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.