ITI Conference 2011

At ITI’s millennium conference, Janet Fraser and Michael Gold presented the findings of a major survey of freelance translators, looking at such aspects of their professional life as the number of clients they had, the terms of business they used, how they managed their client-base, and their reasons for working freelance, as well as the benefits and disadvantages of working for themselves and their perceptions of their career. The research, which we also wrote up in two well-cited academic journal articles, showed that translators make particularly successful ‘portfolio workers’ for a variety of reasons, including a specialist skills profile, a flexible working regime and strong professional networks. In particular, while translators do not always choose freelancing as their preferred career option, the vast majority come to appreciate the value of such arrangements over the security of an in-house position.

The fast-moving world of professional translation has undergone many changes since 2000, not least against the backdrop of rampant globalisation, recession and the double-edged sword of technological advances. Pauline Uyterwijk has reported for the Bulletin on translators’ confidence in their workflow and income during the credit crunch, but we feel it is time to revisit some of the broader issues our survey respondents and interviewees identified 10 years ago and to illustrate in particular how translators sustain a successful career in straitened economic times.

Over the next six months, we therefore plan a further questionnaire survey and hope to re-interview as many of the original interviewees as we can to update the snapshot we took of the profession at the dawn of the 21st century. In particular, we want to explore how the recession has affected their business, what strategies they have adopted to survive the downturn, and how they have expanded their professional horizons in terms of parallel activities, subject specialisms, language range, client-base, software tools or market niche. The research will also consider the impact of such developments as Chartered Linguist status.

Our paper will present the broad findings of our research and, we hope, be of interest both to established practitioners looking to expand their professional horizons and to newcomers to the profession seeking guidance on carving out a successful and rewarding career.

You can participate in the survey at http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/JLXH8LQ.