A French Language Translator Shares His Business View (part 1)

Glenn feels strongly that the quality of the translation work is ultimately what attracts loyal clients and helps build a thriving business. Here's the interview:

Q: 1)Tell us a bit about yourself, how did you become an English French language translator?

A: After getting my Masters degree in French Literature and spending a year on a teaching fellowship in Paris, I followed my wife back to her hometown, New York City.

I did some temping for a year, then through a friend I found an in-house position at a law firm as an English French language translator and editor.

I wasn’t a very good translator back then, but we had a very seasoned translation team checking our work, so I learned an incredible amount.

Q: 2)What makes you (your company) so different from your competitors?

A: My company is probably different in that it’s pretty low-tech. Law firms – our main clientele – still need highly skilled legal-translation specialists to work on their documents. There’s just no substitute for this.

And when translation agencies spread themselves too thin or get distracted by other faster growing fields like Localization/Internationalization or machine translation, the very basic – and very difficult – skill of legal translation often gets lost.

Q: 3)You have a website and you are a regular blogger, how has your web presence affected your translation business?

A: A website is a must for a company nowadays. But it doesn’t usually bring in business by itself. It’s just the most basic building block in anyone’s web presence.

Although lately I wouldn’t call myself a “regular” blogger, I can attest to the fact that a blog gets much more traffic than a static website. Our web presence has definitely put our services in front of a much wider audience than we could have through more traditional means.

Q: 4)A lot of translators complain that social media does not bring business leads to them and is a time sucker, what’s your opinion on that?

Q: There’s a temptation to rush into any new social media platform like Facebook or Twitter, or viral video, or blogging for that matter, in the hopes it will take all the pain out of selling.

But social media sites are blank slates. You bring the content. And if the content is boring or looks like what every other company is doing, it’s a waste of time.

If, on the other hand, you have a really creative way to capture people’s attention for a few moments, there’s probably no other marketing tool quite as powerful. ( to be continued in part 2 - English French translator)

Read more on related topics here:

Legal translation - Interview With Lawyer-Linguist Suzanne Deliscar

The power of language translators -Interview With A.M.Sall (part 1)

The power of freelance translators -Interview With A.M.Sall (part 2)

You can be an entrepreneur -Interview With A.M.Sall (part 3)

Importance of marketing - interview With A.M.Sall (part 4)

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Interview with Joanna Scudamore-Trezek, a German English translator (part 2)

A translator turned entrepreneur shares her tips on opening a small business(part 1)

A translator turned entrepreneur reveals her secrets to sell from home successfully (part 2)

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