ITI Bulletin cover, July - August 2009

A big hello to readers who have found their way here from my recent article in the ITI Bulletin. You might find these posts of particular interest:

1. Twitter: this director’s cut - screencasts of Twitter in action, including examples of professionals who are doing it right and a live demo of another kind of Twitter tool called TwitKit.
2. ITI Conference round-up: a social media perspective - a full write-up of a side to the conference you may not even know existed (the Bulletin article was an extract of this).
3. The royal we: why small is the new big - a perspective on why setting our sights low as freelancers can reap rewards.
4. The value of professional organisations: another view - ideas on the value of professional organisations to newly-established translators.
5. If you’ve had enough of hearing how essential social media is, try these posts for a slightly different perspective: A healthy dose of scepticism and 7 ways NOT to use Twitter for business purposes.
6. Finally, see what you think of my series of short interviews with professionals in the translation world: 5 Qs.

Enjoy!

Posts on related topics:

1. A healthy dose of scepticism Ron Miller, a technology journalist in the US, talks a...
2. Article of the week Interesting article on value of blogs as a networking tool,...
3. Do Freelancers Do It Better? If you’re thinking about taking the plunge to freelance, or...

I was surprised to feel my face stretch into a smile of recognition this morning during my regular industry review. In asking himself if translators should care how much their colleagues charge, translator and programmer Ryan Ginstrom summed up what I found myself trying to express only yesterday in an aborted message to a mailing list.

Translator mailing lists are full of discussions about low rates, unqualified colleagues, unreasonable clients and unrealistic deadlines. (And when I say “discussions”, I mean complaints.) There’s nothing wrong with letting off a little steam from time to time, but I usually avoid these kinds of threads like the plague. What more can be gained from yet another indignant rant about how everyone else is doing everything wrong all of the time?

Ryan says:

I generally have no problem with what other translators want to charge, and wouldn’t take kindly to other translators trying to dictate how much I should charge. If another translator can offer the same quality as me and charge less, good for them. If there are enough cheaper translators that all the demand in my segment is taken, then I need to lower my rates. Conversely, if there aren’t enough translators, and clients are asking me to do more work than I can handle, then I need to raise my rates.

I’m with Ryan on this one: it’s called running a business and it’s really not that complicated.

Incidentally, I feel the same way about accreditation, marketing and working conditions. That is, while it’s good to be aware of what your colleagues are doing and the wider impact of your actions, as a freelancer you need to make your own decisions, then put your head down and get on with it.  That means you’re not always going to agree with how your colleagues package their services and it’s completely up to you to change your conditions if you’re not happy with them - no-one else is going to do it for you. Frighteningly simple, isn’t it?

I prefer to focus on what other translators do well, to understand the nitty-gritty of their successes so I can think about how I might apply these techniques to how I do things. There are SO many translators who produce good quality work and earn a good living, without recourse to long hours, unethical practices or nervous breakdowns. The problem is we rarely hear about them - and why should we? They are busy doing what they do well and they don’t need to blow their own trumpets. If we truly want to raise standards in the industry, these are precisely the kinds of professionals we need to highlight.

Image by Bob.Fornal via Flickr

Posts on related topics:

1. Knowing your worth Pamela Slim over at Escape from Cubicle Nation has an...
2. 5 Qs with Betti Moser With a background in landscape planning and several years’ freelance...
3. Spit happens sometimes GREAT post by Kristen Fischer over at Freelance Switch addressing...

Presenting

Some background

This year was only the second since 2003 that I did not attend the conference in person. I did seriously consider arranging a trip back to Europe based around the conference, but last year decided to focus my resources on events around the Asia-Pacific region instead. Then late last year, Philippa and I were invited by the organising committee to present a paper on social media, based on our own experiences of applying these tools to our everyday business activities. The idea was that we could also demonstrate some of the possibilities of web 2.0 by working together and ultimately, presenting, with me based in Brisbane and Philippa in London. It was an exciting idea and Philippa and I got to work.

I do not consider myself to be social media “expert” but I am aware that I am one of a relatively small number of professional translators actively and visibly using social media as part of my everyday business practices. For example I joined LinkedIn in late 2006 and Twitter in April 2008, and in between I’ve explored countless other applications and tools and developed strong ideas on how to use social media in the professional sphere.

We put a lot of thought into the level at which we would pitch our presentation. Some ITI members are active users of social media while some still think Google is the work of the devil - we wanted to offer food for thought, at the very least, to all levels. It was also important to us to make clear that while social media may not be a business necessity for every translator (because I don’t believe it is), it is more than a passing fad because it represents a massive shift in the way technology is currently used in all spheres of our lives.

Our aim was to speak for about 10 minutes each, with two clear parts to the session: a high-level overview of social media and then a quick demonstration of 1 - 2 tools, all within the context of business use by language professionals.  We knew we would have to do more than just dazzle people with an all-singing, all-dancing software ensemble. So we put quite a bit of time into getting some perspective on our ideas, by researching theories and applications, reading case studies and compiling examples of good practice. All this background work reassured me that we were delivering relevant and useful knowledge, not just parroting a gimicky, flash-in-the-pan marketing message.

Preparation

Philippa found mind mapping helped her clarify her thoughts around the subject, while I work best with OmniOutliner. We used Delicious to share relevant references and articles, and used Skype to IM and talk to you each other. We worked on our abstract at the same time using Zoho Writer and used Zoho Show to pull our slides together.

We considered setting up some kind of community or group around the theme of social media for translators as a way to get a better idea of our audience prior to the conference, and as a centralised source of information following the conference. However after weighing up a couple of factors we both decided against it. Although the idea is an exciting one and it would be great to see it work in the future, I’m getting to a stage where I realise I’m not really interested in “closed-circuit” groups and forums. I think they’re only fruitful when there’s a very specific set of circumstances in place, and when they don’t work then they are a real waste of time - not something any of us as freelancers can afford. I much prefer the more open, flexible approach offered by blogging communities, for example.

Presenting

We looked into a couple of different web conferencing, presentation and remote-classroom style environments early on in our planning and DimDim seemed to best suit our needs. It is free, offers voice and video streaming, and features include the ability to share presenter controls, desktops, web browser, whiteboard and documents.

In practice, we found the voice option too delayed for our purposes, and the shared web browsing feature didn’t work with any of the sites we wanted to demonstrate. As a workaround to these issues, we decided to use Skype for video and audio, and our usual browser but via DimDim’s shared desktop feature. I’ve spoken before about being wary of relying Skype for business-critical purposes but it seemed like the best option for us. ‘Rehearsals’ went really well once we tweaked our settings to what we were trying to achieve and it was exciting to see it all coming together.

I presented from my home office in Brisbane, with very little change to my existing workstation set-up. Philippa used her own laptop in the presentation hall, which was hooked up to a projector and the venue’s sound system. We were both working from headsets with microphones to reduce ambient sound and interference. We had a dry run at lunchtime in London on Saturday (about 10pm Saturday in Brisbane) so we knew everything was in good working order. About an hour before the presentation started on Sunday morning (Sunday evening in Brisbane), I logged on to DimDim, created a meeting with the settings we had tested and sent Philippa an invitation. I then uploaded our presentation into the environment and prepared the applications and my browser with the pages I wanted to share.

Before the conference started on Sunday, Philippa logged into our DimDim meeting and called through on Skype for a final brief chat. She then arranged her desktop so the Skype video window was in front of the presentation (see picture here*).

I sat patiently while the hall filled, introductions were made and Philippa ran through her part of the presentation. I could see Philippa’s face and a corner of the white screen behind her in my Skype video window, and of course our presentation with the pointer she was controlling in our shared DimDim workspace. It was difficult to keep focussed and remember that I had an audience of 200 people at this point and I was glad I’d thought this part out in advance. If I’d gotten distracted or forgotten the video was running, the potential for embarrassment would have been huge.

When it came to my turn to present, I was a bit dismayed to hear a strong echo on the Skype audio line - not something we’d encountered in our rehearsals the day before, or even earlier that morning. The echo was clearly not an issue conference-side, but it made it pretty hard to concentrate on what I was saying right to the end of my sentences - my voice is bad enough the first time around without hearing it bounce back at me several seconds later Once I got going this wasn’t so distracting, but I’m not sure I didn’t sound a bit more like a strangled cat than usual.

It seems there was a slight technical issue conference-side too. Although everything looked good visually from my side, apparently conference attendees couldn’t see when I changed slides. This was easily remedied, as Philippa just opened the screenshots we had prepared in advance and stored locally, should just such an issue arise. The downside of this was that I was flying blind - I couldn’t see when these were being displayed, nor could I use the shared pointer to indicate what I was talking about. As a result, I had to be more explicit about the sections I wanted to highlight at any given time and Philippa had to work hard to ensure the correct slide was displayed. I only had her facial expressions to go on thoughout, so it helped that she looked so calm and in control. I was also very glad we were familar with each other’s content and had worked on our presentations together a couple of times.

It was hard for me to fully assess the impact of these issues on the audience. Of course, I’d love to think no-one noticed a thing, and that we made it all look easy and smooth and effortless. But actually, I imagine it must have been distracting and even at times confusing, which is obviously something we’d hope to avoid the next time [Update: I've now had a thorough debrief with Philippa - very satisfying!].

From a presenter’s point of view, these were small hitches. They were easily managed because we had effectively planned for them in discussions and in a contingency document. But from a personal perspective it was frustrating to dial off and know there were hitches whose impact I was unable to assess for at least 24 hours, and that I might have been able to control had I been there in person. Ultimately, I think this was probably the most difficult part of presenting remotely - not the technical problems, or even the lack of audience rapport or feedback, but a discomfiting lack of control over the presentation experience overall.

What a buzz - I truly cannot wait to do it all over again!

Micro-blogging

Nick Rosenthal proposed the hashtag #iticonf as a way of tracking conference mentions on Twitter. I also ran searches on Jaiku and Plurk and found no mentions of the conference on either. This is unsurprising given the slightly different user profile for these tools, which do not include any ITI members as far as I am aware.

There were about 25 messages with the #iticonf hashtag prior to the actual conference itself, with a definite increase as the big day approached. Only one translator (@nickrosenthal) blogged live from the conference in terms of actually sharing info and impressions. Five other attendees posted general comments and reactions during the two day event, with varying frequencies. To date, there have been about five conference mentions and two re-tweets by non-participants though this may rise as more people come online this morning in the UK (re-tweets are an indicator of interest from the wider community).

Usernames of conference attendees who have used the #iticonf hashtag as of 18 May, noon Brisbane time, in order of message frequency (roughly):

• @nickrosenthal
• @philippahammond
• @serenadorey
• @iwandavies

And by non-attendees:

• @sarahdillon
  
• @matthewbennett
• @FabreuJ
• @localization
• @textclick

Blogging

I ran a series of interviews with conference presenters in the lead-up to the weekend. Five questions were emailed to approximately 50 presenters via the ITI Office, and 11 presenters emailed me back with responses - a reasonable response rate all things considered. My stated goal was to run 15 interviews, but had decided that realistically I would be happy with 10.

Blog search engine Technorati revealed that five blogs published posts on the 2009 ITI Conference, in addition to this one. I’m certain there were more brief mentions of the conference that were not picked up. The blog posts were found at:

• Serena Dorey’s Marketing Translation
• Nick Rosenthal’s Oversetter
• Christine Schmit’s Polyglot Blog
• The Translator’s Scrapbook (author unknown)
• A press release by ITI Corporate member TTC Language Services pulled into a directory - now a dead link

Other

A LinkedIn event was also created for the conference. I thought this was a great idea as it promoted the event in a wider arena, i.e. not just among translators. I was also pleased to abe able to indicate that I was presenting as I felt it added value to my LinkedIn profile overall.

Overall Conclusion

I believe remote presenting is definitely a viable option for major international translation and interpreting (T&I) industry events such as this. There are some clear limitations and risks, but for the right presenter and with appropriate on-the-ground support, these limitations could be easily overcome to ensure a highly polished and most importantly, meaningful learning experience for attendees. Potential presenters are scattered all over the globe in our industry and it would be a shame for an event to limit itself to geographically-available speakers. Saying that, there is no doubt that presenting in person really is the ideal scenario for all concerned. After all, T&I professionals attend conferences for so much more than just the speakers.

It’s also been fascinating to do a quick and dirty overview of the coverage across multiple social media channels of such a major international event. As far as I know (and feel free to correct me if I’m wrong), there was no formalised plan for social media coverage of this particular conference so its organic nature makes it all the more interesting. However I wouldn’t necessarily suggest that T&I event organisers should force this coverage either: I believe there is value in allowing it to grow from the grassroots.

I am certain that we’ll see an increase in this kind of coverage at future T&I events, not least because I have seen it happen already in many other industries. What will be interesting is the impact it will have on attendees, presenters, and organisers: To what degree will this coverage be actively managed? Will speakers incorporate an increasingly busy backchannel into their presentations? What ever-inventive ways will attendees chose to broadcast their experiences of such events? Whatever way it goes, others have gone before us and we can learn from them while still making these tools our own.

* Thanks to Paul Appleyard for the picture - a great souvenir!

Posts on related topics:

1. Social Media for Freelance Translators I went to a conference for solo business owners...
2. Using Twitter to micro-blog live Check out Philippa Hammond’s write-up of the Translator as Strategic...
3. In defense of Facebook I’m SO tired of reading articles like this about how...

Check out the rest of the ITI Conference programme here.

1. In two sentences, please describe what you’ll be talking about at the conference, and what translation and interpreting (T&I) professionals will gain from hearing it.

I will be talking about one of my main specialisations, games localisation. I will touch upon the industry in general, how it has evolved in the last few years and the challenges that the industry is facing at the moment, as well as attempting to provide some solutions. I think it’s a shame that games localisation does not receive the same level of recognition as other more traditional specialisms, and that many people still think that, because they are for kids they must be easy to translate and anybody could do it, a myth I’m hoping to dispel.

2. If you could wave a magic wand and change one thing to make your workplace more sustainable, what would you do?

Like most translators, I use a lot of paper when revising, so I would create a type of ink that would disappear in 48 hours after printing (not in my hands though!), so I could reuse the paper again and again without even having to recycle it.
In terms of sustaining my career, I would love to have a crystal ball that would reveal the market trends and new technologies for the next few years, so I could adopt them before my competitors!

3. Which business leader, politician or public figure do you most respect?

This might seem slightly surprising, but I admire Victoria Beckham for the way she has transformed herself from a former singer and regular “celebrity” into a very successful businesswoman who is clearly extremely passionate about what she does – whilst still looking fantastic every day!

4. To what degree do you feel involved in and supported by your professional community, and why?

I think I have been very lucky in that respect, because nowadays it’s easier than ever to communicate with other professionals. Even if I work from home most of the time, I keep in touch with other translators and interpreters regularly by e-mail, Internet groups and attending meetings and events, and there are always lots of people ready to give me a hand if I have any problems or questions. Similarly, I also try to give something back to the industry, and that is one of the reasons why I decided to put myself forward as Chair of the NWTN.

5. Freeform - here’s where you are free to riff on anyone or anything, good or bad, or just share a pearl of wisdom.

Mmm, this is tough question. I think the best piece of advice I can give you is to put yourself in your clients’ shoes and try to understand what they expect to get out of the experience when they contract you. Try to provide excellent customer service, adapted to their needs, and they should keep coming back (provided your work is of the best quality, of course).

Thans for answering my questions, Silvia. Enjoy the conference.

This is the eleventh in a series of short interviews run in the lead-up to the ITI International Conference on 16th - 17th May.

Posts on related topics:

1. Experts in the Industry: Suki Chung, Chinese and English translator and interpreter Suki Chung is a Chinese and English translator and interpreter...
2. Experts in the industry: Philippa Hammond, French, Spanish, Portuguese to English translator Philippa Hammond is a French, Spanish and Portuguese to English...
3. Experts in the Industry: Stefan Mikulin, French, German, Polish, English translator and interpreter Stefan Mikulin is a freelance interpreter and translator covering French,...

Check out the rest of the ITI Conference programme here.

1. In two sentences, please describe what you’ll be talking about at the conference, and what translation and interpreting (T&I) professionals will gain from hearing it.

My slot ‘Back to the Drawing Board’ in the panel discussion on ‘Contingency Planning’ is based on the pros and contras of client liaison and
building on existing business strengths (realizing one’s so-called USP). In a nutshell, I emphasize the value of developing effective communication - on all levels.

2. If you could wave a magic wand and change one thing to make your workplace more sustainable, what would you do?

I would install all those software programmes out there that make the tedious tasks faster and easier … but is that ’sustainable’ given the extra electricity I am consuming?

3. Which business leader, politician or public figure do you most respect?

Historian, David Starkey - what an impressive array of answers he recently provided on BBC’s ‘Question Time’.

4. To what degree do you feel involved in and supported by your professional community, and why?

I  am really impressed with the friendly and open networking opportunities of all colleagues in the ITI - which reminds me, I must renew membership to the regional groups.

5. Freeform - here’s where you are free to riff on anyone or anything, good or bad, or just share a pearl of wisdom.

The translation profession attracts many highly qualified, interesting and inquisitive individuals. Against this backdrop, it is always amazing that some clients believe a good translation can be acquired for ‘old rope’. Yet, when returning with the question ‘can you just fix this mess - quickly?’ - it appears they never learn that good quality also merits a fair reward.

Thank you very much, Suzanne.

This is the tenth in a series of short interviews run in the lead-up to the ITI International Conference on 16th - 17th May.

Posts on related topics:

1. Experts in the Industry: Paul Appleyard, French to English translator Paul Appleyard is a French to English translator and Director...
2. Experts in the Industry: Iwan Davies, French and German translator and localiser Iwan Davies is a French and German to English translator...
3. Experts in the Industry: Stefan Mikulin, French, German, Polish, English translator and interpreter Stefan Mikulin is a freelance interpreter and translator covering French,...

Check out the rest of the ITI Conference programme here.

1. In two sentences, please describe what you’ll be talking about at the conference, and what translation and interpreting (T&I) professionals will gain from hearing it.

I’ll be talking about what the new generation of websites that have sprung up following the move from ‘web 1.0’ to ‘web 2.0’ can offer us as translators, and how they can help to sustain our careers within a wider community of translation professionals.

2. If you could wave a magic wand and change one thing to make your workplace more sustainable, what would you do?

Like Iwan, ideally I’d like to install solar panels to generate energy, but in terms of productivity (and therefore a more sustainable working life for me!), what I could really do with is a personal assistant! Until then, it’ll just be me, my computer(s), my Blackberry and the internet.

3. Which business leader, politician or public figure do you most respect?

Sorry to be a tad predictable, but I really can’t praise Barack Obama enough.

4. To what degree do you feel involved in and supported by your professional community, and why?

I am on the ITI French Network committee (I’m editor of the newsletter) and more recently the ITI PSG. These activities make it possible for me meet some real ‘heroes’ in the ITI and feel part of a wider community of like-minded professionals. It can feel a bit isolating to be freelance, but with a little help from technology this can be mitigated. I do feel that as a freelancer, the onus has to be on you to ‘reach out’ to your colleagues, but the benefits of doing so are endless.

5. Freeform - here’s where you are free to riff on anyone or anything, good or bad, or just share a pearl of wisdom.

Hmmm, just that I’m looking forward to the conference and the chance to finally meet so many people in person. Working alone, it’s easy to forget how much we can learn from our peers and conferences offer a perfect opportunity to do that.

Thanks for answering my questions, Philippa! “See” you at the conference.

This is the ninth in a series of short interviews run in the lead-up to the ITI International Conference on 16th - 17th May.

Posts on related topics:

1. Experts in the Industry: Paul Appleyard, French to English translator Paul Appleyard is a French to English translator and Director...
2. Experts in the Industry: Silvia Ferrero, English to Spanish translator and interpreter Silvia Ferrero is an English to Spanish freelance translator and...
3. Experts in the Industry: Iwan Davies, French and German translator and localiser Iwan Davies is a French and German to English translator...

Check out the rest of the ITI Conference programme here.

1. In two sentences, please describe what you’ll be talking about at the conference, and what translation and interpreting (T&I) professionals will gain from hearing it.

I’ll be highlighting what many consider to be the two major global challenges facing humanity today, climate change and peak oil, and talking about how they affect us all in the world of translation/interpreting. In fact, each and every sector will be affected and that is not necessarily bad news for translators and interpreters.

2. If you could wave a magic wand and change one thing to make your workplace more sustainable, what would you do?

I’d put an end to the  incredibly wasteful barrage of  printed mail that arrives in my office on a daily basis. Much of it goes straight into the  recycling bin, and the rest could be avoided, for example, bills and bank statements, which are totally unnecessary when I can, and do, access the same information via the internet.

3. Which business leader, politician or public figure do you most respect?

Noam Chomsky ranks very high on my list for his intellectual ability to clarify complex political issues and especially for standing up for his beliefs in an incredibly hostile environment. That in addition to revolutionising linguistics!  And I respect Al Gore for having the courage to stick his neck out on climate change and then weather the storm (no pun intended!) of cynicism and abuse that followed.

4. To what degree do you feel involved in and supported by your professional community, and why?

I believe in karma: I think the more you get involved and the more you put in, the more support you receive back. My translation company is still very young  and as I continue to build relationships within the industry, I am really starting to feel the warmth and support from lots of good people out there.

5. Freeform - here’s where you are free to riff on anyone or anything, good or bad, or just share a pearl of wisdom.

I’d just like to share some good news with anyone who is feeling worried, helpless and fearful for the future. If you haven’t already heard of it, it’s called the Transition Movement (and no, it’s not a new religion!) This fast growing movement offers an extremely positive - and feasible - vision for the future, and a blueprint, already being piloted in communities around the world, for individuals like you and me to get involved and play a meaningful role in making the vision a reality. I’ll be referring to this in my talk and you can find out more from www.transitionculture.org

Thanks for your time, Cat.

This is the eighth in a series of short interviews run in the lead-up to the ITI International Conference on 16th - 17th May.

Posts on related topics:

1. Experts in the Industry: Nick Rosenthal, Managing Director of Salford Translations Ltd Nick Rosenthal is Managing Director of Salford Translations Ltd. He...
2. Experts in the Industry: Paul Appleyard, French to English translator Paul Appleyard is a French to English translator and Director...
3. Experts in the Industry: Silvia Ferrero, English to Spanish translator and interpreter Silvia Ferrero is an English to Spanish freelance translator and...

Check out the rest of the ITI Conference programme here.

1. In two sentences, please describe what you’ll be talking about at the conference, and what translation and interpreting (T&I) professionals will gain from hearing it.

The interrelationship between translation and ideology in news reporting of the British media about China. To raise the awareness of the T&I professionals about the important but always invisible role of translation in writing about a foreign reality in the news discourse.

2. If you could wave a magic wand and change one thing to make your workplace more sustainable, what would you do?

I would change my workplace into a very cozy, homely environment with all sorts of necessary back-up to aid my translation work, in order to make my translation ‘life’ more ’sustainable’.

3. Which business leader, politician or public figure do you most respect?

Aung San Suu Kyi

4. To what degree do you feel involved in and supported by your professional community, and why?

Somewhat. Being a home-based freelancer, I do not often get in touch with my fellow professionals.

5. Freeform - here’s where you are free to riff on anyone or anything, good or bad, or just share a pearl of wisdom.

Many people still think that translation is just transferring one language into another, and that bilingual speakers are able to do translation as long as they have good use of a dictionary and ‘Google’. Are translators professionals, as doctors or lawyers alike? I would definitely say ‘yes’. But there are many sloppy translation service agencies producing too many bad translations that make our profession not ‘decent’.

Thanks Suki, and hope you enjoy the conference.

This is the seventh in a series of short interviews run in the lead-up to the ITI International Conference on 16th - 17th May.

Posts on related topics:

1. Experts in the Industry: Stefan Mikulin, French, German, Polish, English translator and interpreter Stefan Mikulin is a freelance interpreter and translator covering French,...
2. Experts in the Industry: Paul Appleyard, French to English translator Paul Appleyard is a French to English translator and Director...
3. Experts in the Industry: Silvia Ferrero, English to Spanish translator and interpreter Silvia Ferrero is an English to Spanish freelance translator and...

Check out the rest of the ITI Conference programme here.

1. In two sentences, please describe what you’ll be talking about at the conference, and what translation and interpreting (T&I) professionals will gain from hearing it.

One of the challenges in our business is to ensure that we don’t feel we are invisible. By going to a conference such as this one, we can meet with our peers and remember that we are all members of a profession, with the same goals and aims as any other.

2. If you could wave a magic wand and change one thing to make your workplace more sustainable, what would you do?

Actually, I think my workplace is fairly sustainable anyway. The only factor which could make it more so would be a guarantee of work until the cows come home, but that is the one thing over which we have no direct control, other than to continue marketing ourselves…

3. Which business leader, politician or public figure do you most respect?

The anonymous one somewhere who shuts up and gets on with the job, rather then posturing about the crisis du jour.

4. To what degree do you feel involved in and supported by your professional community, and why?

I feel involved with my professional community via the networks of which I am member (seeing and sharing messages of mutual interest), and by attending events such as the ITI conference (discussing the same).

5. Freeform - here’s where you are free to riff on anyone or anything, good or bad, or just share a pearl of wisdom.

Can you seriously imagine working in an office again?

Thanks Paul, and enjoy the conference!

This is the sixth in a series of short interviews run in the lead-up to the ITI International Conference on 16th - 17th May.

Posts on related topics:

1. Experts in the industry: Philippa Hammond, French, Spanish, Portuguese to English translator Philippa Hammond is a French, Spanish and Portuguese to English...
2. Experts in the Industry: Spencer Allman, Finnish to English translator Spencer Allman has been a freelance translator of Finnish into...
3. Experts in the Industry: Iwan Davies, French and German translator and localiser Iwan Davies is a French and German to English translator...

Check out the rest of the ITI Conference programme here.

1. In two sentences, please describe what you’ll be talking about at the conference, and what translation and interpreting (T&I) professionals will gain from hearing it.

I’ll be participating in a Panel Discussion entitled “Where to draw the line”. We want to redefine the idea of customer service for translators, both freelance and in translation companies - highlighting how we can add value rather than simply feel exploited.

2. If you could wave a magic wand and change one thing to make your workplace more sustainable, what would you do?

I’d love to install solar panels on the roof of the house to generate power. If that sounds unlikely to work in Scotland, then I’ll have to investigate the wind turbine route instead! Hope the neighbours don’t mind!

3. Which business leader, politician or public figure do you most respect?

I was at a meeting of my daughters’ school Parent Council this evening, and as always our local councillors were present. These are the people who give up a massive amount of time and can really help local communities. There’s no hiding place on a local council, and we should celebrate grass-roots politicians a lot more than we do.

4. To what degree do you feel involved in and supported by your professional community, and why?

When you work for yourself, it’s easy to develop a feeling of isolation, so I’ve always tried to get as involved as possible in ITI, which I consider to be my natural habitat as a freelance translator. Both at regional level and at national level, I’ve come to value the support that ITI members provide each other, whether in terms of passing on work or simply gathering around the virtual watercooler.

5. Freeform - here’s where you are free to riff on anyone or anything, good or bad, or just share a pearl of wisdom.

I’m generally a glass-half-full kind of person, and am willing to give most things and people a chance. I strongly believe in encouraging others to have faith in what they can do, whether in relation to people starting out in business as translators or in relation to getting parents more involved in their children’s education - another passion of mine. Much of the time we walk around with our eyes shut, blind to our own skills and attributes as well as to those of others. I want to help people discover their potential, and in doing so uncover more of my own!

Thank you very much for your time, Iwan. I know it must be scarce as the conference looms ever closer!

This is the fifth in a series of short interviews run in the lead-up to the ITI International Conference on 16th - 17th May.

Posts on related topics:

1. Experts in the Industry: Paul Appleyard, French to English translator Paul Appleyard is a French to English translator and Director...
2. Experts in the Industry: Stefan Mikulin, French, German, Polish, English translator and interpreter Stefan Mikulin is a freelance interpreter and translator covering French,...
3. Experts in the Industry: Nick Rosenthal, Managing Director of Salford Translations Ltd Nick Rosenthal is Managing Director of Salford Translations Ltd. He...