This is not a list of greatest ever books, just a selection totally subjective one from my bookshelf.

John Simmons – The Invisible Grail: How Brands Can Use Words to Engage with Audiences: This discusses how brands use words to engage with their audiences. It takes examples such as Innocent Drinks and Lush to show how they create not a visual identity but a narrative.

A Book About Innocent: Our Story and Some Things We’ve Learned: Not strictly a business writing book but a great example of how to write for and about a business.

Jonathan & Lisa Price – Hot Text: Web Writing That Works: a mine of information.

John Simmons – Dark Angels: How Writing Releases Creativity at Work: Is this a John Simmons love in? Probably.

David Ogilvy – Ogilvy on Advertising: This worked in a different age but so many of the truths in this book hold today.

Stephen King – On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft: Rightly or wrongly, I’ve never read a Stephen King novel and this is definitely not a business book, but it’s one of the best books I’ve read about writing generally.

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I did a silly thing the other day. I accepted a job from a regular client without asking what the subject was. It’s the kind of bread and butter job that translators rely on. 3500 words is not too short and not too long, the kind of stuff that keeps us going. All the PMs in the agency know what I like doing and what I don’t, but for once it was the big boss who called me. Perhaps I was so surprised it was him, I didn’t think to ask. More fool me. When I opened the file, I realised what the subject was. Refrigeration. Oh deep joy. I think I’d rather have my teeth pulled.

Let’s face it, life as a freelancer isn’t always perfect and we all get boring jobs to do from time to time. So how do you manage a day’s work without yawning?

Allow plenty of time

Boring jobs always take longer than they should, however well disciplined you are.

Make a plan

If it’s a translation, read the entire document first and identify the difficult bits, look for as much vocabulary as possible before you start, it’ll make the job flow better when you start. If it’s writing, do all the research first and plan it out. It’ll spread the pain out a bit and get the job done just that bit quicker.

Break it down into stages

When I was a kid, to stave off the “are we there yet?” question, my parents broke journeys down into bit-size chunks. I still do that with large jobs by counting the number of words left. It’s a great motivator because I find myself measuring performance from
one hour to the next. It also works for the short boring stuff. Writing jobs benefit from establishing milestones and achieving them. You’ll get there quicker (honest…)

Take breaks

Reward yourself with something nice. Coffee and a biscuit? A walk around the block? Twenty minutes daytime TV? Whatever works for you.

Sleep on it

I know I can hear legions of translators laughing at this. We just don’t get time to sleep on this generally because most clients don’t know the meaning of the word “reasonable deadlines”. Having extra time to review an intersting document is always a good thing, with a boring one it’s a lifeline because you’re more prone to make mistakes.

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What with plummeting rates and ever-demanding clients, life can be a bit tough for translators at the moment. Lots of businesses think that computers can produce acceptable translations, so why bother employing someone to do it?

I sit here in my comfortable Western European economy, albeit one that’s struggling a bit, and it’s easy to see the arrival of low-fee translators working in emerging economies as a threat. Quite frankly, I don’t. So what’s the best way of surviving in this new world situation?

Be better than the others

Quality is paramount in any business, but even more so in translation. It’s the job par excellence where you’re only as good as your last piece of work. Deliver quality, the best you can, all the time. Sounds obvious doesn’t it? Have you you never been tempted to cut a corner or two. “Oh, that’ll do”, “I’ll make it up next time”, the best way to lose a client’s trust is to do it gradually. A big howler can often be forgiven, 5 mediocre jobs might not be. Which means you should

Cultivate your relationships

Your clients are all human beings. They have husbands, wives and partners. They have kids, they have interests and they have problems. Basically they all have lives. Just like you. Just talk to them, if you get the opportunity, meet with them, take them out to lunch. A strong personal relationship with your clients will help you weather the storm when things do go wrong (and they will).

Specialise

The best way of making yourself the best is to specialise in a limited number if subjects and turn down any job, however big, in a subject area you’re not too sure about. I was mad enough when I first started to take on almost everything that was offered to me. My first job was medical (how mad was that?), I did engineering, a 9,000 word construction job without a single punctuation mark and more than one tooling machine job. I learnt my lesson pretty quickly. Remember that there are two types of translator, the specialist ones and the hungry ones.

Read

In both source and target languages. Especially in the target. Read in your specialist areas because that will keep you up to date with modern language but also modern and classical literature because that will teach you style. Remember, you are first and foremost a writer in your mother tongue. You just happen to be able to translate from another language.

Target markets that you’re interested in

It’s just common sense to target areas you are interested in because the work you do will be better. You would be very lucky to only get interesting jobs, but a high proportion will be stimulating. Spreading your scope too much will mean you attract jobs that you’re not good at and you will invariably find boring.

Customer service

Rule one of customer service (in fact the only rule of customer service), create expectations and exceed them. So always deliver on time, and when you can, early. There is no excuse for not doing this. When life gets in the way and things do go wrong, you must communicate with your client. No-one likes being kept in the dark. And often you have more time than you think because the real deadline is further away than you’ve been told. Just pick up the phone and have the conversation.

Admit to your mistakes

No-one (not even you) is perfect. We all have bad days from time to time. Admitting to it and learning from the mistakes you made will drastically reduce the chances of it happening again. Failing to own up will only make things worse.

When your client is wrong, stand your ground.

I had a client last year that radically changed the text of a marketing brochure I’d translated (marketing agencies, always think they know better!). The modified text was riddled with errors. I wrote back listing them all and why they were wrong. They paid up.

Stay away from aggregator sites

Bidding for jobs on line may seen like a good idea. Unfortunately, you’ll get into a price war which will only end up with one result. You’ll perhaps make a living, but it won’t be a great one. Apply these other techniques with a few carefully targeted agencies or direct clients and you’ll be a fulfilled translator and a (slightly) richer one.

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Warning: this post contains comments of a personal nature. They are my opinions and describe my life experience. If you are family, perhaps you should read them in order to understand me a bit more. If you are not my family, well, have a read anyway.

I speak as a bilingual adult. I learned French as a teenager and into my twenties. I wasn’t born in France, my parents aren’t French, I didn’t go to school in France (although I did go to University in France later). I learnt my second language the hard way. So was it worth it?

Slipping from one to another

I think what I love is the ability to jump seamlessly from one language and culture to another. This is always easier in the kind of bilingual work environment in which I found myself in the 1980s, but now my desk, computer(s) and my bookshelves are full of documents, audio and video in English and in French. All the clichés a true, it is a window on another world and a different way of seeing the environment in which we live. This may be pretentious but speaking another language teaches you humility and tolerance.

Career opportunity?

Not sure about that one. I spent 20 years living in France. For a long time, I thought that speaking two languages was an end in itself. Here’s a bit of careers advice, it’s not. Professional French (or any other language for that matter) speaker is not a job. For most of the first part of my time there, I was a travel agent in Paris where having English as a second language was a distinct advantage. When I got to Rennes it wasn’t. Lesson number one, in a working environment in France, English is a second language. You do actually need another skill in order to make it.

And what about your mother tongue?

Because of all my efforts to assimilate, I got to speak very good French. So good that people thought I was French. Well done me. That made me acutely aware of the language I was born with. This was probably the reason why I first became a translator (apart from being hungry) and then started writing. That was the other skill I needed.

It’s all about the culture

This is a vast area that can’t be covered in a few hundred-word blog post. My life would be poorer without my ability to understand Jacques Brel in the original. Ne Me Quitte Pas is simply the best love song ever written. The beauty of Le Plat Pays, Vezoule and Amsterdam describe places better than any travel book ever could. Brel has been badly served by his translators. Amsterdam and Next (Au Suivant) are exceptions, but If You Go Away (Ne Me Quitte Pas) simply doesn’t the desperation of the original and the mawkish Seasons in the Sun (Le Moribond) is just atrocious. Brel conveys pathos like no other. He’s happy and sad at the same time. He talks and sings about real things, real emotions and real-life situations. He’s as close as songwriting gets to poetry.

So what’s the conclusion?

Of course it was worth it. The thirteen-year old me who decided he wanted to speak fluent French would have been happy with the outcome. When I was in my 20s I wasn’t entirely sure where I belonged, I’d often say I had one foot either side of the English Channel. Even now, I’d like to be able to spend more time in France than I do. But I’ve got the identity thing sorted. I’m a European first and foremost. As Eddie Izzard says on his Twitter profile, a British European.

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The New Scientist predicts that by 2020 there may be two billion people speaking English across the world. Only 300 million of those will be native speakers. At that point English, Spanish, Hindi, Urdu and Arabic will have an equal number of native speakers.

Whilst English is not the most spoken language in the world, it is certainly the most influential. Varieties of it can be heard across the world that certainly wouldn’t be recognised in the English shires. So that begs the question, do we (us native English speakers) own our language any more?

What has become my language has come a long way. From the remnants of the Latin left behind by the Romans, it has been influenced and bastardised by Scandinavians, Germans and the French. It produced some of the world’s greatest writers in Chaucer and others even before it was recognisable to the modern ear. Then Shakespeare got hold of it and made an incalculable contribution to making it a language that would conquer the world like no other has ever done before.

In its conquering of the world, it has mutated. There are areas where the language that is spoken is as far from the way I speak on a daily basis as sixteenth century Shakespeare or even fourteenth century Chaucer. A century from now, there’s every chance that my grandchildren will not understand their American counterparts.

Even now, there are varieties of English developing in South East Asia that are taking it off in completely new directions. This is not hip-hop or any other sub-culture, these are new languages.

Singlish is a “Singaporean creole” spoken by a majority of Singaporeans and consisting of a mixture of modern English, Malay and Chinese. I’ve never heard it but I’m pretty certain I wouldn’t understand it.

Panglish is a version of the language that may develop as spoken by non-native speakers. As such, constructs that they find difficult may be eliminated. “The” will be replaced by
a “z” or an “s” and similarly the “s” will be lost from the third person singular removing the last piece of verb conjugation that remains to us.

Pedants may harrumph in the letters pages of The Times of London or make endless complaints to the BBC and I will still maintain that the “incorrect” use of language negates its ability to communicate. But lazy English is not the same as new English. BBC broadcaster John Humphrys holds that correct English is not about strictly adhering to a set of hard and fast rules like to some extent French is, but about maintaining a commonly held corpus of words and usage that is understood by all.

The French (and French Canadians) try to protect their language from outside influences – notably “Anglo-Saxon” – rather like King Canute trying to hold back the waters. English doesn’t have that luxury (or curse). It has developed as it has because is ready to accept outside influences, even French ones. Nobody owns it.

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As a speaker of English it’s very easy to feel superior. After all, everyone speaks English don’t they? In a world that is increasingly anglophone, why bother learning another language?

A survey by travelsupermarket.com shows that although they love to travel, more than half of British holidaymakers claim there is no point making an effort to speak the local language because everyone speaks English. 45% of those questioned said that locals acted negatively when spoken to in English. Now there’s a surprise. Imagine their reaction when someone speaks to them in French, Spanish or even worse, in German.

Not everyone is so negative. The other half of those questioned were embarrassed by their paltry efforts, ranging from learning the basics and key phrases to using phrase books. 11% of people in the South West took time ahead of leaving to learn the language.

On the other side of the coin, there is considerable resistance in non-English speaking countries to the tidal wave. I lived in France for a long time where there was and still is much controversy about the influence of English words and culture. A law was passed in the 1990s imposing a quota of 40% French songs on radio stations.

The French have taken on English words, often incorrectly converting a verb into a noun, like a “parking”. They’ve incorporated expressions like “making of” and “coming out” as though they were single words, or perhaps more controversially “un Black” to avoid saying “un Noir”. The effects of saying things in a foreign language are strange sometimes.

The Académie Française huffs and puffs against all this but has had the odd success. It has been successful in replacing Walkman with “baladeur” and email with the Canadian expression “courriel”, having tried unsuccessfully to impose the rather silly “mél”.

But maybe all this is in vain, according to Google’s Eric Schmidt, English will no longer dominate in 5 years time. Everyone won’t be speaking English.

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Anyone can write can’t they? So why bother with a professional?

One of the main problems I have trying to sell writing is that it is something that everyone thinks they can do or should be able to do themselves. For some reason, small business owners often think that no-one can convey their message like they can. This is strange because they readily give up control of designing brochures or web sites and even photography. They see do-it-yourself writing as a cost cutting exercise. You don’t need to go as far as hiring the one in the picture (OK, yes it would be difficult, and even if you could, not many would be able to afford him), but there are a number of compelling reasons why hiring a writer will save you time and money.

Quality. Your content will be the best. In your work, you are are an IT specialist, a financial advisor or a damn good painter and decorator. In fact, you are the best at what you do. Aren’t you? So is your writer. He will give you persuasive copy that really gets to the people you want to target.

Another view. A good professional writer will have experience of a lot of different sectors. He will be able to draw on that experience to provide you with a second set of eyes and help you develop your ideas.

Impact. Writing copy for marketing goes way beyond knowing where the spell checker is and how to use apostrophes. It’s a specialism that involves knowing how to present your product so it stands out from the rest. A specialist writer will also be able to improve your Google rankings (and by the way, if anyone says they can guarantee to get you to the top of Google, they’re lying. They can’t).

Time saving. It’s almost certain that a professional will write for you faster than you would. Even if he doesn’t, it frees you up to do more important things. I can do a competent job of painting my house. If I hire a professional, I’m not tied up doing work that is not benefiting my business, I get a better job done and I can earn the money to pay for it.

Perception. Some people perceive pictures better, others are better with words. Generally it’s a combination of the two. The right side perceives images and the left takes in the words. You can mess up a perfectly good design with rubbish words and vice versa. Work with writers AND designers to ensure your message gets across.

In the final analysis, you are professional in what you do, so is a writer. You really should be working together.

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We all have different reasons for learning a foreign language. It may be for work, family reasons or just sheer pleasure (strangely enough!). It’s not a easy process though, it’s not just a question of learning a body of words, a language is also a culture and a way of looking at the world.

1. Don’t be afraid of ridicule. It’s part of the process of learning a language. If other people don’t point out your mistakes, who else will?

2. Listen to as much as you can.  The Internet has made every language in the world easily available to anyone that wants to learn it. It doesn’t matter how much you understand, put it on for background. Just listen to the sounds of the words and the music with the rhythm of the langaue. When I was learning French, I only had long wave radio to turn to. I listened to RTL for a couple of years on and off and learnt how to do the accent.

3. Vocabulary lists. When you first start learning, the main obstacle to having any kind of conversation is a lack of knowledge of verbs and nouns. Unfortunately, if you want to grow your vocabulary fast, there’s no real substitute for buying a basic address book, writing new words down in alphabetical order and learning them. This can also be done on a spreadsheet. Of course, if you’re living in the country of the language your learning, you’ll have the advantage of hearing new words in their context repeatedly and they’ll be learnt quite naturally.

4. Use any excuse to practice. Seek out foreign community groups, go on holiday, learn the language with someone else. Talk to anyone – even if they don’t understand you. When you’ve reached a decent level of proficiency, you could try watching foreign language films with English subtitles to improve your skills. Or if you’re exceptionally gifted reading books to learn from scratch.

5. Patience. Learning a language takes a long time. It took you three years to learn your mother tongue. Even then, you were missing a lot of vocabulary. It will take you a lot of time to reach any kind of fluency, especially if you don’t live in a country where the language is spoken. A few years ago, there was a headline in one of the British tabloids bemoaning the fact that Claudio Ranieri, erstwhile manager of Chelsea, had been in the country for two months and STILL didn’t speak English. As the saying goes, the difficult we do immediately, the impossible takes a little longer.

It must be said that the best and some would say only real way of learning a language however is to live and work in a country where it is spoken once you have the basics.

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I was pretty good in French classes at school. I could write it well and understood most of the things that were put in front of me. When it came to speaking more than the stock answer that was expected of me however, it was torture. I was constantly looking for the perfect sentance rather than just getting the words out in the wrong order and risking falling flat on my face. Years later, my French assistant at the time still remembered trying to almost physically extract the words from me. Just how I was still talking to my French assistant (and still am) years later is a completely separate story that I may tell one day. The point here is that I was afraid of ridicule and was frustrated that I couldn’t express myself in the way I wanted.

After the end of my second year at university, I lived and worked in Paris for a couple of months. I remember going in on the first day and being shown the basics of what I was expected to do. After a couple of hours I was asked to pick up the phone. By then I was able to string together more than a few words, I could handle myself in a conversation, but speaking on the telephone in a foreign language is another level completely.

For two weeks I swam in a sea of words of which I only understood about 70%. I learnt technical vocabulary the hard way and lived by the seat of my pants using the words I did know to work out the ones I didn’t. I was ridiculed and complained at by the people I spoke to but I sure as hell wasn’t going to ask outright. I was taking this going native stuff seriously despite the problems it was causing me.

I lived in a chambermaid’s room on the fifth floor. The only washing facility was a wash basin on the room, so I often took a morning shower at the train station at Montparnasse. One morning I asked the rather imposing lady that officiated on the front desk if it was possible to have a “peignoir” (dressing gown) rather than a “peigne” (comb). The thunderous look she gave me had me convinced that I’d said something wrong so I didn’t persue the matter. It was only later when I was safely on the metro that I realised my error.

In another incident, a friend of mine had a cat with fleas (puces – beware if you’re scared by rude words here). She went to the chemist and asked for “quelque chose pour dépuceler ma chatte” ( I’d like something to “deflower” my fanny). I think the pharmacist kept a straight face and worked out what she wanted. Karen took it all in good humour although she may have been cringing internally.

Much more recently, I was on holiday in Spain in September and felt the same pangs of annoyance at having my extremely basic Spanish corrected. When I can’t think of a word I revert to French as though I’m thinking, “default foreign language = French”. My wife, on the other hand, hardly speaks a word of Spanish and really doesn’t care. She’d love to be able to speak it properly but certainly isn’t averse to pointing when required to get something she wants in a shop.

Ridicule is part of learning a language. I’ve got over it now mainly because I’m 30 years older and more mature, but I do know how excruciating it can be. Call it a rite of passage.

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During World War II, sausages contained large amounts of water. As the water turned to steam, they had a tendency to explode. Hence the name (in the UK at least), bangers.

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