The ATA Chronicle - September/October 2021 - 25

It's this level of service
that the clients who hire
specialists come to expect
and appreciate.
Respect: Specialists build
a reputation among their
clients and peers as reliable
experts in certain fields.
Your peers seek your
advice, ask questions about
your industry and your
professional practice, and
think of you immediately
when someone is looking
for a particular kind of
translator. This professional
respect, backed by the quality
of your work, can lead to
more of it.
Referrals: Referrals are
a specialist's best friend.
When you deliver highcaliber
work, people talk,
and many specialists report
meeting new clients thanks
to word of mouth, both from
their existing clients and
their colleagues.
What It Means
to Be a Specialist
Whether you come to the
industry with a specialization
or are working to build one,
you'll find it's a marathon,
not a sprint. Specialists build
their careers and client bases
over years, not months, and
their practices do not always
look like those of their
generalist peers.
You Only Need Enough
Work for You: A lot of
translators wonder, Do I need
more than one specialization?
Is my specialization too
narrow? Does anyone even
need translations about
underwater basket weaving?
There's no single answer
to these questions, but it's
www.ata-chronicle.online
In addition to
industry publications,
associations are an
amazing forum for
keeping up to date
on industry trends,
networking with
other specialists, and
passively marketing
your services.
worth keeping in mind that
you only need enough work
for you, and positioning
yourself as an expert in a
certain niche is never bad.
If you're the go-to person
in your field, chances are
you'll have plenty of work
without necessarily having to
specialize too broadly. That
said, if you're afraid your
field is too narrow, you can
broaden your expertise over
time in complementary fields
and add new specializations
over time based on your
clients' needs.
Specialists Refuse a Lot of
Work (and Refer a Different
Specialist Instead): When
you find a client who loves
and comes to trust what
you do, they may ask you to
translate content that you
have no expertise in. In fact,
it happens all the time. In
cases like these, specialists
loop in other specialists to
work on these projects with
them to be able to deliver the
same high-quality work their
client has come to expect.
This makes your network of
specialized colleagues all the
more valuable.
The Future Belongs
to Experts
We all see the increasing
adoption of NMT, which
often reads well but can
be full of subtle mistakes.
Specialists are perfectly
positioned to educate clients
when NMT may do more
harm than good and take on
the role of editors who spot
the glaring errors that only
experts can identify.
Clients are crying out
for subject matter experts,
not only to post-edit
machine translation, but for
human translation as well.
End clients see mistakes
NOTES
1
that highlight lack of
understanding straight away
and will red-flag work that
was clearly done by someone
lacking specialist knowledge.
Language services companies
take a hit to their quality
assurance key performance
indicators when their clients
complain, which means that
they also have an interest in
working with specialists.
We suggest that only
translators who translate like
machines will be replaced by
machines. Those of us who
add value are treasured by our
clients, and our clients are
willing to pay for the peace of
mind that provides.
Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, 11th Edition (Kindle
Locations 147580-147581). (Merriam-Webster, Inc. Kindle
Edition, 2009), https://bit.ly/Merriam-Webster-kindle.
2
Balemans, Percy. " Translation Is an Art: How to Get Your
Work in a Museum, " The ATA Chronicle (January/February
2021), 22, https://bit.ly/Balemans-museum.
3
4
Check out www.mooc.org.
Freelance translator survey 2020 (Inbox Translation),
https://bit.ly/Inbox-survey.
Karen McMillan Tkaczyk, CT first trained
as a chemist, then changed course after
having children and set up her business as a
French>English translator and scientific editor
in 2005. In 2021, she became director of Life
Sciences Solutions at Masterword. She is ATA Secretary (2017-
2021) and an ATA-certified French>English translator. She is
also a fellow of the Institute of Translation and Interpreting.
Originally from Scotland, she now works from her home in the
Denver, Colorado area. karen@mcmillantranslation.com
Ben Karl, CT is a Mandarin>English and
ATA-certified French>English translator and
copywriter based in Los Angeles who specializes
in corporate, financial, and marketing
communications for the U.S. and Canadian
markets. He is the incoming chair of ATA's Advocacy
Committee and serves on the Membership Committee. He also
chairs the Translatio Standing Committee of the International
Federation of Translators (FIT). He has a BA in translation,
an advanced certificate in Mandarin, and an MBA in
entrepreneurship. ben@bktranslation.com
American Translators Association 25
https://www.bit.ly/Merriam-Webster-kindle https://www.bit.ly/Balemans-museum http://www.mooc.org https://www.bit.ly/Inbox-survey http://www.ata-chronicle.online
The ATA Chronicle - September/October 2021

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