The Linguist

26 The Linguist Vol/62 No/1 thelinguist.uberflip.com OPINION & COMMENT And do we really have to make that choice? Someone once told me that, in their experience, you're either a project manager or a translator at heart; never both. I was shocked. It was a bold statement which implied that translators and project managers have skills and qualities that fit into one – and only of one – of these boxes. Is that true? Not in my case. I'm 50:50. I work in both roles. Does that mean that I'm unusual? I'm not so sure. If we look into both career paths objectively, I think we'll find that they're not so different after all. There are lots of things that you can do with a translation degree, but graduates are often presented with two main options: go in-house or go freelance. When I was studying, I visualised working as either a translation project manager (PM) or a freelance translator, and both options terrified me. The picture of project management in my head was scary: stressful, long hours, tight deadlines, responsible for the end quality, no opportunity to work with my language combinations, rigorous and structured, a proper office job with no flexibility. It didn't sound like a lot of fun. Freelance translation was more appealing, but I knew it would be hard to get my foot in the door without any professional translation experience. Most agencies seemed to require 3-5 years' full-time experience to get on their books – and I wasn't at a stage in my life where I could cope with any financial instability. Yet here I am, almost a decade later, an experienced PM. I started in the same way as many others. I needed a job and wanted to gain some precious industry experience. A junior project manager position came up and I went for it, thinking that if I could stick it out for a year or two, I could come back to translation later on. I fell in love with the job immediately. I got a real kick out of seeing all of the languages come together, working with people across the world, and the adrenaline rush of efficiently organising tricky tasks in a short space of time. I was wrong to think that I wouldn't use my languages in my work; I used them every day. Over time, I pushed translation to the back of my head and told myself that it wasn't for me. I didn't think I could handle the pressure of deadlines, complex subjects and intriguing translation issues. I witnessed the stress that translators were under when I couldn't promise that a job would go ahead. And it was difficult to manage some of their questions when clients were unresponsive. With years of experience, there came confidence, and this allowed me to work with more flexibility. I could anticipate any potential issues and nip them in the bud before they came up. As I got to know the people I was working with, I knew that I could trust them to deliver excellent work on time. It was no longer a source of panic. But the truth is, after years of hard work, I had reached a ceiling, and I knew deep-down that it was time to think about moving on. After eight years, I'd reached a point where I could absorb a bit of financial instability and go for the freelance life. Branching out Then came the next question: do I continue working as a project manager (albeit a freelance one), or bite the bullet and try to be a translator? Although I loved my job, there was always a niggling feeling that I wanted to be a translator and flex my creativity. At that point, I realised that offering both services could only be a good thing. Two strings to my bow. I cried happy tears when I passed my first translation test with flying colours. I hadn't expected it. I still saw translators as an elusive group that I didn't belong to, and thought I never would. As I began to translate more and more, I started to realise the true value of what I had learnt over the years, and how it added to my translation ability. I'd been working with a variety of CAT tools for years, so I found it easy to pick up different ones and wasn't phased when clients asked me to work with their systems. I had encountered many translation issues in the past and seen how different professional translators had dealt with them, so I had some insights into how to deal with them myself. Are you a translator or a project manager? GILLIAN MORRIS

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