Hello, this is my first share on The Open Mic and of course the story must be my way as a freelance translator.
I started to work as an in-house translator for several firms, this gave me the chance to acquire the proper terminology in their pertaining fields of operation. Never was ashamed to ask the technicians or the people involved the exact term. Perhaps this attitude opened me the way to other positions that of course needed to have the languages as an asset. In addition the people with whom I worked indirectly taught me the proper way to address reports (style). During my work experience with two important firms (one in Italy and the other in Spain) the Italian firm sent me abroad to act as interpreter and later on as assistant manager. The Spanish firm sent me to have technical stages about steering gears (marine) or door closer equipment at the end, due to new position I was traveling abroad almost the whole week. My brother used the call me “airport rat”. Seems wonderful but it’s not. The straw that broke the camel’s back was a trip to Mexico that was due to be a week long a lasted one year. When back home and after a reflection time I decided to go back to my origins and becoming a free lance translator.
At the beginning I was so comfortable: I was my own boss, no need to dress well, no more driving, no more planes and I could sleep in my own bed. In the early 90’s internet was something new and there was a few agencies that got email address. I started to work with them and with a CAT tool that I cannot remember the name. Fully satisfaction of clients even if sometimes I was late with the dates (specially due to windows 3.0 “blue screen”) and recovery of jobs was extremely frustrating. So I learn to save a copy each 15 minutes, – stupid thing, isn’t it? – but CAT tools at that time did not have that capability. – Even my Trados 7 when working with Tag Editor I need to close it and save the wok.
I started to have a considerable amount of jobs, all of them with a short delivery time. I told you before that I was my own boss, but I’m for myself the worst boss I ever had, so if a day has 24 hours I was working 25 to meet the deadline. The whole day sitting and translating. Because I never negotiated the delivery time (mistake). Under normal conditions 2.500 words per day is something acceptable but I started to increase this level by reducing my sleeping hours until several times I spent three days in a row working to meet the deadline of big projects (another mistake). You know why is a mistake? Because my mind was reacting slowly and the time to choose the correct way to express something increases dramatically.
When I used to spend sometime out of Madrid, I used to bring along the laptop full of harnesses to continue my works (another mistake, just changed location in addition with a more uncomfortable chair).
The last big project I translated “20 keys for continuous business improvement “ gave me another point of view regarding my work. Workplace discipline, Quality Assurance, Production Scheduling and some others that will be long to describe.
In conclusion I was fed up of traveling, dealing with million dollars problems and I finished dealing with myself to reduce my workflow. Now I’m on a sabbatical period, just playing with photoshop or bootstrap and keeping my mind busy reading and being informed.
I hope you could extract some tips and tools from my experience
Maurizio