Translation home-based businesses can be one of the greenest enterprises out there Bridging the Gap, blog in English at marcotranslator.com




Greater than 2 minutes, my friend!

If you are an independent translator who works from home, chances are that your enterprise is one of the greenest businesses out there. Don’t forget that just because your company seems like a small operation ran from a residential area it is not as legit as a Fortune 500 business ran from a corporate building. This is something I learned recently from a course I took at UCSD Extension Program called Strategic Marketing and Branding for Translators and Interpreters, taught by Judy Jenner from Twin Translations.

In San Diego, for example, where Marco Diaz Translations was recently launched, there is a serious water problem, so this small business is committed to help Southern California conserve its water resources. Since as entrepreneurs we have the opportunity to work from home, we can be very frugal about the use of water and energy. Some days, especially when it is not summer, we can skip the shower and just wash our face and arms with soap in the morning. It shouldn’t take more than a bowl of water. This wouldn’t apply if we need to go out to a trade conference to try to engage with potential clients or networking events when we need to look as clean and professional as we can be.

Energy conservation is the key here. You can try to use as much daylight as possible to keep all electric appliances turned off during the day (except for your computer of course). Not only are you helping preserve the resources in your local community, but you are also reducing the costs of running your business (or lowering your monthly bills). Also, you can replace all the light bulbs in your office with energy-efficient bulbs.

Other ways in which a home-based business can be part of the local green network is by recycling hazardous materials such as batteries, fluorescent bulbs, or paint products. Moreover, if you would like to take your green business even further, you can create your own compost bin in your backyard  by following the steps in this easy guide. This way you can reduce the solid waste that goes to landfills and the garbage pick-up costs while keeping your backyard soil nourished to help grow plants if you would like to have an organic source of vegetables.

Marco Diaz Translations also takes pride in not driving a car and only using the San Diego Metropolitan Transit System (which works well if you’re within a 10-mile radius from downtown San Diego, but starts to become a little bit of a drag if you’re anywhere in North County) or riding a bike to the office supply store. An alternative to this, if you need to travel a long distance or make it to a meeting on time, is to use a car-sharing service like Car2go, which uses only electric cars and are friendly to the environment, or Lyft, which is a way of car pooling instead of using your own car.

The only downside about home-based companies and their impact on the ecosystem is the use of paper, like in my

case. In translation businesses it is necessary to print hard copies in order to efficiently revise and proofread  our translation work. The one thing we can do about this is to try to use both sides of the paper for multiple translation projects and recycle it as much as we can.

I wrote this post to encourage other colleagues and entrepreneurs who work from home to try to become as green as possible in order to take pride as an industry with one of the lowest impacts on the local ecosystems.

Marco Díaz

About Marco Díaz

ATA-Certified English to Spanish legal and technical translator in the San Diego Area specializing in contract law, business law, family law, and mechanical/electrical engineering I Native Speaker I

3 thoughts on “Translation home-based businesses can be one of the greenest enterprises out there Bridging the Gap, blog in English at marcotranslator.com

  1. Hey Marco!
    Thank you so much for encouraging our community to think about the ecology. I feel like this is topic is often overlooked when you’re running a 1-man home business. I also try to recycle as much as I possibly can (we live in a condo and our garbage chute supports easy switching between recycle and organic waste). As far as paper concerned: have you tried using several screens for proofreading? Some people feel like this is a great way to perform side by side proofreading/editing tasks (although an extra screen can add to energy consumption).

    Congrats on publishing your first Open Mic story by the way! Looking forward to read more from you!

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    1. Hello, Dmitry,

      Thank you very much for your comment and for creating this space where we can all learn and improve the overall reputation of the translation/interpretation industry. I actually have not tried using two screens in my workplace, but that is something I should probably look into. I know of many translators who work this way, yet I still need to figure out what’s the best way to implement it. On the other hand, I’ve also heard that for some reason the eye usually catches mistakes better when looking at printed paper, although this might not be necessarily true for everyone. I am glad that in Canada they are also environmentally conscious about disposing waste.

      Best,

      Marco Diaz

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      1. Glad I could help with the suggestion. I guess it all depends on the field that you work in. In my case I work with video games and although using MemoQ for QA and proofreading in 2 columns works for me, sometimes localization testing on an actual game can also help catch errors and issues with the text.

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