Sunday, January 6, 2013

Do We Need to Specialize in the Translation Industry?

Translators usually start their career as translation providers in a variety of fields starting from translations of diplomas, academic transcripts, certificates to highly technical texts which require not only very good linguistic skills but also deep and expensive knowledge in the particular field of expertise.

Probably you wake up in the morning feeling nervous because you have to deal with a new topic and this repeats almost every single day of your career. Well, your argument could well be because you want to earn more money but have you ever considered specializing in a certain area as a chance to improve your knowledge and income and have a more balanced everyday life? You can better concentrate on what you are translating and wait for the expected text to come rather than distributing your energy and time on various subjects. We all know that a translator should specialize on what he or she is passionate about. So first do enjoy the subject you have decided to deal with in depth and last but not least check if this area will bring your good financial support. Wasting your time on topics that prove to leading you to bad income are not beneficial for you at all. So loving and managing the area are important points when making your choice!

Before focusing on any field, you have to assess your strong and weak features and then subscribe to some national business daily newspaper or magazine. Then you will see what is in demand and decide what the best match is for you! Time is passing and you make your mind about which area to specialize in. You have to start contacting business people from the chosen industry; describe your experience and try to learn more about their work and connections abroad. Also, make sure that you do not show them you are desperately looking for work: try to obtain information about the possible professional industry events you could attend and go for them. Also, ask about any sub specialties you can further focus on so that you could be very outstanding in the competitive translation world.

At the very beginning you might have little or no experience in your chosen field of expertise: you may contact agencies but the lack of experience may lead you to nowhere and put you in a vicious circle to gain experience but not having the chance to do it. What you can do is networking or meeting with colleagues who specialize in the same field and ask them to subcontract some work to you (either translation or proofreading). All professional translators need some time to have a break and escape from the daily routine so this is your time to gain experience. Also, do attend training courses or workshops where you will meet colleagues and agencies interested in specializing in the same field as you!
Do not be afraid of specializing, take the subject you feel most comfortable to focus on and go for it!

Wednesday, January 2, 2013

#ILIlC3

For the past two years I have been fortunate enough to talk at the ICT Links into Languages conference in Southampton. It is a weekend of learning, sharing, collaborating and sheer unadulterated joy. This year's conference will be taking place on 9th-10th February 2013 and you can sign up for it here This year's theme is ‘Jail breaking the MFL Classroom’ and the keynote speakers are the fabulous duo of Joe Dale and Isabelle Jones. I am delivering two talks/workshops. The first is called "Triptico Tips to jailbreak the languages classroom" This session will illustrate how to use the Triptico resource application to liven up your classroom and turn learning on its head. There will be practical demonstrations of the organisational tools such as the group sorter, timer and score board. I will also demonstrate the higher order thinking tools such as the hexagonal Think Link resource and show how it can be used for promoting Solo taxonomy. The session will give specific examples from my own classroom practice as listed here and here as well as feedback from the pupils. There will also be plenty of time for participants to create their own resources which they can then take away with them, as well as showing them how to access the files already created in the likes of the Twitterati Dropbox. The second session is entitled "LITERALLY JAILBREAKING THE LANGUAGES CLASSROOM" This session will look at how to move the pupils' learning outside the languages classroom with practical examples which I have done with my own pupils including using Posterous to moblog a language trip, Voicethread to collaborate with other language learners around the world, Animoto to create videos such as the videos my pupils made on why our school should be the venue for the 2020 Olympics and QR codes to create a speaking wall with videos created by pupils on a variety of topics which other pupils can then access using their mobile phones to scan the QR code. This conference is an excellent opportunity to meet like-minded language teachers, learn some new stuff, share ideas and enjoy the excellent atmosphere. The Show and Tell event last year had us tweeting for months afterwards! If you want to catch some of the buzz in advance, search for #ililc3 on Twitter or join the MFL Twitterati