Freelance business potential or I had a good day

Many years ago, I learned of a way to measure the potential of a business quickly and inexpensively. The technique is to identify the business day with the best results, analyze what went right that day, and apply the lessons learned from this analysis. Of great relevance to freelancers, it takes into account that each business is fundamentally different mainly due to the fact each person and set of circumstances is unique. This technique helps define the current actual potential of a business rather than its theoretical and maybe unattainable one.

Clearly freelancing involves factors not relevant to standard businesses. Freelancing is generally conducted from a residence and not always even in a dedicated room. As a result, friends and family represent a major disturbance factor. Furthermore, household duties, including laundry and cooking, can be a serious time robber. This lack of clear distinction between work and home also creates a tendency to relax business discipline as distractors are close and plenty. As freelancers are their own bosses, work discipline is internal matter subject to moods and whims, unlike the traditional workplace where fear of the boss keeps people on their toes. Finally, freelancers must handle sales, marketing, production, bookkeeping and post-sale service, often dividing their concentration and rendering them less efficient in any or all of the tasks. Thus, the potential of a freelancer is not identical to that of a standard business.

Given the multiples hats a freelancer wears, the term productivity can be measured on many forms, depending on what is required. The results can include an order from a new client, proper job preparation, successful resolution of a customer issue, sending of invoices, collection of debts, preparation of marketing material, cleaning of the desk and even producing a product or service. All of these required to earn money but are not directly reflected in daily income. Psychologically, freelancers must consider each one a proper and effective use of work time.

Given that the productivity of freelancers is so dependent on themselves, a good day begins by starting the morning properly.  A good night’s sleep creates the conditions for proper energy while getting waking up at the ideal hour, both individual matters, helps starts the day with maximum momentum. Likewise, some type of breakfast fuels the morning hours. Feeling physically good is a basic requirement for the ideal day.

In addition, since outside disturbances, both work-related and domestic, drain energy, the efficient day begins with a clear head. Some people have the skill and/or discipline to block out external matters but most freelancers have to clear them away. First of all, the best day begins with no pending email matters from previous days, the mental version of a clear desk. Not always in our control, it is preferable that there are no unpleasant appointments scheduled that day, such as the dentist, which not only take time but create anxiety. Facebook is the enemy of productivity.  Since nothing there is truly urgent, the mere refusal to open it reduces that temptation. By contrast, scheduling a pleasant evening activity creates a positive expectation for the evening as well as reinforces discipline in terms of staying on task as the available time is limited. Importantly, translators must educate the friends and family that work hours are precisely those even if they are physically at home. Admittedly, this is not an easy goal to achieve. Thus, the mind is in focus on the tasks at hand.

The work process directly affects productivity. For example, a clear but flexible schedule helps directs the order and priority of tasks.  For example, if a translation is due EOD, the first draft should be completed as early as possible in order to have as much “forget time” before final QA. In additioon, ideally, all elements of the job should be ready. If a translator is using a CAT (computer assisted translation) tool on a document from a PDF, the document should be converted into Word the night before, a task that can be done even when the person is bit tired. If writing is the task at hand, the freelancer should organize the approach and material beforehand. It is possible to properly focus completely on either content or language, but not both. Setting daily goals dividing the tasks that must be completed and those that we would like to be completed is a useful technique for many people. If there are multiple tasks for that day, a list helps freelancers move through the day by creating easy recall and helps prevent avoidable emergencies. If a task has multiple stages, each aspect should be considered separately, a successful method for reducing stress in large, complicated projects. For example, the creation of a website involves attaining the needed information, creating the text, defining the design concept and flow, production, proofing, etc., each of which is a complete task in itself. Of course, if specific physical materials are required, such as a printer toner, sufficient amounts should be in stock. Like a regular business, an ideal business day begins with the preparation on the previous day.

When all of the stars are aligned, it is amazing how much a freelancer can accomplish in a single day and how much satisfaction (and money) it provides. That magical work day is the current potential of the business, which can change in either direction for many reasons at any given time. The good news is that freelancers, like all businesspeople, have the power to influence those factors and recreate that success. Just as it is important to understand yourself to achieve happiness, an enterprise, no matter how small it is, needs to understand not only its failure but also its success. Scio te when the sun is shining.

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Foreign tube watching

I admit that I enjoy watching foreign television. The reason is not that it has better or different programs than my local one.  In fact, the format of most television shows worldwide is fairly similar both due to the universality of human nature and tendency to copycat successful programs and of equally poor quality. For that matter, I don’t even have to fully understand the language to enjoy the television as any child can tell you. In my countries, I could guess, often successfully, the meaning of many words.  For example, Russian is very helpful in understanding Polish while Italian is a cousin of Spanish. By contrast, in China, I understood absolutely nothing and was mesmerized by the tube.

First of all, I enjoy the tone of the speech, which reflects the nature of the language and people as well as the agenda of the television stations. For example, most characters in English tend to speak quietly and even respectfully. At the same time, they often are mocking the same institutions and customs they are respecting.  This is a nice contrast to the argumentative and loud nature of Israeli television. Chinese television is owned by the government and is therefore very nationalistic and proud. Aside from great military victories and impressive scientific and economic achievements, they also proudly present many shots of Chinese food production and preparation, always in a loud fashion (to my ears).  Thus, I was able to see parts of China that I would and will never visit in person. Not having lived in the United States for some 30 years now, the TV in the United States is interesting in terms of how the language and emphasis has changed. I can see by the words and message that America is much more critical and direct than it used to be.

The national differences are also reflected in the local version of internationalized programs.  The French version of Master Chef focuses on the artistry of the food while the Israeli program focuses on the past and present personal situation of the participants. The tone of the original Japanese Iron Chef is straight out of the classic Samurai Movies while the American one resembled sports broadcasting. In the Israeli The Voice, exotic is expressed by an ultra-orthodox singing rock while in China strangeness was represented by a black Chinese-African singing Frank Sinatra in English (and singing it well, it should be noted). I would not say “lost in translation” but instead “localized in translation”.

Finally, the aspect of foreign television I enjoy most is the commercials. Ads reflect the 

concerns and psychology of the people.  For example, based on the frequency of the ads on UK television, the Baby Boom generation is very concerned about paying for funerals while those in their twenties are having a hard time getting accepted for a credit card. French commercials focus on food, health and losing weight, no surprise. Apparently, death and credit are of no concern. Americans appear to be hypochondriac as every third commercial (or so) sells some drug, faithfully and rapidly reading through the long list of potential side effects and ultimately encouraging people to consult their doctor, of course.

So, while I am not a big fan of spending much time in hotel rooms when I travel, circumstances sometime lead to dead time, which I profit from by watching TV. I am amused, surprised, educated and even entertained by programs whose words I barely or do not understand at all as I learn about the culture, psychology and concerns of that place. In short, foreign television is much more interesting and educational than my local local one, just like the proverbial lawn.

Manifesto of an atheist Jew

Israel is land where spirituality in all of its forms defines you. Putting aside the various divisions among Christians and Muslims with whom I am less familiar, the range of expression of faith among Israeli Jews is amazingly varied. At one end are Jews that refuse to speak Hebrew (and speak Yiddish instead) because it is a holy language and officially reject the state of Israel because its establishment was not in the manner foreseen in the Bible.  On the other extreme are those that are choose to eat cheeseburgers on Yom Kippur to express their complete rejection of Judaism. In between are a wide range of observant and non-observant behaviour and tolerance.

I am an atheist Jew. To explain, although I can accept that others believe in God, I not only lack that faith but simply find it sufficient to believe in probability. In short, I don’t require a chief engineer in the sky to understand and accept this world. From this state of point, it follows, in my mind, that the holy writings, e.g. the Bible, Mishna, Talmud and Halacha, to name only a few, are the product of human thought, albeit rather intelligent one in some cases, and can be criticized and even rejected outright. I therefore feel no obligation or even logic to follow the countless rules of behaviour expected of a good Jew, as largely codified in the halacha.

On the other hand, I do not want to throw away the baby with the bath water. Judaism carries a rich body of proscriptions regarding ethics, derech eretz, which should serve as a model of behavior. To oversimplify, I do believe in the ten commandments. For example, in a proper, healthy society, the vast majority of people do not murder, steal or lie. The key to satisfaction is worrying about your situation and not trying to “keep up the Joneses”. Sleeping with another person’s partner is clearly a stupid and dangerous thing to do, not to mention rather destructive for everybody involved (except for the lawyers). Within the family, honoring your father and mother creates stability for all members. As for converting people of other religions, it is a source of countless troubles. For that matter, blaming god or thinking that god makes you special often makes leads to irresponsible behavior. I am even for keeping the sabbath in the sense of not working at least one day a week as the practice is vital for physical and mental health. So, I am a proud Jew in appreciating and trying to practice its basic tenets in its spirit even as I reject the long record of the interpretation of those tenets.

In this way, I am a non-believing Jew. I fully accept my identity as a Jew and feel equally free to reject many, if not most, of its traditions and rules. Granted, there is a tension in this position, bordering on a contradiction. However, most manifestos carry those qualities as reality is more complex than any statement of belief. Not only that, I am one of many Jews, Israeli and others, that so believe even if they do not express their identity in this manner. Of course, there are countless more on both sides of the issue that would strongly disagree with me and even find them offensive.  That is quite normal and even acceptable. As they say, two Jews, three opinions.

Outstanding in meaning

English is a hard language to master not because of its grammar, however complex that may seem to some, but due to its free, even chaotic, process of vocabulary development.  In simple terms, the original meaning of a word is so turned and twisted by popular use that it becomes impossible for a foreigner to guess.  In verbs, many of these changes are made by adding prepositions or nouns, creating a rich but confusing word family.

The verb word stand is from an old English word standan, meaning standing in one place, with the additional meaning of tolerate added in the 1600’s. So, it is clear that people should take their place in a queue if they are to stand in line or do not like a certain spice if they cannot stand cilantro.

Life, especially for second-language speakers of English, then gets complicated.  English abounds with phrasal verbs, verbs with prepositions added to them, with specific and seemingly unrelated meanings. To stand up is to rise from the sitting position while to stand up for is to insist on something, such as rights. By contrast, to stand down is end a state of high alertness as in the army. Actors that stand in for stars are temporarily replacing them but if they stand out enough and show how good they are, they may replace them one day.  If you stand on ceremony, you are a stickler for social rules. Yet, if you are in a standoff, you are in a deadlock. For that matter, someone who is standoffish is rather aloof.  By contrast, if someone stands by you, they support you. If parents do not stand for sassiness, children watch their words.  Curiously, to stand around does not necessarily mean being on one’s feet but merely hanging around with no purpose. What a difference a preposition makes.

Adding a noun expands the whole range of meanings. To stand on your two feet is not what very small children do but instead what adults in their 20’s strive for, economic independence. Likewise, a standing army does sometimes sit but is always ready and in uniform. You can say that you stand corrected, i.e., understand your mistake, even when you are sitting. A standing argument or standing rule do not actually have legs but merely are unresolved or permanent. To stand pat means not make changes and is derived from Poker and should not be confused with to stand Pat Boone, which means tolerate listening to his songs. Standing your ground involves establishing your position, not repositioning the earth. If something stands to reason, it does not involve rising to attention due to logic, but merely being logical, which is more than I say about most of these phrases.

In terms of noun use, there are taco stands, small booths to stop by for a quick lunch, and last stands, a place of no retreat. There are league standings, the relative records of teams, and legal standings, one’s status in court. In sports arena, you can sit in the stands, generally benches. You can put newspapers or umbrella in a stand in the entranceway when you get home. For fish, a stand or group of pelicans is bad news. Two cricket players are together for a stand and score a certain number of runs. To take a stand means to express an opinion while to take the stand means to testify in court. A stand or bunch of trees creates a nice patch of shade. Nothing is obvious here.

For a simple five letter word with a clear meaning, stand has come a long way and created many linguistic channels. You could that it is an outstanding example of the challenge and richness of English vocabulary.

Stranger in a strange land

As I wrote in last week’s post, my wife and I went to China for a week, specifically to Shanghai, Yiwu and Hangzhou. The trip was the exhilarating and exciting to all senses but left a foreign impression of China.

China is a multifaceted country. As tourists, each day we encountered worlds that we had never seen, each different from each other. In Shanghai, we sat in the cool, peaceful passages of the Yu Garden and were swept along with the mass of people and vehicles, two and four wheeled, to view the lighted buildings in the Bund, the Shanghai river district. We browsed the old-fashioned shops in the Pudong district in Shanghai, unchanged for hundreds of years, and poked our noses in only one building among the massive wholesale complex of the Futian International Trade City in Yiwu, the largest wholesale source of consumer products in the world. Our ears were assaulted by the sounds of the vegetable hawkers at a supermarket (see video below) and soothed by the silence of the tea fields above Long Jing village above Hangzhou. We enjoyed the tastes and smells of an elegant Chinese tea ceremony and encountered rather different ones as we strolled through the food booths at the Yiwunight market.  All this we did with the temperature ranging from 30 – 38 degrees and humidity no less than 90% and quite often even higher. As can be seen from this partial list, no day or even half day was the same in any sense.

China is a completely different country in another way also. When traveling in North America, Europe or even South America, tourists can somehow manage on their own. The locals know enough English or tourists can easily learn the local language to communicate basic ideas while the meanings of both street and store signs can be guestimated. Most cultural rules and norms in the West are similar enough to understand the rules of behavior and even blend in with the locals to one degree or another. The populations and governments accept and even facilitate tourism.

China is another story. The vast majority of Chinese do not know a single word of English, not to mention any other foreign language. Except for stores selling international brands, signs are generally in Chinese, inaccessible for most foreigners, including highway signs. Even "universal" tasks can be difficult. Ordering a meal or telling a taxi driver to go to your hotel is a challenge.  We ordered the same set of drinks from Starbucks three times and received three different pairs of beverages. Finding the "next" button in an overheated, asphyxiating ATM closed cubical is an experience that I will never forget. This inaccessibility goes beyond language. The Chinese have their own rich culture and do not need anybody else’s. The Chinese have their own way of doing many things, generally quite logical even if the logic is not immediately evident to a Western tourist. Even catching a train at the Shanghai Hongqiao train station, would be daunting for the unescorted or unitiated. 

This distance makes it necessary to have an intermediary, a guide of some type. We were lucky to be accompanied either by our daughter or our excellent guide, Aron Long. They opened up the window of China and allowed us to glimpse a tiny bit of China and its culture. The lonely planet hiker would find this country very intimidating and rather inaccessible.

 To make it clear, we had a wonderful, even amazing trip.  I do not regret a single moment and hope to return, albeit not in July. At the same time, I do even fantasize of living there because I could never be a part of Chinese society in any way even if I spoke and wrote Chinese. As Heinlein would way, I would always be a stranger in a strange land.

Travel jitters

I travel abroad every year, mainly to visit family and, more recently, to attend translation conferences.  A meaningful, often the most pleasurable, part of any trip, for better or worse, is the planning, expectations and gut feeling before departure. These often begin months before and slowly develop until suddenly, for me at least, thinking about the trip creates a certain emotional feeling.

This actual feeling can vary. Given that the reasons for my travel do not give me limited options on where I can go, I have experienced emotions ranging from dread to joy.  Prior to attending a conference in Bialystok, Poland, the birthplace of my grandmother, I felt very tense at the mere thought of going to Poland, probably because its legacy for the Jews.  In practice, the conference was excellent but Poland was indeed a complex experience for me emotionally as I saw bits of Poland of yesterday, today and tomorrow. I do not regret that trip at all but it was challenging in that sense.

I fly to LA twice a year.  My feelings about my city of birth have generally been highly negative but have now reached neutrality, a sort of progress.  I didn’t like the place when I was growing up nor do I do today.  However, I can somehow ignore it for two weeks during my parental visits. As Tom Lehrer said in the song National Brotherhood Week, be grateful that it does not last all year.

Last year, my wife and I attended a conference in Valencia, Spain. Aside from the worry on how I would cope with the Spanish, I expected the venue to be a fun place. I am fond of European cities, at least for short visits, and looked forward to the friendly atmosphere.  I was not disappointed.  Spain is indeed a warm country to visit in both meanings of the word. By the way, I coped with the Spanish with no problem thanks to my Italian.

France is my mother’s homeland and dear to my heart.  I lived there on and off for short period and have family there. Unfortunately, the last time I visited was some 9 years ago for my daughter’s bat mitzvah. The mere thought of visiting it sends me into extasy, then and now. My excitement for France may be more nostalgic than reality based but we are planning a long, trip to it once circumstances allow.

I am now flying to China to visit my wife’s daughter. Unfortunately, circumstances limit the trip to a week. So, I and my wife will get a taste of China, which I believe it will be a treat.  We have been told to be ready for a truly foreign experience in terms of way of life, manners, food, etc., unlike any place we have ever been. Psychologically, this trip will be the first time where I will be, as Heinlein wrote, a stranger in a strange land. This sentiment creates some anxiety but also quite a lot of excitement. I go with no concrete expectations apart from seeing the different.

I know that when I get on the train to go the airport, the reality of my upcoming trip will hit me, as always. These jitters are an essential part of the travel experience that I hope never to lose. They say that the opposite of love is not hate but indifference. I cannot imagine not loving to visit new places.

Machine translation and Orwell

For many translators, machine translation is a combination of nuclear war and global warming. There is a sense that it will wipe them out from the map but they hope that it won’t happen in this generation. This week, I skimmed through two articles discussing MT. My thoughts were led not the future of the profession but to the future of English.

The first article, written by Florian Faes and cited by Slator in its weekly newsletter, discusses the linguistic differences between texts translated by MT as compared to human translation after editing. Among the writer’s conclusions, albeit on a limited literary sample, was MT texts tend to have a higher resemblance to their originals in terms of structure even when this structure differs in the target language as well be “simpler and more normalized”.

In another article, also cited by Slator, Jochen Hummel, the creator of the Trados computer assisted translation (CAT) tool, declared that his tool would no longer be used in the future but instead all human translation would be based on MT. In other words, the opus of previously written text will standardize our language. As I see it, what was will be in a much stronger form than today and subject to manipulation by corporate and governmental organization.

These two observations led me to recall Orwell’s 1984. For those who have forgotten or simply never read the book, he described a world where the government controlled everybody (Big Brother). Interestingly, one of its main tools was its control of language. English vocabulary had been reduced to the bare minimum. For example, a negative was expressed by adding “un” to the positive, e.g., unhungry. All texts were online (yes, this book was written 1949) and amended as political winds changed so that the public never had any proof of any change in policy or thinking. Looking at North Korea in 2019, Orwell would be appalled but not shocked.

Given that English is the dominant language of communication worldwide for the foreseeable future and assuming that machine language, however “artificial” it sounds initially, becomes the statistical and controlling norm, it is not hard to imagine a world in which people’s thoughts are expressed in intentionally simplified language and form. It would be undoing Dickens and Shakespeare, to name a few.

It is clear that MT has its place and will not disappear. It also clear that MT will have a huge influence on translation project management. Looking at the development of chat language, which is also simplified in many ways, it can be argued that this language is no less rich and individual. However, I still fear the gradual “poorification” of English not as a result of government action but instead due to industrial pressures.  I hope Orwell was wrong in this prediction and that 1984 will never come.