A leap to the top

Post date: 28-Aug-2012 19:23:26

Over the past 12 years, since I began working full-time as a professional translator, there have been countless occasions when I was commissioned to manage a team of translators to tackle a specific job — usually a very long one, but with a tight deadline.

With that in mind, I have recently partnered with Brazilian-based translation company De Letra Tradução e Serviços Linguísticos to start working as their chief translator. For my current and potential clients in Brazil, that means they won't incur the infamous social security burden which makes up the notorious "Custo Brasil". For non-Brazilian clients, the only change is that I'm now invoicing most jobs as a company rather than as an individual.

Before my recent trip to the UEFA Euro 2012 and the Olympic Football Tournament, I was lucky enough to be tasked with a huge job to put my coordination skills to the proof — a 160,000-word Spanish to Portuguese translation of a World Bank report on safety in and around schools. On top of that, I kept my ongoing responsibilities as editor and translator.

Project management and coordination is nothing new to me, and I know that the bigger the project, the more difficult it is for the coordinator to have complete editorial control. That said, one of my conditions to accept my new role was to be fully in charge in terms of style and terminology, which has been possible by selecting only personally vetted translators who will abide by a given style guide, by using TM software in a sensible way, and by always revising all translations.

On the other hand, there are still many jobs which I take on a solely individual basis. Even though I invoice such jobs as a company, I won't outsource or share any documents under any circumstances unless previously agreed upon with the client, as I'm aware of their privacy and confidentiality concerns, not to mention their own consistency requirements.

I will finish this short post with thanks to my colleagues Fernando Campos Leza and Leonardo Milani, both highly successful and accomplished translators who have also made the leap from freelancers to sole proprietors and whom I truly recommend for PT-ES and FR-PT jobs, respectively. Having a small but good network of top-class translators is always the best way to get in touch with demanding, but knowledgeable and high-paying clients.