Hi everybody! So how are you doing? I can't believe autumn is coming so fast! As much as I like the summer, I can't wait for September to come. If you read this announcement you'll know why :)
My second webinar for Russian-speaking translators is approaching fast, too. This time we are going to talk about blogging as part of translation business. You can check the details and register here.
And now let's get down to business :) Hope you remember that we are talking about specialisation. And this time my guest is Sara Colombo. Sara is a freelance translator, interpreter, blogger and author. She is going to be one of the speakers at our September Conference and give us some important advice about transforming a blog into a book. So if you are blogger and if you are looking for a way to make a book using your blog posts, Sara is the person you need!
You can read Sara's blog at Balance Your Words and connect with her on Twitter and Facebook. And here's her story:
The job was interesting, there were many other young
graduates and nice colleagues, and I was asked to translate, speak or interpret.
But not as often as I wished. On top of that, I felt that I could not put into
practice my ideas, and quickly found myself facing a scaring dead-end: I was
not using languages, not growing as I wanted to. So I decided to leave the
company and gave my dreams a chance.
During the
time spent working within such challenging environment, however, I learned to
develop a wide and precise medical terminology. Indeed, my daily activities
included face-to-face specialists and manager meetings, which were mainly
focused on technical and detailed aspects regarding our products, patients and
general communication strategy (often addressed to our other Spanish and
American markets). Even if initially I disliked that experience, it proved to
be very useful.
On one side,
I understood that I had to be a translator: I had to use, learn and play with
words, concepts, values. While on the other, that I loved working with
localization, marketing and transcreation.
So I
started to look for clients within the marketing, advertising, but also
localization field. You might wonder what does the medical field have in common
with creative texts? Which, by the way, is a good point. The answer lies in
globalisation. Communication is a key
aspect within the medical industry, and companies (both small and large) like
to promote and share, let alone managing their institutional website and
marketing materials.
Globalisation,
by its side, has changed the way we communicate and share our knowledge. Health
and medicine have turned into global issues covering a wide range of topics and
problems, at national as well as international level. Markets are
interconnected, health and medical specialists can’t ignore the cultural values
beyond a foreign market anymore, because also patients and potential customers
can easily reach online information, and, as a consequence, change their
opinion, or make a different choice.
These years
within the medical field have proved to be really – extremely – interesting and
resourceful. I worship the chance I had to work in that big company (it is a
client, now), because it baked up my linguistic education, and proved to be a
memorable experience.
Indeed,
after all those translated texts, meetings, and courses, other companies within
fields such as marketing and advertising started to contact me to collaborate on
different typologies of materials eg. fitness (my beloved!), food, beauty, but
also research and ethic.
My
suggestion? Don’t be a naysayer: try many things, absorb, learn and listen to your heart (literally), because the
moment it will bounce you will know that is your path, and will find what you
love most.
Dear Sara, many thanks for sharing your valuable experience!
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