SPECIALISED: TOURISM TRANSLATION (Freelance Translator)
do you have what it takes to be a tourism translator coming up [Music] hello and welcome back to the freelance first thanks for being here thanks for coming back to the channel it is time for another specialized episode on the channel this time I invited three panelists to talk about tourism translation tourism seems to be a very highly requested and highly sought after translation specialization I see it all the time in my comments coming up I'll send messages and I think it makes sense I mean tourism traveling it's kind of linked who doesn't like it right so if you can manage to combine that that aspect of of life with your work that can be an amazing career I'm about to have the conversation with the panelists can't wait to share this with you but first as always this episode is brought to you by memoq thank you so much memoq for sponsoring the specialized series memoq translator Pro is a tool specifically for translators that helps them increase their productivity improve their translation quality and to meet tight headlines if you're interested in their product or their company make sure to click the link below that leads directly to the landing page and you can check them out now let's get on with interview [Music] so hello everybody we are back with another episode of specialized today we talk about tourism if you've missed any of the previous episodes I'm gonna link the playlist down below so you can check all the countless I've lost count at that point how many have done but today I'm very excited to talk to Sylvie Fiona and Lisa hello everyone thanks for taking the time could you please start by introducing yourself Lisa would you like to start uh yeah sure so I'm Lisa I'm French English to Dutch translator and with that I mean Dutch for Belgium I only translate for Belgium I specialize in marketing translations for on one hand education companies and on the other hand everything that revolves around tourism education tourism culture things like that Sylvie hi I'm Sylvie I'm from the Netherlands um I work from English into Dutch Dutch for the Netherlands not like Lisa um I specialize in marketing and translations and tourism translations and yeah tourism travel Hospitality everything that's related to that specialization recovering all the Dutch speakers today that's nice Fiona German um I'm based in the UK near Cambridge and I specialize in marketing and tourism translation as well interesting so I hear that it seems to be I mean this is a question that I wanted to come back to later but you both or I think all of you mentioned that you also do marketing right uh is that kind of uh interwoven marketing and tourism Lisa you would say I think marketing is not necessarily tourism but tourism does require the same level of creativity you need for marketing so um when I started out as a tourism translator I did a lot of newsletters magazine articles for tourism magazines uh tourism newsletters things like that and I was very creative all the time the main guideline clients gave me was don't translate literally making your own text making your own translation I could add sentences I could I could switch around things add words delete words and everything and that's something I also do in marketing so for me felt natural to do both at the same time to on the one hand specialize in marketing but also specialize in tourism culture things like that I think for me marketing really is like websites social media ratios and everything whereas tourism it's more it's more storytelling it's longer text um there's usually like a story to be told whereas marketing can be very short posts and everything yeah I think for me marketing is more it's broader it's um like every company does marketing or you should marketing a lot of translators including myself say that they're specialized in marketing I think on the one hand yes like Lisa said it's like a very creative genre I guess but um on the other hand it's it's just also a way of translating I guess like very creatively but the the topic the actual text it can be about for any company and it can be um I don't know for a company you say um they would like to hire people or they have a marketing campaign to to get more employees or it can be a holiday uh destination guide or it can be anything so for me it's more more of a and I'm proud of term more or less um most of the people watching this this series are people that are trying to figure out if this is potentially specializations for them right uh Fiona what would you say uh are kind of the backgrounds that one would need all like they personally professionally academically whatever to go into this area okay what what Lisa and Sylvia said they're about the kind of crossover and links between marketing and tourism translation leads nicely into that because I think I always think of it as there's this kind of creative thread running through all my work in both of those areas and I think that creativity is so important and I think people can get those creative skills in different ways so just working on your target language writing skills and being able to write well in your target language is such an important skill for tourism translation and interest in travel and tourism and culture more broadly you know an interest in in all the different areas of Tourism and then I think academically I don't know I have a masters in literary translation and then I've obviously not gone into literary translation but those creative skills that I picked up in in that period of study have really helped me um later down the line in a different way so I guess it's pulling on those creative skills that people wouldn't necessarily need a master's to get you could do maybe a copywriting course other courses in in writing well um interesting yeah what what caused this switch from literary to tourism in your case the creativity and I started working in-house a translation agency actually um and they specialized in marketing translation and I was thinking back um ahead of this conversation I remember actually my first project I translated at that agency was for a luxury cruise ship that was a brochure um and I think maybe that stuck with me and I enjoyed it so much and I just felt like it was like such extreme marketing you know like the oozing luxury and trying to encourage and entice people to come on board the luxury cruise ship and I just enjoyed it so much um and yes progressed from there I guess I feel like English is always the ideal language for all these like very marketing luxury type of languages right I always find it so so tough to write these texts in German because it just sounds so fake most of the times right so it's it's really difficult I feel like to make this switch so I guess for you you translate from German to English so you have to add this kind of Flowery language this um right okay okay I can see how this is more fun than the other way yeah so much fun what I would say skills that translates we need to work in tourism and culture is definitely very good research skills uh because for example my most recent project was a an exposition on Mesopotamia and it has a lot of archaeological things uh like ancient objects that existed millions of years back uh thousands of years back sorry uh but they don't use this anymore and usually get this sometimes you get a picture but no always they have to take them and you don't find a lot of information on the internet and you have to know what to do how do you find the right term how do you know what it is uh you should be able to research it maybe go to the library sometimes ask questions to your clients don't be afraid to ask for pictures I think that's also very important that you have the necessary research skills that you know how to research things on Google library ask your clients things like that yeah I agree I use I use Google a lot mostly for tourism translation more than any other type of translations and it's it's nice to to learn stuff because you get paid to learn things I like that and but also I don't know for you guys but for me the my travel wish list wish list keeps growing all the time because I I wanting to go to all these destinations that I try translated but yeah I think it's also nice when you translate tourism tags is that you when you're translating on a destination like something in the mountains it sounds really beautiful then the first thing I do is just look at pictures I look at the video and just look at it like to have a feel like what is it and like it's like gorgeous and you want to to add the same feeling uh of Amazement into your text the second changed your whole vibe right if you're translating for I don't know for like a treehouse Hotel rather than a luxury hotel it's completely different uh copy and style and register okay yeah one thing that I I was thinking about preparing for this video I also let you guys know in previously like when you really think about it you could say that literally anything can be tourism related right because we translate for other cultures with there's of some some kinds to to understand right and Lisa you mentioned this this project it sounds more like a perfect for a historian or something right rather than tourism so how do you maybe say that you can start off how do you define tourism for you what is it you're actually working on um for me it's like um specific texts about destinations or um a cruise line or a hotel chain or yeah something like that and say it in first travel and um yeah if you look at it it's a culture and tourism they're connected but not exactly the same so who would you work for then mostly is it is it the companies in the travel industry or do you work with agencies uh both I work with some travel agencies or tourism boards and also um translation agencies that give me jobs like that's usually for the the big companies in in travel they use translation agencies and then there's a smaller companies that I work with directly and for Fiona and Lisa how is it for you text types clients how do you how does your everyday workflow look like Fiona maybe you could take that one um so I also opened a mixture of translation agents seasoned direct clients so I started off working for working on Hotel content copy I'd say through translation agencies and then I've gradually kind of Diversified my client base and brought in more direct clients and um I was trying to think of them all and kind of write a list to my head and it's quite nice because it's so varied so I've got one client who has a website and she reviews um kind of the main tourist attractions and kind of hidden gems in different cities around Europe and she has this on in website articles and then has brought in a blog as well so that's a couple of different text types and I also get to work on um content about um say Rome and Paris which I don't normally get to do working from German to English so I like this client a lot so I get to explore different places um and then also um another direct client I've worked with fairly recently I've translated to travel guide um so it was for the city that was the European city of culture um last year in 2022 and I translated the the whole guide um and actually if I could just do a little bit of self-promotion I went there last week on holiday and I went to the tourist office and it was so exciting they found it for me it was really cool so yeah that's the actual physical book like an actual chunky copy that I could hold in my hand um and then also travel magazines which are kind of similar and Lisa what area do you work in um so when I started out I worked a lot for travel agencies but mostly via VIA translation agencies with my clients like direct clients they were um travel agencies or also like a cruise operator I worked for um but at the moment I mainly work with museums so I don't necessarily do the travel things anymore but I really focus on museums more and more um and cultural stuff so with museums that's a bit special because it also goes through a translation agency but it's a very small agency and I'm very I have very I'm in very good terms with the agency and at least in my country in Belgium many museums there govern body government and so all translations um go through tenders so when a museum like once every five years they think I had like oh we might need that many words or that many expositions translated and then they publish a tender which is visible for anyone and then the agency me and then another translator someone who translates into English we apply it together we do test translation we follow the whole procedure and then so far we managed to to win a few attenders which is really nice and that's how we get to work for museums it's also scary because right now we have a tender for a museum and it's five years so for five years we know that we will get all the translation all the translations but we also know in advance how much it will be because it's written in a tender so it's going to be like three or four expositions something which is a nice volume it's really nice but then as soon as those five years are finished you know like you have to reapply and the thing with tenders is price is the main Criterium you can't quote too high I say because there will always be other agencies who who will offer a wide low rates and then quality is not very good and then it can get quite competitive working for museums Sylvie it sounds like you are working very much in the area where what I would imagine a tourism translator does right you work for destinations for cruises for traveling how do you manage to keep up to date with cultural phenomena cultural shifts in the countries that you work in so you work you translate into Dutch right so do yeah is your tourism is your is your uh destinations usually in the Netherlands or is it more in your Source languages um well it can be anywhere really I mean not so much in Netherlands but more like Dubai or uh um cruise itineraries that go around the world or just a river cruise in in Europe or um I travel a lot my business name is to travel traveling translator um um I'm off to uh Prague next week actually yeah well I mean usually if you translate for a translation agency then usually you just get instructions like for Dubai and they ask like do not use the word alcohol or don't promote alcohol just use the word drinks or something like that all right and um yeah and then mostly I suppose it's just in the source text already like those those words they don't they won't use the word alcohol in the source decks so then you don't need to use it necessarily in the ear translation I guess like a destination like Dubai or anywhere with more conservative values they would also not want to uh promote different values even in Publications in the Netherlands right it makes sense yeah but that's an interesting point that you mentioned so there you you mostly rely on the bricks from the clients yeah the reason what I know um myself about the translations our destination sorry uh one thing that I thought about when preparing tourism was extremely affected by kovit right I don't know Fiona were you already a tourism translated during covet I did tourism translation but through translation agencies and also alongside lots of other marketing translation so I didn't take the hit because it wasn't my soul kind of specialism so I'd say the tourism translation obviously dropped off in 2020 but I had other work so I didn't notice that as in the way that some other translators might have but I think what I did notice was that in 2021 as tourism kind of kicked back in after the main peak of the pandemic that's when I got contacted by direct lines the 2021 middle of 2021 is when the work started coming in so I kind of got the benefits after I suppose and then I think from there I've done more and more tourism translation as it's kind of past the industry it's kind of built itself back up and and kind of recovered I always tell people when I talk about these times that actually my profession was wanted was positive almost positively affected by the whole thing I had more work than than before but I assume in tourism it was the opposite so if someone solely focused on that right I don't know Sylvia and Lisa did you experience any drop in in revenue or work um not in revenue or work but the um like Fiona the the amount of Tourism translations uh dropped a little bit but then I got more other types of translations in return and also very interesting um some of my tourism clients they um kept giving me work but um it wasn't wasn't about hotel descriptions anymore but now this time it was about cleaning how they uh or like what covet measures they would take and yeah for for an Airbnb or something or for me it was actually funny because the full covered uh I was not yet working for museums it was mainly working for like travel uh one of my biggest clients at the time was through in a translation agency was a cruise operator uh and with covet all cruises were suspended for a very long time I think even longer than hotels and travel in general and that client never came back so so all of my travel clients that was those collaborations and that suddenly we covered but the funny thing is that all of a sudden uh my museum clients they were like oh you know what we're going to have new expositions once covered is over so you have like a bunch of new expositions oh you know what we had this brochure we drafted like 20 years ago we wanted to redo the brochure for the whole museum you can do this I was like what is happening exactly and organically one door closed and one opened I guess yeah yeah like that so you would suggest to like people to keep always some kind of door open not focus fully on a very small Niche and then you know it might always disappear I always tell people like of course Niche down but keep some back door open you know you can do some general things you can have two specializations exactly three nations is really is really nice because there's some like also with covid like um everything that's medical and financial suddenly was soaring um they also have like the crash with 2008 financial as well with soaring with other translations were um we're diminishing and everything so there's always like no matter what is happening there's always one or two or three topics that are doing really well in other hits so if you have two niches for example which is perfectly manageable I think uh like they're closely already lower data for example I do tourism cultures education education a lot of the museums I translate forward and on the one hand they have the exposition that has to be translated but they also have education packs for schools they have games for children and everything so that's also education yeah and I think for if you work for agencies they they keep sending you work if they like your work as a translator and they're like I know this is not your area of expertise but maybe would you like to try this or that and I got a lot of HR all of a sudden and it's like hey you want you want to try that do you think you can do that and yeah it's naturally exactly it happens organically and usually you know when it when this happens it's I don't know it's either like before the holidays or before Christmas or on a Friday when the PM gets stressed right and suddenly can you help me with this and sometimes I have to say no I I can't do this contract for you I mean that's insane but if it's not extremely specialized then you might open a new a new uh Avenue right yeah so we have to already close this this one so quickly but uh I always like to finish off these videos with a word of advice from uh our seasoned professionals so Fiona what would you tell the viewers or what would you tell to yourself the younger self that you wish you knew before don't underestimate the power of Word of Mouth I was thinking about all of where will these clients all my tourism clients and all the really cool projects I've done where they came from and most of them I can track back to either a recommendation or the client's been happy and they've referred me to someone else or a translation colleague has referred me onto someone who's contacted them so I think make sure everyone knows what you do tell everyone who'll listen shout about what you do um and build your network of colleagues um and you know be part of the translation community Fiona is also excellent in branding you should all check her branding I really like what she does so thank you and Sylvie your words of advice um can I can't say I'm actually just up there a lot people use LinkedIn a post on there and also connect with people not only other translators but also people in your field so in Translation in the travel industry and also try to attend conferences and network events to see your colleagues in real life and um because if they know who you are in person and they like you then they're also likely to offer you work if you if they have too much and they're like okay maybe I'm going on vacation maybe silvi can be my replacement or things like that so uh yeah just get out there and and don't be shy it always comes back to networking I I got the funny message yesterday from a subscriber and she said I love your videos but I hate it so much you always say how important networking is but I'm such an introvert why does this have to be the most important thing and I just told that we are all introverts that's that doesn't matter yeah we don't bite and Lisa to finish off the video I think I'm gonna give two pieces of advice uh the first one being as Sylvian fiancee Network you know it is actually the tourism field is very small as in everyone goes to the same events every country hosts a few tourism conferences a year and you notice everyone goes to those conferences all tourism providers go to those conference and so be there uh once you're in the field you know it is like everyone knows each other so as Jenna said Word of Mouth dance spreads very quickly uh and my second piece of advice is don't be afraid to um contact a more experienced translator and ask for feedback on your translations that helped me a lot when I started out tourism can get quite creative and when I just finished school I was translating like word for word kind of like that always afraid to to move around words and everything it was really nervous to do that was like oh what is it for client going to think it's not going to be if it's gonna be literal but then there's a translator who really showed me like no you can do this and maybe you can translate it like this and she she gave me a lot of feedback on my translation showed me how I can make things more creative how you can play around with words uh and that really helped me in terms of quality to really see like oh this is a good tourism translation oh yes I can do this or I didn't think about this or this is a good resource just reach out to more experienced translator ask for feedback as for help for resources for tips and that's really that helped me a lot that's great advice and it ties into what I always say of course I'm gonna link all you people's links down below so if anyone watching wants to reach out I'm sure you're more than willing to help uh thanks so much to all three of you this was fantastic and thanks to everyone at home for watching let me know in the comments which specialization I should do next I see you next Monday with the next video bye bye
2023-09-17 05:26
