5 Reasons Why You Should Maintain A Good Work-Life Balance
Last week, I started discussing potential ways that you can help yourself to reach your target income by using your obvious linguistic talents. Depending on how much time you have left before the deadline you have set for yourself, how much free time you’re willing to invest in achieving your goal and how well you are able to organise your time, there are some rather interesting possibilities. Here are a few more:
Train Other Translators
You’ve been translating for some time now and you’ve faced your fair share of issues in the translation industry. Perhaps you translate in a specific area, or perhaps you live far away from your clients – trust me, you can find other people who are willing to pay to learn from your experiences. Webinars are a great way of getting this done remotely, but you could organise workshops or presentations if you would prefer to teach in person. Don’t think that you’re qualified to do so? There are always people less qualified than you. You could also try organising workshops or presentations in a foreign country – preferably one where your target or native language is in demand and make it a working holiday. Stress relief and a holiday that could potentially pay for itself and give you some great networking opportunities… what could be better? Giving back to the translation community is always a great idea – you will probably get more out of the experience than just money.
Write a Book
This is something that you could think of as a long-term project, and would be great for people who are only willing to put in little bits of effort (over a long period of time, of course). You could write about language, your experience in the translation industry, or you could get completely creative and write a novel… it is really up to you. An interesting approach would be to take a specific challenge that you have faced as a translator (e.g. translating and parenting or translating and working full- or part-time) and spend a few months doing a bit of research on the topic. This would give you enough material to write a decent book on the subject. You also have the option to release your books as Ebooks via the Internet, although you should probably expect to charge less for them than you would if you were selling them in paperback form. There is no guarantee that a major publishing house will pick up your book, so you may have to get a bit financially creative in that sense, but with online book sales doing well despite the economic downturn, you have access to a global market – there may be people half-way across the world just waiting for what you have to offer!
Create an Online Comic
Before you shoot this suggestion down by saying “But… I can’t draw!”, take a moment to consider it. Firstly, comics are less about art and more about your ability to crack a joke or tell a story. Here’s a great example:
Believe it or not, this would be considered a comic strip – and it took me the sum total of 10 minutes to create. I didn’t use any fancy software – just my webcam and MS Paint (I do have some awesome Adobe software that I purchased for a small fortune recently, but I’m trying to prove a point here) and as you can clearly see, I didn’t spend any time “setting the scene” or “doing hair and make-up” either (yes, I am in my dressing gown). If you have the patience to do this every few days (or at least on a regular schedule) for about a year, you’ll have more than enough material to compile into a book, along with some witty anecdotes (“In this strip, my hair was a mess, so I grabbed the nearest beanie I could find”), some annoying disclaimers (“I hope I haven’t offended my Indian readers – this was just meant to be an inside joke amongst translators”) and some plugs about how awesome your services are (“In reality, I would never accept jobs like this because I’m a professional – I always check translations before accepting them. Email me here so I can do your translation!”)
I’m sure there are lots of other ways in which you could supplement your income by using skills that you already have, and I would love to hear more. An income target shouldn’t be intimidating, it should be something that drives you to get creative – after all, all work and no play made Jack and Jane very dull children.
Author Bio
Dr. Sarai Pahla is currently a freelance Japanese and German to English medical translator who is also a non-practicing medical doctor. In her free time, she enjoys playing first-person shooters on her Xbox, studying new languages (next on the list is Russian) blogging in her own blog, Loving Language, and reading other translation blogs. She is also currently inching her way slowly towards a future career in space exploration. You can find her on Twitter, LinkedIn and Google Plus.
About the author
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Woooo-hooo, ha! Did I ever need a good laugh today. Thanks, Sarai! BTW, superb graphics. Eat your heart out, Adobe. 🙂
Hee hee! Thanks, glad you enjoyed it! Always nice to know that I brought a smile to someone’s face 🙂
Some of these great interpreters do not like to share their knowledge and experience with the new generation. Translation can be quite isolating work. Being among so many people who share my love for this art and all its ramifications was really special.
All great ideas here, thanks Sarai!