Dora Wirth (Languages) Limited was proud to once again join the London Regional Group of the Institute of Translation and Interpreting (ITI) for their annual Meet the Client event on 23rd March 2021.
This year, for obvious reasons, the event was held on a virtual basis. As always, however, the event was a chance for translators and translation companies to mix and share their experiences of working in our fantastic industry.
In attendance were representatives from several language service providers (LSPs) as well as members of the ITI and Westminster University.
The session began with presentations from LSPs and then moved over to (virtual) break-out rooms where rapid-fire roundtable discussions were conducted.
Our colleague and project manager, Beatriz Puche Lopez, gave an introduction to DWL’s services and suggested some possible routes into our specialist area: the life sciences.
We were pleased to see some familiar faces among the talented translators in attendance, and to have the opportunity to meet new ones.
The topic of “specialisation” emerged during the roundtable discussions. In particular, translators felt intimidated by the perceived barriers to specialisation in, say, the life sciences. To address these fears, Beatriz offered some suggestions to move forward on the path to specialism, including starting work as a project manager. Practically every single member of the DWL project management team trained and worked as a translator before joining the team, but one in particular has acquired sufficient knowledge of medical translation to have recently passed our rigorous evaluation process to become a freelance translator on the side.
Offering services outside of pure translation may also be a window to more translation work and exposure to specialist document types. This could be in the form of desktop publishing, proofreading or even post-editing of machine translation output.
Another suggestion which came from attendees was “mentorship”. Finding a mentor to develop skills in a certain specialism is a fantastic opportunity available via the ITI and other associations.
The bottom line, Beatriz suggested to attendees, is not to dismiss the challenge of finding an appropriate niche or specialism since it may be a big step towards success in your translation business.
Mother-tongue fluency was the subject of another lively discussion. The approach at DWL is usually to work with translators who reside in the country in which their mother tongue is spoken. This is primarily to ensure that there is no loss of ‘feel’ for their native language, but has traditionally made it easier for them to keep up-to-date with national regulatory requirements. However, this is by no means a barrier to working with us and it was also suggested during the session that translators can also help maintain their native language feel through Continuing Professional Development courses.
Thank you to the London Regional Group of the ITI for organising this “Meet the client” event once again, and for adapting to the new virtual format. We look forward to the chance to meet you all again next year!
