War and freelancing

 

At the moment I am writing this post, the inhabitants of several countries face intensive and random bombing. Those attacked include Ukrainians, Israelis, Gazans and Iranians. Many of these civilians are freelancers, working from home. The challenge they face in trying to make a living while keeping their lives and those of their family together is extraordinary, even greater than salaried employees. While it may be easier or even unavoidable to stop working until the bombing ends, freelancers should continue to seek work, if possible, because it is possible and beneficial with a few modifications. Let us hope that this “new normal” situation soon becomes ancient history.

The number of freelancers struggling to work today is quite significant. Ukraine has more than 500,000 self-employed people. 17.69% of Israel, with a population of 5.7 million adults, is self-employed, many of whom are freelancers. Gaza is estimated to have some 12,000 entrepreneurs. Iran, with a population of 63 million adults, reports a self-employed rate of 42.5%, some of whom are freelancers working at home. Clearly, the businesses of many of these entrepreneurs depend on import/export or the local economy, which may be severely limited at this point. However, many of these self-employed individuals provide services through the Internet that are not directly limited by the war.

The challenge all of them face is to run a business between dashes to the bomb shelter or its equivalent, maintaining work discipline when they and their families cope with extreme stress and remain professional. The current conflicts feature bombing at random times, day and night. Civilians have little time, if they are lucky, to seek relative shelter. The sirens prevent a full night’s sleep either through the necessity to wake up and go to a shelter or the anxiety that this event may occur. Everybody has jet lag symptoms while not even going abroad. The enforced breaks and fatigue make it difficult to schedule work in any predictable manner. Unlike salaried employees, freelancers work at home and must also cope with the stress of their families, especially children, who need comfort and diversion. Amid this chaos, the freelancer must somehow produce proper results on time. That goal requires great effort.

For some, it is a bridge too far. Despite the need to earn money, many entrepreneurs can barely drag themselves through the day. Every person reacts to stress differently. Nearby explosions and even those reported in the mediaa create massive anxiety, both conscious and subconscious. Some people can distance themselves from the first and continue to function but others feel it directly and struggle to maintain some balance. Parents have the extra load of trying to protect the mental health of their children. It is no less difficult for people living alone. With no possibility of social activity in person, they often become isolated, which only adds stress. It is more than enough to keep one’s head straight during the day without pretending to do work.

However, I have found that continuing to work has improved my ability to cope by occupying my mind, earning money and enforcing a routine. When uncontrollable events, which include rockets and bombs, are the source of the anxiety, there is, in effect, no action that a person can take to ease the anxiety. Under these conditions, considering the dangers and the time of the next attack only increases the fear. Consequently, focusing the mind on work keeps the devil away. Furthermore, for freelancers whose income is always uncertain, the knowledge that they are earning money at this time is always positive. Keep in mind that there is no guarantee that the respective governments will compensate them for lost income in any meaningful way after the war. Finally, work is a routine, the best medicine in times of trouble. Life seems ordinary when you work.

That said, bombings and normal productivity do not go together. Consequently, it is necessary to make a few adjustments in terms of deadlines, project types, and processes. First, since the daily routine is subject to sudden change, freelancers must add time to their deadlines to compensate for any potential delay. Secondly, projects involving extreme concentration or complicated thought become much more difficult. Entrepreneurs should carefully consider whether now is the appropriate time to take such projects on. Finally, if focus and concentration are less than normal, it may be worthwhile to share brains by asking for help from a spouse or colleague at least in terms of QA. Two brains, even if not fully functioning, are better than one struggling one. These steps help ensure the customers receive a proper quality of work even if the sky is falling.

For many of us, work has become a challenging diversion. Freelancers in countries under attack find it difficult to make a living. They fear for their lives and those of their families. Explosives overhead create high anxiety. If you have an opportunity to help them, send them work or even a “how are you doing?” note. Let’s hope for peace quite soon. In the meantime, I would say to my fellow freelancers, “Let’s try to do a little work”.

P.S. If there are a mistake or two, please forgive me. War wreaks hell on writing also.

Text-book perfection – in search of a QA panacea for revising long texts

 

Long translations pose special problems for translators. The intensive process involved in translating a long legal document or multipage text leaves little time and freshness for the no-less-crucial process of QA. Simply put, by the time the hard-pressed translator gets to the editing stage, the text is already embedded in the mind as basically acceptable, limiting the translator’s ability to identify syntactic errors. This problem is not new, with translators having long used a set of tools, some old and some new, to overcome it to varying effectiveness. I will discuss some traditional QA methods, some recently developed ones and my experience with Grammarly. Whatever the individual choice of tools, professional translators and writers must employ them to properly check their work.

To illuminate the problem, the act of translating a long text, whether a legal document, a set of technical instructions or personal journal, involves multiple hours and multiple readings. Working from first draft to non-QAed finalized version may require the linguist to read through the original and source four or more times. Aside from the time invested, the creation process creates a sound and vision in the mind, which become de facto acceptable. Professionals are aware that many areas for correction and improvement lurk in the text and strive to find them in the jungle of text. However, the longer the text, the more difficult it is to locate them. The moment of truth is when the customer or translation agency editor sends back a document riddled with red marks, a truly unpleasant and often embarrassing experience. The question that most translators and editors ask is “How did I miss that?”. It often was not from lack of effort but  due to the tools they used.

The tools of translators and other linguists at minimum include
Word “spellcheck” (F7), printing and reading and use of outside editors. The Spellcheck function in Word identifies the most basic of errors with the failure to use it bordering on professional incompetence. A more comprehensive manner of editing is to print and read a text. For some reason, a text appears differently on paper than on a screen and, thus, fresher to the eyes. I personally read the text backward, i.e., from the last paragraph to the first paragraph, in order to render the document even more different and prevent me from going into “read a story” mode. Ideally, all linguists would employ outside editors, a fresh pair of eyes, to review any resulting text. In practice, the time and cost factors limit this practice from becoming standard except in literary translation. Translation agencies employ editors, especially those applying the various ISO standards. As I wrote, it is unpleasant to receive red-dotted corrections even if such a result does not affect future work. As for direct customers, the linguist is solely responsible but most technical translators do not use outside editors as a standard practice.

Two more modern and comprehensive methods are text-to-speech and AI. The text-to-speech function in Word is a simple manner of reviewing a document using a completely different method. Instead of having the eyes read a given sentence for the umpteenth time, the ears filter the sentence. Thus, poor-sounding phrases and structure immediately hit the linguistic warning bells and cause the translator or editor to reconsider the wording. It is a tool that I may try in the future. Another trendier tool is AI editing. Using one of many applications, it is possible to have AI analyze a document, identify possible errors and suggest solutions within seconds. On the surface level, it sounds quite magical, even ideal. My serious issues with this method are the lack of confidentiality, the actual process and results. First, as of today, in most cases, once a text, even without any identifying names, is posted to AI, it enters the public realm, which may be a breach of the confidentiality conditions. Some writers may be risking their copyright privilege if they use AI. Furthermore, I personally find the process of writing prompts to define and limit the range of errors as well as desired style I seek to be overcomplicated. Even when a person overcomes that difficulty, the suggested changes represent some collective image of the ideal such text, much of which is not relevant objectively and/or subjectively. In other words, the benefits, i.e., AI’s comprehensive and standardized approach, do not justify the risks, i.e., the loss of confidentiality and hassle of writing prompts. Thus, I do not use text-to-speech or AI.

However, recently faced with specific challenges, I applied Grammarly to two especially long and complicated texts and found the results positive on the balance. One text was a 20,000-word personal journal while the other was a 5000-word contract. As time and energy were short, I sought a tool that would identify phrasing errors and improve my translation in my text without risking confidentiality. I used Grammarly, an application that does involve a user fee. The process was simple, merely uploading or dragging the text into the editing box. I then selected the type of text, e.g. informal or formal. The result was a long list of possible errors and suggestions for improvement. To give a perspective, the program created 500 comments for a 5,000-word text. The vast majority, around 80%, were false positive either because of context or personal choice. For example, the program was not familiar with legal language and questioned many acceptable terms. In terms of subjective choices, I personally do not apply the Oxford comma, the comma before the word and, nor place a comma before the word but. Thus, I ignored those comments. On the positive side, it did identify many passive sentences that I could render in the active voice. This comment was of great value in the personal document but less so in the legal document even if I  try to limit use of passive structure in legal documents. Grammarly also identified sentences that could be joined or split, suggestions that I adopted several times. Overall, review of these long texts using the program involved several hours but produced better results in less time as compared to rereading.

It is clear that linguists, especially translators, must provide high quality products, meaning documents as clean of errors as possible, especially in the light of AI-created documents. The longer the document, the more difficulty that task is. Thus, translators and writers must use a wide variety of tools to achieve the required quality. I intend to use Grammarly on longer texts where a lack of time and freshness may harm the quality of revisions. While linguists can choose their preferred tools, it is clear that no specific method is a complete panacea.

Conferences and marketing

 

For whatever personal growth and pleasure attending a professional conference may bring, it is not entirely clear to what degree they justify investing time and money in them. In terms of professional education, conferences provide the most efficient way to learn and renew. On the other hand, it is often quite difficult to ascertain how much actual business, either in terms of volume or client numbers, they create. My experience of more than 10 years of conference hopping is that it is possible to maximize the economic benefit of participation and justify the expense.

To begin, the term conference refers to any industry event bringing together professionals whether it is for those in your field or those of your target customer. It is also necessary to define participation in today’s hybrid environment. At minimum, it means paying a small fee and watching the lectures through Teams, Zoom or any other Internet streaming tool. Physically attending involves a larger investment of time and effort in traveling to a city and possibly staying there for several days. Once there, participating in a panel raises a person’s status with relatively little preparation time while making a presentation generally involves a significant time investment, far greater than the discount or fee that conferences compensate their speakers. The cost of attending a conference can vary from minimal to highly significant, especially to freelancers with low income.

In compensation, conferences provide a fast track to knowledge and an opportunity to frame a business vision. Especially for newcomers but also for experienced practitioners, the speakers and workshops provide practical advice for solving common as well as not-so-common issues in the profession. In translator conferences, these matters generally include marketing, pricing, software and, especially in the last few years, AI. There is no need to find time to watch videos as the lectures occur in real time. Moreover, experts make these presentations and are available for questions. Beyond immediate needs, conferences provide a wider perspective of industry trends and trigger contemplation on how any given freelancer can leverage them in the future. Daily life leaves little time for longer term planning while conferences encourage it by providing a wide-angle view of the industry and its practitioners. Thus, the educational value of conferences is without question, even for the most experienced.

Yet, many freelancers question its direct business justification. To understand this issue, it is vital to understand the difference between advertising and marketing. The former involves providing an immediate incentive to buy, generally some level of discount. Its results are measured by comparing short terms sales as compared to the previous month or the same month last year as is relevant. By contrast, the purpose of marketing is to create a brand, a name that customers will remember when they need that product. To give an example, Huggies advertises to all customers, even those that do not have any children yet, knowing that a day may come when the person has to buy diapers for the first time and has to decide which is the “best” product. For service businesses, a business may not need to outsource it on a weekly or even monthly basis. However, decision makers or colleagues may remember someone that they had met at a conference and impressed them. In marketing, the economic return is not generally immediate and difficult to identify among other factors. Therefore, it is far from simple to calculate whether attending a conference was worth the cost in terms of new customers.

I have attended many conferences and directly benefited from the contacts I made. In one case, a fellow participant on a panel asked for my services as she remembered that I specialized in financial translation. On many occasions, colleagues I met at conferences recommended me to translation buyers, having heard that I translate from Hebrew to English. Just recently, a translator with whom I had spoken in the hallway at some conference several years ago gave my name to a potential customer. To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, the only worse than being remembered is not being remembered. Without being able to quantify the number of new customers or resulting business volume, conferences have increased my visibility especially in places where I have no direct presence.

Five ways to increase this exposure and, consequently, the economic benefit of attending a conference, are to attend physically, mingle with others, focus on one niche, raise your status by speaking and follow up. First, while virtual events are far less expensive and more convenient, they do not allow proper face-to-face communication, severely limiting the ability to create a memory. In simple terms, on-line conversations do not create the same level of human impact as actually sitting with someone. To attain this benefit to the maximum, spend as much time as possible, aside from quiet breaks and possibly a short nap to charge the battery midday, reaching out to people, whether in before and after lectures or in the halls when none of the lecture offerings are attractive. Conventions are work and hard work at that. Marketing requires effort but the rewards come to those that make that effort. Since most conversations are short and conference participants may engage in hundreds of conversations over the conference, it is vital to focus on your best and most unique niche, some area that the person will remember after the conference. Since conference chats tend to be short, use words efficiently and effectively. Furthermore, investing time in proposing, preparing and making presentations creates value by raising your status and getting people to approach you either directly after your lecture or years afterwards. The speaker stands out above the others, making it the best marketing position. Finally, upon return to reality, i.e., going home, professional follow-up by contacting serious contacts in writing reinforces the connection. By going, mingling, concentrating, speaking and following up, conference participants maximize their marketing efforts.

In my opinion, the choice to attend conferences, whether those focusing on the service provider's profession or in the potential customer’s field, is sound both in terms of the opportunity to learn and update knowledge as well as create strategic vision. Furthermore, when participants maximize their personal investment and effort, they also can receive their money back with interest. When I return from a conference. I am exhausted but invigorated, a seeming contradiction in terms. I am tired from the effort but more focused on bettering my business bolstered with additional knowledge on how to. I know that I will harvest the fruits of my labor sometime in the future if not immediately. Thus, attending conferences is a solid investment in the future.