I woke up earlier this month to a deluge of alerts on my phone about the news that a milestone of the Trump 2.0 administration was the appointment of Elon Musk to the “Department of Government Efficiency”. Which will be abbreviated to DOGE. Nice one Space Karen. I am currently actively in the eXit process, after discontinuing my active involvement on Musk’s toXic platform in the summer. It was part of a bid to stop doom scrolling. Doom scrolling had resulted in me learning about the tragic circumstances and aftermath of a friend’s untimely death.
I therefore sought solace by retreating more to the pages of books, either as physical editions or Kindle editions. Reading books help you learn – both for and about yourself. They also make you think, whereas much of social media seems to serve little cognitively enriching purpose. Possibly social media remains my vice at the moment (after stopping drinking over a year ago). I’ve not yet extracted myself fully from its clutches, and I am present on bluesky post-eXit.
With my focus on reading, I am now compiling regular posts about my reading list for the respective season. This is my list for the autumn – the summer list is still available here.
And in addition to reading, I am starting journaling – there will be a future post about that too!
Autumn Reading List
Serghei Sadohin, Hiding in Plain Sight: what Language says about being Human
Chip Heath / Dan Heath, Switch (the German book was part of a goodie bag for involvement in a transformation programme)
If you know me well and personally, I’ve probably talked to you about tinnitus management over the last three years. I might well have ducked out of meeting up or taking a phone call. Maybe I advised that I could only take a call over speaker phone. I might even have attended a hybrid meeting that I could have attended in person – to reduce the volume level.
I have probably also changed or shortened a meeting length. Or refused to go from one meeting to the next on the fly. I might also have changed a one-hour meeting slot to a 25 or 50 minute slot on you. I might even have taken time out during the day and logged out for a couple of hours. Guilt-free naps have been essential when tinnitus got too much.
The chances are that you might have noticed I have been less forthcoming in taking on something new recently. I might also have relinquished commitments I previously had. What I might not have mentioned to everyone is about having actively used a coach earlier in the year. I used the sessions to try to address the remit creep affecting my actual work. It is still a work in progress – I ought to get back to my coach for follow-up sessions soon.
So why am I blogging about this? Quite simply because it might maybe help someone else. Social media focuses on “living my best life”, rather the real view when things aren’t quite working out. It seems strange that I seem to notice some friends and connections more by their absence than their repeated posting.
If it isn’t going to plan, come up with a plan
Psychological safety was addressed in the subproject of my employer’s transformation programme I was in the sounding board for. Vacation absence meant limited presence in sessions over the summer. I hope that I still made a contribution. It is good to see that the subject is among many being addressed. Over the last couple of years friends and colleagues have opened up more about the assistance that they have sought. Sadly, I also know of people who did not seek help in time.
I am open that I have sessions with a coach, where one exercise was trying to redesign my typical day. My wife and I have a regular session with a parental therapist about our son’s neurodivergence. If anyone is curious, I’m happy to engage and chat about how coaching sessions help. We are also in a self-help group supports parents of neurodivergent children. I follow quite a lot of blogs by psychologists and coaches. I read them or books that they recommend rather than doom-scrolling through social media while commuting.
Notebooks, which I have long used for mental decluttering, have also been useful for coming up with the plan. I never leave the house without a notebook and pens.
Make time to take time out of the day
October is a busy time with work – the end of the year is approaching, and the days rapidly become shorter. Leaving the office in darkness is a more frequent occurrence. I take vitamin D capsules, and use a phototherapy lamp. I consciously make sure that I get out more during the day. I occasionally even use a calendar entry marked “Take a break”. Breaks have been essential this week – just before the end of summer time. On Monday I went out for a walk and collected lunch with a colleague rather than heading down to the canteen.
On Tuesday I met up for a coffee with a fellow translator visiting from Berlin. We sat outside in a nearby cafe and chatted for a couple of hours. Yesterday, I avoided the direct route to and from my son’s school. We took a longer walk (and a trip to the comic shop!) Today (Thursday) I logged out and grabbed a coffee and the Kindle and had a walk. I then read on a park bench in the sunlight. It is a real bonus having a park about 200 metres walk away (60 metres from our terrace in a straight line). Whenever the weather is good, I’ll be making a regular thing of it.
Take a break!
I try to use natural caesurae in the day to take a break. Coffee and meal breaks are essential in this regard. Resist the temptation of having “al desko” lunches. I tend to punctuate tasks with a walk around the corridor on my floor – a lap with a comfort stop is definitely a good thing. Some regular meetings also lend form to the day, or create certain-sized chunks. I try to remember to raise my desk at lunchtime in the office – and have a standing stint after lunch if possible.
Make positive changes
Last autumn I also stopped drinking – a three day hangover after two beers made me decide to stop drinking alcohol. My wife and I still enjoy an alcohol-free G&T. That is a care routine too. I did drink three glasses of wine over the course of the summer. Sometimes a glass of wine with a meal or to toast a special occasion is needed. Geocaching remains a constant, which takes me out walking usually once a week. I’m currently thinking up a few ideas for new caches. Recently I hid a new one which has been well received by the Vienna geocaching community.
I am also reading more – and with greater substance. I didn’t get through all of my summer reading list, but several other books have also been read in the meantime. A chat with an acquaintance at the British Embassy also reminded me of some books I not started.
Getting back to core business
I am taking a break from the data science courses I had been pursuing for two years. My motivation was flagging, time was also at a premium. I’m focusing on translation-based CPD. I am currently submitting abstracts for translation conferences and getting back to blogging. There are a couple of publications in the pipeline too. Journaling in my change planner has become a daily habit. Best of all it helps me to free up thinking space.
At the same time, I’ve also tried to feel less guilty about not being “perfectly efficient”. I have stopped commoditising my translation work into numbers of words delivered. The only time I really look at the word count is to try to establish how long I might need for a specific translation – and to handle multi-day projects. Slowing down a tiny bit, actually makes me feel more productive. And conciseness seems to be appreciated by colleagues.
If anything in this post has helped you, or made you think “I need to do that!“ please let me know. It’s also very good to talk.
I’ve been pushing the case for “Experts in the Lead” (XITL) a lot recently, as a new term for human-led translation. It implicitly defines that humans remain in the lead, while “Machine in the Loop” (MITL) only infers it. In contrast “Human in the Loop” (HITL) relegates human involvement to a trivial nature. A parallel that ITI seems keen to push is Francois Grosjean’s quotation that two hands and ten fingers don’t make you a pianist – just as speaking two languages doesn’t make you a translator. Your expert in the lead is a translation virtuoso.
Why do we need it?
Currently two terms crop up frequently in relation to human-machine translation. Both are quite weaselly for the translation profession: machine in the loop (MITL) and human in the loop (HITL). Both indicate a continued role for humans in some shape or form (i.e. some task left to the human). However, neither acknowledges the need for human expertise that machines are not capable of. MITL indirectly infers that a human remains in the lead in that a machine is only in the loop. In contrast, HITL directly states mere (non-expert) human involvement. Check out my assessment of the state of play at the start of 2024.
Both these terms suit the translation industry well, but do little to assuage the concerns of the profession. This is why we need a third option. The necessity of the Expert in the Lead (XITL) approach is what the language profession needs to emphasise. It isn’t about being a Luddite and rejecting technology. Many experts in the lead have used CAT tools for decades. Both Trados and MemoQ celebrate round birthdays in 2024, turning 40 and 20 respectively.
What else do we need it for?
In advocating an expert-led approach, we should also promote technological agnosticism. Human experts in the lead should be free to decide how and which technologies they use. A cuvee depends on the specific blend of grapes – expertise also needs to find the perfect balance.
XITL approaches won’t sit well with LSPs exploiting MITL and HITL for larger margins. It will however justify better rates for human experts. Commoditisation of translation into characters, lines and words is often part of the reason why customers look towards HITL. Past translation quality may have been a driver for the industry to look to at new ways to earn. Mediocre results at premium rates also create a market for customers looking for “good enough” results. This is where real expertise needs to come in. To achieve this translators need to also make sure they convince their customer’s decision-makers. In another of my recent blog posts, I discussed Chris Durban’s clarion call for translators “to visit Clientland”.
When do we need it? (Now!)
Expertise and experts need visibility and being heard above the industrial noise. Think of it like ensuring that a building site doesn’t operate around the clock in a residential area.
We’re also not talking about job title inflation (à la “freelance translators” becoming “professional translators”). The experts in the lead revolution needs to see people proving their expertise. A recent CAMELS interview with Deborah Fry highlighted a need for specialist subject-based training by subject matter experts. This is the way forward rather than an “opiate for the masses” type approach.
Many large professional events have tracks on the work/life balance side of translation. This is all well and good, given the cognitive demands of translation, but does not assist expertise building. I struggle to attend conferences, where the added value in terms of subject matter expertise is not obvious.
I have to convince line managers why I need to attend events. The rationale is not merely financial. Time out of the office plays a big role if the “red line” for enhancing my expertise isn’t apparent. As does remuneration for attending weekend events. There is a time and a place for popular subjects covered at conferences. Such events contribute to professional development, as does networking, but they can fall short regarding subject matter expertise.
How do we go about it?
From my holiday reading, Cal Newport’s “Deep Work” from 2016 has certainly struck a chord. The Expert in the Lead needs “deep” or focused work rather than shallow work (i.e. like MTPE for peanuts). The book advocates concentrated work, away from distractions (social media, e-mail, instant messages). Projects with substance help in this regard too – rather than fighting over scraps. Refining processes – like establishing better briefs can also help.
Similarly, we need to think about the battles we fight. Picking up those MT fails and sending them viral isn’t where it is at. We need to focus on how to improve and extend our expertise. I’m quite lucky in that the expanding remit of supervision means new supervisory areas (e.g. DORA, MiCAR, ESG). And the transposition of CRD6 and CRR3 into Austrian law is a fresh seam of translation content at the wordface.
Examine the way your area of specialism is going (and the next big things) and proactively obtain expertise. This is what “staying good” is all about. And if you aren’t good yet, devote as much time as possible to getting good, quickly.
I’ve just powered down my work laptop ahead of my summer holiday. Before turning off, I finished my timesheets and backed up files that needed to be. It’s a good routine to come down a cognitive notch after a final working day with various translations and revision jobs to finish and turn around.
Part of the packing routine is also sorting out my reading material for the trip. With not being sure whether we might need to share rooms with the children en route, I have taken to ensuring that I have some books to read on my Kindle (as well as also trying to read a physical book). The following are the books that I am taking with me for the next fortnight. Some I might only dip into if I wake up early, or am not quite ready to fall asleep.
I used to ingest first time, digest second time.
It’s a mixed bag – although with certain thematic groupings. Some books I am starting for the first time, others I am going back to, and others are re-reading. As I commented to a former tutor of mine from university, who remarked about rereading books, “I used to ingest first time, digest second time.” His attention was piqued by my re-reading a book that had been part of my primary reading during first year at university (28 years ago!).
I’ve deliberately left out any books about translation and languages, There are plenty of books I want to read, but for restorative purposes, I need to give my ever-curious brain some down time from language and law and to read something unrelated.
There are some self-improvement titles – a couple of which are recommendations from the coach I had sessions with earlier in the year. The sessions with him really paid off. I’m sure I will return to the “wordface” in September relaxed and reinvigorated.
Summer Holiday Reading List
Diccon Bewes, Swisswatching
Urs Birchler, Das Einmaleins des Geldes
Bill Browder, Freezing Order and Red Notice
James Clear, Atomic Habits
Gunter de Bruyn, Märkische Forschungen
Katja Hoyer, Beyond the Wall
Cal Newport, Deep Work
David Omand, How spies think
Fiona Rintoul, The Leipzig Affair
Rebecca Seal, Solo: how to work alone
John Sillitoe, The loneliness of the long distance runner
X/Twitter is broken and beyond repair. I’ve decided to stop posting both via the website and the app. I haven’t deleted my profiles, but have ceased posting on Twitter. I am also on Mastodon and BlueSky, but haven’t really found them conducive to engaging on.
It is a pity as I did make some good contacts and learn about some great blogs from the site.
Update January 2025: I have deleted my Twitter/X profile.
In March, another tinnitus flare-up meant I had to resort to additional tinnitus management mechanisms. This allowed me to keep going, and to take back control of the issue. Hybrid work and remit creep have meant increases in virtual meetings – both recurring or very densely scheduled ones. At some point, it gets too much for me with either headphones or a conference spider. Cutting meetings is the realistic measure.
At home, the noise level from my three happy, excitable and energetic young children can also get too much. With tinnitus, the impact on me of non-stop noise exposure is draining and I often retreat for a snooze. On some occasions, the snooze lasts for 2 hours. A more frequent need for one (i.e. particularly during the working week) is an indication of noise overload.
There are a few stealth tricks that I use to prevent things from getting out of control. I am able to turn down all the speakers around the house from my phone. And the maximum volume on the children’s Tonie Boxes is lower than the default value.
Verterminierung – the scourge of hybrid work
German has a concept of Verterminierung, meaning calendar gridlock and a continuous cycle of meetings. How people manage wall-to-wall calls and meetings throughout the day, every day of the week eludes me. Some corporate cultures conflate being in meetings with success. Sadly, Verterminierung has spilt over into private life: organising a child’s birthday party now needs 4-6 weeks’ lead time. In a work environment full of meetings there is too much “work about work” rather than “working”.
I struggle with densely packed meetings, and using wear various earplugs to reduce the noise overload. Adjacent appointments also mean a constant rush from one to the next, and invariably they over-run. This is less of an issue between virtual meetings than physical ones. But there is also no opportunity to stretch legs between meetings. In addition to the noise overload, a steady stream of meetings breaks my concentration and flow. This was picked up on in comments on my Translation vs Tetris blogpost). That post was given a re-airing in light of Liz Truss’ new book.
However, the typically hybrid setting means that meetings also place additional load on ears. Four years on from the Covid-enforced change, I regularly have uncomfortable meeting experiences. If I am alone in a meeting room and predominantly in “listen only” mode, I return to my office to escape empty room echoes.
Banishing sales calls
Spring seems to be a peak season for sales calls. Not unsolicited, because I clearly opted-in at some stage to be allowed to be contacted by phone. I frequently find their machine-gun pace and loud volume of such calls very painful. Usually when they first draw breath, I stop them and disarm them. I instruct them to speak slowly, clearly and at a lower volume and explain that the latter also helps them to speak in a more comfortable tone. If call centre operatives speed up again, I request an e-mail instead, and information about why it is financially in my interests.
I used to perform a lot of customer service related matters by phone (this is still commonplace in Austria). I now steadfastly contact banks, utilities and mobile providers by Internet chat. My bank, phone provider and electricity and gas providers have proven contactable using their customer service chat. I no longer take sales calls by phone from all of them. Meter readings can now be communicated using the chatbot, phone contracts changed or extended via their app and the like. I also resolved the double charging of my ORF Beitrag this way. Occasionally I have to check whether I am dealing with a human or request to chat to a human operator.
Applying private needs to shorten work meetings – a productivity hack
With how easy it was to apply this for private matters, I thought I would apply it to work meetings. A few mails worked wonders to reduce the frequency or length of meetings. Many meetings are now 30 minute slots rather than 1 hour. I’m going a step further: if I set up a meeting, I use 25 minute slots. Or 50 minutes rather than an hour. This also allows breaks between calls and meetings, and time keeping is tighter. 30 and 60 minute slots have a tendency to “fill the slot” rather than good time-keeping.
Shorter meetings allow me to have larger blocks for focussed work – for translations, terminology and editing. I use wafer-thin gaps to set up and run machine translation tests (a subject of another forthcoming blog post) or terminology entry work.
I discovered another hack by accident. Every Wednesday and Thursday I collect my son from school with alarms at 14:37 or 15:22. I now accept 2pm meetings, scheduled for 1 hour, but will say I have to leave at 14:35. It often means meetings that are shorter, quicker and more focused. If I need a 10-15 minute meeting, I schedule for 15:00 ahead of pick-up at 15:30. For bilateral meetings, the meeting planner can shoehorn in meetings to not break up longer meeting-free blocks.
In case people are wondering whether there is a way to enforce this in Outlook by default – there is.
Changing meeting lengths in Outlook
In the Outlook Options for the Calendar, meetings can be selected to “start late” or “finish early”, and in my case have been set to be shortened by an five minutes by meetings of less than one hour or 10 minutes for meetings of one hour or longer. There is of course another reason why I have chosen these particular lengths – they tie in with pomodoro lengths.
Could that meeting be an e-mail, a Teams chat, or even a form?
We’ve all left meetings with the feeling that “it ought to have been an e-mail, or a Team chat.” With an M365 roll-out there’ll also be “that e-mail could have been a chat”. It’ll be interesting to see how quickly we move from an e-mail to a chat-based corporate culture. Naturally, I’ll adjust my translation workflows (in terms of status updates, translator’s questions and comments, and terminology issues.
Many meetings don’t have to be meetings. The following flow diagram is one I put together from a number of different sources to reduce meetings, meeting-related dead time and to help regain part of my working day.
A post on LinkedIn recently addressed the issue of expectations for delivery of a translation project. The suggested timeframe provided for a single translator to translate a website of approximately 25,000 words was approximately 1 week. The responses of other linguists generally fell into two distinct camps: firstly, the that’s-no-way-near-enough-time camp, and secondly, the it’s-no-wonder-translators-are-losing-out-to-MT-if-they-are-that-slow camp. Fence-sitters would probably fall into a how-long’s-a-piece-of-string camp – which is a justified argument – as the subject matter was unclear.
Currently there are more “famine” than “feast” posts from freelancers. (N)MT and LLM-based translation form a two-pronged attack that are affecting human translators. Industry-side evangelisers sometimes claim that MT more content translation than human translators can translate. Even if this is the case, there is still a diminishing wedge for human translators.
Since 2022, I have regularly seen posts about translators being reduced to post-editors of Machine Translation. The rates do not reflect the true amount of effort required to bring translations up to standard. Which in turn leads to a drop in motivation. It isn’t realistic to expect the same service for a living rate as a dumping rate.
100% productivity is corporate settings: an illusion
In the modern data-driven world, we are incredibly IT-dependent. Updates need to be done, and they don’t always happen overnight, during lunchbreaks etc. I’ve previously covered why I schedule my return to work to allow me to start with a home office day: with a “soft logon” the night before. Unless you user blocker appointments, you are bombarded with mails, calls, Teams chats etc. And all this eats into your productivity – particularly if you consider your day like a game of Tetris.
As I pointed out to one comment about the 25,000 words in a week, which suggested 100% productivity in the corporate world, this is a fallacy. Time and activity tracking frequently sanitises out “Tür-und-Angel-Gespräche” with colleagues, lunchbreaks that overrun, online calls that start and end late. Full calendars are seldom a sign of productivity in their own right. There are also “meetings that could have been a mail” and continuous calls are draining. I now maintain better call discipline – sticking rigidly to the intended call length, and excusing myself from over-running calls.
Is human productivity the issue?
Returning to the how-long’s-a-piece-of-string issue, about productivity and its effect on translation output, it is clear that there are unreasonably high expectations on productivity. As a translator, you might have a “straightline top speed”, but for how long can you maintain it for? And does the ride remain comfortable, or do things straight to rattle or get uncomfortable. When I went in house, to try to gauge my output, I set myself an original 1,500 words a notional daily output. A 1,500 word document to translate from scratch can reasonably be expected to be sent back by the end of the day,
Would I start translating the second I got into the office? Rarely. Unless an item has come in the previous evening and I had set up the project the previous evening. It might be necessary to perform some alignments, concordance-based terminology work, or (re)read the legislation. Sharing an office means inevitable phone calls and distractions. I often work with noise cancelling headphones when the office is fully occupied. When I have a lot of short tasks I use desktop timers to keep moving between the tasks.
6 out of 8, or 8 out of 10?
If I am lucky, I get about 6 hours (out of 8 hours) undisturbed translation time a day, and would have to go at a steady 250 words an hour to do 1,500 words in that 6 hours. As translation memories and termbases grew, “plain vanilla” translations became a lot quicker. Filler tasks like translating investment warnings are now practically automated. The translation task mainly involves locking a few segments and a quick check of the output and a bit of formatting.
Consequently, I have been able to increase my notional daily output to 2,000 words, but the added 500 words a day reflect a number of factors:
I do considerably less terminology work. Now it is frequently ad hoc rather than in dedicated terminology sessions.
I also have read-only translation memories containing bilingual alignments of European law at my finger tips, allowing me to spend more time in Trados Studio than I previously did.
Better screen setup means reference materials open on a second screen, a glance away.
I have a very narrow subject focus – at its broadest, my subject matter is financial market supervision, but predominantly focussed on banking supervision. There are very few supervisory procedures that are genuinely new. I have occasional forays into insurance and Pensionskassen supervision, securities supervision or banking resolution.
Regular expressions for QA have helped reduce cognitive (over)load.
Despite such “efficiency” improvements, achieving 8 hours’ pure translation productivity still requires working for over eight hours. Changes in daylight conditions also need considering. However, mature TMs also have drawbacks – which is why I have looked into better use of segment penalties, and terminology can also change over the years.
Explained simply, it goes like this. You want a high quality translation? You’ll either have to pay a premium rate (i.e. price is high), or allow more time for the translation. You want a quick translation? You’ll either have to pay a premium rate (i.e. price is high due to needing translators to work extra hours, or in a team) or sacrifice quality. You want a cheap translation? You either sacrifice quality (e.g. review processes, terminology checks, coherence checks) or have to wait on delivery.
The AI hype and the genuine advances in machine translation have pitted the industry against the professionals. There is a different playing field in the age of NMT and generative AI. There has certainly been a big leap since statistic MT was in its heyday. You have to therefore manage your customer’s expectations (explain what you do – e.g. explain that you use CAT and not (N)MT), and what the expected delivery time is.
Managing expectations.
I’ve always believed in expectation management (a skill you learn as a parent). Back in 2016, along with recurring daily work, we had most substantial relaunch of my employer’s website to date. Eight years on, there are still regularly new pages and posts, and the workflow has proven itself. I had to work to a fixed deadline for go live, at the end of an intense month (including work trips to London, Zagreb and Nuremberg).
The project allowed me to also educate colleagues/customers about realistic expectations, while also changing the translation workflow for publishing directly to the website. Now, with backend CMS access. I extract texts from the source view in the CMS and open the files in Trados Studio. I could translate pages as they successively went live in the testing environment. That approach eliminated dealing with multiple versions of the same page or post as Word files. Agreeing on a top-down approach allows prioritisation of certain content for translation. This ensured handling top level content child pages/posts first, and steadily working through subpages.
For multi-day projects, I explain how to involve me before a final version of the document exists. This approach is particularly useful for multiple iterations of a text. It also helps to allow more translation time – PerfectMatch helps to overcome document iteration issues. Naturally, I do also make sure that I allow a slight buffer, and early delivery is easier than having tight deadlines.
Ultimately good customer communication is key – keep they updated about progress – maybe check in with them partway through the project – possibly the earlier the better. Try to group questions about terminology or wording suggestions together rather than a constant trickle of questions.
When you say that you are an in-house translator, it seems like a conversation stopper. Seemingly, everyone assumes they know exactly what you do for your entire working week. People’s perception of your activities are that you are a “one-trick pony”. However, the fact is that many in-house translator jobs are not full-time translation positions. Fortuitously, this provides such translators with a possibility for “job crafting” a blend of translation-based and non-translation-based activities into their working hours.
To the uninitiated, an in-house translator sits or stands at their desk (hurray for the modern workplace!) and translates documents all day/week/year long, with revision and terminology tasks along the way. But even for someone with a job title as simple as “translator”, there are other tasks to perform, and a degree of wiggle room for “job crafting”, even as a SPLSU.
From my in-house experience, demand for translation has always depended on proximity and visibility to colleagues in active supervision. Whereas freelancers market themselves and dedicate time to marketing (as shown frequently in the #litranslators community on LinkedIn), physical presence has been an essential factor for me – the need to be seen.
With the disruption from the pandemic and the advent of “new work” with versatile and flexible working arrangements, the tasks picked up through job crafting have helped to reinforce my presence. This has proven particularly important as I don’t necessarily see my colleagues in person, even though I share an open plan shared office. And “cold calling” colleagues over MS Teams is not an option for translation marketing in the in-house setting.
Seize the day! Subconscious marketing works.
Fortunately, there are a lot of “recurring” jobs that allow a gentle trickle of osmosis marketing opportunities to colleagues. Intriguingly, the example below proves how the actual translation job that triggers the marketing doesn’t need to be massive. Take a recent case in hand. There was a micro-sized amendment to the Austrian Banking Act (BWG; Bankwesengesetz). We’re talking about a law that affects everyone in Banking Supervision at my employer.
The amendment in question in translation terms was at most a 10-15 minute job (with most of that time spent generating the 250 page accessible PDF file in Word4Axes), and consisted of:
the appending of a single point/subparagraph at the end of a single Article in the BWG,
an inserted reference to the transposition of a single point in an EU Regulation into Austrian law, and
the insertion of a single sentence stating when this amendment would enter into force.
Of course, I didn’t draw attention to the size of the amendment addressed, or that it only becomes relevant from the start of 2024. The mail that went out told a story that I could use to connect with colleagues, and I told them:
The English translation of the Austrian Banking Act has been updated to include the latest amendments. The full translation can be downloaded directly at …
All English language versions of supervisory laws, as available, can be downloaded from the website from the page …
Extract of a mail to colleagues
Tell me you are looking for translation work, without saying you are looking for translation work.
That simple two sentence mail connected me with 100+ colleagues. It reminded them that I was potentially available for their translation needs, without saying I am looking for work. The mail flicked the thought switch about translation needs: two pages for one colleague here, one from another there. Checking presentation slides from a third, gist translation of a draft amendment to another law for a fourth. It also planted seeds in colleagues’ minds. Do I translate secondary legislation? Is there a working translation of some frequently cited provisions of the Commercial Code (GewO; Gewerbeordnung)? The list goes on.
This is what a simple e-mail in the depths of the traditional “Sommerloch” can achieve. Its impact means that I am aware that I have to be careful not to get the timing “too right”. Especially as the mail also triggered some enquiries about whether I have time next month for a couple of jobs.
My job crafting also focuses on “seeing the bigger picture”. Part of this revolves around ensuring that translation is not only an afterthought in colleagues’ perceptions. By teasing out a number of non-translation tasks over the years, I have found ways to ensure a steady interaction with colleagues. In turn, this also helps to ensure a constant flow of translation work.
Leveraging a few (relatively) small, but nevertheless important, non-translation-based tasks ensures a strong flow of translation. These tasks include:
Content and document management for our website and departmental Intranet.
Accessibility (Barrierefreiheit) for web content and publications in both German and English
Handling the public consultation of national soft law instruments
Handling the comply/explain process for EBA soft law instruments
Coordinating periodic reviews of internal banking supervision processes
Monitoring of covered bond issuances under the new Pfandbrief Act
Member of the Sounding Board of a subproject in my employer’s digital transformation programme.
Tranlation expertise regarding workflows and processes flows into many of these tasks. A number of them also have synergy effects in relation to my translation work. By handling monitoring tasks, it gives me access to policy experts, who provide me with follow-up translation work. Other monitoring activities allow me to talk to colleagues, in particular recent arrivals, who become translation customers. In turn, I can approach them about meanings and interpretations of tricky concepts.
Keeping a watchful eye over a list of standardised processes provides me with an opportunity to contact colleagues. In turn it helps to ensure a steady flow of translation work, Experience from translation workflows proves useful in understanding the interfaces between banking supervision processes. Similarly, it also helps in understanding how they shape content updates to our website.
Much of the synergies revolve around multi-hatting – dealing with colleagues in a number of capacities.
Take this anonymised example about how I multi-hat, The points below are not in strict chronological order (e.g. Guidelines may already have entered into force, while the national transposition is still delayed…)
A proposal from the European Commission focussing on an amendment to a Regulation of relevance for a specific topic within banking supervision pops up. The policy expert has a couple of days to respond with comments and suggestions in English. They request that I carry out a quick language check for their submission about the proposal. (translator/reviewer hat).
After many rounds the proposal eventually clears Parliament and is duly published in the Official Journal of the European Union. Member States start transposition into national law. Once the national legislation is enacted, I translate the amendment (translator hat)
EBA draws up Guidelines about a specific aspect of the Regulation (and by extension its transposition into national law). I check the German translator with the policy experts (reviewer and national editor hat). Once the Guidelines are published into all languages, I set up the comply/explain process for the policy expert to then appraise. (compliance monitoring hat)
New Guidelines often require updates to our national soft law publications, including a public consultation and/or changes to our banking supervision processes (process management/reviewer hat/consultation hat).
Publication and translation of published soft law instrument and assorted changes needed to our website (web editor and translator hat) as well as for accessibility (accessibility hat).
Three out of the five tasks come about from job crafting, although three tasks also involve me directly based on my “original” role as a translator. In the long-term, it is also possible to ensure that job crafting elements are included in goals and performance metrics for appraisal/review cycles.
In a larger, i.e. non-SPLSU in-house setting, job crafting can allow team members to focus on the areas they prefer, and to collectively cover more bases. While onlookers continue to see a certain number of full-time equivalent translators, within the team there are a far greater array of specialists.
I’ve just returned from a work trip to Athens, my first in-person away day since before the pandemic. I’d last attended a conference in person in 2019, and an away day of my working group back in 2017. A big takeaway has been how good it is to talk face-to-face.
Hybrid and virtual meetings really cut out the opportunity for one-to-one conversation. You log on with a minute to spare, there is no chatting during breaks often only the length of a brief comfort stop. I felt very fortunate that my hosts also arranged dinners for the participants on both evenings. The hospitality extended at the meeting itself was also conducive to being able to talk to colleagues from other institutions. The breaks for coffee and lunch allowing me to speak to several other attendees. Even quick chats to the colleagues sat either side at the beginning of the meeting had a novelty value. Compare that with the awkward silence of hybrid meetings, where at best there is a round of salutations before silence. With presence meetings you are consciously “in the room” the entire time.
Hybrid and virtual meetings have killed off one-to-one conversation
Many hybrid and virtual meetings have an unwritten rule not to use the chat function during the meeting. This makes options for conversations with other colleagues very limited. Online meeting fatigue has also meant that meetings have been pared back in length massively. People attend for the bare minimum time and with cameras off (to conserve bandwidth rather than not wanting to be seen).
By travelling for the meeting, I felt like I was attending the meeting with a renewed purpose. I was eager to talk to as many of the other participants as possible. I knew many for a number of years from presence meetings, but we had sparse contact during the pandemic years. Even sessions with less direct relevance for me than others provided interesting comments. Some are already due to flow into my internal Language Services Handbook (LaSH). The LaSH is a living document compiled since 2017 and that covers various aspects of language services. It addresses issues like best practices, lessons learned from past experiences, technical issues resolved, and handling procurement processes.
And break!
Scheduled breaks in meetings allowed me to talk to other participants. Their situations range from those encountered by fellow SPLSUs (single person language service units) who I ally with, and where we discuss how we manage without a team, and the challenges of smaller language units. With larger language service units, I frequently talk about how job remits change, We talk about team members upskilling, diversification of activities, changing trends in job types, and the changing profiles of linguists. After all, larger teams have more options to look into new areas, and for individuals to “personalise” their position. Most importantly, it is a really important chance to talk about LangTech. Within the group, practically all the language services represented use Computer Assisted Translation (CAT) / Translation Memory software, as well as terminology software. This is our starting point
We need to talk about LangTech
The real hot potato is about the increasing use of technology in language services. LangTech is ultimately already an essential part of language services. During my time as an in-house translator, I have witnessed the neural machine translation (NMT) revolution, the use of natural language processing (NLP) and AI in language services, and now the rise of large language models (LLMs) including ChatGPT.
Some of the colleagues I met with also use additional LangTech solutions and are further along with deployment of machine translation. In some cases, they even have in-house language technologists who work on finding the system(s) that suit(s) their needs. More often than not, there is more openness to talk about what hasn’t quite worked out, or has perhaps not proved as successful as hoped.
The LangTech debate is an interesting one, in that I could be an ostrich and stick my head in the sand and cite (over-)busyness as a reason not to look into it further. However, at the same time, if there are some tasks that it is able to perform and help with that increase my productivity, or alternatively free up translation capacity, then this is a churlish approach. I also cannot afford to rest on my laurels, and be late to the party. After all, certain tasks are currently very time-consuming for relatively little return. For this reason, some alignments and terminology work often only getting fleeting consideration, due to the time needed for them to make a positive impact.
Why I am not LangTech averse…
Good LangTech solutions might reduce a two-hour task to one of twenty minutes. A couple of hours invested can go a long way. It makes investing a couple of hours into alignment or terminology extraction far more conducive. I did a lot of alignment to try to establish a larger translation memory when starting out. Some of the benefits from those early alignments were only realised a number of years later.
Another benefit of talking about LangTech isn’t just about what works, but also about what doesn’t. Understanding the cost-benefit analysis for a large language services unit and economies of scale also is useful to rule ineffective solutions. Granted, I only get to see how the public sector is considering LangTech,
And how about LangTech in the private sector and for freelancers?
The private sector is savvy to MT and having the human expert in the loop doing the PEMT task. I have started to see some freelancers offering “supervised MT” as a premium service. Here light post-editted machine translations are fit for purpose (e.g. gisting) although not a polished human translation. And this is a premium rate service. The potential new charging models are interesting in this regard. Otherwise, there is a race to the bottom with dumping rates abounding for PEMT work through agencies. Where I am particularly interested in their approach is about how they offer such a service for sensitive material. I am also interested in the mitigations in place and the workflows involved.
Another interesting consideration is also what the PEMT margins are like such services, particularly if context matching is used in the MT process (or 102% (double context) and 101% (single context) matches in MemoQ). There is a very thorough examination of how MT character charging *really* works in this piece in the Multifarious blog. If sudden a text of 700-800 characters is using 2,500 characters from your character allowance, it might run through your character allowance quicker than you think.
Preparing for presence meetings – (Re)learning to listen, observe, process and reflect
I find that my preparations for presence meetings are far more thorough than hybrid/online meetings. By nature, I am never a passive participant in any meeting I attend, whether personally or virtually. However, with a presence meeting, I find I take more time over preparation, e.g. finding out who else will attend and what I can talk to whom about. I also try to prepare a set of potential questions in relation to the presentations at the meeting. Presentations of technical solutions also work better in person, and I usually have a think about the possibilities of how to apply what I see.
In contrast, in a hybrid setting due to Webex-weariness, I probably only really tune into the meeting a few minutes before it begins, and seldom look at presentations beforehand if available. There is also the distinct temptation to relegate a hybrid meeting to a second screen and not to fully listen. Having had three years of exclusively hybrid meetings, it was definitely a case of having to almost re-learn meeting skills.
After three years of speaking into webcams, with either a headset, conference spider or podcasting mic, and not having my own window displayed on my own screen, I found the return to full presence mode meant readjusting to simultaneously listening and observing gestures and facial expressions of speakers. The increased effort in terms of concentration, if unused to a presence meeting setting for a while, can be quite tiring.
The value of presence meetings for freelancers
Having freelanced for 14 years, I am aware of the somewhat lonely nature of day-to-day work. My advice would therefore be to try to find yourself a sparring partner. They could be someone who either works in your field or in another, or maybe in a different language combination. They should be in a similar situation to you and you should make time to meet in person, rather than online. Attending presence-based CPD events and conferences can be a great way to network to find your sparring partner. I’ve seen numerous freelancers have done this recently and get a lot out of such meet-ups.
I realise that financial constraints for freelancers might make a two night trip with flights an unjustifiable expense. You might well be able to fine a more affordable way of meeting up with someone. How about roughly halfway from your respective offices, to have a concentrated presence meeting? Also remember the value of having time away from the screen. Such meetings remain essential as a time for reflection about what works or not in your job. They also provide a chance to consider changes to make to the way you tackle certain tasks. This can increase productivity or weed out distractions.
If that doesn’t sound like your cup of tea, you could always consider having a presence meeting-cum-Christmas party – I used to have an “unofficial Christmas party” with freelancing friends – so that we all had a night out and were able to round off the year of freelancing in a convivial atmosphere!
Part of this blog post also appears on my personal website at www.michaelbailey.at, That version has more of a focus on presence meetings, while this version focuses more on LangTech.
At the end of the calendar year I sign off my time/activity sheets to say that they represent an accurate record of the work that I have done during the course of the year. There are two elements here: time physically clocked in, and the activity performed. Perhaps it is a good comparison to think of how London taxis charge: by time when stood still, and by distance covered when the wheels are turning. Translation is the wheels turning, the other jobs are the cab being stationary.
Freelancers probably consider it slightly differently. Time is more important where they provide added value services (e.g. revision, transcreation, terminology, database maintenance). In contrast activity/performance is more important when providing a basic translation service (whether charging by characters, words, lines, pages etc.). That said, the latter has a time element in terms of whether a certain job is worth the hassle. The taxi comparison also breaks down as added value services are also productive, and not just idling in traffic. In particularly, database maintenance ensures a leaner translation memory rather than an out and out larger quantity of translation units.
My annual breakdowns of timesheets since 2014 have shown that I spend around 2% of working time on translation on database-related activities including terminology. This can be in the form of dedicated terminology hours, alignments or TM maintenance.
How has my time and activity logging changed?
I physically sit in the banking supervision department, but also have responsibility for outsourcing for other supervisory departments. After a couple of years’ experience of outsourcing, it became apparent that small jobs cost more in terms of the procurement process. In terms of time, they often take longer than had I just got on and translated them. I used historic timesheets to show the hidden cost of procurement instead of me logging to a different cost centre. Doing so reduced the number of items translated externally. The time saving for the procurement of such translations in turn freed up time to handle short pieces. By doing so, I proved that some translations, e.g. press releases were “too small to outsource”.
A further simplification was possible once I had multiple years’ of data. Initially, activity logging for translation was broken down into three sub-activities (translation/revision/other) in an extra level of detail in the activity booking. In some jobs this resulted in triple the number of bookings. After a number of years I proved that the level of the individual sub-activities remained pretty constant. Broken down by different sub-activities I consistently posted approx. 80% for translation, 17% for revision, and 2-3% for database maintenance and terminology work each year. The consistent level was instrumental in reducing three booking codes to one and reducing the number of activity logging bookings by 75%. It was also possible to bundle jobs that were otherwise realistically almost “too small to log”.
But what happens if the goalposts move?
When my employer changed website CMS, I developed a way to handle translations of pages through the code view. This meant that jobs weren’t broken down into translation, revision and then layout, in my web editor guise. However, when the site changed editing system with the CMS, this did affect my workflow. Fortunately, I was able to then book the layout/CMS work as external communications (web editing).
This also meant that I could see how the change affected my activity. The extra layouting step’s impact has diluted my percentage of translation bookings out of total bookings. The consequence has also been an increase in overtime hours. I’ve tried numerous work-arounds, but they haven’t been effective handling Unicode code bindings. I am able to show the effects of the workflow change impact my activity logging.
Does terminology work get marginalised?
A mere 2% of translation activity being specifically devoted to terminology is a very low amount. I concede that this is one of the shortcomings of being a SPLSU. Considered over a working year, (for sake of argument 220 working days), it accounts for only one working week. However, this amount doesn’t fully reflect any ad hoc terminology work on the fly during a translation job. I add a lot of barebones items (i.e. source and target terms, reliability score, supervisory area, and whether a term is inclusive).
Termbase items quickly add up, but revision and completion (e.g. phraseology, synonyms, context, definitions) only happen after delivering the translation. I would love more time for terminology, but am realistic that added detail is something that only I benefit from. Customers are naturally happy that I use the correct terminology, but have little interest in the research behind it. Terminology work can become hard to rationalise. For them translation is like a swan gliding effortlessly across a lake – they don’t see below the waterline.
Perfect efficiency: exploding the myth
When I deliver my time and activity logging, total translation hours do not tie up 1:1 with my total working hours. It would be a myth/illusion if they did! Time and activity logging also reflects non-translation related activities (e.g. attending courses, working groups, internal/external communications tasks). A translator would need to work up to a 10 hour day to have 8 hours of pure translation productivity. This confirms that your mileage may vary even if benchmarks about daily translation output apply (see for example this blogpost).
In my early days at my current job, a common question was about how much translation was possible each day. I took a simplistic approach: of sustained output of 2,000 words a day. With an 8 hour working day, that meant the output was a steady 250 words an hour, right? Jein. 250 words an hour might be the average, but output could fluctuate between 100 and 800 words per hour. Text complexity, TM maturity and subject familiarity all affect output rates.
As a freelancer, customers and agencies set the deadlines and I worked long hours. I became all too well aware of burst and steady translation output rates. I learned how to work on extensive multi-day/week/month projects and how to set deadlines. The secret was to have enough of a buffer to deliver slightly ahead of schedule. Lengthy projects were vastly preferable to very short pieces (“snippets”). Agency “ticking clock deadlines” were never a favourite. For long jobs there was also due warning about their arrival.
Managing workplace wellbeing: handling peaks and troughs
Time and activity logging provides an added dimension of understanding to recognise peaks and troughs. Having experienced fast-moving black swan events, I now know what effect they have in terms of shockwaves. Typical black swan events include insolvency of a bank, national lockdowns and events impacting financial market stability. Years of bookings also show when to take extended periods of annual leave. How? The type of projects I have to handle provide tell-tale signs of how busy the office is. Past time and activity logging shows that August is usually filled with low urgency projects. This makes it easier to take annual leave. Time logging shows that it is easier to leave the office earlier during the summer. However, it also confirms that I do not often adopt the POETS approach.
A translator’s life can often seem to be a lonely existence. Many aspects about the profession fuel the isolation. I have ploughed a sometimes lone furrow for two decades. In times of plenty I remember being “too busy” to take a break. For self-employed/freelance translators in particular, the initial stage is filled with worry about what happens when e-mails or phone calls dry up.
Another major issue is the asynchronous nature of feedback also plays a role: feedback is frequently sparing when positive, yet abundant when negative. And there is seldom meaningful feedback to help translators to improve. Translation is a mentally demanding profession with tight deadlines and an impossible battle to achieve perfection.
Translators strive for this elusive perfection in the translation they deliver, while also contending with running a business. A job as a translator entails much more than merely translating. Translators have a reputation, possibly due to the precision the profession requires, of being overcautious and introverted. Overcautiousness is often fed by the constant need to set yourself apart from your competitors.
Translators are also secretive creatures – they dare not give away anything more than is absolutely necessary. NDAs often bind them to secrecy that prevent them from discussing their work. This also has an effect of increasing the silo mentality, as does viewing other translators as “the competition”. Translators rarely publish details about customers and rates, due to a fear of “being too expensive”, or providing information to allow others to undercut them. And then, playing on the fear of not having enough work, unscrupulous agencies squeeze freelancers’ rates.
Others contribute with throwaway remarks and questions like “Anyone can translate!”, “How come you can’t translate everything”, or even “How can you survive on one language combination?”. Others humblebrag by saying how they “just translated something”. Occasionally translating short texts is a world away from delivering long and complex quality translations to a tight schedule day-in-day-out. Others neglect the fact that translation is an added value service, with providers best selected using the best bidder principle, rather than the cheapest bidder principle. All these factors contribute to imposter syndrome among translators, particularly those at the start of their career.
How perfectionism makes things worse…
Translators’ tendencies towards seeking perfectionism compounds the issue of being an imposter. With hindsight, this is as ridiculous as the notion of a “perfect translation” is absurd. After all, apparently “faithful translations are not beautiful, while beautiful translations are not faithful”.
Translators nevertheless tend to strive for perfection, when possibly there is a need for a translation that is fit-for-purpose. This can make translators their own worst enemy, particularly until they have sufficient experience to know what is needed. Experience brings with it a degree of acceptance about the necessity of occasional (linguistic) sacrifices.
Literary settings lend themselves to being able to stylistically offset and compensate between source and target texts. Stylistic devices used in the source text may also appear in the target text, albeit not necessarily 1:1 at sentence level. But when it comes to say commercial contracts, it is worth remembering that they aren’t ripped up over a missed alliteration in an arcane clause, but are ripped up if not being fit for purpose.
When is a translation fit-for-purpose?
Fit-for-purpose translation refers to producing a translation of an appropriate quality for the purpose and audience specified by a client. I usually establish the intended use (e.g. discussion at a meeting, or for presentation or publication) at the start. Time constraints can have a bearing – for example, whether to translate the entire text or only certain sections, with possible gisted summaries between those sections.
Feeling like an imposter
In the early stages of my career as a freelancer, imposter syndrome plagued me in a particular form: the form of a dream/nightmare. It took a number of years to overcome and banish the self-doubts instilled by the dream. Even acquiring a batch of stable direct clients, and learning to decline work without guilt didn’t help. Even though I knew my worth, and stuck steadfastly to my rates, with as much work as I could manage, the recurring dream plagued me for three years.
Looking back, it doesn’t surprise me that imposter syndrome is quite common, particularly among freelance translators. Translators are constantly under scrutiny and always having to perform: ultimately many translators feel as though they are judged solely on their most recent translation. When starting out, before you find and settle into your niche(s), you feel compelled to take jobs in a wide range of matters. It was no different in my case. My earliest projects covered a wide range of subject areas – from software manuals through to telecoms equipment, and even the odd military procurement contract.
I remember the relentless pressure on me to deliver. Often it would be in subject areas where I had a very limited degree of knowledge and negligible advance warning or briefing. The only “knowns” would be the broad subject matter, number of pages and the deadline. It lead on occasions to swearing never to touch a specific subject matter again, even after successfully delivering jobs to customers. Panic, fear and dread often only subsided after the money hit my bank account.
I had a dream…
For three years at the start of my career as a translator, I had a recurring imposter syndrome dream. I suspect readers who have had imposter syndrome might even have had the same dream/nightmare. Alternatively, it may have been a similar dream around the same underlying theme. In my case, the core theme of the dream was that I achieved my university degree by mistake or accident.
The dream manifested itself in a number of forms:
failing to satisfy a formal requirement about the modules I chose.
failing to complete coursework for a module.
failure to turn up for an examination.
The common thread of the dreams is “failure”. If the “failure” in the dream was left unchecked, it began to also dominate my thoughts while working. This in turn led to anxiety and affected my ability to think clearly. Since 2004, the dream has only “resurfaced” very occasionally, but never as a frequently recurring nightmare. Any subsequent minor “relapse” was at times of greater stress, when I was facing tight deadlines to deliver high volume translations.
Deconstructing the dream – dismissing its validity
In order to consign the dream to the past, I had to look at the facts in a rational manner. By deconstructing it, it allowed me to reject the dream’s validity.
The advising appointments for each academic session never identified any issues about formal requirements.
I graduated. At latest, any issue would have come to light before graduation.
Banishing the dream
Recurrences were only on an isolated basis in subsequent years. I confronted recurrence head on at times where I felt vulnerable to a relapse. For a while I struggled with panic attacks from overwork, but didn’t suffer from a relapse of the nightmare. At that time, I visited St. Andrews with friends. On both occasions, I never felt like an imposter or a charlatan. I looked back on my time studying there with pride.
On my second visit, I met up with my former Professor for a drink. He was delighted that I had a career as a translator. I mentioned my (then) specialisations of ionising smoke detectors, nurse-call communications, and banking law. He responded with a broad smile, “I can’t imagine you became an expert in those subjects while at university!” I quipped, “I did manage to set off a fire alarm cooking a fry-up!”.
In 2013, I started to forge plans to bring my divergent career strands together, and decided to purchase an academic transcript. It confirmed the satisfactory completion of all necessary modules to allow me to graduate. It gave me greater confirmation than looking at my degree certificate in the early days had.
In 2021, during seemingly endless pandemic lockdowns, I exchanged messages with my former tutor, with whom I also had played cricket, and tackled my only unresolved thought. I had scraped a low 2.ii in the module on War Fiction that he had taught. After the exam, I realised that I’d made an unmitigated hash of an essay question.
My former tutor was quick to dismiss the issue. He consigned the hiccough, a case of “missing the straight one” in cricketing parlance, as being “water under the bridge”. Despatched like a loose delivery to the boundary. Had I not mentioned the issue, I don’t imagine it would have even registered with him. The elephant was only in my room, if it even existed.
Fear of failure?
A comparatively poor pass result had weighed more heavily on my mind than having failed a module and passing a resit in my second year. Passing a module at the second attempt had been like polishing out a scratch. A poor pass was like a still visible scratch – an unsettled score.
Polishing out a scratch…
The unsettled score perhaps weighed far more heavily than it should. After all, it had had no bearing on my final degree classification. Put into perspective against accumulated professional experience it barely even registers now. At the start of a career, your degree classification is a massive benchmark, and still carries a disproportionate weight for a few years. Its significance fades towards obscurity over your professional life. The presence of post-nominals are the only significant reference to my degree. My experience, professional standing, reputation and specialisations carry far greater weight.
How do perceived failures impact translators?
When I started out as a freelancer, I reached a point after 2-3 years to be in a position to pick and choose customers. However, just as I reached this position, I lost a seemingly stable customer. At the time, it seemed like a catastrophic failure and one I took as a failure on my part. A few years later it became clear than translation was only one area to fall foul of cost-cutting measures. Shortly afterwards, another customer chose to pursue cheaper options for their translations. This still felt like a failure in that my service was not good enough value for money. “Failure” as a translator, in terms of customer retention, however, is frequently due to external factors rather than a lack of quality of the actual translation.
Alternatively, the “failure” dream may rest on a sense of under-preparation. As traditionally risk-averse people, translators understandably fear flying by the seat of their pants and need to feel to be in absolute control. The feeling of failure may be even more exaggerated when starting out, as you don’t have the positive past experience to reassure you. Not being in control may be equated with failure. This is unsurprising in a mentally demanding and meticulous profession.
In contrast, in-house translators (at companies or agencies/LSPs) often cover substantially narrower fields of specialisation or a single language combination. Nevertheless they can still feel like imposters. Internal hierarchies can exist in teams, with some translators getting the juiciest cherries, and others having to be content with the pulp. In this case it can become a challenge to keep the whole team happy, as well as how to harmonise the level of knowledge and expertise. There is often scope to acquire different areas of expertise.
Going in-house…
When I changed from being a freelancer to an in-house translator, I did not experience a feeling of being an imposter, due to the fact that I was the team (or as I now define it, a SPLSU (single person language services unit)). Having gained esteem and a good reputation as a freelancer, I knew that acceptance was key in this position and ensuring that I was treated on an equal footing. Fortunately, my employer helped in this regard as I followed the same training courses as desk officers (usually holding law degrees and postgraduate qualifications) in my department.
I also actively sought to establish the place of translation in workflows by showing how to integrate the translator from an early stage, rather than as an afterthought or a final step before publication. For example, I explained the workflows that should what a translator can already handle before the final document is available. This approach helps to minimise the impact of delays in previous stages, thus maximising the time available for translation.
Die eierlegende Wollmilchsau
Barnes’ iron triangle of expectations has existed for decades, yet translators still constantly fight the unachievable due to customer expectations. Customers still expect high quality translations quickly and cheaply – a combination as illusory as the eierlegende Wollmilchsau (the egg-laying, sheep-fleeced, milkable sow). To get a large translation delivered quickly, higher rates and larger teams are used. The result is not cheap.
However, there is another new reality that has come to pass. In the search for greater productivity, shorter turnaround times and keeping apace with greater demand, agencies are now downgrading translators to machine translation post-editors (MTPEs). I will be the first to say that embracing technology as a translator in many areas is essential. However, it is also essential to acknowledge the need for a human in the loop.
Why buy a CAT tool?
Investing in a CAT system definitely helped extend my competitive edge nearly two decades ago. It also gave me a greater feeling of control – in terms of times required for projects. It has helped with knowledge management. To this day, in my in-house position, it allows me to recall any job that I have done. It could be mere coincidence, but my imposter dream disappeared around the time I became a CAT user.
CAT and MT do not provide a human translator with the level of meaningful feedback that a human colleague can. QA tools can leverage your terminology to hint at unexpected terminology choices. For example detailed termbase entries can indicate the usage of a non-standard or obsolete term (helpful if your TM contains TUs spanning a large period of time!). Limitations depend on how Termbases have been set up, maintained and also the completeness of entries.
Dedicated terminologists or translators will provide more constructive feedback than a QA tool. Fellow professionals can point out why something may be a correct rendering of a term in a certain context, but doesn’t fit in another. It is what makes adequate feedback so important.
Improving feedback cycles
Both in-house and freelance translators suffer from lopsided feedback – an acceptable translation frequently yields little feedback. This makes it difficult to gain any constructive feedback, other than responses to questions during the translation process. I have come up with some ways to improve the amount of feedback, by normalising it.
For large translation jobs, I usually request a “fatal flaw check” of my translation – especially if it is intended for publication. I also offer to do a final consistency check before publication – which also allows me to amend TUs accordingly. This way I obtain more meaningful feedback.
For new translation customers, I slip in a feedback form (questions on overall satisfaction, a positive highlight, and suggested improvements). It is kept very short, but jogging them for feedback proves far more beneficial than just an “OK”.
For revision jobs that I do, I point out something that the customer can take away and apply. This often elicits feedback from them. Sometimes, my role is little more than a reassuring second pair of eyes. On other occasions, my role is to ensure that the correct message goes out, in an appropriate correct tone.
In outsourced translations, I add constructive feedback to the thank-you note I send out to the agency. I point out constructive corrections made, from checking the received document. After all, this kind of feedback is the only way to improve texts, or provide impulses for terminology work.
I firmly believe that you never stop learning. From 2023, I intend to take part in translation sparring slams with other translators. I have been reading up about them a lot recently. Sparring slams can be discussed virtually or while at conferences. Getting a fresh perspective is a good tool for staving off “Betriebsblindheit”. It helps you to freshen up your own language (your everyday situation may expose you unwittingly to source language interference, or to language attrition) as well as having a chance to gain knowledge from others and impart your own – this is particularly useful for those who work alone.
More thoughts on imposter syndrome/perfectionism/quiet spells as a translator or interpreter
As a bonus and reward for reading this post all the way to the end, a word of explanation about the chosen title. The play on words deliberately relates to one of the set texts in the German War Fiction course I took in my final semester at St Andrews. Erich Maria Remarque’s Im Westen nichts Neues was a text I initially studied in my first year at St Andrews, as well as part of the German War Fiction course.
Right translation, wrong cover!
I am about to re-read the book again, with the greater hindsight of a further 22 years of living in the German-speaking world, and also reading it for pleasure, rather than as a set text. I choose to do so in preparation for watching the new Netflix film version, which has just come out. See below for the trailer.
Trailer of the Netflix film version of All Quiet on the Western Front
I turned off my work laptop after submitting my timesheet and activity record, and set my out of office message. Holiday had felt overdue for at least the last two weeks. August commutes had been punctuated by the slew of articles about “quiet quitting” – this summer’s controversial buzzword. That was until I ditched my smartphone on the tram and bus for my Kindle. “Taking back control” they call it. In another way to those who decided to take back control on holiday by taking stock of their situation and initiating change.
Flagging mask-wearing attitude in Vienna indicated that people consider the Covid-19 pandemic is over. When commuting on public transport, between one-third and one-half of passengers ignored the FFP2 requirement. Although triple-vaccinated and recovered, the final two weeks were in fear of a new infection before my holiday.
I had no thoughts of “quiet quitting”, but what was on my mind in ahead of my holiday to Tyrol, Salzburg and Bavaria?
Before physically setting off on holiday, I powered down and guided my eldest son through his final days at Kindergarten. He clearly also needed a break. Before we left, I packed and loaded the family car, and finished some admin to allow me to relax. A catch-up with a friend from Uni and his family over beers was a perfect wind-down exercise.
As I was leaving for my holidays, freelancer contacts announced their return to the office after theirs. They posted about marketing and customer acquisition work, due to a dread about a lack of work. It was similar when I freelanced, even with a steady set of fixed customers.
So what was/is on my mind?
Years in the same position have reassured me that I can go on holiday, relax as intended and take a third week off that is crucial for regeneration. Focussing on relaxation and regeneration, I downloaded several books for my Kindle, to enjoy while away. In addition, I stocked up on enjoyable podcast episodes (Decades from Home was a shoe-in given our visits to Bavaria). I also dialled down my current affairs intake – so took a break from Today in Focus. And deliberately also didn’t start getting into The News Agents until my return from holidays. My reading list consists of several biographies, some non-fiction reading and a couple of books related to translation.
Sufficient holiday reading has become essential, especially when booking issues mean sharing a room (and large bed) with your sons. My wife shares with our daughter, when requested adjoining rooms are overlooked. The boys flake out early, giving me a couple of hours’ undisturbed reading. Due to their nocturnal thrashing about, I often end up sleep at the bottom of the bed.
Holiday days vs being on holiday
Taking paid leave (holiday days) is vastly different to “going on holiday”. Out of three weeks paid leave for my summer break, only half of that is actually spent on holiday. I assign a day of paid leave at the start to catch up on filed admin tasks. This quick “stock take” clears my mind for relaxing while on holiday. And I make a “before” list. Similarly, I have a “soft return” to the office in that I log on from home the evening before starting back to get the software updates done and come up with my “after” list. It is my way to ensure that I resume “on the ‘B’ of bang“.
Comparing the “before” and “after” lists helps me see whether my pre- and post-holiday thoughts are on the same wavelength. They aren’t always – some “tired” thoughts at the start of my leave period are duly ditched. A third “during list” contain the thoughts that flitted through my mind while away (relaxation inspires!).
I first became aware of the difference between holidays and being on holiday in 1994. It was after my first year of A Levels. My teachers gave me holiday reading in French and German. One explained with a smile that school holidays didn’t mean a holiday from learning. Surely paid leave is a different matter though?
Does switching off the computer mean really switching off?
While I switch off from my work as an in-house translator, I still struggle to switch off completely. I do try and reduce some of the sources of interference. This year, it was actively leaving all Xing groups. The step was to pre-empt their closure. Doing so also gave me instant impulses for my “during list”, which in turn help with my “after” list.
As a translator, I actively avoid looking for mistranslations in restaurant menus on holiday. I know that non-translator friends will supply enough source material to make up for me not looking. And some still think I need to see the culinary howlers. I now untag and delete these kind of posts. I do this to actively stop thoughts wandering to ongoing and future translation projects.
Breaking the (social) media onslaught
One reason I choose active holidays (in terms of going out and doing and seeing things, rather than lying on a beach or a sofa or a bed) is that it helps me reduce my consumption of other social media. It is also good for actively being present for my children, seeing and experiencing the world. I mute Facebook and WhatsApp group chats (in particular WhatsApp parents groups as our three were away from Kindergarten) to reduce distraction.
I also partially mute Twitter (and actively add some words to the block list!) particularly to avoid its toxicity. Instead, I actively reach for the Kindle and read when tempted to doomscroll. As mentioned above, I also limit my news consumption – in desperate times of rolling news, it is necessary to take a break from it all. It also helps avoid the emergence of a holiday fug by removing the everyday stimulus.
Does anything meaningful come out of my lists?
I mentioned having three lists (before, during and after) during my leave period. My “before list” had three to dos that I completed once back from holiday. Satisfyingly, I didn’t think about them once while on holiday. Two work-related items were also handled in my absence.
My “during list” was an interesting one. Thoughts while relaxed on holiday, hastily scribbled on a free postcard from a bar, might develop into tangible projects. I came up with a machine learning use case for a forthcoming course while sat drinking a can of Spezi. Two conferences I want to attend (preferably in person!) flitted through my mind. I had a crazy thought involving regular expressions (RegEx) that could bear fruits. And there was a mental plan how to rearrange the office at home.
My “after list” prepares me for the return to office. I log in once in advance to let my computer update before I go back to the office. I also catch up on calls for papers for conferences. This is a positive sign, as I recently decided not to submit abstracts, nor to attend a couple of conferences. It also contains a very quick list of all the mails from a single session in Outlook that I need to attend to. I usually revise that part of the list to make sure I prioritise what needs dealing with first.
How do hybrid working arrangements optimise returning to work?
As mentioned elsewhere, I work from home on Wednesdays and Thursdays. I therefore try to ensure that my holiday weeks (of five consecutive working days) run from Thursday to Wednesday or Wednesday to Tuesday. This means that I start back from paid leave in my office at home, and can get on with work with less disturbances than if in the office from day one.
Similarly, when preparing to go on holiday, I try to ensure that I finish in the office one day before I have my final working day. It means that I think more carefully about what I need for the final working day, and focus on what needs finishing off. It also means that I can leave my laptop set up in my office at home and also do my “soft return” logon to allow my computer to do all the updates before I start back at work.
Although I am not (yet) a member of the ITI, I follow their content on LinkedIn, and one recent post particularly hit home, to the extent that I felt the need to add some remarks to a post of my own on the issue of “aural health”.
I was recently felled by acute hearing loss and tinnitus, coming at the end of a busy year. The doctors I went to really advised me to try to avoid noise as part of the recovery process. It meant that while off on sick leave I read a lot on my Kindle and avoided noise where possible (easier said than done with three lively children aged three to five). As part of the noise avoidance, I went to the supermarket in noise cancelling headphones, avoided public transport except for going to the doctors. I struggled most on the U-Bahn, particularly with the sound when a train comes out of a tunnel and goes into a station. Masked and with a hood up, I probably looked to all intents and purposes like I was definitely up to no good.
As we returned to presence working in July 2021, there was a major change from 2020. The previous summer, we were in in split shifts, meaning a week in the office, and then a week working from home in two fixed teams. The latter option meant less setting up and putting away of computers, but had the inflexibility that you only saw one half of your department. If there were two people working on a topic, they only ever saw each other virtually.
As a child I learned that my alarm clock would wake me up. But it took me a lot longer to realise that an alarm clock was a tool to send you to sleep and sleep more.
