Our “virtual” journey to learn more about languages and translators is continuing and we are happy to meet even virtually our FR>EN translator Olivia. Olivia has been working for us for about 2 years and this is the perfect occasion to get to know her a bit more. Gaël, our French intern is also joining the call. So ready, steady and “allez”!

Q) Hi Olivia, thanks for joining us on this interview for “A cup with”. Can you introduce yourself?

A) Hi, I am Olivia. I have been doing freelance translation for 5 years since I graduated in 2015 with a degree in French and Translation. I work from French into English and I do a lot of transcription work as well, mainly from English to English. When I started freelancing, I also had a full-time job for 2-3 years as it can be difficult financially in the beginning. Two years ago, I decided to go full time freelancing. I am glad it worked and that I have some freedom with my job. I also really enjoy being a freelance translator.

Q) How are you doing, with the current Coronavirus crisis?

A) Adjusting to Covid 19 has been challenging. Many people have moved online, and I think it took some time for them to get used to this new way of working. It was easier for me to adjust to the new situation as many translation agencies already worked remotely. Luckily, work picked up fairly quickly for me. The only difficulty at the moment is not being able to see my family and friends.

Q) Do you have some sort of specialisation in a specific field or are you translating very different kinds of documents?

A) In the beginning, I was working in a wider field. I think you are sort of figuring out what fields you want to specialise in, and you enjoy what you understand. As part of my university degree, I did a year-long internship in the translation department at the tourism office in Paris. I was mainly translating tourism texts for hotels, restaurants, and such. When I first started freelancing, I thought that it would be my specialism because I had the experience in that field.

Over time, I realised I enjoyed more medical, legal, and business-related documents, such as contracts or company policies. I enjoyed these texts more and actually found them easier to translate.. Marketing and tourism can be quite difficult as it is about translating and recreating the text in an appealing way for the target audience, whereas medical, business, and legal documents are easier to work with, in my opinion. There also tends to be more of a ‘straightforward’ translation when working with these kind of documents. I do that more of this now, and less of the tourism and marketing side of things. It kind of surprised me that I ended up doing more research into these fields and specialising in these fields. It naturally flowed into that, which is nice.

I haven’t translated a lot manuals or instructions. Maybe more companies are using machine translation for these. I guess with medical and legal, a lot of the French words or phrases have a set English translation, but these documents are so important that I cannot imagine companies relying just on the machine translation, given the importance of the final text. I think there always needs to be some human approach to these kind of texts. It would be interesting to see the evolution in the next 10 years. As a translator, you must keep evolving and keep your field open. That is why I do a lot of transcriptions and proofreading as well as translations. I am trying to keep a variety of things I do as well, just in case, for example, translation was replaced by machine translation. With transcription, I can already see companies use machine transcription tools and I end up editing a lot of transcripts rather than transcribing them from scratch. However, when the audio quality is pretty bad, I still just transcribe it from scratch. But it is interesting that within a year I’ve already seen the improvements in that tool. It is impressive, but the idea of it 100% replacing what I do can be quite daunting!

Q) What do you think of working as a freelancer, as compared to be an in-house translator? Do you plan on working in-house, should the opportunity arise?

A) I travel between the UK and New Zealand quite a lot for personal reasons. With my job as a freelancer, I am able to do that. Although I like the idea of the security of an in-house position, i.e. you always have work and if there is no work you are still getting paid, I would never have enough time off to travel if I were working in-house. I did an in-house internship as part of my degree at the tourism office for one year which I really enjoyed, and it was nice to have the job security. The social aspect of an in-house role and ability to bounce ideas off other people is also great as when you are freelancing, it can be quite lonely and solitary work. With freelancing, there can also be a lot of anxiety if you do not have work coming in. You are accountable for everything that you do, whether it is scheduling, deadlines or invoicing. But for me this is outweighed by the freedom of being able to travel and live where I want to. I would happily pursue my freelance translator career for the foreseeable future.

Q) What is your use of CAT tools? What is your take on the use of these technologies in the translation field?

A) I use Trados Studio as a main tool. When I first started out, I had been introduced to CAT tools at my university, but not that much. So originally, I was translating from one Word document to the other, literally flicking between them. There was no translation memory and nothing to help me with the formatting side of things. Then I discovered Trados again. I realised that a lot clients were using it as I started to work as a freelancer translator. So, I naturally started to use it more and learn more about it. I could live without it, technically, but I would not want to. It is an extremely helpful tool with the translation memories and the formatting aspect. That is the main positive for me. It is just easier for translators not to miss anything, when you have your documents displayed side by side. CAT tools are great (laughs). They make my life a lot easier as a translator. The customers and agencies I work with use them because you have a consistent term base and translation memory for future projects. For example, I worked on a big project over Christmas along three other translators. Using a CAT tool, clients can collect all four translations into one consistent document.

Q) You told me you were living in New Zealand at the moment. Does the difference between time zones affect your work in any way? Do you have some sort of strategies to deal with that?

O. Time zones affect my work for sure. It was a learning curve in the beginning to be available all the time when I was 11 or 12 hours ahead of the UK. As a freelancer you have to be switched on 24/7 in the beginning. If you want the work, in my opinion, you need to be available all the time for the first few years at least. The time difference still confuses me now! I use calendars and alarms for deadlines. And for accepting work, it is like on a first come, first served basis with most agencies, because the deadlines have to be met and the agency needs to know it is going to be done in time. So, I just set my phone emails to loud overnight here [in New Zealand], so that I am notified when emails come in and I reply to them overnight if it’s urgent or to accept projects, or in the morning for less urgent emails. This strategy may not be the best for some people, but it works for me. A good thing about the time difference is that I can work during UK night-time, as it is in the morning for me. So, it can be helpful depending on the situation. It requires flexibility. It would probably be different if I had children or other commitments as this job can be a solitary thing, as you are very much focused on your work every day of the week.

Q) Any trends on French translation or the translation market in general you might have noticed? How does the current situation affect your work?

A) The main trend now is Covid 19. Pretty much 90% of the translation and transcription work that I had last month was related to Covid. My transcription work is entirely focused on Covid 19 at the moment. A lot of company updates and earnings calls which are all taking place over Zoom. There is more to transcribe because the meetings and updates are getting longer and there are more questions from the attendees.

Q) Any work you felt proud of translating? If you can talk it about, of course.

A) I have offered my translation services for free as part of a volunteering scheme. I was proud of these projects because I felt I was translating something that was going to be used to help a situation in a specific country. One project was about policy implementation, another one about women and equality in war zones. It was interesting as I got to learn more about these countries. I felt a sense of pride being able to translate it and being involved in a project like that. It makes you feel like you are helping.

Q) Any helpful tips for aspiring translators?

A) You cannot focus on one skill. It is important to keep doors open, so you can fall back on another skill to adjust to changes on the market. When I graduated, I wondered, “how do I become a translator?” In the beginning, it seems impossible, but you learn things gradually from experience (invoicing, finding clients, dealing with clients). For those of you who are reading this and are starting out as a freelancer now, I was in the same position as you a few years ago. If you work hard, and network as much as possible, the work will slowly start to come in. You need to commit a lot of your time to it in the beginning and that will eventually pay off with regular work and income. I used LinkedIn as a main network to get in contact with project managers. I also looked online for a list of hundreds of agencies and emailed them, maybe about 500–600 agencies in the beginning. Contact as many people as you can and eventually you will start to get responses.

Also bear in mind that you may make mistakes and remember not to beat yourself up about them and, most importantly, learn from them. There are high standards and expectations in the market. There will be some difficult moments with the time pressure of deadlines and the high standards that are expected of you. Another piece of advice would be learning how much work you can cope with. This is definitely a learning curve and an important one as taking on too much work and becoming overwhelmed can affect you personally and the quality of your work!