I am writing this blog post with two audiences in mind. Firstly, as a Dear Diary exercise for myself, should I ever look back and wonder what on earth it was that I did with my time during the summer of 2024. Secondly, for fellow industry newbies who might be wondering what one of their equally wet-behind-the-ears colleagues has been up to.

I have had to double-check the archives, so hard is it to believe that not even three months have passed since I wrote this post.

I’m fairly sure I have never squeezed so much learning into such a short period, except perhaps the first three months of my daughter’s life. Luckily, this latest factually acquisitive curve finds me energised and strangely hopeful, as opposed to exhausted and questioning my life choices.

This website was the first task I set myself after that revelatory ITI (East Midlands Regional Group) meeting. It was a challenge, primarily because I myself am fairly challenged when it comes to anything technological. Luckily, the blog I started in 2010 gave me a stepping stone. WordPress then offered me a wide choice of website templates, and after a lot of sweating and swearing: aquí estamos, eccoci qua, voilà, iată-ne aici and here we are.

I did cast my eye over some other freelance translator websites when putting mine together, but while they helped me formulate an idea of what should be included, many seemed to showcase a polished, almost corporate look I didn’t feel would represent me honestly, even if I had been capable of creating something similar. I might be professional and good at my job, but I am neither polished nor corporate, and I would hate to inadvertently invite polished or corporate expectations.

My journey to becoming a translation professional has been every bit as important to me as the destination, and a website scattered with my travel photographs, a rather informal potted biography and a blog that addresses a plethora of different topics and interests feels like a pretty accurate representation of who I am, both professionally and privately.

And I have actually grown very fond of www.lovelanguages.uk. I particularly like the fact that WordPress gave me the option of a @lovelanguages.uk email account to go with it. After a lifetime of hotmail, yahoo, gmail et al it feels like a definite step up.

At the aforementioned ITI meeting, LinkedIn was also touted as being a Very Good Thing, although whether as a method of finding work or just as an exercise in networking was not entirely clear. I had actually joined the site in the mid noughties while working in Monaco, although I couldn’t for the life of me remember why, nor could I remember my log in details, so I started afresh.

A word of warning: LinkedIn is not for the faint-hearted, and being of a fairly faint-hearted disposition myself, I have found it to be a hairy ride. I suppose all social media can be reduced to nothing more than a vehicle of self-promotion: whether your desire is to convince your old school friends you are living the dream, or “enhance” the face that greets you in the mirror every morning with make-up and filters. But using it as such is a choice, because it can just as easily be nothing more than a connection with people you don’t see very often, or a place to share family photos, articles of news, gossip or videos of cats pushing a variety of different objects off a variety of different surfaces.

LinkedIn, however, exists ONLY as a vehicle for promotion. For the freelance individual it is a CV in constant motion. A tool to shine an enticing light on professional activities in real time. Personal activities also play a part but more often than not only as an uplifting backdrop to the professional. A daunting prospect for those of us not well-versed in self-promotion given that you are simultaneously faced with the need to be blush-inducingly forward about your own perceived strengths, as well as remaining stalwart and unintimidated in the face of everyone else’s (and there are A LOT of very competent people on LinkedIn).

It took me a while to understand that “connecting” with people I have never met in real life purely to pick their brains for career-advancing ideas to emulate is not considered rude in LinkedIn world. In fact it is one of the nicer aspects of the site, and even as a newbie, you soon find yourself doing the same for others. While I cannot speak for other industries, I have to again praise the collaborative nature of my translation colleagues who are only too happy to share their knowledge when approached. In fact two such colleagues have even offered to coach me through making better use of LinkedIn, so I shall be picking their brains shortly.

Another of my summer activities, in between dog walking, bat caring and fielding the endless needs and wants of a 10-year old off school for the holidays, has been contacting translation agencies. It was suggested that I start my search with the Association of Translation Companies, given that they have to comply with certain industry standards in order to be admitted.

One of the many (many, many, many) misapprehensions pertaining to the world of translation is that it is a well-paid profession. It isn’t. Going through an agency does remove the need to source your own clients (although you still have to court the agencies), so it is to be expected that you will learn less than you would working directly with a client, but there is a limit, and it is disheartening as a professional, performing a complex job, just how often you are pushed towards and over it.

Nevertheless, I am now signed up to a selection of agencies, and paying work is coming through in dribs and drabs. I would of course prefer it to arrive in a torrent, but progress of any sort is not to be sniffed at so I am learning to take things one day at a time.

Where does Bristol Translates! 2024 and #BCLT 2024 fit in to all this? you might ask. And on the days I feel I making no progress at all, I do have to remind myself that I am currently attempting to travel two paths: one as a “jobbing” translator, and another as a wannabe literary translator. The aforementioned courses were hugely beneficial to both, but their focus was primarily on the literary: a sector that is notoriously hard to get in to, and once in, notoriously hard to make pay the bills.

Before undertaking the courses, I had already dipped a toe into literary waters by translating an entire book. Something I was later advised to be NOT A GOOD IDEA, as counterintuitive as that might seem. An Italian translation tutor had blithely assured me the best way to get into the field would be to find books I enjoyed, translate an excerpt and then tout it round British publishers. The aforementioned book was not a long one, so I translated the entire thing (in all honesty I enjoyed the process so much that once I started I could not stop) and began the thankless task of approaching publishers.

It was while floundering hopelessly around on the fifth or sixth publisher’s website trying to work out who on earth I should contact, while nursing a suspicion that I would almost certainly be saying all the wrong things once I did contact them, that I had to face the fact that I had not the faintest idea what I was doing.

Bristol and BCLT certainly helped resolve some aspects of that ignorance, and having the excellent good fortune to meet a very kind literary translator and book scout cleared up some others. So it is my hope that I shall shortly be heading back out on the publishing circuit, refreshed and better-prepared.

And in the meantime:

I have applied for the Emerging Translator Mentorship 2024/2025, run by the National Centre for Writing (purely an exercise in bravery and proactivity).

I am participating in two courses with CIEP (Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading). One on fiction editing and the other a continuation of core copy-editing skills.

I have also found another book that has caught my attention – Spanish, this time. Will she be able to stop at an excerpt? I hear you asking. Well I shall certainly try…