By Ruchika Gulati
This is a transcription in English of the question-and-answer session with Prof. Ioanna Daskalopoulou (Greece), guest speaker at the Modlingua Summer Internship Program 2017 on the professional development of translators. The session covers how new translators can get trained, win their first clients and handle client tool requirements. Watch the full session on Modlingua's YouTube channel.
Prof. Daskalopoulou: Please feel free to ask any questions, and do not think that any question might be stupid. As a freelancer, I have been in this profession for more than 20 years.
Becoming a translator without prior experience
Intern: I am new to this industry and am basically a teacher, with 30 years of experience. After hearing Mr Ravi's talks and reading his articles, I would like to become a translator. My problem is that I have no prior experience of translation. Will any translation agency hire me, or should I undergo training first and then apply?
Prof. Daskalopoulou: What I would suggest, and what I did myself, is this: I did not have any translation experience either, I just knew a language well. I decided that I needed to do some translation, so I entered a school where I specialised in translating legal European Union texts from English into Greek for two years, and that helped a lot. So what I suggest is that since you do not have experience as a translator, if you can attend a seminar or a school where you can gain some, do that, and then you can start doing your own work by reaching out to your own clients. It does not matter if you do not have a lot of experience at the beginning. If clients see that you are good at what you are doing, they will trust you and have you translate texts for them. This is how everyone starts. When I started, I started with four or five clients; now I have more than 30 clients in my network, and that is basically done through hard work, networking and marketing. And of course, if you want to get certified through an association or an agency, that is great too.
Intern: Thank you so much.
Prof. Daskalopoulou: You are welcome, and I wish you all the best.
Certification and training in India
Ravi Kumar: It is a sad affair that in India we do not have any certifying agency developed by the government. But there are some good initiatives on the way. For example, there is the Indian Translators Association, which provides workshops and empowers translators, and although it is very tough to become its member, one can always try. Plus, Modlingua, our own company, has been providing mentoring to newcomers, and you will be surprised that in the last 20 years of our operations we have provided a first opportunity to at least 500 translators.
Prof. Daskalopoulou: That is great; that is a great initiative for Modlingua, congratulations. There are also associations abroad, like the American Translators Association, and European associations of certified translators. Here in Greece we do not have official certification either, only the Greek professional translators association, which is very limited. It is unfortunate that it is very hard for a professional translator to become certified here too.
Ravi Kumar: We are announcing, in the next month or so after our internship gets over, a certificate course for translators in Translation Management. We will not focus on linguistic aspects; we will focus more on professional development aspects.
Prof. Daskalopoulou: That is great. That is why I said it is important to get a certification or some kind of education. It is not always necessary, but it establishes you professionally. It is one thing knowing a language really well and another thing translating. Translation is totally different: it is very difficult, very demanding, and it is something that you develop over the years, not something you learn overnight. The job requires experience, a lot of hard work and patience.
Ravi Kumar: One thing that always helps is to undergo training under supervision. If you do not train under supervision, and your agency or the person who has hired you is not giving you feedback, after three or four years you will realise that you have been making the same mistakes time and again, and you will be surprised when your work is rejected by quality-conscious clients.
Quality before deadlines
Prof. Daskalopoulou: Quality, like I said, is very important. You should never sacrifice quality for delivering a project on time. It is better to have a delay, or to let the client know that something came up, instead of delivering without checking and proofreading. If you deliver without checking, the project manager will come back to you; it is a boomerang. They will say, "What have you done here? There are too many mistakes, please correct them", and then you go back and forth, and of course this is not good for your image. So it is better to pay attention to quality and mistakes before handing in your project. Are there any other questions from the interns?
When clients demand specific tools
Ravi Kumar: Surbhi, you had asked one question. What was that? Are you around?
Surbhi (intern): Yes, sir. Whenever we connect with any new client, they have certain requirements of tools. I am currently working with Lionbridge, and they have their Logoport and GeoWorkz platforms. So how do we meet those tool requirements? I am facing some problems with them.
Ravi Kumar: The question is that there are some clients who ask for the use of a specific tool.
Prof. Daskalopoulou: You mean CAT tools. Yes, sometimes companies require that you use a CAT tool like SDL Trados, which is a translation memory tool, or memoQ, which I think is the newer one. To be honest and frank with you, I have been using SDL Trados since 2007, but I have used it only when the client demanded it. If the client demands that I keep a translation memory, then I will do it through SDL Trados using that translation memory. If not, that does not mean you will not get the job. So having a CAT tool is not necessary. It is good to have one, and it is good to attend seminars and learn about new technology, because that gives you a competitive advantage as a translator, but it is not necessary to get a project. Keep that in mind: it is good to have it, but you can also work without it. That is my opinion, and this is how I have been working for so many years. Of course, I am always open to learning new things and new technologies in the translation industry. That is a very good question, thank you for it.
Closing
Prof. Daskalopoulou: I think that is it; we can repeat another session some other time, since it is already 7:30 here. It has been a pleasure meeting all of you, and I hope I helped your interns gain some insights into the translation industry in general. And congratulations to Modlingua for all its initiatives, for bringing interns from all over the world, and for doing these great things for India.
Ravi Kumar: Thank you. We will be in touch, and thank you, everyone, for being here with us tonight.
