Translator? No sir, nowadays it is called “a Deadline warrior”

“Time was made for slaves,”

John B. Buckstone—Billy Taylor. Act I. Sc. 2.

Fighting for a reasonable deadline is a tedious procedure you “have to” go through in nearly every time-consuming translation or copywriting job.

Reason is because Project managers, or call them client serving people are always trying to keep buffer time, their safety net, to deliver on time; to look good in front of their demanding clients and avoid stinkers to their bosses along the way; But covering your ass as a luxurious commodity in this world, bought on whose expense? The people who actually do the job!

The original content, THEY took their own sweet time, months to compile, edit and approve, and when it comes to translation phase, it is needed yesterday! And the phone call is always concluded with: “We are behind schedule, I am counting on you, Please bail me out!”.

You have no choice, you have a sense of responsibility and a long history with the client, and you accept and end up performing! A live sketch depicting The White Rabbit in “Alice in wonderland”: "I'm late! I'm late! For a very important date! No time to say hello, goodbye! I'm late! I'm late! I'm late!"… While watching the PC’s clock as hell breaking loose!

In this case, the cure to that damage does not lie in demanding extra urgency fees! It won’t help you in that situation – you SHOULD demand it though! – for you end up hassled like anything and start hating your profession that puts you every now and then in that tremendous nerve racking pressure to deliver with no time at hand!

After what seemed like decades, You deliver in time, and you are in bad shape, and before you even recover, mentally and physically, you are bombarded with edits, corrections and modifications and sometimes hideous comments from the original client conveyed by the servicing person - or call him the “courier” in this case - doubting the style or how professional that translation is! After all that!

It is a learning point here buddy, in this case the extra bucks that you charged won’t cure the pain, and here you have a two-pronged fork at hand, either to create an internal firewall and don’t let this get to you, and consider all this as inevitable hazard of trade and think about the money gained; or, if you can’t cope, use this as a learning lesson, sacrifice the future money that might come from a job as such! (that comes with very little time to deliver) for which you have to fight against passing time, fatigue and sleep; playing the “deadline warrior” only with a cup of coffee at hand.

M. N

Freelance translator/ Copywriter

To comment: click here