Author: Anubhuti Gupta
Visibility in the social and professional sphere is immensely important for any professional. The professionals are required to be visible and known in their particular business field and that circle to ensure one job security. Freelancers have to work on this extra hard since to there is no company or a brand name to back them and add to their resume. Freelancers represent themselves and are a brand name to own self.  Personal branding for translators, especially freelancers is a very important aspect and if done right enables them to build many clients. There are various things a freelancer can do to be visible to the prospective clients.
First and foremost, the translator needs to be very clear about their own identity and skills. And they should be broadcast very clearly leaving out any ambiguity. For example, mentioning the jobs a translator can undertake very clearly like book translation, transcription, subtitles, back editing etc.
Along with the work that can be undertaken, a freelancer needs to be specific to their specialized fields like legal, finance, IT, general etc. It’s better to restrict the specializations to 4-5 fields as it establishes the authentic and genuine nature of the translator.
The Translator should also know what they are worth and the rates of their services should be fixed. It can be as per hours, pages, words or project.
Having said the above, a translator needs to grow their professional network which is only possible when they take up more and more work. The more work a translator takes up, the more they have to list in their experiences and more number of contacts in their contact lists.
The translators should identify their goals. Having clear and achievable goals is the basis of your personal brand. Goals help to monitor your progress and understand if you are on the right track with your promotional efforts. As a rule, the primary goals are to earn more money and find better clients. However, your goals should be more specific, measurable and achievable.
The next step after setting up the goals is to identify your target audience. In the case of freelance translation business, we can easily identify two major groups: direct clients and translation companies. Translators may try to target both groups but you should understand that it will take more time and resources to achieve good results. Moreover, not every translator is ready to work with direct clients. Cooperating with a translation agency is easier: the agency takes care of management and administration issues; it provides translators with more or less regular workload and secures payment, etc. Many freelance translators never work with direct clients and prefer stable cooperation with reliable agencies.
 
Building one’s own website will give a translator visibility. A personal website is more than just a portfolio. It’s their online headquarters – a powerful tool to represent oneself on the web, attract new clients and run a marketing campaign. Many translators have personal websites, however, according to a recent survey, 41% of translators don’t have any. So if translators want to stand out with their freelance translation business, they should start building their website today.
What more a translator can do to strengthen their network and increase visibility is blogging and social networking. Translators can develop a content plan and try to post at least twice per month. Even if they are extremely busy with translation tasks they will definitely find some time to write one new article in 14-days period.  They can try to identify the main problems of their target audience and provide helpful answers to resolve them and then promote their blog on social networks, forums and other related resources to increase the reach. A single well-written article can bring a new client when promoted to the right audience. Networking also is an important component that will help build a strong personal brand. A couple of hours per week can be allocated to improve the social media presence. It is hard to find a person who is not using Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn nowadays. One can create a Facebook page, develop a perfect LinkedIn profile and set up a Twitter account to promote one’s services, share useful stuff with one’s followers and attract new clients.
Lastly, one needs to know that personal branding is not a static image; it is a dynamic representation of their business that should be up-to-date and always relevant to the target audience.
The above-mentioned content refers to personal branding and increasing the visibility which will get new clients but retaining the old clients is just as important. This can be done by always following the deadline and in case it is not being possible then it should be immediately communicated to the client honestly and clearly. Apart from that, a translator needs to be at the beck and call of their old clients and if by any chance a call is missed or a mail is not immediately replied to, getting back to the client with a strong reason can help the case. Also, appreciate any feedback from the clients and work on any criticism if any after the completion of the task.
Thus, a translator needs to take the above-mentioned steps to get a hold on their market and doing this with a right amount of professionalism will be immensely helpful. Therefore, the quality of the work should never be compromised and a translator needs to keep in constant touch with the changes in their source and target languages. Attending seminars and conferences once in a while will help in this.
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