Hail, friends. I'm writing to you today on Friday, when according to all my stated plans, I should have done this on Wednesday. Well, sometimes I forget or get swamped with work and I do miss a post, as you might have noticed lately. But that's okay; this is just a blog, and as informative and useful a tool as I'd like it to be for you, at the end of the day it's a purely frivolous addition to your translating diet.
But, there are some things that as language professionals (I love that term, it almost makes us sound dangerous), we need to bring a more fastidious approach to. Deadlines, invoicing, fulfilling promises of cooperation and keeping appointments when we make them. Filing taxes, paying bills - these are but a few examples of the staples of a translator's life, especially if you're freelance and working from home as many of us do.
Recently, I've had a few experiences with student translators, and with some older, experienced agency staff that have made me think again about Personal Responsibility. Yes, with capital letters nawet! I don't want to be a drag, but it's an important thing and one that I always mention in my lectures to student translators and so on. It's also something that it never hurts to be reminded of, no matter what your age or experience.
What do I usually have to say about it? (Forgive me, I'm a Gemini, talking is one of my favourite things ;). As it applies to translators, I usually break it down into three categories: discipline, ethics, behaviour, and attitude. These are all mental, abstract things that obviously you can't learn from a book, but as they apply to being a translator, by the end of your formal academic training you'll have the foundations of them anyway. Even so, if you then go straight into freelancing, you'll have little direct physical contact with other people in your field - as opposed to if you went into a translating office and had to work with them every day.
There's a lot to be said for going that route, but it's largely another topic and one that we covered briefly back here. What's good about it though is that you quickly learn about doing your work on time and with a minimum of fuss. One problem with working from home is that it's easier to whip up all sorts of drama and shenanigans in your head when there's a problem. It's easier to mis-read the tone of an email, especially if it's not written in the native language of the writer. In short, you can potentially get into all sorts of mess by not having your colleagues right there with you. I know this because I've done it both ways - from home, and in an office. (After a few years of working with people of different nationalities, you'll also come to understand their cultural quirks and you'll see some of the patterns behind the national stereotypes that float around).
As a student, you have a certain leeway built into your deadlines. Of course, you have to get your work back on time, and it has to be the best and has to conform to all sorts of formatting rules etc etc itd itp. Later on, if you do Master's or Post-Grad degrees, the schedules become even looser, esp. with wandering professors who sometimes forget they have students who need consultation and so on.
But this all changes the moment you take a job from a client. They choose you to do their translation, and a price is agreed - that's your money - and a deadline. The deadline comes from the fact that they have a whole life which you know nothing about, and for whatever reason their translation needs to be available from that time onwards. Of course, this is largely based on doing direct deals with clients; with agencies it's a different story because very often they'll push you like a donkey to finish the work a.s.a.p., and then two weeks later casually say, 'Oh, there are all kinds of problems with this text, you naughty translator. Please check all this stuff.' And you think, 'Shit, if I had a week to do it, how come they had two to check it?' Yeah, it sucks, but that's the business - and another part of personal responsibility is not freaking out when you are presented with your own mistakes - whether they're valid or not. But I digress.
It all changes in this situation (as compared to being a student writing a thesis or papers etc) because now you are being paid for your work. And of course, any time money is involved, especially hundreds of clams for big, long, important documents, everyone becomes very, very sensitive. And whilst you're working with new clients or agents, and you're still not sure if you can trust them to give you a proper ST or even pay you afterwards without a load of song and dance, and they're still not sure that you're the right one of the eleventy billion translators to entrust with their work - then you have to be The Big Guy for everyone involved. Your responsibility now is to your client (doing the best job you can), yourself (doing the best job you can and getting paid for it), and to the gas/electricity/landlord/ZUS/shoe shop (paying your bills and being a responsible human being generally).
Okay, enough already. Pompous Englishman, telling us the obvious! Yeah, well, sometimes the obvious is not as obvious as it should be. And if you can endure another few seconds of my terrible over-bearing sermon before I disappear to prepare the fun stuff for Sunday, it is my own belief that humility is the greatest asset a human being can have. From it, all other virtues flow. The lack of humility is represented by Ego - and ego in a translator (or proofreader!) is a veeeeery dangerous thing...
Enough, I'm gone already! :D
Jim :)
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