For the love of the job...

I was given food for thought this week by a comment made by psychologist and child development specialist Annette Karmiloff-Smith on Radio 4's The Life Scientific.

She started her career as a simultaneous interpreter with the UN (immediately my ears pricked up...hello?! Dream Job?!)... but she sounded rather dismissive of this profession, saying that a) she "learnt nothing" because she worked in so many different areas at the same time, and b) she hated not being able to have and express her own opinion.

I was a little taken aback by this view as I personally find it to be quite the opposite.

I ADORE the diversity of this work - be it interpreting or translating - and I am the envy of my friends. Far from "learning nothing", my work has allowed me to discover, and learn about in a lot of depth, certain sectors and fields which I would otherwise barely have given a second glance. Mycology. Enology. Apiculture. Soil Erosion. Castles. Wind Farms. Bridges. Grain Silos. And the list goes on...

Obviously, nobody can become a true expert in everything - and it is always recommendable, particularly in translation, to specialise in a particular area, as increases your credibility and prevents you from spreading yourself too thin - but there is always the opportunity to learn new things... if you're willing.


On Karmiloff-Smith's second point, well, I guess it's all about personal preference. I would say I'm outspoken and a good communicator, but I don't miss expressing my own opinion while I'm working. For me, it's part of the challenge - transforming someone else's words into another language and making it sound natural involves a lot of mental gymnastics and creativity at times and I focus on that and leave my soapbox at the door. Proofreading jobs offer more of an opportunity for arguing your point (or choice of words) particularly if you have a picky or stubborn client - and while I welcome the chance for some good negotiating, I actually prefer to let the original speaker/writer's words play around in my head and find the best possible translation for them than worry about having to argue all the time.

I suppose that's why I'm a translator and Annette Karmiloff-Smith isn't. Which is fine, of course. We both love our jobs and are well suited to what we do. Horses for courses and all that. It's what makes the world go round!

Getting everything in order for a productive 2013

A rather belated Happy New Year to all! I hope 2013 has started off well and that the year ahead is full of fruitful and exciting projects, both professionally and personally.

Following on from my previous blog about keeping track of how your business is doing, and in order to practice what I preach... I have spent much of the habitually rather sluggish start to the year getting up to speed with, adapting and updating my accounting and business management systems. I have found it a thoroughly motivating and refreshing experience, and I hope that my business will benefit from it in the long run.

The main area I wanted to discuss is that of specific software. There are literally hundreds of small business accounting programme out there, ranging from free to wildly expensive, and I had always been rather dismissive of them, as my own Excel spreadsheet worked perfectly well both on a daily basis and when it came to doing quarterly and annual tax returns and the like. However, in this new year I have downloaded a couple and I am trying them out to see how they fare. So far I have set up Express Accounts from NCH Software and GnuCash, both of which are free of charge for small business users and pretty straighforward despite covering pretty much all the needs of a small business for keeping the books in order. I particularly like GnuCash's different report options, which lets you generate groovy bar charts and pie charts as well as offering a clear overview of exactly what's going on for your business at any given moment.

Obviously, for many small businesses there is the option of profession-specific software. Translation is no exception.
Translation specific software includes: MultiTrans Prism, Plunet, Projetex, TOM (Translation Office Manager), or Promax, all of which have their pros and cons, but in the end I opted for Translation Office 3000 by AIT.

Okay, time to tell the truth now - I bought this  software (not at vast expense I might add) a few years ago but never really got off the ground with it as I found it time consuming to set up and rather rigid in terms of file structure. I suppose I just wasn't willing to start jumping through certain hoops in order to use something that was supposed to make my life easier rather than complicate matters more, and in the end I got fed up and returned to my trusty old system. BUT... TO3000 has been updated since then, and I was thrilled to find that its former drawbacks have been resolved, and I can now customise the folder structure exactly how I want it. Making productive use of a couple of days without any work in the diary, I got everything set up, entered (almost) all my clients on to the database and I am now using it full time. I love being able to generate quotes and invoices at the touch of a button, PLUS it comes with an extremely useful tool called AnyCount which gives you a speedy wordcount of any file(s) in seconds without having to trail back to dig out the original document or Customer PO. It offers a large selection of business reports (those groovy pie charts again!) and I have to say I'm really pleased with it! I will still need to tweak it for tax purposes (hence my foray into other accounting software) but it does allow you include a log of business expenses and keep an eye on your basic balance sheet. It has handy reminders to issue invoices and check due payments.

I am feeling so organised that I am still using my old system of jotting down jobs and invoices on a separate table and I will still use my Excel spreadsheets as a backup accounting system, but I would certainly recommend this software (or any of the others available, which I haven't tried, so cannot comment). I think it would be very useful for a beginner as well - it offers a pretty good reflection of a typical translation workflow and accommodates all sorts of potential circumstances which may not initially occur to someone just starting out on their own.

So...here's to a productive and well-organised 2013...and a business that's making money!