March was a difficult month for Italy. Nevertheless we have decided to go ahead with “A cup with”. It was my greatest pleasure to chat on Zoom with Mariolina and get to know her better.

Q: Hi Mariolina, welcome to “A cup with”. Can you introduce yourself?

A: I am Mariolina Brenna, I am 55. I have been working as professional translator, interpreter and professor for English and French since 1988 so over 30 years. I have been working in many different fields mainly legal, medical and technical. As for translation and for interpreting of course the medical field as I belong to a family of medical doctors so that was the easiest way to get my foot in the door but I also deal with many other different fields.

I also live in the North of Italy, precisely in Lombardy which is extremely under the stress of the Covid-19 situation. I also live in a specific district (the furniture district) so I also do have a huge amount of experience in the furniture industry. I have been teaching since 1990 at different universities: “translation from EN/FR>IT” and simultaneous interpreting.

Q) Let’s talk about the translation market. What are the trends in your opinion? How did the market affect your career? Any recent changes?

A) The market since the 90s has been changing a lot in term of clients, technologies and in terms of the type of assignments. Let’s talk about translation first of all: initially we worked without computers, so everything was quite mechanical. Then computers arrive, technologies and the internet came in and everything became easier. Not only that, but we could work with companies locally but we now had access to international clients and brands. It literally changed our way of working: I used to work only with Italian clients, then I started with Switzerland, France, the UK and US. I work with companies all over the world now. It changed also the type of assignments you had access to (you could now have access to companies producing different products).

“Suddenly we were able to work with companies from all over the world, work on different timezones. As a consequences, the competition also increased”

Machine translation has been around for years now. Will it replace human translations? Definitely for some industries when you do not need human creativity. For example transcreation will always need human input and so all the marketing texts. Specialising in a specific industry is a plus but also be realistic of the current market needs.

Q) As a teacher, what do you recommend to your students?

A) In mediazione linguistica e culturale, we provide background knowledge in another fields (psychology, criminology, marketing, etc..) in order to provide a specific specialization. For instance, specializing in marketing will also allow you to have some career opportunities in marketing and not only in translation.

Q) Do you think your translators are ready to enter the job market when they finish university?

A) As a university, we promote internships. This clearly is a first step to understand the market. After 3 years, they can enter the translation market but not the interpreting market ( you need extra training). My suggestion is continuous training: read multilingual magazines, news and sites. As a translator/interpreter, you need to be update with the current affairs. Use the lockdown opportunity to train yourself. Keep your skills up to date! Train your language skills, Skype your foreign clients..

As a translator, availability is quintessential. Being flexible is essential as you might need to take a job at the weekend and if translation is your only source of income, be tactile. Do not accept a job for the sake of making money as delivering a bad job could compromise your relationship with your client. Honesty is the best policy, even after 30 years, there are fields I am not comfortable with and I’d rather decline an assignment rather than delivering a mediocre job.

Network with colleagues, colleagues are not competitors (and this is not for newbies). It is good to have always “a go to” colleague to share some work with when your are too busy (you always need to inform your clients).

Q) Let’s talk about clients! Desperate times also require “special” measures. I noticed some companies having some poor or no communication about the current events, what are your thoughts on this?

Words still matter a lot. 90% of the communication is on the internet and email. At times, we rely on impersonal communication. We do not deal with a person. So if the communication is wrong or come across as “touchless”, the reader will consciously or subconsciously decide to stop using that company. Give correct information, straight to the point on how your company is to rectify the situation. For example, Italians use too many words. As linguists, we can help to deliver this message in a professional way.

And in this scenario, you still have companies using Google translation for their marketing colleagues. Selling luxurious items with mistakes do not convey a professional idea of your company. These materials must be read from a clients’ prospective. Do they make sense in their language?

To sum it up, the current emergency will cause some slow times to everyone including translators and interpreters. Working on continuous training and branding is vital for linguists but also we can assist companies to communicate better. We will share some interesting information and strategies with you! So watch this space!

Try to think about your freelance business as a brand and try to turn this difficult situation into an opportunity. You might need to adapt to a new market and learn new skills or educate your clients to operate in a different way!