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The European Commission’s translation department is once again offering its Juvenes Translatores (Young Translators) competition; the 2008 edition will be held on November 27 and the registration is open to any secondary school in Europe (deadline October 20). On November 27, the student contestants will all translate the same text (last year’s was on sustainable development) and they may choose any language pair from among the EU’s 23 official languages.

This competition is an incredible initiative that simultaneously encourages high school students to pursue careers in translation and highlights the work of the European Commission’s staff translators, who judge the entries that are submitted. The winners receive a trip to Brussels where they participate in an awards ceremony and meet some of the EU’s staff translators.

Thanks to reader Dierk Seeburg for sending this Wordle made from the posts on Thoughts on Translation.

Time management is an aspect of freelancing that many people struggle with. In one sense, a freelancer’s time belongs to her or him, which is a beautiful thing. Rather than the métro, boulot, dodo (an expression too expressive to be translated!) life of the office worker, a freelancer can make the 10-step commute from the bedroom to the office at 6AM, 10AM, noon or later and then work until the work is done, scheduling shopping, cooking, exercising or socializing as time allows.

At the same time, the amorphous structure of a freelancer’s work day has its disadvantages. An office worker has an external incentive (let’s call it “the boss”) to get to work on time, put in an eight, nine or ten hour day and produce results. In addition, an office worker doesn’t have to explain why he or she can’t drop a friend’s dog off at the vet or let the neighbor’s plumber in, because the office worker has a strict boundary between home and office.

I think that there are a number of good productivity strategies that home-based translators can apply. A few of my favorites are:
-Use a prioritized to-do list or a day planner. When you’re translating away and suddenly remember that you need to check on overdue invoices, pay your credit card bill or buy printer paper, don’t stop what you’re doing to perform that task. Instead, write the task on your list or in your planner, and do all of the small tasks at once during a work break.
-Realize that it’s acceptable to be “at work” even though you’re at home. Answer the home phone line sparingly; warn house guests that you will be working while they’re visiting; don’t feel obligated to be the person who’s always free during the day just because you work at home.
-Do the “have to” tasks before the “want to” tasks. On your to-do list, list the tasks that must be done that day first; don’t let yourself fiddle around with your website when you should be doing your payroll taxes.
-Give yourself a time frame for non-work tasks. One of the things I really enjoy about freelancing is the ability to do things like banking, grocery shopping or getting the car’s oil changed at off-peak times, but I make sure to give these errands a defined amount of time so that they don’t eat the day up.
-Acknowledge that sometimes, staring at the computer screen isn’t the best way to get the job done. Especially if you’re at the computer for most of the work day, consider an “exercise desk” where you can work while on a treadmill or stationary bike, or make an hour of outdoor exercise part of your work day.

Also, I think that productive people are sometimes defined more by what they don’t do rather than what they do. For example, our household doesn’t have broadcast TV and we watch one or two movies per month on DVD. If you watch a couple of Netflix movies a week, you could probably start a blog, write a book or market your translation work to better-paying clients in the same amount of time you spend watching movies. However, our household also considers nightly home-cooked meals to be an essential component of our day. We spend a fair amount of time growing, shopping for and preparing food, but we feel it’s an overall benefit to our quality of life. A big part of increasing your productivity is prioritizing the activities that are important to you and eliminating those that aren’t. As the summer winds down, it’s a good time to think about your goals for the upcoming months and how you can achieve them efficiently!

In the past month I’ve been contacted by several translators who are at what I think of as the “make or break” phase of freelancing. They have a fair amount of work and their clients seem pleased with their translations, but they are not yet at the level of income and work volume where they would like to be for the long term.

In this situation, I think it’s important to look at a few factors in order to break through to financial sustainability, and the point in your freelance career where you are spending your time working rather than looking for work. For example:

• Have you allowed sufficient time to reach your goals? I would say that the average translator’s startup phase could last six months to a year, but that it’s not unusual for many people to require two to three years to reach “cruising speed,” where the freelance business becomes like a full-time job where you control the hours. Expecting this to happen after three or four months is, in my opinion, very optimistic.
• Have you met the requirements of every project you have done? If you meet (or better yet, beat) your deadlines and deliver quality work that has been carefully researched and proofread, your clients will use you again. If you are lax about deadlines, don’t allow time to ask terminology questions and proofread your work, it’s time to tighten up your quality assurance system.
• Are you targeting clients who have ongoing work? Sometimes, a client is very happy with your work but simply does not have a need for your language/specialization/etc. more than a few times a year. In this case, ask the client for a testimonial and use it to market your services to other clients.
• Are you asking your clients for feedback? It’s important to remember that a) some clients are not eager to give you constructive/negative feedback and that’s their prerogative and b) a translation project manager’s job does not necessarily include evaluating translators. That being said, it’s worth asking your clients what you could do to better meet their needs, if they have any feedback on your services. etc. At the very least, this lets the client know that you are eager to improve and to work with them again.
• Are you charging too much or too little? The rest of this blog’s lifetime could be spent talking about rates, but in general, you want to avoid pricing yourself substantially above or below the market rates for your language pair. Charge too little and you’ll mark yourself as either an amateur or someone who is not confident about your skills; charge too much and your clients will look elsewhere.
• Are you targeting clients who fit your niche? In general, large agencies seem to prefer translators who work in a variety of specializations, charge moderate rates and can turn around large volumes of text in a short amount of time. In exchange, a large agency might be able to keep a translator busy close to full time. Smaller, boutique-style agencies often prefer specialized translators who, often in exchange for higher pay, are very meticulous about their work and don’t mind answering questions about their terminology choices, target language phraseology, etc. Just make sure that you are targeting clients who fit your own work style.
• Have you considered taking on a supplemental job? You’ve come this far; rather than abandoning your freelance business (assuming you enjoy it!), consider working at a bookstore or library, teaching language courses, doing tutoring, applying as an FBI contract linguist or another similar job that will help you keep your business afloat while you reach profitability.

For anyone in the Denver area, or anyone who would like to come to Colorado this July, you don’t have to wait until 2010 to attend a translation conference in Denver. ATA’s Translation Company Division will be holding its 9th annual conference in Englewood from July 17-20; that’s next month!

I’ll be attending this conference, and although it’s obviously geared toward people involved with translation companies, I think that a) many of the sessions are applicable to freelancers too (Trends in Translation Technology, machine translation, The Technological Vice Grip, Life Cycle of a Translation Project, as well as tool-specific presentations on across and Beetext) and b) it’s a nice chance to get to know other translators and company owners in a more personal setting than the main ATA conference. And no, I’m not a spokesperson for the TCD, I just think this looks like a good opportunity and Colorado isn’t generally flooded with translation-related conferences. All of the registration information and the program are on the TCD’s website that is linked above, and there are also some interesting social activities like dinner at The Fort restaurant.