Best alternative career paths for translators

 

Let’s say you’ve just earned your degree in Translation and you’re wondering: “All right, but what are my career options – besides translating, of course?”.

Or let’s say you’re an experienced freelance translator who wants to add some pizzazz to his or her tried and tested routine.

The best thing you can do in both situations is to ask your fellow translators to share their experiences with you.

While you’re waiting for them to answer, we’ve asked some great professionals with a translation background to show you how you can put your hard-earned array of language skills to work in a different field.

Table of contents

1.     Kelsey Frick, Freelance Account Manager

2.     Bilyana Ancheva, Copywriter

3.     Virginia Vizcaíno Ruiz, Marketing Consultant

4.     Lucy Walhain, Terminologist

 

1.     Kelsey Frick, Freelance Account Manager

“I spent 5 years working for a boutique translation agency as their Senior Account Manager, but a year ago I decided that I needed something a bit different and left that role”, says Kelsey Frick, who self-defines as a “lady who posts TikToks disguised as LinkedIn content”.

All jokes aside, at that time “I didn’t know what I wanted, but I knew I wanted my ‘dream job’ and I wasn’t going to settle. So I went freelance just to pay the bills. I was trained in translation and subtitling, so I figured that’d be the type of work I’d pick up, but since people in the industry already knew me as an account manager, that ended up being the type of work I kept getting offered”.

Pretty quickly she realised this was her dream job and decided to go freelance properly and start her business. But what does a Freelance Account Manager typical workday look like?

“My typical workday starts around 8-8.30am. I log on, look at my to-do list of tasks that I made the day before, and update it with anything else that’s come in overnight. I have about 5 emails that I manage, between my own and the ones I manage for my clients’, so this takes a good while!”, she explains.

“With all my tasks for the day laid out in front of me during the morning, I prioritise what each end client needs and run projects accordingly. A lot of this is about knowing the end clients –one client’s ‘urgent’ Is much different than another’s!”. After an hour-long lunch break, her afternoon is filled with meetings. “At the end of the day, I’ll see what needs to be accomplished for the next day and write down my to-do list”.

 “I’m definitely grateful for the fact that I’ve had my BA in Translation and Media to prop up my career. I don’t think I would’ve gotten into this field without it. It’s helped me grow into an understanding project and account manager. It means that I can understand difficulties in translation that linguists may face, while still being able to convey why to an end client who isn’t in the localisation sphere”, she says. “The other thing I do is try to attend every free webinar I can that major industry players put on. There’s so much out there that I don’t know about the industry, and while I’m an expert in my little field, there’s still a lot to learn”, she adds.

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2.     Bilyana Ancheva, Copywriter

“While translating has been my full-time profession in Bulgaria, it wasn't this way when I moved to Spain many years ago. Translating Bulgarian in Spain was not a profitable business due to a lack of demand, so I had to build my career in other fields not directly linked to translation”, says Bilyana Ancheva, who now is a trilingual copywriter and content manager.

“I became acquainted with copywriting gradually: it was a process of discovering what services were needed and what I could add to translation to complement my translation skills”, she adds.

From her point of view, “both translation and copywriting require similar basic skills: excellent writing and creativity”. Besides, “copywriting can add value to a translator's work because it allows him or her to directly write in their linguistic combinations about topics that are relevant and interesting to their potential clients, rather than just translating content. I really suggest you consider this skill, especially if you are struggling to assure full-time income as a translator with rare language combinations and less translation demand”.

PRO TIP: Wondering whether copywriting is the best for you as a translator? Bilyana’s course “Copywriting for Translators” answers all your questions and allows you to learn the basics of direct-response copywriting and content writing directly applicable not only to your own translation business, but also to the copywriting needs of your translation target clients. 

3.     Virginia Vizcaíno Ruiz, Marketing Consultant

“As a student, I tried every specialization and I realized that the fields I enjoyed the most had to do with marketing, communication and advertising, because it requires lots of thinking, creativity and playing with words. I’ve always enjoyed writing and in my last year of studies I took a course on transcreation and copywriting and did an internship on digital marketing, and that’s when I knew for sure”, says Virginia Vizcaíno Ruiz, professional translator and marketing consultant,

After working in-house in a communications department and studying an MA in Multilingual digital marketing, she became a freelancer, “completely sure about wanting to follow that path from then on!”.

Now she feels “a bit like Hannah Montana: In the morning I put on my marketing consultant hat, and in the afternoon, I become my translator self. As a marketing consultant, my work consists of reaching out to clients and assisting them with their marketing needs: some of these tasks include designing website structures, paid media campaigns, social media campaigns, client engagement campaigns, etc. As a translator, I work with direct clients in different fields, and my translations are always used for marketing and communication purposes”, she explains.

When you work in marketing, “being used to play with words and doing your research to deeply understand the original concept makes a huge difference. As translators, we are trained to dive deep into meaning, and that’s the very root of creating a successful marketing strategy: understanding the essence of the product or service, and the message that needs to be shared”.

PRO TIP: Learn the basics of traditional and digital marketing while also sharpening your translation skills with Virginia’s course “Traducción para marketing”!

4.     Lucy Walhain, Terminologist

“Terminology and translation are really linked. During my translation studies, I learned how to search for information, find reliable sources and deeply understand texts. This is helpful in terminology when the terminologist is trying to understand a concept and create its definition based on different sources. And of course, as I work in a multilingual environment, my language skills are very also useful”, says Lucy Walhain, Terminologist at the European Union’s Publications Office.

“Our work here is to maintain controlled vocabularies (authority lists, taxonomies, thesauri, ontologies, etc.). I check that all reference data and metadata are compliant with the ISO standards for terminology. This ranges from creating concepts and their terms to creating definitions for already existing ones”, she explains. If you wish to follow her steps, she suggests applying for an internship at the Terminology coordination unit at the European Union. “Their website also contains a lot of useful information to find out more about terminology work and terminological resources”, she adds.

PRO TIP: Do you have a background in translation but over time you’ve chosen a different career path?

If you wish to share your experience with us and other fellow translators, please contact us and we’ll feature you in our next article, “Best Alternative Career Paths for Translators – Part Two”!

We want to hear your story!

 Roberta Cavaglià