When you’re suddenly the one who doesn’t speak the language

We enjoyed a lovely Indian summer here in England, but now it has come to an end with a vengeance – plummeting temperatures and pouring rain! Time for that finest of English institutions: a hot cuppa!

When you’re suddenly the one who doesn’t speak the language

I work from home and really love doing so – the quiet, the lack of commute, having my cat share my office! But now and again a change is welcome, and when I was asked this year to work on site for the World Council of Churches in Geneva, I jumped at the chance. I thus spent nearly two weeks in Switzerland at the beginning of July, working in a team with three other translators in my language combination (there were twelve translators in the WCC language service altogether). There were quite a few eye-openers for me – what a pain it is to try and catch a bus for work during the morning rush hour, for example, or how nice it is to be able to turn around and just ask a colleague for a second opinion instead of having to post an enquiry on a forum – but perhaps the most interesting wasn’t actually directly to do with my translation work. Geneva is, of course, in the French-speaking part of Switzerland, and I don’t speak French. Well, I can order food, ask for directions, and thanks to my musical training can spout various operatic phrases (“Ah! Je ris de me voir si belle dans cette mirroir!”), but I cannot have a proper conversation with a French speaker, nor indeed understand a lot of what is spoken around me.

This was an unusual situation for me. When I travel, for various reasons I usually go to countries where one of my languages is spoken – Germany, Austria, German Switzerland, Canada, the U.S., Italy. I’m used to being able to understand what people around me are saying and being able to speak to them. Not being able to do so produced a number of instructive, albeit unpleasant reactions:

• I felt helpless. Not being able to communicate what I wanted or needed made me feel powerless. Suddenly I was dependent on other people’s ability to speak one of “my” languages.
• I felt stupid. There’s nothing like stuttering, trying to find the right word (no, make that any word), being reduced to pointing and saying “Cette…si vous plait…” to make you feel like a complete idiot – especially when everyone around you is speaking French with such ease.
• I felt isolated. When all of us translators went off to the canteen at lunchtime, despite everyone’s best efforts to speak English so as to include me, conversation would inevitably drift into French. While I could often work out more or less what everyone was talking about, I was completely unable to join in.

All of this was very interesting for me. In theory, of course, I knew that not being able to communicate makes you feel powerless, but experiencing it full-on first hand was a completely different matter. It gave me a new understanding of the service we translators (and interpreters) provide: while on the surface we are helping clients to get a message written in language A across in language B, on a deeper level we are helping them not to feel helpless, stupid or isolated. An awareness of this will give us both new respect for our own work and greater empathy with our clients. This in turn can spur us on to produce work of an even higher standard.

So all in all, I feel the benefits of my embarrassing lack of French skills probably outweighed the drawbacks – even though I may invest in a “Beginners’ French” audio course before I visit Geneva next time!

Keeping your business going when things go wrong

September – harvest time! Here in Rutland, most of the fields are now stubble, dotted with bales of straw. The village gardens are full of fruit and vegetables – it’s impossible to go for a stroll without being given a marrow, a bag of apples, some raspberries or tomatoes by a neighbour eager to offload their extra produce. Our own apple trees are doing well, and I will be busy making lots of apple compote, jelly, crumbles and so on over the coming weeks!

Keeping your business going when things go wrong

It’s been quite a while since I’ve written a blog post. This year has been a fairly turbulent one, and for the past few months I’ve been dealing with quite a lot on the domestic front. This has, of course, had a knock-on effect on what I’ve been doing professionally. So in this post I want to take a look at what we can do to keep our businesses going smoothly when “life happens”.

• Know there is a right and a wrong time for growth: Recently, my self-employment guru Corrina Gordon-Barnes wrote that businesses go through phases of growth and phases in which we need to focus on maintenance. When big changes or crises occur – which they inevitably do – it is key to remember that your business does not have to be constantly expanding. This is not the time to be doing lots of marketing or to be redeveloping our website; instead, it may be more useful and sustainable to just focus on looking after the clients we have.
• Remember your colleagues: If we are unable to take on new clients, this is the time to refer enquiries to trusted colleagues – they will be glad of the favour and may well return it when they find themselves with more work than they can handle. Seen this way, referring clients on can be seen not as losing business but as a longer-term investment!
• Take a break from social media: Depending on what feels nourishing or not, this may also be a time to take a break from social media. I for one find it easy to get overwhelmed by Twitter and Facebook and have hardly used them at all for the last few months. It’s always possible to return to social media when you feel you have more time to spend profitably using them. (However, others find staying connected via social media a great help in times of crisis.)
• Trust your clients to understand: If you’ve got a reasonably good working relationship with your clients, you will be able to let them know you are dealing with a challenging situation and explain your availability or ability to respond to enquiries may be limited for a while. We often feel a need to present a perfect façade to our clients and fear losing their respect (and custom) if we admit to sometimes having problems – as if professionalism equated to invulnerability. But my experience has actually been that opening up to clients creates a stronger relationship and does not mean they are any less likely to use my services in future.
• Automate: Times of crisis are when having automated systems really pays off. I’m no specialist where automation is concerned, but anything like an efficient software that deals with invoicing, bookkeeping and even sends automated reminders for you (like FreeAgent, for example) can help free up time and allow you to concentrate on more essential things. I was full of admiration for the way that Leonie Dawson  not only kept her business going but managed to grow it during nine months in which she was incapacitated through hyperemesis gravidarum – through having really robust automated systems and some reliable assistants. 

What are your tips for keeping your business going in times of crisis? How do you ensure your professional life remains on an even keel when everything else is going topsy-turvy? I’d love to hear your suggestions!

How a mentor can help your business

This late spring / early summer is one of my favourite times of year – as it gets warmer, greenery starts bursting out everywhere and the air is filled with energy. I’ve been tapping into this energy, attending a number of work-related workshops and social events with ITI’s German Network and East Midlands Regional Network – from transcreation (translating promotional and marketing copy) to Twitter, we’ve covered it all!

How a mentor can help your business

Another thing that’s been keeping me busy over the past month is the work I’ve been doing on my business with my current business mentor, Jez Allman of What and How. As I’ve mentioned in other blog posts, I worked with a coach (the lovely Corrina Gordon-Barnes) while setting up my business and through my first year of self-employment, and now decided I needed the input of another professional to keep my business moving forward. 

Often when I mention I’m working with a business coach, I get reactions like “Isn’t that a really expensive luxury? Can it really be worth it?” or “Oh, I’d love to do that, but I can’t afford it.” However, personally I believe that working with professional business coaches has greatly benefited my business and that the input and support I’ve received has paid for itself – probably many times over – in additional business gained. This is why I was really happy to pay for coaching even at a time when my business was not generating much income. 

So here are, to my mind, the main benefits of working with a coach:

• Running a business can be quite scary, especially if you’re comparatively new to it. A coach or business mentor provides you with the support you need to move through that fear and come out the other side.
• You are paying someone to listen to those worries and fears – and dreams! – and offer helpful, qualified advice. This means you don’t feel the need to vent at family and friends, who may not understand what you are going through. Nor do you need to feel embarrassed telling your coach – after all, they’re being paid to provide you with this service.
• A coach helps you develop longer-term targets and plans, so you don’t get bogged down in the day-to-day running of your business (this is my particular problem!). Even better, they will hold you accountable for the tasks and goals you have set!
•  A coach can help you to “dream big”. Coaching sessions provide you with a space in which to develop new ideas and encourage you to aim for your wildest dreams rather than small things you can definitely achieve but won’t gain much satisfaction (or money) from.
• As business owners, we are so involved in our business that we often can’t see the wood for the trees. A business coach can give you a fresh, outside perspective on your business, and they possess the experience to recognise what can work and what can’t, saving you time and money lost in making mistakes.

If you don’t want to work one-to-one with a coach, there are other ways of getting similar input – for example, you might want to form a Mastermind group with some of your peers (I did this when I was starting out on my self-employment journey). Some coaches actually run online “circles” or “academies” (I particularly like the unabashedly hippie but extremely business-savvy Leonie Dawson). 

Here’s to all of us finding the support we need!

Any stories to share about coaching, mentoring or helpful support? Do leave a comment below!

A rare skill: Sütterlin script

Exciting news here – Margaret Hiley Translations has moved! Not very far, however: my husband and I have bought a cottage about five minutes’ walk from Pudding Bag Lane, so are still happily based in Exton and enjoying the beautiful spring flowers here in the village.

A rare skill: Sütterlin script

Over the past months, I’ve been making use of a skill I acquired as an undergraduate for one very specific university module, thinking afterwards that I would probably never need it again. This is the ability to read (and write, if necessary) a special kind of German handwriting called Sütterlinschrift that was widely used in the late 19^th and early 20^th century, eventually falling out of use following the Second World War.

I first re-used my Sütterlin skills shortly after I set up my translation business, when I was asked to translate some letters written to and by a German prisoner of war who was interned in a camp in Lincolnshire after the War. These letters provided a fascinating insight both into the POW’s life – his experiences, hopes and dreams for the future after his release – and into life in post-war Germany. The POW’s family had been forced to move from formerly German territory in what then became Czechoslovakia, and the letters included some very telling comments to the effect that the Czechs were now treating the Germans “like Jews”! (Germans were subject to a curfew and had to wear symbols on their clothing.) One wonders to what extent this treatment opened some people’s eyes to the dreadful injustices of Nazi Germany.

Last year, I started to work on a longer ongoing project that involves transcribing and translating the correspondence between the Austrian modernist composers Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern. These letters are publically available in PDF format in the database of the Vienna Schoenberg Center. Once again, they provide fascinating insights, this time into a slightly earlier period. Some of the statements I found most intriguing (besides the information on musical compositions and performances) concerned the outbreak of the First World War – for example, on 11 August 1914 Webern writes: “What terrible events. There is no way of understanding it all. [..] Where has all of this terrible hatred been up till now? And what will happen? […] I pray to heaven for the victory of the Austrian and the German army. It cannot be that the German Reich will perish, and we with it. A steadfast belief in the German spirit, which created the culture of mankind nearly on its own, has awakened within me.” Little did he know what was to come!

Last month I got to use Sütterlin again for some more personal correspondence, this time written by a family who found themselves on opposite sides of the Iron Curtain following the Second World War: the son, taken prisoner during the War, in England, and the rest of his family in the GDR. The letters revealed the difficulties faced by these individuals in simply trying to stay in touch under these adverse circumstances; this made particularly poignant by the information supplied by my client that they in fact never saw each another again.

Working on personal historical documents such as these always gives me a particular thrill; it is almost like being there at a given moment in time, seeing it through the eyes of those who experienced it. At the same time, it always also feels a little bit like eavesdropping; after all, these are intimate letters written for the eyes of one or two people, certainly not for mine. This makes the whole translating experience a particularly intense – and often moving – one.

Wishing you all a wonderful blossom-y May!

Self-employment Stories: Part Two

We have been spared the worst of the wind and rain that have buffeted other parts of the UK here in Rutland, though it has not been the pleasantest of months in terms of weather! I was lucky enough to be able to distract myself from the wet by attending a few choice events: a Society of Authors event with two of my favourite childhood authors, Judith Kerr and Shirley Hughes, and the 2014 Sebald lecture held by the British Centre for Literary Translation, which this year was given by another one of my favourite authors, Margaret Atwood. I was delighted to hear all three of them, learning that Shirley Hughes started to draw and make up stories “because there simply was nothing else to do” in wartime Merseyside, that Judith Kerr’s Mog was actually based on her real cats, and that Margaret Atwood regarded herself as “a nightmare for my translators”!

Self-employment Stories: Part Two

In my last blog post, I wrote about the story of my own path into self-employment, and promised to continue the theme this month by sharing the stories of some other self-employed professionals from a range of different businesses. These kind individuals told me about their experiences in a short survey I designed to gather some interesting anecdotes and advice for a presentation on self-employment I gave at the University of Exeter last year, and I’m really pleased to be able to share them with you here as well.

Setting up a business – why and how

So why do people become self-employed? Among the things that “pushed” people into self-employment were the end of university, redundancy, they were fed up of working for others, they were unhappy with their jobs or simply unable to find employment; and among the things “pulling” them were the desire to achieve a better work-life balance (working with young children), a passion for specific field or industry, and their desire to be their own boss. They used a range of means to fund their start-ups; among those mentioned were redundancy packages, savings, bank loans, remortgages, family support, government grants and even credit cards! They found their first clients through telesales, leaflet drops, by buying an existing business, networking, through their website, newspaper ads, agencies, social media, word of mouth, referrals, university tutors, local events, and online profiles – once again showing a range of different strategies.

Things people value about self-employment

What is it that people value most about self-employment? The answers speak for themselves:

• “Time and Money are what I wanted from it and have achieved, but the other key benefit is developing a culture within the company that stems from my own business management views and style.” (Quality Water & Fruit Distribution Company)
• “It creates far greater potential to generate real 'wealth' than virtually any employed position.” (Consultant)
• “Being able to decide what I want to take on or not, choose when I want to be on holiday, the flexibility.” (Subtitling and translation provider)
• “No limitations to what I can take on or what direction I go in next - no one says no other than me!” (Interior and garden design specialist)
• “Not being badgered by management or having to put up with colleagues talking behind my back.” (Translator)

The challenges of self-employment

However, of course there are downsides to self-employment too! Here are some of the things that respondents struggled with the most:

• “Sometimes feeling a bit isolated. Uncertainty about where the next job will one from. “ (Freelance editor and writer)
• “Growing through a recession. Confronting my fears.” (Accountant)
• “There are no employer benefits (i.e.: sick pay) unless you pay for them yourself.” (Independent Financial Adviser)
• “It is an emotional roller-coaster.” (Language agency)
• “Never being able to shut down.” (Nutrition consultant)
• “Realising that every time you finish a job you’re technically out of work until the next one starts.” (Document management expert)
• “Actually buckling down and doing the work! I enjoy being out talking to people, doing presentations and training courses, but I often lack the discipline to get on with the preparation.” (Welfare Benefits Consultant)

Advice from business owners

I also asked respondents what advice they would give to a young person (or indeed any person!) thinking of setting up their own business. Their responses certainly gave me food for thought!

• “Turnover is vanity, profit is reality and cashflow is sanity - it's too easy to underestimate the importance of financial planning.” (Property developer)
• “Don't undercharge or accept dumping prices.” (Translator & editor)
• “Put by one third of everything you earn as soon as someone pays you to pay tax bill with surplus used to cover any extra investment needed, e.g. a new computer.” (Writer and editor)
• “Don't fear failure (learn and bounce back from it) and have a mentor.” (Career turnaround coach)
• “Get some employment experience first. That way you will learn your trade and make contacts.” (Translator)
• “Do your market research before you start. Too many businesses fail because they thought their business was a good idea but there was no market for their products and services.” (Business mentor & coach)
• “Determine if you have the self-discipline and drive to continue and make difficult decisions without a safety net.” (IT consultant)
• “Your working life is a marathon, not a sprint and so you can build on a range of skills, not just what you learn at college/uni.” (Language service provider)

For me, reading others’ thoughts, experiences and advice was really enlightening; I found it fascinating how peoples’ experiences across so many different sectors and professions were similar, and how the best advice was applicable to any kind of self-employment. Perhaps my favourite piece of advice came from a people development consultant, whose message to those considering self-employment was: “Don't let anyone tell you you can't make it work! YOU CAN!”
Have you got any advice you’d like to add to this list and share with other readers? Any comments on the issues raised here or things that you would do differently? Do leave a post below – I’d love to read what you have to say!

Self-employment stories – Part I: My story

Happy New Year! It’s been a wet and foggy one here in Rutland so far, but luckily not very cold – the first snowdrops are already emerging!

Self-employment stories – Part I: My story

In October last year I visited the University of Exeter to speak to their students about my experiences of setting up and running a successful self-employed business as part of the university’s Global Entrepreneurship Week. While preparing my talk, I spent a lot of time reflecting upon my experience of self-employment – how I’d ended up becoming self-employed, the main challenges I’d faced, the most valuable lessons I’d learned. The students told me they found hearing about my own experiences really helpful, so I’m going to be sharing them in this post. Here is my self-employment story (scroll to the bottom if you just want my top tips)!

My way into self-employment

I grew up in England, Canada and Germany as a bilingual native speaker of English and German. After finishing school I went to university, which I enjoyed so much I decided I wanted to take a PhD and then get a lecturing job. However, once I had become a lecturer,

I realised I wasn’t enjoying myself. In particular, I wasn’t enjoying the lack of freedom to decide what and how I wanted to teach, the huge amounts of paperwork, the constantly changing policies and procedures, and the overall dependence on government whims for funding. I had assumed that what attracted me to academia was the ability to engage with literature, theory and the arts. But now that I was missing freedom and independence, I realised these were actually far more important to me than my subject. Was there a something I could do instead that would give me the self-sufficiency I longed for? Suddenly it seemed very obvious: throughout my undergraduate and postgraduate years I had always worked as a translator on the side as a way of earning extra pocket money. As a native speaker of English and German, I kept getting asked to do this – I didn’t have to look for clients. Some clients I had even worked with regularly for several years. Might it be possible to start doing this kind of work again, earning enough money to make a living?

Starting out

I decided to take the plunge and switched to part-time work so I could earn some regular income while building up my translation and editing business. Given that all of my professional experience was in academia and the cultural sector, I decided it made sense to specialise in this area.

I contacted all my old clients as well as my university colleagues and let them know I was looking for work. I also asked them for testimonials that I could use on the website and marketing materials I was planning to create. I joined the Institute of Translation and Interpreting (ITI), the UK’s professional association for translators, which gave me access to a professional network of colleagues who proved a fount of knowledge concerning the industry. As I felt I had very few “business skills” as such, I took a 6-month group course on self-employment called “Turn your Passion to Profit” with Corrina Gordon-Barnes, a specialist business coach – probably my single most useful step! I also took an “Orientation Course” organised by ITI for newcomers to the industry, which again is something I would highly recommend. I attended several free workshops on self-employment and taxes run by my local HMRC office. I also had a professional website built for my business. This was comparatively expensive but really paid off – I still get compliments for this website years down the line and it really helped me to stand out and look professional.

Becoming established

There were still a few bad patches in the first 6 months, but then – almost overnight – things started to pick up; I gained a couple of good regular clients; old clients kept coming back; I got recommended on. I started making money. In fact, everything went so well that I was able to quit lecturing after a year and a quarter, not 2 years as originally planned. I spent a lot of time building a professional profile (networking, blogging, publishing in trade journals, presenting at local and national business events). This usually doesn’t cost anything but time and is a very effective way of “showing up” – becoming visible to your colleagues and target market. I now find that most of my work comes from referrals and repeat customers; they basically do my marketing for me. Today I am in the very lucky position to not have been without a project on the go for a very long time, and despite the challenges of self-employment (my particular demons: dealing with my terror of “money issues”; learning how much my work was actually worth and charging that; managing periods with a very high workload; learning how to respond to criticism; learning how to say “no” to clients), I now can’t imagine working in any other way.

My top tips for self-employment:

•       You need to be able to motivate yourself.

•       Do something you are passionate about – it makes it easier to motivate yourself!

•       Define a clear niche or “tribe” for your service or product (and make sure it really exists).

•       Get support – you don’t have to do it alone (professional networks, mentors, mastermind groups).

•       Have a financial safety net in place, at least for the first while (savings, loan, part-time work).

•       Marketing is all about becoming visible to your “tribe” – find where they hang out (in real life or online) and let them see you.

•       Making your clients happy so they recommend you on is the most sustainable form of marketing.

•       Keep showing up – networking, marketing, sharing your expertise in whichever          way.

In next month’s second installment of this blog post, I’m going to share the self-employment stories of colleagues from a whole range of businesses and sectors – do check in again for their experiences and advice! And if you’ve got any tips to add to my list in the meantime, please leave a comment below!

Why I'm no longer offering translations into German

As I write, I am gazing not at my beautiful garden in Rutland, but at my sister-in-law's beautiful garden in Upper Bavaria. The view goes out across a meadow and a little stream overhung with willows, and behind that the ground rises in fields covered with corn. I had forgotten how much corn they grow here (as animal fodder, not for human consumption)! I am currently spending a few days in Bavaria with family before heading off to Vienna for the annual "Internationales Texttreff" (meeting of the German-language women's network Texttreff). It's nice to be back!

Why I'm no longer offering translations into German

One of the beauties of self-employment is that often we can work from anywhere (such as Bavaria instead of Rutland). Another is that our businesses can grow, develop and change as we ourselves do. If we realise that something is no longer working for us, we don't have to go through a lengthy application and justification process - we can change it. I've recently decided to make such a change in regard to the language combinations I offer.

I grew up in the UK, Canada and Germany as a bilingual native speaker of both English and German. When I started translating as a student, I worked both from German into English and from English into German (I also studied translating both ways at university). Amongst translators, it is regarded as good professional practice to translate only into one's native language, but as a native speaker of two languages I have always defended my ability to translate into both English and German. However, recently I have found myself becoming increasingly uneasy about offering translations into German. Here's why:

• I feel increasingly out of touch with everyday language and culture. I lived in Germany for 15 years, went to school and university there, am married to a German and do in fact speak and read German every day. However, it's been ten years now since I actually lived in Germany, and I feel I no longer have my finger on the "pulse" of the language (to use a German expression). For most of my work - which is academic - this might not seem too much of an issue, as academic German is a very formal, resolutely old-fashioned language that changes very slowly. Nevertheless, I have felt increasingly that my German has lost its spark, a certain "aliveness" without which texts feel boring. And I don't want to produce boring texts, even if they are accurate translations.
• All of my creative work is in English. I don't think this loss of my German "spark" is a coincidence. For the last ten years, I have neither been required nor felt inspired to write creatively in German (by which I mean actively producing content in German). By contrast, I have written essays, a book, poetry and blogs in English. English quite simply is the language I feel creative in - including in my translations. In English, I get a real sense of "flow" when translating; my translations into German feel a lot more laborious, even though the outcome may be perfectly acceptable.
• It doesn't make financial sense. Because I feel less attuned to and less creative in German, it takes much longer - in fact, significantly longer - for me to produce a translation into German. However, I can't charge significantly more per word for that translation to compensate for the additional time. It stands to reason that the obvious thing to do in financial terms is to concentrate on producing high-quality English translations as I can complete more of these in shorter time, earning more income.

So, from now on, I am going to be concentrating on German-to-English work. I will still work with my current English-to-German clients (who constitute a relatively small part of my client base anyway) for the time being, but any new enquiries for translations into German will be referred on to trusted colleagues. I do want to experiment privately with "playing" and writing more creatively in German - who knows, my "spark" may come back - but for now, English is going to be my only target language.

What are your thoughts on language combinations and offering translation both out of and into a language? Have any of you had similar thoughts or experiences regarding your languages? I'd be very interested to hear them - why not leave a comment below?