03 May Five Habits of a Successful Translator

Five Habits of a Successful Translator

Translating jobs, especially home-based translating jobs, are very in demand nowadays. People from across the globe and different industry are in need of freelancers who will do translation jobs such as translating a certain language to a different language, medical documents translations, legal documents translations, and etc.

Having this new in-demand jobs in the freelancing world, more people want to be good at this job. With this, a lot of newbie in freelancing or home based jobs are very much focused on acquiring appropriate skills so they can apply to these said jobs. However, while they are very much focused on honing their skills and abilities, they sometimes neglect to know and understand what should be the good habits of a successful translator.

Here are the five important habits of a successful translator:

1.  Making high-quality outcome

Translation projects are requested by clients for important matters and it should be taken seriously. Since you have been given a translation job, it is assumed that your client has seen a sample of your works and know that you are capable enough to be given such tasks. With this, prove to them that you are worth the money that they are spending for that project. Show them your skills and keep in mind their goal for that certain project or their business’ goals so that you yourself will incorporate that goal on the tone and style of writing that you will be doing. This will lead you to the next habit, review your works.

“Over time, quality work will lead you to an audience for your work.” – Nicholas Sparks

2.  Reviewing and proofreading twice, even more

“Nobody is perfect” so is any work or work outcome. Even the smartest person you know may not have a perfect work/project done at first. However, what makes a project perfect is by double and even triple checking it. You may be one of the best when it comes to writing and grammar, but for sure, you will still have that one or two mistakes that you will not notice when you first make a certain project. It is hard to check your own work, so if you have someone who can check it for you, then it’s better but if you don’t, just check it over and over again until you are satisfied. Remember even the legendary genius Albert Einstein made some mistakes on some of his discovery so why would anyone be at ease thinking that they will never have any mistakes at all.

3.  Learning from feedbacks and criticisms

Confucius once said, “A man who has committed a mistake and doesn’t correct it, is committing another mistake.” If you have received a feedback whether good or bad, you must consider it especially if it says that you made something wrong because if you will not try to correct it, you are bound to a lot more mistake. Listening to feedback and criticisms are very important to help a translator become successful and learning from it is much more important. With this, you keep on learning and improving yourself in your chosen field.

4.  Keeping yourself open to various topics

“Don’t just go outside the box, but think that there is no box at all.”
In order to be a diverse translator, you must try to accept niches that you haven’t tried working on before. It will not just make you go out of your comfort zone but it will also open your doors to a bigger world in your translation career. But before working on a different niche, do not forget the first habit mentioned here; so, study first.

5.  Building a good relationship with customers

“Coming together is a beginning, keeping together is progress, working together is success”
Since translation jobs are more on home-based in our era now, it is very hard to maintain a professional and trusting relationship with your customers as you cannot see and transact with them personally. However, the online world will still not hinder this important working relationship. To achieve this, first, is to understand fully your project, if you have any question, do not hesitate to ask your customers for clarifications as it will make them see that you are aiming to perfect this project and that you really interested working for it. Second is to focus on work to ensure high-quality outcome. Next is to finish a certain project at the time that you and your customer had agreed on. By doing such things, this will lead to building your customer’s trust and expect that more projects will be given to you, they might even refer you to other customers that will open to more projects for you.
Remember that no matter how many certifications or examinations you had passed or taken, good habits are much more important as this will take you to a long road in the field of translation.