I'm on the [colourful phrase describing the internet]

     I finally set up my own website (www.johnappstranslation.com, for those who are interested). This is something that I've been meaning to do for quite a while now and it is finally done. Overall, I'm reasonably happy with it, though I do keep tweaking details here and there. I went with my own name because I couldn't think of anything else I was really happy with and it's unlikely to change any time soon. It's only been up a couple of days but I've been getting a half dozen or so unique hits a day without me doing anything to promote it: a good start, I think.

    To design the website and decide what pages I wanted to have, I just went to the JAT directory and looked at other people's websites. I picked the bits that I liked or thought were appropriate to me and used that as a template. I already had some ideas but this helped to solidify them and I found some ideas that I just hadn't thought of (such as providing a link to the AUSIT code of ethics and some of the questions in the FAQ). There are still a couple of points that I want to work on. In particular, I like the idea of having terms and conditions on the website and I want a Japanese version (although that may take a little longer since I don't want to embarrass myself with a website in poor Japanese).

     I've linked the website to my LinkedIn account but not to this blog or twitter because I'm aiming at different audiences with them. This blog (and by extension twitter, which I mostly use to advertise when I have a new post) is mostly written with other translators in mind and may not be of interest to potential clients. I'm still tossing up whether or not I will have a blog on the website itself. Apparently, that's the type of thing that Google likes and it improves your search ranking. I suppose it might even be interesting to some people. However, I'm still not sure what I would write about (although at least my target audience is decided) and we can all see how well I kept the update schedule on this blog.

     I have some ideas on what I need to do next for the website (such as the aforementioned terms & conditions and a Japanese version and somehow boosting my search engine rankings) but I would love to hear some feedback. So, please tell me what you like or don't like and why.

Baskets of Eggs

     I've noticed that whenever one of the agencies I have signed up with sends me work, they all do. Usually there is only a little overlap, if any, but occasionally I have to turn down work. These leads me to wonder, how many clients/agencies should I have?

     On the one hand, more is better. I get nervous if I go more than about a week without work (I'm not saying I never go more than a week without work, that's just about how long it takes me to go from 'ah, a well-deserved break' to 'aah, no one loves me! How will I feed my family?'). I can use this time for professional development or I can spend time with my daughter, but that doesn't make me any money. I also don't want to rely too much on one source of income if I can avoid it. What happens if they experience a quiet period? or shut up shop? or decide they just don't like me that much any more? So, having more agencies/clients is better for my peace of mind and financial security.

     On the other hand, I hate having to turn down work. This is not just about turning down money but also about the effect on my long term relationship with the agency/client. If I turn someone down because I'm busy, they're going to think twice before they offer me jobs in the future. So, the more agencies, etc. that I am signed up with, the greater chance that I will get little jobs from all over the place instead of developing a stronger relationship that sees me trusted with larger jobs.

     Unfortunately, I'm not sure I can see a way out of this predicament. I can't just sit out the quiet periods and hope that someone sends me work (If the waiting doesn't get to me, S____ nagging at me to get a real job will). I suppose the situation may sort itself out: those that send me requests more often are more likely to catch me when I'm free and, thus, are more likely to send me more work in a self-perpetuating positive feedback loop, while those who don't are more likely to be turned down because I'm busy. But this doesn't really seem like a solution so much as hoping for the best and it doesn't really answer my question.

There's no time to waste

I recently did a couple of rush jobs for an agency I hadn't worked with before. I always get nervous about handing in jobs for new clients but this time it was worse.

For a start, it was a rush job and these come with their own special problems, which are exacerbated by stress over the deadline. Usually, I try not to translate and proofread on the same day so that I can get at least a little distance from my own work. I find this helps me see the forest for the trees; that is, it is easier to see the work as a whole rather than the individual sentence or phrase that I am translating at a given time. I also find it easier to rewrite particularly ugly or literal phrases if I can look at them with fresh eyes. I know there are tricks I can use such as changing the margins or reading off a print out, but I think taking some time away (when possible) is most effective. Most importantly, it helps me spot mistakes since I don't have what I *thought* I read in the front of my mind. Obviously, I couldn't do that here, which meant that I was worried about making a stupid mistake and that I wouldn't catch it when I checked my work.  In fact I did make a stupid mistake, I confused 酸素 (oxygen) and  酵素 (enzyme), which was, luckily for me, caught by the proofreader. I could make all sorts of excuses to say it wasn't my fault, but I knew the situation and I took the job anyway; I should've caught it and I'm ashamed I didn't.

The other factor that made things more stressful is that I actually remembered to ask for more money this time. This becomes a problem for me because, in my own mind at least, it's a guarantee of good work and as soon as I asked for more money I lost the right to say "it was a rush job, mistakes happen". I am reminded of a meme that was popular before the word meme was: a job can be done quickly, it can be done cheaply or it can be done right; pick two. In asking for extra money, I'm promising it will be quick and right.

I don't think it was a total disaster. My contact at the agency seems like a nice enough person and he knows that I am still relatively new to the business. He also said he looked forward to working with me again, he may have even meant it. At this point it would be easy to say "all's well that ends well" and move on to the next job. However, if I want to become a better translator I need to learn from my mistakes.

I was fortunate enough to receive back the document with all the changes made for the final draft and I have gone over it with a fine-toothed comb. In this case, I think my problems stemmed not from my processes (I think I made good use of the time that I had) but from haste. Unfortunately for me, the only thing I can think of that will prevent me repeating my mistakes is experience, which you only get by making mistakes.

What's in a name?

     So, I've started working on a website recently using a service called weebly. I've been using the free version which is pretty good. It's very simple and easy to use and the results look good too. One of the things I like is that you can use any web address you like. They have one that is a sub-page of their own site, i.e. xxxx.weebly.com or what have you, they can register a domain for you or you can use a domain you've already registered. I don't like the first option, I think it looks unprofessional, so I'm going to register my own domain name. However, I'm struggling with what that name should be.

     At the moment I'm using Journeyman Translation as a place holder but I don't know if the word 'journeyman' will give the first impression that I want, my wife thinks it won't, and since I want to update my business cards (half the details are out-of-date and I want to incorporate some ideas that I picked up at IJET), I think this is the ideal time if I want to re-brand. I'm not sure if I want to use my name either, I just don't like the sound of it. Does anyone have any suggestions?

     Also, I'm wondering whether or not to attach a blog to the site (this blog or a new one). I don't think I want this one since it is not really aimed at clients, which the site would be, and I'm not sure what I would write in a new blog.

The time has come to talk of many things

     Let me preface this by saying that this is probably not a return to regular updates. Having said that, I've been thinking about the blog lately and this post has been assembling itself in my head at odd moments over the past week or so.

     One of the biggest things to happen since my last post is that I went to IJET-23 in Hiroshima, which was also one of the things that I planned to do this year. I'm really happy I went, among other things it rekindled my love of Japan and seeing and talking to so many other translators inspired me to become a better translator, or at least try to.

     I met a lot of interesting people there, I even remember some of their names. Some of them I recognised from blogs or mailing lists (one of them even recognised me and said she read my blog, I was so stunned that I was speechless) and some of them I had never heard of but was glad to have met all the same. I even met people who had less experience than me, I knew they had to be out there but I still didn't expect it. 

     One of the most interesting sessions was a workshop where we went through a translation of a short document; it was less than a page. What fascinated me was how free some of the translations were. I tend to be a fairly literal translator, partly by training (we were encouraged towards being as close to the text as possible to prepare for the NAATI exams), partly because of the work I do (fairly technical stuff mostly) and partly by nature. For me inserting a subject or dividing a sentence can be a big issue. A good example of this is the title of the text we looked at which was about Twitter and face-to-face communication. The title was 'PhoneとFace', which I would probably have translated as 'Phone and Face', literal as that may be. But the hands-down best translation was 'Tweet or Meet', which is absolutely brilliant and I wish I'd thought of it. It was clever, natural and perfectly suited the article. What more could you want?

     I also attended a session on CAT tools, which was actually one of the reasons I wanted to go to this particular IJET. Despite my earlier protestations, I had decided that a CAT tool was probably a worthwhile investment and I thought it might be good to know a little about what I was buying. Honestly, they all seemed to have the same basic features, but in the end, I chose Deja Vu, mostly because one of the speakers recommended it. I also spoke to some other people who recommended it and I didn't really hear anything bad about it.

     So far, I'm reasonably happy with it. It does everything it's supposed to and it's fairly easy to use. One point that really stood out for me was that when it presents you with a fuzzy match it highlights the differences that are in your source text, which is very helpful. Another feature I liked was that if the only difference between a text was a number, for example diagram titles that were the same but had different figure numbers, the program would automatically change the numbers. I'm not sure if this works with dates though. For all I know, these are standard in most programs but I still think they're cool.

     I bought the USB dongle with the program. This means that I just plug in the USB stick rather than using a registration code and if I want to upgrade my computer it's simply a matter of moving the USB stick, rather than deregistering from one computer and reregistering on another.

     I have had some teething troubles, lest you think it has all been sunshine and puppies, but I'm hesitant to say anything because I haven't read the manual or looked at the training, which they provide for free. If I had done so, I may have had fewer issues.

     One of the reasons that I bought Deja Vu was because I had signed a contract with an agency and I was expecting a lot of repetition in the work they sent me (I won't name the agency because I'm about to complain about something that is not really their fault). Part of the confidentiality agreement they signed in relation to the contract I was hired for means they want me to work over a remote connection to their server and I can't use my CAT tool for the job I had in mind when I bought it. I'll let that sink in for a moment. Furthermore, I can't copy and paste from their system so I can't copy to a new document to import into Deja Vu. I also can't print out the document, which is very annoying. Now, I didn't want to translate into a document over the remote connection because a) the lag was terrible, only about a second but that's bad enough, and b) I'm a little self-conscious about my work, especially while it's still in progress and I don't like people to see it until I'm done. This meant that I translated into a document on my computer only to discover that I can't copy and paste to their system either and I had to type out the whole thing in their system, one of the things I'd been hoping to avoid. Now, I'm not blaming them (that's why I haven't named them). I understand why things are the way they are and if I'd had the time I probably could have found a better way of doing things, but it's annoying all the same.

     Finally, I'm not sure when I'll post again. Regular updates are good in that they give me practice in trying to produce something readable in a deadline but if I'm forcing myself to write something then I suspect you (not you personally, I mean readers in general) would be forcing yourself to read it. So, at the minute, I haven't decided on what will happen, although I have had an idea for a future post.

     tl;dr version, I went to IJET; it was good. I bought Deja Vu, a CAT tool; so far, so good. I can't use it for one of the projects I had in mind when I bought it; not good. There will probably be future posts, but I don't know when or how far apart; up to you (and this time I do mean you personally) whether this is good or not.

Hiatus

I'm putting my blog on hiatus. I'm not sure how long for. Lately writing for it has become a chore that I only do out of a sense of duty. This means that it has not been interesting to write and probably even less interesting to read. Furthermore, I'm not sure that I am adding anything of value to what is already out there.

So, I'm putting the blog on hiatus while I decide whether or not to continue with it and what I will do with it if I do continue.

Money

I've just recently signed up with another agency, which is the reason this post is late but more on that another time, and one of the things they wanted to know was how much I charge. As I was thinking about this I decided that, where feasible, I would be charging by source character rather than target word. There are a number of reasons for this, the primary one being that it is fairer.

I think it is fairer to charge according to source rather than target because it means that both myself and the client know what the costs will be in advance and also the client knows that I am not trying to rip them off. In a target word model, the client needs to hope that I am honest enough not to pad out the word count (which I am) but it also means that I lose out if the word count is less than I expect. As a translator I am always aiming to improve and produce more concise translations, should I be punished for trying to become better? This also makes it easier for both sides to plan because the client knows exactly what it will cost before hand, instead of a rough figure, and I know exactly what I will get for it (admittedly there may be arguments about the character count, but that's a different issue).

A third way of doing things is to charge by the hour, which many people do for proofreading and the like. This wouldn't work for me for two reasons. The first being Parkinson's Law, work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion. I can drag out a driver's licence to take all day if I have nothing on. The second reason is that I have slightly erratic work habits and don't always work at a consistent pace. How can I charge by the hour in good conscience if I know I am likely to spend longer than is necessary?


To me, it makes more sense to charge by the source character. At least this way, the client gets a reliable figure and they know that I am not trying to rip them off. After all, if they don't trust me, they won't come back to me.

I'm not much of a socialist

I have a couple of pending invites on LinkedIn from people who would like to be my friends, or whatever term they use, and I'm not sure what to do about it. Generally, I only friend people I've already met or had some dealings with, in fact Twitter is the only exception to this, but I signed on with LinkedIn to form business connections, so I'm not really sure what I should do in this case. Although, I'd probably be more favourably inclined to them if they had actually written some kind of introduction, etc. rather than just using the standard formula that is provided.

I think this extends to other forms of social media as well, like Facebook and Twitter. I've signed up to them but I don't really know what to do with them. Or perhaps it is more accurate to say, I don't have the right mindset to use them effectively, the only friends I have on Facebook are people I've actually met and I probably average a combined total of one post a month on all the social media sites I'm a member of. I'm sure that some people can use these as tools to build up their business, although I haven't really seen much to convince me this is true for anyone outside of "social media gurus" who tend to espouse the benefits of social media because their business model depends on people believing this is so. But, I suspect that people who are able to use social media effectively are probably social people anyway and would use similar tactics even without the Internet. As is probably obvious, I'm not one of these people, hence the above conundrum.

So to summarise this slightly rambling and kind of, but not entirely, off-topic post. I've joined a couple of social media sites, which I make the occasional stab at updating, but I don't use them effectively to drum up interest in myself or my business and I doubt that will change any time soon.

Seriously, What the Hell?

Many of you may have read about the recent debacle regarding court interpreting in the UK. For those that haven't you can read about  what happened here and more detailed breakdowns here and here, but basically  the Ministry of Justice (MoJ), in an attempt to cut costs, contracted all court interpreting to a single firm, Applied Language Solutions (ALS), whereas previously (before Feb 1) each court had found their own interpreters as required from the National Register of Public Service Interpreters (NRPSI). Now, it seems that ALS was paying interpreters considerably less than the earned in the old system (GBP16-22 per hour for a minimum of one hour vs GBP30 per hour for a minimum of three hours), so many interpreters refused to work for ALS, cases are being deferred and people are being remanded to custody due to missing or unqualified interpreters and leading to increased court costs. What they have now is a system that is expensive and a potential miscarriage of justice instead of just expensive.

My question is how could they have possibly thought that this would end well? I can almost understand from the MoJ side. They thought instead of wasting public servant time looking for interpreters, they could contract out to a company that would do all the leg work. A comment in one of the above posts also mentioned that they thought the costs were higher than was actually the case. So I can almost understand their side. But, and this is a big but, why didn't they get an accurate costing of the issue, shouldn't they have done that first? And while I'm sure ALS made an attractive bid, this deal was worth 6.5 times more than ALS per year, shouldn't that have raised some red flags on their ability to handle such a large contract? And most damning of all, a trial involving ALS and police in Manchester had already been cancelled and the contract ripped up for many of the same failings.

Looking at the ALS side, things make even less sense. To start with, the deal was worth several times more than the company! I don't care how good you think you are, even putting your name in was a pretty stupid move. I also don't see how they thought they could have made money. Obviously the MoJ wouldn't want to spend more money per hour on this service (this is a money saving exercise), so ALS would have to pay the interpreters less in order to make a profit. But in what world would this work? Those who make a living this way wouldn't be willing to work for less and even the most altruistic would reconsider after such a significant pay cut. Translation work could conceivably be farmed out to people in countries with lower costs of living, but that wouldn't work here. They may have been aiming for interpreters with less experience but interpreting is quite a difficult skill to master and anyone smart enough to do it wouldn't do it cheap for long. I imagine this applies even more so to court interpreting. And don't they realise that people talk to each other? I've already read a half a dozen or so articles about this, interpreters will probably have read more.

And just to rub salt into the wound, it appears that ALS's standards are lax enough that they added someone's pet rabbit.

I don't understand how anybody thought this would work, especially ALS. It seems like their entire business plan for this undertaking relied on nobody realising how much they were getting screwed or ever talking to each other.

I Should Be Working

I am mindful of my self-imposed duty to this blog, but I'm right in the middle of a large job at the moment so I'll keep this rather short.

There are two things that I have noticed during this job. One is that I am now more seriously considering a TM program. It would help with term consistency within the document, of course, but this document is also closely related to a previous document that I worked on (proofread rather than translated) a little while ago and it would make consistency between the documents easier. As it is, I am looking at previous notes as well as the translation and source of said related document. At this stage it is probably too late to do anything since I have no idea how long it would take me to set up and fiddle around, but it is something I am thinking a lot more about. I am familiar with TRADOS and know that I can import source and translated documents and match them up but are there any other suggestions of good products?

The second thing I noticed is that the closer a deadline is, the easier it is to keep. So far I have been pretty good about keeping disciplined and staying on top of things, but it is really tempting to say, "sod it, I have heaps of time," and slack off.

Also, today is my 5th wedding anniversary. Happy anniversary S____, only 2 more years to go.

CAT Allergy

I recently did a rather large translation that had quite a lot of repetition in it. In fact, it would have been perfect to use a CAT tool (that's not a tautology, it's Computer Assisted Translation or something) for. But I didn't.

This document (actually there were 3) would have been perfect for a CAT tool because it had a lot of repetition, both of terms and whole sentences, which is exactly what CAT tools are designed to deal with. I've had some experience with CAT tools: At MAJIT we had some training in TRADOS and I downloaded the free trial to play with for awhile and I've also used OmegaT (I even reinstalled it specifically for this job). Furthermore, this wasn't a case where I would be punished for using it (I've read of some agencies paying less for fuzzy matches and 100% matches, but I have no personal experience of this. Although, I did get an email from a company that apparently does this and wants you to buy a licence to their product as well. This seems to be a major issue that some translators have with CAT tools in general and this agency in particular. I won't name them though because, as I said, I don't have any personal experience. I didn't take them up but more because I had enough on my plate. I wonder how long I can drag out this set of parenthesis, I'd say 'without going off-topic', but it's a bit late. That seems to be it).

However, despite having every reason to and no reason not to, I didn't use a CAT tool because I just don't like them very much. I like the idea of them. They are very cool and can potentially be extremely useful, especially in texts such as the one I had, where there was a lot of repetition and consistency was important (it was a document for a court case). But I don't like using them. I prefer to work off a print out rather than off the screen (I ensure consistency with a piece of paper, a pencil and patience). I also don't like messing around with tags and things (they annoy me, I'm sure I can be trained to use them effectively, etc. but they still annoy me).

So there you have it. I could have used a CAT tool, and it probably would've made things easier for me, but I didn't, for no real reason other than I don't like working that way.

As an aside, when I was writing this it occurred to me that I'm probably not doing a very good job of advertising myself here, what with admitting that I can take a long time and I don't like time and labour saving CAT tools. So I went back and looked at my first post to see who my target audience was. It seems I didn't really have one. Now, I think my target audience is other translators who are at a similar stage in their careers to me. I don't really have any wisdom to share but I hope they get something useful out of it, even if I'm not sure what. Also, I can't get a damn thing done if I spend all day in my PJs.

Better Left Unsaid

Earlier this week, I planned to post about a particularly troublesome proofreading job I had over the weekend. However, a major part of the post I wrote devolved into a criticism of the translator and it occurred to me that posting such a rant would have been unprofessional and possibly unethical.

It would have been unethical because a) the AUSIT code of ethics says that we shouldn't badmouth our professional colleagues, or words to that effect, and I'm fairly certain this would apply even if I don't mention any names, which I don't know in any case, and b) it'd be a nasty thing to do and wouldn't really accomplish anything.

It would also have reflected poorly on me. It would look more than a little unprofessional if I lambasted everyone I thought did a bad job and I doubt anyone would want to work with someone who then publicly criticises them. Even if I withheld names, if you think it's you, you'd still feel insulted, I'm sure, and I don't think I have the skill, yet, to make a successful career while alienating people unnecessarily (if I did I wouldn't refer to myself as a journeyman).

I may write about it another time, when I've cooled down a little (after 4 days, it stills aggravates me when I think about it) or I'll just stick to complaining in private.

Balance of Fear

I recently did a job that I got through a friend of mine. I was absolutely terrified and this is good.


I'm normally pretty nervous when I translate because whatever I write is going out into the real world, not a closed environment like school, and will have repercussions. Repercussions for myself: a good job means more work and more money, a bad job means less work from that agency/person and possibly from others (I was once told that a good review is spread to six people and a bad one to 100 people). Repercussions on the author: based on what I write, they may end up looking foolish at best, they may lose clients, etc. And also repercussions on the reader as well. Mark Twain once said, "be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint." A mistranslation could be just as bad. I realise that I'm not usually translating anything that is quite so important, but I'm nervous nonetheless. In this case I was also worried because if I did a bad job then it would reflect poorly on my friend, in addition to all that other stuff.


But I think it is good to be nervous, it makes me careful. I worry about mistakes so much that I check everything. Even the things I think I know, especially those things. In my experience, that is where the mistakes are and I've made more than enough of those. One of the things that I noticed at WIPO is that when they checked my work, the things that I agonised over barely got a comment, but it was in the parts that I was confident of that I made mistakes. This makes sense when you think about it because I focused more on where I thought I might be wrong than on where I thought I was right. 


In short, I get nervous about my work and this is good, so long as I don't let it paralyse me and I can use to make my work better.

To Infinity and Beyond

My business cards arrived today. I'm reasonably happy with them. I could have done a better job designing them (I'm not entirely happy with where I put that phone number) but that's on me not Vistaprint. The quality of the card itself is pretty good too, especially considering how cheap it was. Here is a scan of the card (print it out and pass it to your friends, I don't mind. Really). 

The back is blank. I wanted lots of white space so I can write in my web address when I get one or anything else really.

The thing that really blew me away was the delivery time though. I went with the cheapest, and thus slowest, delivery and they told me 21 days. I could have paid more and had them arrive sooner but I was in no rush. Two days after ordering I received an email saying that they would ship ten days ahead of schedule. Four days later they arrived, two weeks ahead of schedule. I already planned to write a bit about the cards when they arrived and I already wrote a little about how I thought it was a good deal when I ordered them but now I'm more inclined to do so. The first thing I thought when I got them was "that was fantastic. I'm going to tell everyone."

My point is that doing that little bit extra can make a huge difference in the minds of customers or clients. It's easy enough to do a job that is merely adequate, just look at some of the posts I've written here, but unless you are stupidly cheap or there are no other options, people won't come back. On the other hand, I'm now more likely to recommend Vistaprint to people and use them again because of something that was probably so trivial on their end as to not be worth mentioning.

My question is what can I do to give people the same impression? If I want my business to be successful, coasting along just won't cut it. Early delivery is one option but I don't think I'm cut out for that. I'm usually so nervous about doing a good job that I keep working on a piece right up to the deadline. (I should mention, I don't think this is a bad thing. If I were to become more blase, I suspect I would be more tempted to cut corners or not check as thoroughly as I otherwise would. In fact, I know it.) 

One thing that I can do is provide personal customer service. When I deal with direct clients, or even with agencies, I know the details of any translations that I have done for them before (if that is the case). I can learn how they like things done without them needing to repeat themselves every time (if I am lucky enough to have repeat clients). This also works the other way, the client or the agency can get to know me, which may be equally important to building a successful business relationship.

What else? I'm not sure yet. But, they'll probably be little things. I may not notice them but they could be very important to someone else.

I'm in Business

In keeping with my New Year's resolution and my terrible embarrassment at not having a business card the other day, I have just ordered some. I know I intended to wait until after I had a website set up but these were on special and a fantastic deal. I paid $5 for 500 cards from http://www.vistaprint.com.au. They have a lot of designs that you can use for free or you can upload your own for a small fee. There are a lot of options to customise things as well, although many of them you pay extra for. As far as I'm aware, I don't get anything for spruiking them but it seems like a good deal so I'm happy to tell people about it. Although, they won't get here for a couple of weeks because I went with the cheap postage option, so I can't speak for the quality just yet.

I Met Someone

I translated a driver's licence recently. What makes it noteworthy is that the guy I translated it for wanted to meet me because he was working for an organisation that is looking to be involved in Tanbo art in the local area and he might have documents that need to be translated in the near future. I suspect that I got picked because, according to the NAATI website at least, I'm the only (accredited) Japanese to English translator in North Queensland. (Although for some reason it only lists nine translators in Queensland and I'm fairly certain there are more than that.) It also reminds me how important it can be to actually meet people.

The only regret that I have is that I didn't have a business card to give him when he gave me his.