When I first started translating, I was told that there were two types of translator. The specialists and the hungry. The reasoning being that, as individuals, we can’t be expected to cover all subjects and specialisms. This applies to all types of freelancer. Major corporations often have problems when they overstretch into areas they don’t master and then have do embarrassing U-turns to focus on their “core” business. So us poor freelancers have no chance!
Jack of all trades
I soon found that attacking subjects about which I had no idea was complete folly so my first paid translation was also my last medical one. Subsequently, machine tools, construction and anything vaguely scientific were crossed off the list as well. I started learning by default what I was interested in and what I was good at.
I enjoyed marketing, culture and (strangely enough), IT. I was familiar with the vocabulary and terminology used and I enjoyed the creative side of texts like that rather than the mind-numblingly dull and usually badly written engineering texts.
When I started copywriting a few years ago, I was far less naive. Applying the same rules, I started translating geek into English. That presented its own challenges! I wrote newsletters for accountants and advertising for all kinds of small business and not a single machine tool crossed my desk.
I’d made it, I was a specialist and I wasn’t hungry.
Specialists don’t work in isolation
Specialisation is fine, but we don’t work in isolation. It’s very easy, especially if you work for large organisations, to finish a job, send it off and never think about it again. Of course, our work doesn’t fly off into a vacuum to be sucked up into a corporate black hole. It has a life after it goes down the email pipes.
Translation agencies are, wrongly, particularly prickly about allowing freelancers contact with their end clients because they’re afraid of being undercut by their service provider. This rules out any real dialogue between the service provider and the end client.
So, there is no collaborative process and the only time there’s any feedback is when there’s a problem. The result is that freelancers can feel or actually be a small part in the big corporate process.
We have little or no access to the really big juicy work that we could actually do quite well because we are perceived as lot big enough.
A network of specialists
On the one hand we have to specialise to build up any kind of expertise but on the other we loose out because we can’t do all the related things. As a copywriter, I can’t design the web site that goes around my prose, I can’t code it either, but I know a man who can.
So how am I more powerful? Writing for my clients, coaxing them into social media and advising them about marketing or providing a full range of services from a network of trusted partners that give them the benefit of an agency – adverting, marketing or whatever – at a reduced cost?
We are never stronger than when we work together in groups, collaboratively, and now is the time for freelancers to come together and start bidding for some big work.
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