A translator’s guide to the world of social media

Imagine you are going on a long trip. You thoroughly research your destination, start mapping out an itinerary of must-see attractions, carefully select your accommodation, pack the perfect suitcase and you’re ready to go. Oh no, there’s one thing you really can’t forget: your boarding pass. All your preparation would go down the drain without this little piece of paper. Similarly, to get you on your way to the modern working world, your social media presence is your boarding pass, or rather, your business card.

Little thought is given to translators. They work behind the scenes and are rarely noticed or, indeed, imagined. However, in the digital age and with the spread of machine translation, translators need to understand how to stand out and enhance their skills by exploiting the potential offered by the Internet.

We know that it is not easy to find your way in this market, as shown by the survey conducted by Rudy Loock from the University of Lille in 2020. The results show that most freelance translators (79.6%) have never received specific training in the use of social media for professional purposes. It is therefore up to translators to independently seek out training opportunities to learn how to manage their image on social media. As early as their university years, translation students could consider courses on this topic, despite the fact that they may seem distant from their field of study. For example, the University of Trieste offers an interesting opportunity at the so-called CLab, a hub where students can take innovative courses on topics such as strategic marketing or digital marketing.

Another opportunity to broaden one’s horizons is to find information on the web. And it is precisely for this reason that we have decided to bring together a series of tips in this article to help you chart a course and identify the key stages in your digital journey.

1. Step one: explore your strengths

First of all, it is essential to start with a key concept closely related to the promotion of your online services, i.e. brand identity. This is the set of unique and original characteristics that company or organisation wants to be identified with, how they would like to be perceived in the market. Like a person’s own name, the brand identifies and makes a given product unique and recognisable (Icardi 2019: 18). Brand identity, therefore, allows us to project an image of ourselves and communicate our essence in a professional and strategic manner. It might sound easy, but what does this mean in concrete terms?

To get to grips with your brand identity, you can start with two questions:

1.       What makes you unique?

2.       Who is your target audience?

To answer the first question, take a pen and paper and try to identify the aspects that set you apart from other translators. Have you studied abroad? Have you completed an internship in a translation agency? Have you carried out volunteer work? All this adds up to your experience and skills, but you should also think about your personal interests, your passions and your values. For example, if you are passionate about law and are trained in this field, you could highlight this specific knowledge across your social media profiles and post content related to the legal field.

In this way, you will start to attract a certain market segment (Adams 2013), and this will help you answer the second question. Now all that remains is to prove to clients that your services can meet their needs and solve their communication problems. Picking up on the previous example, if you are a legal translator, you can publish posts in which you guarantee that your translation will not only be linguistically correct, but will also be very accurate from a legal point of view, given your in-depth knowledge of the (a)symmetries between different legal systems and your ability to pick up on the nuances of specialised texts. All this will give the client one more reason to choose you rather than another translator.

2. Step two: choose the most appropriate social media

Now that you have a general understanding of brand identity and of how to enhance your profile, it is crucial to understand which platform best suits your business:

- Proz.com: is a powerful resource not only for finding job offers, but also for being found by clients because it has excellent search engine optimisation (SEO) and is therefore one of the first sites to appear using Google Search. It also provides very useful tools for translators, such as the term search function, where you can solve your terminology doubts or those of your colleagues, and the Blue Board, where translators can review the translation agencies they have worked for and possibly warn their colleagues against dubious agencies.

- LinkedIn: is a point of contact between professionals and companies and is the most widely used social network for browsing job offers and promoting services. LinkedIn functions as an online CV where you can show your education, work experience, awards, certifications or publications. All this will help you position yourself as an expert in the translation industry and attract not only potential clients, but also colleagues and collaborators.

- X (Twitter): although not generally considered a social platform on which to promote your services, this microblogging platform hides great potential. If you use the right hashtags, X can be very effective in increasing your visibility and creating connections with other users working in your field of specialisation. For example, if you are a legal translator, you cannot avoid using hashtags such as #law, #legal, #lawsuit.

- Facebook: to make the most of Facebook’s potential, you can start by creating a professional page through which you can interact with potential clients and colleagues. There are also numerous sector-specific communities on this social network where you can find job offers and training opportunities.

- Instagram: is the visual social par excellence. Through the publication of eye-catching visual content you can show your work (taking care not to divulge confidential information) and interact with users through other IG tools, such as reels or polls.

3. Step three: tips on your digital presence

After this overview of the characteristics of each social media platform, you need to understand what should be published in order to convey a professional image of yourself. Here are five practical tips:

1. Use a photo with a neutral background in which you are wearing smart clothes.

2. In your social media descriptions, emphasise your fields of specialisation and language combinations (avoid acronyms such as EN, ES, DE, ZH, as non-specialists may not be familiar with them; use extended forms such as English, Spanish, German, Chinese).

3. Do not limit yourself to informing your community about the translation assignments you have carried out, but try to let them know how your presence helped the client solve a particular problem, what difficulties you encountered and how you managed to overcome them.

4. Keep in mind the objectives you want to achieve through your posts. If your goal is to attract customers, avoid publishing content related to the world of translation, for example “5 essential CAT tools” or “How to translate a website”. This content will attract other translators rather than potential customers.

5. Don’t publish posts in which you express your dissatisfaction with your clients because it is unprofessional and may drive away new clients.

4. Step four: take off

Just as every voyage of discovery enriches us with experiences that mark our lives forever, the journey into the digital world enriches us with opportunities that can determine our professional future. To grow professionally as a translator, you cannot neglect the media visibility offered by social media and put advertising your services online on a back burner. Your digital presence is your boarding pass leading you to a career in line with the times. So don’t forget it and have a safe trip!

References

Adams N. Y. (2013).The Little Book of Marketing for Translators: Branding, offline and online marketing strategies to boost your business, NYA Communications.

Icardi B. (2019) Brand Design. Strumenti e strategie per costruire un’identità di marca solida, concreta e duratura. Il caso UniGe, MA dissertation in Product and event design, University of Genoa, https://unire.unige.it/bitstream/handle/123456789/2479/Icardi_B_tesi.pdf.