entrepreneurial Linguist"

the sisters' own blog on translating and interpreting, Translation Times.

You can order a copy of the book from Lulu.com, other internet bookshops or your conventional high-street bookshop. The book is available in print and as an e-book (PDF).

image: © Judy and Dagmar Jenner, The Entrepreneurial Linguist

Scammers and identity theft

nospam@example.com (Carl) — Fri, 20 Sep 2013 09:44:39 +0200

For a while now, I've been receiving some rather odd applications for freelance work by e-mail. This prompted me to write a post about the do's and don'ts of applying for freelance work this way a little while back, which some readers will hopefully find of help for their own marketing activities. However, what I've now discovered is that most of the odd-looking applications were actually scams produced by people wanting to get assignments – and ultimately money – from gullible customers around the world.

How did I find that out? Well, simply by looking up some of the applicants' names on the Net. Many of the names that have been used seem a little strange and are actually fictitious, so it turns out. (Not all of them are, though, which makes investigation trickier.) The intriguing thing about applications of this kind is that they apparently contain lots of background information about the person that is true. Because it's been stolen from existing translators who once made their CVs available to the wrong readership by mistake!

A long directory of scammers who claim to be translators has been created by João Roque Dias, a Portuguese translator. Click here to access the page. It lists the name of the "applicant", the e-mail address they have used and the original translator whose personal details were stolen (the victims of identity theft, in other words). If you receive scam mails of this kind, but can't find the person's details on this list, then please contact the people now running the site [as of 15 Feb. 2014] and forward the messages to them so the data can be checked. Any new scammers found will then be added.

To find out more about this issue, which seems to be a big one affecting the translation industry (and many other fields as well), you might want to read the section that Proz.com has created on scammers and identity protection; click here to go to it.

There are also plenty of other sources of helpful information you can refer to, many of which are on the internet. Marta Stelmaszak, for example, has written a detailed blog post on how translators can protect the CVs they send out to prospective customers from abuse; click here to read her advice. (Among other things, she refers to an article on the BBC's website on what information you shouldn't put in a CV in the first place.)

One easy step you can take is to save your CV as a PDF file, which makes it harder for people to extract the information quickly (unless they know how). You can also write-protect the file and prevent any content from being copied by using a program like Adobe Acrobat®, say – pick the appropriate security settings before you generate the PDF file (this short video from Adobe will show you how).

If you haven't done so already, take a look at the CV you've prepared for new customers (and the personal details you've included in any internet profiles you've created on platforms such as Proz.com, Xing, LinkedIn or Facebook) and think about steps you could take to protect your own identity. This is something that's becoming increasingly necessary as the amount of networking and self-marketing we do via the internet is growing. It can be as easy as leaving out your date and place of birth and adding the words "Further details upon request" for anyone who is really interested in working with you.

And in addition to that, please think twice about sending detailed personal data to agencies en masse. Hand-pick the agencies you want to contact after checking out their websites and seeing if they are likely to be interested in receiving your application; the more you personalise your covering letter and match the requirements they specify on their website, the better your chances are of being accepted as a potential supplier of translations. By increasing the quality of the contacts you pick, you ought to find your applications become more effective and you can keep track of the agencies that have your personal details much more easily. Protect your identity – and your reputation as a translator.

Regards

Carl

Professional associations for translators

nospam@example.com (Carl) — Sun, 18 Aug 2013 21:32:42 +0200

Why should a translator want to join a professional association for linguists? What are the advantages of being a member? Is it really worth all the time and money?

Well, having been a member of a German association for translators and interpreters for a number of years now, I'd say it can definitely help a professionally minded translator in several ways. It's an opportunity to

become part of an organised and officially recognised body that represents its members' interests at various levels, both nationally and internationally

network with other translators who have joined the organisation and interact with them via a range of channels (e.g. at national AGMs, regional meetings, regular informal get-togethers of local interest groups, training events and online forums for all members)

attend formal training events arranged by the association especially for its members, which are held by experts and count towards your continuous professional development ("CPD")

obtain professional advice about your own work situation such as legal advice or advice on accounting and tax issues

benefit from special group discounts on insurance policies (e.g. indemnity insurance) and software that many members are likely to want to use (e.g. CAT tools), which the association may have negotiated

make yourself known to many more potential customers by allowing the association to publish your contact details in its public list of members and to include the details in its searchable online database, which customers can access for free

benefit from additional marketing opportunities for members such as brochures for the public, which list members who have specialised in certain fields (e.g. engineering, law or economics) and which get sent to business associations, for example.

Other services may be available to members in addition to these. My own association, the Bundesverband der Dolmetscher und Übersetzer (BDÜ), for example, has arranged for a dictionary publisher (Langenscheidt) to make some of its most popular bilingual dictionaries accessible to members online.

An annual fee is charged for membership, which varies in size among associations, but ought to cover many of the services mentioned above. If you wish to take advantage of any supplementary offerings above and beyond the standard ones in your association, you will have to sign up for them and pay an extra charge to offset the extra costs the association incurs.

One significant aspect of membership is that it entitles you to participate in the association's annual general meeting and vote on issues that affect the organisation and its members. You are also entitled to propose changes to current organisational policy or suggest new points that ought to be adopted in your opinion, which everyone present at the AGM will vote on if they are accepted as legitimate points on the agenda. So as a member, you have the opportunity to shape the association to a degree. (You can, of course, even stand for office if you feel you would like to play a direct role.)

Why not contact a translators' association in your own country or a country where your source language is spoken and find out how it could help you further your career as a translator? You'll find some links to websites and some more background information below.

Regards

Carl

image: S. Hofschlaeger / pixelio.de

Some useful links

There are several associations in Germany specifically for translators and interpreters. Here are three of the better-known ones:

BDÜ e.V.

ADÜ Nord e.V.

ATICOM e.V.

Many other associations are also listed on the Web. See Kevin Lossner's blog post on Translation Tribulations for a relatively up-to-date list of their websites. Other lists are available at Lexicool and Proz.com.

For a more critical view of translators' associations, see Kevin's post "Are professional organizations worth the bother?". (The quality of professional associations varies considerably, depending on how they are run and what funds they have at their disposal.)

Writing an effective application for freelance work

nospam@example.com (Carl) — Wed, 17 Jul 2013 13:10:49 +0200

In my recent post on applying for freelance work by e-mail, I pointed out ten basic things I feel a translator should or shouldn't do when writing to potential new customers. Actually, it's always a good idea to step back a few moments from time to time and view what marketing material you have been sending or handing out to people in a critical light. What I mean by that is identifying what's good about it as well as where there's room for improvement. (The same thing applies to telephone marketing, of course, and to other forms of self-marketing like your website and any Web 2.0 interaction you're involved in for professional reasons such as a blog, Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn).

Basically, applying for freelance work by e-mail is like sending someone you don't know yet a business card and letter of introduction:

it makes them aware of you as a person (puts you in the limelight for a short time)

it outlines what you do (explains your background) and

it tells them why you are contacting them (your purpose).

It may even go as far as stating

what makes you stand out from the crowd (your "USP", or "unique selling proposition") and

how you believe you can be of assistance to the customer (specific customer benefits).

These points ought to make it clear why it's necessary to put some thought into what you write and do your "homework" before you send off an unsolicited application by e-mail (or put it in the post, for that matter). Remember, it's now common practice for people to apply for work by e-mail, so you will need to stand out from the crowd somehow.

One basic way is by creating a visually attractive e-mail and attaching a well-structured and carefully formatted CV.

If you can, find out who to contact at the company and which e-mail address to use for your application – these details may be mentioned on their website. Address the message in a personal way if possible.

Keep the e-mail itself short, but to the point.

Mention your experience and say which subject areas you have specialised in.

Don't exaggerate here, though – no-one will believe you if you say "I specialise in engineering, law, marketing and science"; it may be the case that you've translated texts from all of these fields in the course of your career as a translator, but you are only likely to have specialised in one of them – or even in just part of a field. If you're a jack of all trades, as it were, then you haven't specialised in any of them. In my experience, some agencies are interested in working with translators who have a clear focus, while others are keen to give work to "more versatile" freelancers, so you won't be doing yourself a disservice by being frank.

Say what kind of translation work you would like to do for the company and give them an indication of your general availability. Add your main e-mail address and a phone number they can usually contact you on. (If you work at home, it would be wise to mention a line that you only use yourself, which you can set up easily enough if you have an ISDN connection, for example).

That's it, basically. Obviously, your message shouldn't contain any spelling or grammatical mistakes, and you ought to read it through again before sending it off to make sure none of the changes you've made have led to any new mistakes. It's also helpful to put the message aside for a few hours or even a whole day and then take another look at it (just like proof-reading a translation).

Good luck with your applications!

Carl

Applying for freelance work by e-mail

nospam@example.com (Carl) — Thu, 04 Jul 2013 13:49:23 +0200

Tess Whitty, a Swedish translator I know, recently wrote a post on her own blog that was about unsolicited e-mails she gets from other translators. As I read it, I nodded in agreement with each of the points she made. Take the introduction, for example:

"Almost every day, I receive emails addressed to 'Dear Sir/Madam' from freelance translators applying for a job as a freelance translator, translating into or from other languages than Swedish. This is inevitably a result of someone finding my company information in a database, among many other companies and sending out mass emails to most of them, without checking the company facts."

Same thing here!

I currently receive several e-mail applications from translators each week, just about all of which get binned within 60 seconds (I'm sorry to say) because they don't meet my basic selection criteria. It's easiest to summarise these here as a list of do's and don'ts:

10 "golden rules"

Address your e-mail personally, i.e. use the actual name of the person you're writing to, not an impersonal "Dear Sir or Madam" – it will catch their attention right away and make you stand out from the crowd.

Never send the same unsolicited e-mail application to a group of agencies or other translators – it won't be personalised or meet each person's specific needs, so it's likely to waste their time and land in the bin.

If you really do want to do point 2, don't make the e-mail addresses of all the other people you are contacting visible to the reader – this data is private and the recipients won't want to know who else you have chosen to write to.

Tailor the content of your message to the recipient by checking out their website (or blog) first of all; the more you refer to that, the more impressed the recipient will be – because you are showing them you have made an effort to find out about their company and needs. If you do translations in a language the company doesn't offer itself, then there's not much point in asking them for work, is there?

Don't mention their website or blog if you haven't taken a look at it beforehand – it's annoying for them if they can tell you haven't read the information they've put on it (or haven't read it properly). Take your time and learn something about the firm before you apply.

Only apply to a translation agency for freelance work if it offers your target language to its customers. Check out their website beforehand and see if your language is listed as one that the agency covers. If it isn't, then move on to the next potential customer on your list – your chances of finding a new business partner are much higher if you offer them something you know they need.

If an agency you are interested in working for has provided a special e-mail address for unsolicited applications on their website, then please use it. And if they have posted instructions on how to apply for work, please follow these carefully. Again, this will impress the agency as they will see you have been making an effort to find out about them.

E-mails that contain spelling mistakes or are poorly worded or structured are very likely to get binned quickly – if you are a translator, then you are a language specialist, so regard anything you write as a sample of what you can do. "If she makes mistakes in a simple e-mail like this, what will her translations be like?", the recipient will ask himself.

If you decide to write your e-mail in a language that's not your mother tongue and you feel the e-mail is important (which it is as you are trying to win a new customer and ultimately boost your income), then ask a friend or colleague who has a very good grasp of the language or is a native speaker to check it for you. After all, it ought to be as well written as any e-mail you write in your first language.

Last but not least, if you really are interested in working for a particular company, then follow the message up with a phone call to the same person a few days later. This kind of contact is more personal than e-mail correspondence and will help the recipient remember you when a suitable assignment comes in. A phone number ought to be listed on the "contact" page of their website.

These are just a few brief tips about applying for work by e-mail. If you follow this advice, chances are you'll get more (positive) responses from the potential customers you contact and a few more assignments as well. Why not try it out? Apply these "golden rules" and see if they can improve the results of your own customer-acquisition strategy. And remember: sending a prospective customer an e-mail for the first time is like handing them your business card.

Regards

Carl

Trials and tribulations of being a translator

nospam@example.com (Carl) — Wed, 03 Jul 2013 10:47:15 +0200

This month's issue of my German translation association's journal MDÜ (3/13) has just arrived in the post. This time it focuses on "human issues", namely coping with stress: the difficult or unsettling situations we experience at work, how we react to them and what we can do to cope with them better. Three of the four articles on these subjects are actually about interpreting – in court, for example, and in a medical environment:

"Mitfühlen, nicht mitleiden – Dolmetschen im medizinischen Bereich"

"Machen Sie dem Stress Beine – persönliche Bewältigungsstrategien entwickeln" (with a checklist on personal stress factors)

"Wenn Helfer Hilfe brauchen – zur psychischen Belastung beim juristischen Dolmetschen"

"Wenn es einfach zu viel wird – sekundäre Traumatisierung" (interpreting in extreme situations).

It's good to see these topics being addressed in our own trade journal, particularly as it currently has a relatively wide reach with the largest circulation of its kind in the German-speaking world (over 8,000 issues a month, apparently). Mental strain ("psychische Belastung") is something we all have to deal with at some point, and we should think about it and discuss it with colleagues and friends to find ways of handling it effectively. If we don't, it can lame us.

The second article in the above list – on stress at work – is something we will all be able to relate to personally (and the two checklists at the end of it are likely to be helpful aids we can use to reduce stress). Click here to access part of the article as a PDF file (go to the bottom of the page that appears and then click on "Titelthema").

There are three things I've noticed over the years that can be a cause of stress or anxiety at my own workplace from time to time:

assignments don't come in regularly, but in fits and starts

it's hard to predict when work is going to be coming in, which makes it difficult to plan your time in terms of what you'll be doing over the next few weeks or months

as the amount of work varies, so does your income and liquidity.

What can we do about these negative aspects of our work? Well, first of all, I'd say that what we do largely depends on what kind of person we are: introverted, extroverted, ready to pick up the phone and get the ball rolling by contacting customers and asking them about work we are likely to get from them in the near future, or asking them when they will be able to settle an outstanding bill, for example. There's no "right" way of tackling problems that will work for everyone; we all need to choose an approach that suits us personally.

Birgit Golms has emphasised this point in her excellent little book on marketing for translators and interpreters, which I reviewed here in June.

By making marketing an integral part of the working week (or month), we can

increase our general workload in the short and long term

balance out the lulls in our work, creating a more even spread of the workload

increase our monthly and annual income as well as improving our liquidity, thereby reducing the strain on our minds caused by an unsatisfactory business situation.

That's it for this post. To get some more insights and tips, why not take a look at some of the guides on marketing for small businesses available in your own language or talk to a few of your colleagues and pick their brains? Just seeing that other people are in the same position as you are can calm you down by putting things into perspective.

Regards

Carl

image: courtesy of BDÜ Weiterbildungs- und Fachverlags GmbH

Book review: "Marketing für Dolmetscher und Übersetzer"

nospam@example.com (Carl) — Tue, 04 Jun 2013 14:31:28 +0200

As the German title says, this practical little book is a basic guide on marketing and is specifically tailored to the needs of translators and interpreters. Although it's written for speakers of German, I expect much of what it has to say is equally applicable to other cultures as well, although marketing styles no doubt vary internationally.

Author Birgit Golms is an expert on the subject of marketing and holds workshops on it as well as writing articles and books on related issues (partly for the German Association of Interpreters and Translators (BDÜ), which I happen to belong to). You can tell she's familiar with the way in which translators and interpreters work and think as she provides lots of practical examples that ring a bell.

The book is a handy size – approx. 150 pages long and A5 size, so it can just about fit into your coat pocket. It's divided into four practical sections: (1) how to position yourself, (2) the basic marketing material you need, (3) how to win customers and (4) developing your own marketing strategies and putting them into practice.

One of the things that make it a bit different from many "Ratgeber" is that it's meant to be used, not just read – it includes various checklists and plenty of practical tips and links to resources on the Web. Since the guide was published in 2011, it's also fairly up to date (so most of the links will still be active) and it puts a lot of emphasis on self-marketing via the internet, e.g. by means of your own website or blog or by using social media. What I particularly liked here was the author's open-minded approach to tapping social media as a marketing resource – it's not everybody's cup of tea, and how much (and how successfully) you use it will depend on your own personality.

In my opinion, "Marketing für Dolmetscher und Übersetzer" is well worth the read for any self-employed person interested in boosting their turnover and winning new customers. At 20 euros, it's reasonably priced as non-fiction goes and the investment is quite likely to help you move your business in the direction you want it to go (and make your income flow more steadily as well thanks to the extra custom you get).

You can order the book from BDÜ Fachverlag in Berlin or from any good bookseller.

(German) ISBN: 978-3-938430-34-7

Carl

image: courtesy of BDÜ Weiterbildungs- und Fachverlagsgesellschaft mbH