By Sharmishtha Samal
The society today is a highly multicultural one; with people from sundry cultures merged into each other giving rise to something which could be called a cultural diaspora. Taking any example, for instance, considering the case of Southeast Asia to Europe- specific migration, this trend of migration comes forth due to the lookout for upscale jobs with better living conditions by the population of Southeast Asia. Likewise there are are a lot of different trends seen in migration, each of them driven by wise reasons, (for which you can research on structures of migration). Societies, cuisines, fashion, music, cinema and even festivals are becoming increasingly cross-cultural today. We see fashion lines from India (like Anokhi) flourish effortlessly among the westerners and we see huge foreign brands like ZARA, Marks & Spencer, MAC, Forever 21, Victoria’s Secret making huge profits in Asian countries. About cuisines, we see blends of Mexican-Asian, American-French, or Colombian-Indian dishes all the time, everybody trying to make new hybrids all the time, for instance, there is pita bread which is used as a staple throughout the Middle East and Eastern Mediterranean, pita pit is an American fast food chain with branches over the globe, the branch in India has its own ‘tandoori’ flavours, like the ‘tandoori chicken pita’.Similarly, music has started to find ways into the cross-cultural realm and Bollywood songs have started adding French lines into the pop songs they make, reggae, jazz, pop and a hundred other genres of music spread over hundreds of cultures all intermixing each other, pure, indigenous music has started to wipe out because of the pop culture in music. Now, this trend of cross-culturalism that has emerged over the last 100 years has amplified the requirement of translators in today’s world.
Popularising themselves in the global market is the high-reaching goal for businesses today, especially businesses that stem from developed countries like the US, France, Canada or Japan; for this, they need a target audience from countries with high populations like that of India, or China. But these are developing countries with majority of the population speaking only their native language, here emerges the need for translators who translate to Mandarin, Hindi, Bengali, Malayalam, Punjabi, Urdu, Sanskrit, Telugu, etc. Businesses seek to make use of their translating work or use the translation programs in order to speed up their moves into the international markets.
As we see, the scope of the translation industries as well as freelance translators in the field of business today is vast.
Being bilingual or multilingual today has innumerous benefits, some of which are getting better job offers, getting better opportunities, having a larger network encompassing the globe, having preference in a few countries where speaking their native fluently counts as a bonus. As a bilingual or a multilingual, having chosen the career of translation or interpretation requires being able to strategise your moves very carefully as well as diplomatically. People either get into freelancing and become freelance translators or freelance interpreters or they dedicate themselves to a translation industry and work for them routinely. However, as a language professional for all of us, creating a name and a reputation for ourselves in this competitive field is the first and the most crucial step. Personal branding introduces itself in this step. Although personal branding is much more important for freelance translators, it is not at all something that can be ignored by the translators working for an industry, be it a renowned industry with its own brand name or otherwise.
Unless you take personal branding seriously and execute it in a disciplined manner, you will get no clients. As an amateur translator just starting out with your career, you must remember personal branding comes in SIX main steps:
1. Authenticity-Be your authentic self and speak your truth, let people know why you should be their first choice, tell them why you started translating in the first place, tell them what drives you and why you are so passionate about this.
2. Convincing –Second step is to convince them you are their best option by building your profile, or advertising yourselves or asking your friends or family to give you a testament, or by mentioning your qualifications and achievements and highlighting them
3. Building active Social Media presence-Being active on social media is the most effective way to be seen by people, to advertise yourselves
4. Stick to Your Word – Make sure you make a schedule and stick to it and repeat it everyday, for example, if you have promised your current audience to be live on YouTube at 11 am each day, ensure that you stick to your word.
5. Build a relationship with your clients-Once you start getting your clients initially, make efforts to be in touch with them so that the first person they think of when they have projects in the future is YOU.
6. MAKE AN IMPRESSION-Know yourself well and highlight your good traits a lot and work on your bad traits, MAKE an impression and think of something that helps you stand out, so that people REMEMBER YOU!
The translation industry today is a very flourishing and competitive industry and if you take all steps possible to keep up your passion and to beat competition in this field, the journey will be nothing but rewarding.
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