Six things university doesn't teach you

How many of you are about to complete Translation and Interpreting studies and think of immediately entering the labour market? This is what I did two years ago. I thought I was ready to launch myself onto the market and I actually was, but not for every aspect.

What does university teach you about the labour market?

At the university they teach the theory and the practice of the translating profession, but they don’t explain how to start carrying out this job in the reality, out of the academic environment. How do you get noticed as a freelance translator and interpreter? How do you obtain jobs? What should your rates be? How good is the labour market of your country (yes, it changes depending on every country, I learnt this few months ago!)? These are just some of the questions that I had in my mind once entered in the work market. And I found little answer in what they explained me when I was studying.

People may think: “Why didn’t you ask to professors?”. I did and I got some answers, I got help, but this wasn’t enough. The impact with the reality of this profession has been overwhelming, huge and surprising. After the first year working but not understanding a lot of the translation market, I started thinking that I should have done something about it.

What did I do?

I started reading. Reading a lot. About translation. I read articles written by translators and project managers, started following translators’ blogs and read all the stuff I could find related to this subject. There are kind and altruistic translators and interpreters in the world and they help their colleagues sharing their experience, their thoughts, their knowledge and what they learn on a daily basis.

On social media I started joining translators’ groups where I could find new interesting articles with useful information every day. I began to understand a little bit more about this profession and its market, how to get more clients, how to attract agencies and how important it is to always deliver accurate and on-time translations.

What did I learn?

1. Maybe the right question is, what did I discover? The existence of Proz, Translators’ Café, The Open Mic and others. Yes, I didn’t know that these networks existed.

2. The need to promote yourself on the Internet by creating a good looking website, detailed and attractive accounts on social media and translators’ networks. In other words, the necessity to be a self-promoter, to apply marketing strategy that no one ever taught us - or at least me.

3. The need to specialize or what to do if you want to be a generalist. More experienced translators recommend to specialize in 3 fields of expertise (3 is the perfect number, but 4 or 2 are good too). And how do you choose the sector on which focusing? You should look at your passions besides languages and translation/interpreting, at your hobbies and what people close to you are specialized in. What if you want to remain a generalist? This is not the wrong choice because you can get more jobs related to many fields, but the disadvantage is that one can end up working always on the same stuff and at the same level without the possibility to really improve the carrier.

4. I didn’t know that ‘rate per word’, ‘rate per hour’, ‘rate per matches’ etc. existed. At the university I always heard people talking about ‘rate per page’ – that is more or less 250 words. When I started sending my CV and received the first answers, they were asking me to indicate my rate per word or worse my rate per hour. In the beginning I was astonished. Then I accepted the existence of rate per word, but I really cannot understand how one can quantify a rate per hour when translating. A lot of issues can emerge and it can take longer than what you assumed to translate a document, text or whatever it is. Moreover, when you finish studying no one tells you what your rates should be, how low or high they should be and believe me, understanding the right rates to apply is a difficult step for a translator/interpreter.

5. When I was studying people continuously told me to create my CV through the European CV template. And I did it. Then I started reading on agencies’ websites, translators’ blogs and articles that it is better to create your own CV from scratch. So did I not long ago. And it is much better than before. First of all because I love how I drew my resume and then it gives you greater professional attitude and appearance.

6. The last and most predictable thing that I learnt is: Not to wait to be contacted by someone assigning you a job. You must be very active and always search for new opportunities, new clients, new agencies.

In conclusion

Never give up. I know that all this can discourage and dissuade translators to pursue their dream because it can seem a huge mountain to climb. Not receiving answer to dozens of emails can be very hard to bear. Having to promote yourself and apply marketing strategies can be very difficult and you seem to ignore what is the starting point. So my greatest advice is to read a lot about translation and interpreting to find inspiration and understand what to do. Make a to do list and follow it. Create routines to search for new clients and agencies, organize your term lists and so on.

This is my experience, did you have a different one? Feel free to share it with me in the comment section!

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