How important is courtesy to you?

I recently received an unusual surprise: an anonymous note on my unit door posted by a neighbor who obviously wanted to remain unknown. The note contained a noise complaint. Days later, having successfully resolved the noise issue (the neighbor never identified himself or herself, and the condo building board never received a complaint), the matter of good manners hovered on my thoughts for a while.

While I was working out the noise problem, I was working with a very polite client of mine on a multilanguage layout project for a local lighting company in Ohio. Each lighting fixture is sold with an information sheet in Spanish and Canadian French. These sheets are composed in InDesign CC; my task involved setting the translated text to an InDesign document (given by the customer or freshly created by myself). A pretty simple workflow.

However, my customer and I were facing miscommunication problems and some curt responses to our queries. My customer is a consummate diplomat in these situations; he has the capacity to listen and absorb his translators’ complaints and misgivings about a project but he will reframe them to the client in a way that is true to content but respectful to the customer.

You may feel like shouting on the phone, but it would be bad manners to do so.

Theodore Roosevelt said: “Courtesy is as much a mark of a gentleman as courage.” In Spanish we have an older saying with the same meaning: “Lo cortés no quita lo valiente.”

However, there are different degrees of courtesy accorded to family members, friends, neighbors, business associates, distant relatives and complete strangers. The way I learned to be courteous and polite can be summarized thus:

• Show equanimity (temple, in Spanish) in the face of rudeness
• Continue to be nice in the face of antipathy
• Give a calm response to angry outbursts
• When in doubt, be polite
• Avoid namecalling
• Give the benefit of the doubt as the other person may have different reasons for saying/acting the way he does
• Internalize (i.e. be sincere) all your expressions of courtesy to avoid sounding like a phony

These are some of my own standards of courtesy. Very few things in life anger me more than a lack of civility; however, I rarely, if ever, respond in anger. If I do, I am quick to apologize.

But you might think that all this talk about politeness is old news to you, even a trite topic. But courtesy is like humor: it’s not universal and nobody expresses it quite at the same expected level. Agreed, the Japanese and Koreans may exhibit a more elaborate degree of courtesy than New Yorkers or Texans. The point remains that we should cultivate a basic level of courteous behaviors to the point that they become second nature, regardless of our interlocutor’s behavior or level of courtesy. It is only by internalizing these behaviors that we can avoid two disagreeable outcomes:

• Look and sound like phonies
• Our expressions of friendship and concern are manipulative

During a Graham Norton show a few years ago, a British comedian made a shrewd observation about Americans: “In California, people are friendly in order to network and offer their business cards” (the paraphrasing is mine). Sadly, I’ve seen the same behavior in countless conferences, meetups and social gatherings across America. In short, the behavior I’ve witnessed can be summarized as I’ll be friends with you if you buy something from me.

Consequently, have we come to expect courteous behavior only when things go our way or when we stand to benefit from a relationship with a customer or a colleague? What is more relevant to you, business owner or company representative, should courtesy permeate your business dealings in every situation?

The acquisition of manners finds its best vehicle in the home, and behaving well under pressure is its best expression. Good manners harness a person’s virtues —those tried-and-true character traits— found deep inside him as sunlight brings out the hues and tints on a landscape. It is through good manners shown that most people form a good opinion of an individual: she’s patient, respectful, attentive, friendly, dependable. Social media may be the desert mirage where good manners evaporate, but we can still rise to the occasion and let our goodness through with a kind gesture, which is at the root of all civility.

Have we become so concerned with that sad substitute for a good name, brand, that weed masquerading as a flower which thrives only on poor soils? Are we so enamored with the glitter of one-word descriptions as shortcuts to communication, thus relegating courtesy to the perpetual folder of “Nice to have”? I am persuaded that politeness, far from being the much-maligned veneer of politicians, narcissistic managers and con artists, begins with integrity and self awareness, attributes commonly found in “individuals of stature and profundity, of flesh and substance…”, as noted arts advocate Eric Larrabee once wrote.

Being courteous is a hallmark of professionalism as well. Indeed, showing up on time for interviews and meetings, for example, reveals respect for the individual and for her time. In writing this piece, my intent is to invite you to ponder the following: are you being polite to your colleagues, customers and vendors because you are naturally courteous…or because it is a means to an end?

Think about it. All candid and courteous comments are welcome.

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Charge a fee for your service, not your self-esteem

America, the perennial land of opportunity and home of the Braves, the Cavs and the Cubs, has also become the land of positive thinking and an incessant cauldron of relentlessly optimistic how-to books. If you were born in poverty or if your talent goes unrecognized and your ego is sorely bruised, America is the land for you.

For translation students, bilingual or polyglot workers and professionals aiming to become translators and baccalaureate translators everywhere, America not only preaches the gospel of free markets and entrepreneurship, but also the hopeful message of self-esteem-based pay.

How so? Consider how many times you’ve read or heard the expression “get paid for what you’re worth” or references to a translator’s self worth being more deserving of the 2 to 4 cents per word she’s pressed to accept for her highly skilled labor. As somewhat tangible proof of this psychological thinking, here’s a recent blog posting posted in an anonymous translation blog:

Marketplaces are about supply and demand, products and services, buyers and sellers, not feelings or egos or personal worth. Business deals and negotiations should not be personal in nature nor should they be taken personally. For example, if your translation quote is rejected (especially when no reason is given), you should just shake it off and learn from it. Success in any profession is not about closing every single sale, winning every customer and satisfying every user. Failure, contrary to what the positive thinking movement asserts, is not a negative event but a necessary and yet enriching one.

Yet some of my colleagues conflate their personal worth (character, good name, good habits, etc.) with their professional competence, as so deftly described on this piece written in response to a posting by Corinne McKay on her blog Thoughts on Translation:

What is of concern is the apparent connection shown between a translator’s personal worth (i.e. how good a person is, her value in the community, her parenting skills or her contribution as a human being) and her earnings. The realities in any marketplace contradict and disprove this flatulent fallacy. There are two points I’d like to establish:

1. Only your professional services (translation, editing, proofreading, subtitling, interpreting, etc.) have a market value expressed in monetary terms.
2. Your goodness as a person has no bearing on that market value or on your competitiveness in the marketplace.

Many of us know someone who sacrificed greatly to earn a university degree or who paid heavy dues to achieve a level of recognition in one country or continent only to discover that the marketplace tolerates only a modest fee for his translation services. As a human being, feeling undervalued is understandable but it still irrelevant to being competitive.

The reader will forgive this cliché, but many of us are passionate about our profession. This dedication or devotion should be uncoupled from our self esteem and feelings of self worth.

The awkward departure of a former ATA media representative

The American Translators Association, a non-profit professional organism with a membership of approximately 11,000 in the United States, Canada, Europe and other countries around the world, is undergoing another set of growing pains. Its Board of Directors is made up of volunteers, most of whom are independent translators or small business owners like the readers of this blog.

Established in 1959 by a small number of New York City translators, ATA grew almost exponentially in the following decades. It currently has strong programs to reach out to novice translators and schools. Its media and public relations program has achieved important milestones in the last 15 years, thanks to driven people such as Chris Durban, Lillian Clementi and Kevin Hendzel, the latter becoming ATA spokersperson.

However, the ATA PR machine has undergone some painful internal motions in recent years, which culminated with the sudden resignation of its spokesperson, Kevin Hendzel, in 2012. He was replaced by Dr. Jiří Stejskal (no the ice hokey goaltender), a small businessman, owner of CETRA, with main offices in Elkins Park, PA. Mr. Stejskal is also a former ATA president.

A recent article published in the online site of The Economist quotes Mr. Stejskal thus:

“Machine translation” is the next step. Computers learn from huge databases of already-translated text to make ever-better guesses about how to render whole chunks from one language into another. Translators used to scorn this, seeing their human judgment as irreplaceable. Now, says Jiri Stejskal of the American Translators’ Association, it has won respectability.

This seemingly innocent statement caused a firestorm in the Yahoo! ATA Business Practices forum and in LinkedIn’s ATA discussion group this week, initiated by Mr. Hendzel:

When I first saw it, I assumed that it was sharing a link to an article about the ATA. Many translators did just that. It wasn’t until days that the reactions began to appear. Some commented on the outrageous quote, which many took as the ATA’s official position on MT (machine translation) having gained respectability. Mr. Hendzel, as it is his custom, rehashed his past role as ATA spokesman for a decade and how the ATA and translators in general had gained greater recognition during that time. At least, until 2012, when he resigned as spokesman. He further recited well-worn lamentations about the sad state of ATA in the field of public relations and the overall mismanagement  perpetrated by members of the current ATA Board. The initial posting collected a thread of about 45 comments, some thanking Mr. Hendzel for bringing up the topic and others disagreeing with him.

I also participated in the discussion. Full disclosure: at first, I complained about the misquote and asked that Mr. Stejskal offered an explanation:

My first comment on the matter.

A second reading of the quote in question changed my mind. The quotation marks surrounding Machine Translation had thrown me off, and I erroneously attributed them to Mr. Stejskal. It was time to call for a step back. Is it possible that the writer’s stile was at fault here? I concluded that the article required a second or third reading.

 

I was confused, and doubts about blaming this “PR disaster” (according to Mr. Hendzel) on Mr. Stejskal deserved further analysis and cooler heads:

The discussion was boiling and not resolving anything. However, commenters were civil toward each other, despite the fact that clouds of doubt and something more, undefinable as yet, were mounting and hovering over the debate.

There were many sensible comments and I added what usually drives me to discuss things. I also sensed an agenda after carefully rereading the initial posting that started the thread: Why is Mr. Hendzel criticizing the ATA spokesman for saying the wrong thing? Why is he making Mr. Stejskal responsible for “killing our primary message”?

Before the reader arrives at wrong conclusions, this is not about the nice and sensible things I said. Since the thread includes 45 comments and due to the impracticality of quoting every single one of them, I’m using judgment to insert the ones that I think are necessary for my discussion on the matter. Nor is it my purpose to rant against anyone involved in the long conversation. I want to present the most salient facts for those interested precisely because it touches on the public image of the professional entity I belong to as a translator. From my exchanges with Mr. Hendzel since 2011, I knew him to be a consummate self-promoter, a superb presenter and a very articulate spokesperson. Behind all that, however, I could sense a tendency to indulge in hyperbole and extreme comparisons bordering on demagoguery. I pointed that to him on several occasions, both in public and in private exchanges. Therefore, that exposure cued me to some purpose in his carping against the current ATA spokesman. I considered the discussion another exercise in futility and kept my thought to myself.

First, upon Mr. Hendzel’s resignation in 2012, ATA had to find a new spokesman and Mr. Stejskal stepped in. Media interviews don’t always go the way the interviewee intended and it’s up to the journalist or editor what comes out as the final version in print (or on the air). That’s what seemed to have happened with The Economist paragraph. The portrayal of machine translation (MT) as given in the article does not represent ATA’s position on the matter. Second, ATA lost its paid media adviser when it defunded the media outreach effort.

Finally, some light at the end of the tunnel. Some much-needed clarity reached my thoughts and I thanked Ms. Clementi for the facts and her comments. The discussion was not going to end like so many others, however. It was not going to be another event blown out of proportion by hyperbolic statements. A fellow translator, James Kirchner, known for his sharp mind, wrote what he considered to be the motivation behind the whole thread by Mr. Hendzel. Summarizing his words, Mr. Kirchner said that Mr. Hendzel had misrepresented the Stejskal “quote.” Mr. Stejskal clarified the matter in the BP list that the paragraph in the article was not accurate and proceeded to repeat what he actually said to the journalist.

In Mr. Kirchner’s view, Mr. Hendzel is being unjustly critical of Mr. Stejskal and the whole argument is pointless: there is no crisis. Finally, Mr. Kirchner indicated 3 common threads in Mr. Hendzel’s press-related pronunciations in the past: 1) Mr. Hendzel and his team did a superb job as ATA liaisons with the media; 2) any other ATA media representative is incompetent, and 3) Mr. Hendzel prefers to criticize those in ATA who are working in his old position as spokesperson.

James Kirchner said what I was thinking, but with much more force and determination. The interesting thing about this is, I had said similar things to Mr. Hendzel in the course of other discussions in the last year and a half, with little consequence. So I started to ignore his postings. The ATA moderator for our discussion group reminded everyone of the netiquette rules: don’t attack anyone, be courteous, etc. Inside, I was a tad indignant because I didn’t want this uncovering of a self-absorbed individual go unnoticed. So I wrote this:

I finally expressed my thoughts about the propagandistic tone behind the announcer of the thread, Mr. Hendzel.

I was courting a reprimand, I know. I said what was on my mind without naming names, but it was clear who I was referring to. Being reprimanded was not a present worry for me, though. Then Mr. Hendzel did the unexpected: he said he would resign from ATA this week. He further claimed the dangers ATA was facing due to the lack of real leaders and improper management. He lamented over the years he served to promote ATA, adding, rather puzzingly, that ATA was like the Apple computer going the way of Radio Shack. He promised to keep active in his blog and his parting words made reference to pursuing better options to head media efforts at other translators organizations.

Kevin Hendzel announced, with his hallmark pomp and circumstance, that he was leaving the ATA. He shared his conviction that the ATA is on a downward spiral to ruin and irrelevance but that he was going to be better off elsewhere.

So it seems that Mr. Hendzel had been smarting from his resignation as ATA spokesman, burning with desire to keep working in some media capacity but still harboring a deep resentment, contempt and disdain toward other ATA officers and marked animosity against Mr. Stejskal for reasons unknown to us.

I used to respect Mr. Hendzel precisely for the PR achievements he scored for the ATA. I remember the occasions that I would hear about the ATA and its spokesman, Mr. Hendzel, on some radio or TV interview. He did provide a great service to our organization. Then, the assumption of a new board of directors in the second decade of the 21st century changed things for public relations and for Mr. Hendzel. The Board and Mr. Hendzel didn’t see things eye to eye, the former later defunding PR and media efforts and the latter resigning in the aftermath in 2012.

Kevin Hendzel says that it was a sad day for him. Well, it was a sad day for me and for many others who witnessed how this otherwise intelligent and highly skilled professional decided to tear down his own legacy by tearing apart the current ATA spokesman and whatever other PR initiatives were started and achieved after his departure. It is a very grey and dull epilogue of his own making, a bland departure for a heretofore sterling man with an ego to match and who couldn’t bow down with grace and dignity.

The main problem for most was the misquoted ATA position on machine translation. Mr. Stejskal, fully aware of the commotion caused elsewhere in LinkedIn, wrote a candid, calm and complete explanation on the topic, which is now considered closed. As a result, ATA is requesting a clarification on the misquote from The Economist.

In the larger horizon of news events, we can be sure that ATA spokespersons will be quoted, misquoted, underquoted in different media. Other bloggers will comment on the issue, not all of them connected to the translation activity. And ATA will issue clarifications and gain more recognition and stature in response, I surely expect. That’s basically what the cooler heads in the LinkedIn discussion thread were asking all the time.

Cleveland could be a cosmopolitan city

I’m a Clevelander by adoption; I’m entering my 5th year as a resident in the area (west side of Cleveland proper) but I can’t yet feel the urban atmosphere as more than mere concrete bigness and hollowed-out glory that doesn’t seem to reach out and touch the world.

Cleveland and surrounding cities have many bright spots: worldclass museums and orchestras, as well as the famed Cleveland International Film Festival, now in its 39th anniversary. Several multinational companies, from Sherwin Williams to Lubrizol and Hyland Software, call the Greater Cleveland their home.

According to US Census 2010 figures, 12.1% of the population age 5 and older speaks a foreign language. Of that slice, 7.1% of adults 18 and older speak Spanish, 0.6% speak Arabic, 0.5% speak Chinese. Also, 0.9% speak a Slavic language (Polish, Serbo-Croatian, Ukranian and Russian). But Cleveland is not the only epicenter of foreign languages in Ohio. In recent years, the city of Dayton, OH, has become the home of 2,500 Aishka Turks, who speak Turkish.

By most accounts, Cleveland is a multicultural hub, but you wouldn’t see it by reading the local newspapers or websites —unless you were specifically looking for a foreign-language website, that is. But Cleveland has a ways to go before being considered a truly dynamic cosmopolitan city.

Take exports, for example. Aside from some of the companies I just mentioned, I didn’t know about any local exporters until recently through an article published in Crain’s Cleveland Business (found here) in last June. The article, titled Companies have a world of options to enter export game, mentions several useful programs to help local companies export products, but fail to say anything about using foreign languages. Countries may have ports of call where you send your merchandise, and your company (if it is an exporter) may know all the forms to fill out to comply with the regulations of a foreign country, but a language is your portal to a foreign culture, which can come in handy to understand business transactions and practices in that faraway destination. Since you put so much stock on exporting and gaining new customers, thus improving your bottom line, shouldn’t you be paying attention to their language as a factor that can influence your earnings favorably?

Another area of potential robust growth is real estate. You would think that the saying “location, location, location” is only relevant to local clients or buyers, right? Not quite. In a July 18, 2014 article in the Mansion supplement of The Wall Street Journal, a foreign language can give real estate agents a competitive edge. For example, Nadia Rahmani, an agent with Jameson Sotheby’s International Realty in Chicago, is fluent in three foreign languages —French, Arabic and Spanish. In her estimate, 40% of her buyers in Chicago are international: “Even though they’re fluent in English, they’re more comfortable speaking in their native tongue.”

A similar circumstance is happening here, in the shadows: a real estate agent I know, Luba Kohut, speaks Ukranian. She told me that her Ukrainian has come in handy with some clients. But I wonder: where are the Ukrainian real estate brochures or websites? Are you listening, Howard Hanna? Imagine for a moment if real estate companies could market units in foreign languages, thus attracting the attention of foreign investors! Just look at what Dayton did.

Health care centers in America attract thousands of patients from all over the world. In our metro region, hospitals like Cleveland Clinic offer language assistance services by way of foreign language interpreters for international patients. However, how is a Brazilian patient supposed to know that she’s entitled to request a no-cost Portuguese interpreter? Even the otherwise informational page is —you guessed it— in English!

To recapitulate, Cleveland businesses, big and small, could learn a great deal about showing an international, cosmopolitan face to the world and to every visitor. A very good example is Lubrizol. If you go to the Lubrizol’s website, you are welcome by this splashscreen:

Small businesses could do something similar, but COSE, the Council of Smaller Enterprises of which I was a member for close to 2 years, has no initiatives in that regard. Cleveland businesses need to adjust their attitude from a local mindset to a more worldwide one. Use foreign languages not just to network and find clients but also to show your sense of hospitality and humanism, which goes beyond language and cultural differences. And this attitude should not be an one-off event. I invite you to widen your vision to years, not just months, down the road. You don’t have to shed your unique city identity when you embrace a cosmopolitan attitude. If you agree, let your voice be heard at your local chamber of commerce or similar association.

But you could take direct action and put yourself on the map whenever there are international events in our city. Take the 2016 Republican National Convention that will attract thousands of press representatives from all over the world. If you play your language cards right, they might as well become your best brand ambassadors back to their home countries.

Cleveland and its metro area have some enviable advantages compared to other metro areas in the country, including reasonable property taxes, simplified ways to establish a corporation, low housing costs, lots of green spaces and the four seasons (even if we get snowed in once in a while). Don’t keep it to yourself, say it in a foreign language.

Please be patient with us translators

Translators and translation agencies are an interesting bunch. Sometimes we act like second or third children too eager to please our elders. Every single website promoting translation services almost invariably offers the same thing: hundreds of languages and thousands of translators and interpreters at your disposal. No subject matter is too esoteric or insignificant, no document too small or too unimportant. We aim to please.

Some of this eagerness is wholly sincere: we do care about languages and about precision in writing the best translation copy for you. But this desire to meet your demands may also betray a deep insecurity: we swim in a sea of saturated language service providers, with many bilingual amateurs and self-aggrandizing entrepreneurs looking for the next success story and fighting for customers like you, attaching to your business like remoras. We are afraid to be undervalued, underappreciated and ignored by you.

This insecurity drives us to show a little resentment towards amateur translators and Johnny-come-latelies who will snatch clients from us. It’s like a Cold War movie or a poor man’s John Le Carré novel: we want to rescue you from them as James Bond, but we end up being a copy of Johnny English instead.

The translation industry is highly fragmented, with very large language service providers (LSPs in our jargon) gobbling up the large government and corporate contracts because they have the marketing muscle and the human resources for them. In America, as well as in many other industrialized nations, the bulk of the translation services providers consists of small businesses, 5 to 50 strong, some being general-purpose agencies and some boutique translation companies. The rest is individual practitioners. Unlike milk producers in California, our industry does not have a slogan like and TV campaigns to bring awareness to the powerful resource we can be for your company.

In this sea of confusion, it’s commonplace to see providers overpromising, overreaching and sometimes underperforming, which hurts other, better prepared providers. So, if that has been your experience, your new, better qualified translation provider may have to start from scratch to rebuild your trust in our services. Hence my request to be patient with us multilingual folks.

I recently penned a comment to a colleague’s sincere plea to improve and unify our public relations efforts and remind others out there that human translation is far better than machine (or software-driven) translation. This is what I wrote:

Subscribing to the right trade and business magazines and newspapers also helps to be aware not just of what’s going on with translators and interpreters elsewhere, but also with sister professions, such as graphic designers, information designers, technical communicators and writers, and so on. Many of our struggles as a profession are not unique to us, and knowing what other trades and professions are doing in the public arena can be very informative, educational and helpful.

After reading an article by graphic designer Ilise Benun in the HOW magazine, regarding how to negotiate fees for freelancers, I contacted her for permission to use parts of her article in my blog (wordsmeet.wordpress.com). She graciously granted it, and she’s now one of my LinkedIn contacts.

We need outside speakers at our ATA chapters and annual ATA conferences to learn what others are doing to bring not just attention but honor and respectability to our profession. We are too isolated. Isolated people tend to believe too much in their own fears and paranoia. We become so hungry for solutions that anyone with a megaphone and charisma can sell us their agenda.

I don’t think we should approach PR from our fears of being undervalued or ignored as a storied profession, as any fear-based campaign can become a self-fulfilling prophecy and undo our best intentions and efforts.

So, next time a translation company or translator comes knocking, please be patient. They’re trying to be as helpful as they can in a competitive and fragmented world.

I’m not an entrepreneur and I don’t head a startup

I carry a love/hate relationship with networking events. Among the methods I have come to love is the 2-minute swap networking as carried out during the 2012 ATA Conference in San Diego last October. Dreading the worst —we introverts dislike gatherings with large groups of strangers— I sat in one of the long tables facing another colleague…one more stranger.

When the whistle blew, we acted as instructed: talk with your neighbor in front of you for 2 minutes, then stop and move to the next seat to your right. I didn’t need any prompting: just the thought of introducing myself and asking my colleague facing me what he or she did was enough to keep the ball rolling. Sometimes, 2 minutes were insufficient to wrap up an otherwise interesting conversation. Business cards and smiles were exchanged. The entire affair was over before you knew it.

I attended an annual business meeting/networking event at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History last Thursday (January 17), hosted by COSE (Coalition of Small Enterprises), an organization that connects its members with more than a dozen chambers of commerce. The business meeting highlights: a professionally made video and the awards ceremony. However, the networking that followed was not my cup of tea. I was looking to spend up to 3 hours with strangers. In this and other similar events, I noticed that, regardless of whether you are an introvert or an extrovert, you will find that most people are already engaged in conversation by the time you approach them to strike up a discussion.

A solitary home office

This is the Upper Midwest, after all. People are cordial, courteous and willing to meet you. But the format for this networking activity is all wrong. You can’t possibly network with even a 10% of all of the people there. I did, however, manage to encounter a fellow translator who lives in Vermillion, as well as representatives of a couple of ad agencies, with whom I discussed a bit of typography and graphic design topics briefly.

Another contact I made was a COSE staff member who is involved in the marketing committee. He mentioned that his committee is going to introduce new services in March 2013 for startups and entrepreneurs, all COSE members. After listening to him for a few minutes, I volunteered my thoughts about the words “startup” and “entrepreneur.”

-I think these words are being overused today. I don’t consider myself an entrepreneur or a startup, even though I have my own small corporation.

He considered my words carefully and went on to expand how COSE had thought about using a word other than startup to refer to small businesses, to avoid the former’s negative connotations. He added that COSE had started to use the word “solopreneur” (a cringeworthy term in my book) to replace “entrepreneur.”

First and foremost, marketing people are not etymologists or linguists, nor should they be required to be. But so-called ordinary words, such as business owner or company manager or even sole proprietor carry more proven weight than faddish words such as mompreneur, solopreneur or any other feeble attempt at me-too linguistic pioneering for marketing or sales purposes.

How do other business owners see a startup? An IT outfit? A young company? What about their view on an entrepreneur? In the eyes of a well-established business owner, does the word entrepreneur carry the cachet of motivation, creativity and inspiration…or a can-do attitude? The more we use an otherwise particular or special word, the soon it becomes stale and obsolete, yielding an anemic impact. Which brings us to a topic of import: writing. Say what you want about the printed media or the impending death of newspapers and magazines, but no amount of slick YouTube videos or well-crafted Facebook page likes will ever replace a well-written message. Even if that message is a one-word label that you choose to apply to yourself or your company.

We may think it’s all semantics, but words, the written word, is the second most important invention since the wheel. We live and die by the word.

Be a resource to others

Who doesn’t like a helping hand?

I recently spent 10-12 minutes reading a thread in the Freelance Writers LinkedIn group about networking. Some posters mentioned how difficult it is to network if they’re new in the field, or shy or introvert. Others offered sensible advice on what to do and what to expect. This reading exercise motivated me to give something of myself to this motley group of writers, the basis of which is the headline of today’s post: Be a source to others.

Some of my thoughts from my LinkedIn contribution are summarized thus:

Wow, I like this thread! I belong to a close cousin profession: I am a translator, so I write translations for a living…full time! Ruth, Erin & Lori, I agree 100% with your approach to networking, since I can relate to some of the things you do (except for the lip gloss convo, ha). One cannot be a member of every trade group or association related to one’s profession, of course, as it quickly becomes expensive in terms of money and time commitment. I truly and genuinely believe in giving first, in sharing what I know, in offering something extra, in paying forward.

When I started my career as a translator, back in 1991 in New York City, I knew nobody. I went to my first meeting of translators nervous and insecure, being one of the youngest in the group of experienced linguists. Being an introvert, I usually think I won’t get to network much, but I am a naturally good listener. So I observed, I learned. Over time, I meshed in.

One of the best tips I can pass along is this: be and become a resource to others, without any interest or expectation. If I meet someone who does something completely unrelated to my line of work –a chemist or a lawyer, for example– I steer the conversation towards something that is interesting to THEM: I ask questions (I am inherently inquisitive without being nosy). I show them that I find something interesting or fascinating in what they do, it comes naturally to me. That attitude bears fruit sooner or later for me.

We won’t make friends or contacts with everyone we meet. But that person with whom we didn’t click may know a third person who could find us interesting and useful. As for social networking, I am very active in LinkedIn groups but I don’t believe in Twitter that much. LinkedIn is a more professional, gentle approach that is suitable for me (I have made some new clients thanks to it!), but Twitter seems more aggressive and potentially annoying, not different from 6 p.m. telemarketing in calls.

The original thread can be found here on LinkedIn.

Ads that blithely ignore world outside of America

I am not a football fan, but I can recall a certain Groupon Super Bowl ad with Timothy Hutton in it. I like Mr. Hutton as an actor, but if the flurry of negative tweets is to be believed, the ad makes light reference to Tibet, which is a faux pas in advertising (or it should be). Click on the following image to read the article.

Super Bowl games are no longer viewed only in America. According to Initiative, a New York-based media research firm, the 2005 Super Bowl event attracted about 2 million viewers outside of the United States.

One of the most difficult things to translate or convey in another culture is humor and jokes. If you are a multinational corporation or a company that is trying to stretch your business horizons overseas, you cannot claim ignorance or innocence when your advertising is deemed unfunny, even offensive, in other countries, even in foreign enclaves within the United States.

Andrew Mason, Groupon’s founder, issued an apology and the ad was pulled afterwards. The Super Bowl championship is the biggest event in America, and advertising during the Super Bowl is the most expensive of the year. So, it was not a matter of cost, but of awareness.

The moral of the story seems to be this: don’t be penny wise and pound foolish, do your homework on the language, culture or country you are targeting your product or service.

A follow-up on 50 Best Jobs (book)

I received a letter from Dr. Laurence Shatkin today. Dr. Shatkin is one of the authors of the book titled 50 Best Jobs for Your Personality, 2nd edition (JIST Publishing). In short, he explained that he had to base his book on the Department of Labor’s SOC (Standard Occupational Taxonomy). Because Dr. Shatkin’s letter is both gracious and professional in tone, the least I can do is to include excerpts from it:

The most important limitation is that I must rely on career information databases from the Department of Labor to provide information on the hundreds of occupations that I put into my books, and those databases sometimes lump together occupations that you or I might prefer to be defined separately. For example, although the government’s official Standard Occupational Taxonomy (SOC) recognizes one occupation called Accountants and Auditors, the O*NET database (which is what I used for the personality types in 50 Best Jobs for Your Personality) splits this into two separate occupations. Sadly, with Interpreters and Translators, both SOC and the O*NET keep these two titles lumped together. The O*NET does not provide separate information on their personality types or on any other characteristics or requirements.

What results is an average. I would guess, although I do not have any data on hand, that there are more interpreters than translators. (I’d appreciate hearing from you about whether this is true). This would explain why Social is the second personality type listed as the average for this combined occupation, although a translator’s work environment is not very social. In fact, translating is probably an excellent occupation for an introverted person.

I should point out that the Department of Labor tends to keep occupations lumped together in cases where the initial stages of the preparation pathway are similar. In the case of Interpreters and Translators, one would start preparing for both of these occupations by becoming knowledgeable about a foreign language. Eventually, one would reach a fork in the road and would decide which occupation is more suitable.

The statement about the type of education/training required is also based on information from the Department of Labor. Most occupations allow a range of preparation routes, and this one (or two, if you prefer!) probably allows a wider range than most. The policy of the Department of Labor is to list the shortest of the possible entry routes, even if it’s not the one most preferable. So, for example, they list associate degree as appropriate for Registered Nurse, even though a nurse without a bachelor’s degree faces severely limited job choices. That’s why “long-term on-the-job training” is listed for Interpreters and Translators.

This open dialogue is encouraging. Care to participate?