The Linguist

SPRING 2023 The Linguist 27 OPINION & COMMENT I understood what clients were looking for and what was important to them. It was good that I was already on the pulse of inclusive language and marketing terms, and understood brand identity and tone of voice after talking it through with clients during discovery meetings. I was scared that I would be a 'generalist', as my entire career and studies were based around language, and not a specialist subject, but in fact, working with a wide variety of texts gave me an idea of what I would be good at. After years of carrying out quality assurance checks and working with brilliant translators, I was well aware of what an excellent standard of professional translation looks like. Mutual respect Working on both sides has given me great insight and perspective, but I'm often caught in the middle. There are plenty of things we can do better. We're all aiming for the same end result and we depend on each other to get it done. Yet there still seems to be an underlying mistrust there; a certain level of disrespect from both sides. I have heard lots of stories from translators about project managers who don't care – who just want to place a job quickly, in the cheapest way. They waste translators' time by sending them projects without giving them long enough to respond. They ask obvious questions, complain about quality when there's nothing wrong, and try to squeeze as much out of you in the shortest space of time. To them, you're just a resource. Replaceable and forgettable. But there's another side to it. Project managers can also feel undervalued. Translators have left me in the lurch in the middle of a project; delivered a messy file, which took ages to rectify, right on the dot of delivery time; and pulled out of an assignment after receiving a better offer. Basically, they seemed to treat me like just another agency. Having worked on both sides, I can look at such scenarios with a greater level of understanding and empathy for everyone involved. Maybe the project manager who is sending out mass requests is extremely short for time and has no option. What if the translator who cancelled on me is going through something personal and cannot work? Perhaps the person who delivered the messy file started working and realised that the job was more complex than anticipated, and was only able to deliver it on time because they were up working on it the night before. I know that while there is some bad business going on out there, a lot of the feelings of segregation between agencies and linguists could be solved with better communication. Project managers and translators are not so different. There are a lot of transferable skills between the two roles. Both require an ability to adapt to deadlines and scheduling issues, an eye for detail, excellent language skills, good customer service, and exacting organisational skills. We need to look to each other as colleagues rather than competitors, and make more effort to understand our different but overlapping circumstances. So, my final question to you is, are you a project manager or a translator at heart, or is it possible that you could be both? Gillian Morris MCIL CL is a project manager and freelance French> English translator. She regularly posts translation tips on LinkedIn and on her blog www.thattranslationblog.com. TL I started to realise the true value of what I had learnt as PM, and how it added to my translation ability © SHUTTERSTOCK

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