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Many times, we hear from newcomers to the profession that they want to become translators and/or interpreters because they love languages and really enjoy working for themselves. Those are two excellent reasons, but of course those two things don't make anyone a translator or interpreter, nor do they guarantee success, but we digress. Today we wanted to address some lesser-known facts of the business: much of it won't have anything to do with language at all, and some can be, well, a bit boring. We are not saying, by any stretch of the imagination, that all adminstrative tasks are boring, but it does make for a catchy title.
Most readers of this blog are experienced linguists and will certainly know that self-employed translators and interpreters have to devote a significant portion of their time to tasks that have absolutely nothing to do with language. These are neither fun tasks nor tasks that you can romanticize at all: they are the nitty-gritty basic tasks (some very easy, some challenging) that are necessary to run a business. They include highly interesting (yes, we are being sarcastic here) things such as:
- Logging our mileage and our business expenses so we can deduct them from our taxes
- Calling customers who have not paid their invoices (does not happen very often)
- Sending customers the requested paperwork (W-9s, confidentiality agreements)
- Dealing with tax-related paperwork
- Paying our bills and your vendors
- Renewing business licenses and dealing with government bureaucracies
- Going to see our accountants and lawyer, etc.
- Issuing invoices
- Working in our trusty accounting system, Translation Office 3000
- Corresponding with clients
- Depositing checks
- Checking the online balances of our accounts
- Dealing with computer challenges
- Doing software upgrades
- Calling the bank again to deal with an incorrect charge
The point of this post is the following: newcomers to this profession must realize that while of course we work with language on a daily basis, all linguists devote part of their time to administrative tasks. Sometimes it's 30% of our day, sometimes it's 50%, sometimes it's even 100% (as happened during a recent computer crisis). We think it's important that newcomers know about this reality, which is why we share it here on this space as food for thought.
What about you, dear colleagues? How much time do you spend on boring (read: administrative) tasks every day? Which one is your least favorite? Do you have one that you actually like?
And surely music fans were quick to recognize the title of this post: it is a favorite line from an 80s song by The Smiths. The name of the song is "Shirtlifters of the World Unite." Yes, Judy is a huge The Smiths/Morrissey fan.
2 comments:
"Check" on every single one of these! If I ever got to the point of hiring staff, my first hire would be someone to do the administration. One other thing I would add to the not-boring-but stressful list: explaining my charges to individual clients who don't think they should pay for things like numbers and proper names, or who interpret a question about preferred terminology as them doing my job for me. Those are times when I really appreciate project managers :)
@Marie: We are so happy to hear that you liked this post! Interesting point about hiring staff: we regularly hire fellow professionals for certain projects, such as doing maintenance on our websites, doing some paperwork, etc., but at some point, we might also be looking at hiring staff. Oh, too funny about clients perceiving questions about preferred terms as them doing their job for you... Yes, project managers can be worth their weight in gold for sure!
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