“la parole exportée”

I found the video below on Dawud Miracle’s blog (go there to read the entire post) and it resonates so much with me that I decided to refer you to it too.

Admittedly, Christine Kane is a musician and an artist. Yet I believe that the points she makes also apply in any profession where the blogger is performing, or delivering a service for something in which they are a vital component, even though they might have to stay out of the limelight.

Why does this interview resonate with me then?

Because a majority of people around me are a little confused, even suspicious:

“Tsss… Why do you blog?” “Is it really going to bring you new business?” “Shouldn’t you be concentrating on more traditional ways of approaching clients?” “Aren’t you wasting your time?” (understand: “stay where you are, don’t do anything that wasn’t done before”)

“Aren’t you revealing too much of yourself?” (understand: “keep quiet”)

“Who are those people who read your blog, anyway (*frown*)” (understand: “serious people, potential clients, don’t read blogs”)

My answers are:

“The world is changing around us, it’s as simple as that. We might as well acknowledge it, instead of holding on to old ways (old ways are good too, but not the only ones anymore.)”

“I carefully select what I want to reveal. This is not very different to what you have to do in real life, and I am aware of the necessary restrictions on disclosure.”

“All kinds of people are following this blog, including spammers… My blogging experience, in the widest sense of the word (I include here all the social networking and reading on marketing, etc. ), has allowed me to meet more diverse people than I had ever been able to before.”

Christine Kane - Broadcast your self LIVE

Do you come across similar roadblocks? How do you deal with them? Why do you blog?

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A fellow conference interpreter sent me a link some time ago, asking my advice about a website. She had clicked on one of those Google links offering extremely cheap telephone interpreting from the depths of the Amazonian jungle, or somewhere in South America.

At first sight, I felt that the author made an immoderate use of exclamation marks, something I am not particularly fond of. I know that it’s accepted practice among US marketers, but this one was overdoing it… with an exclamation mark concluding practically every sentence. Furthermore -talk about not liking static sites- this one had small pictures literally jumping all over each page, all the time, and that made my head spin after a couple of seconds. You know the type.

This person was advocating cheap interpreting rates. Why not? Everyone is entitled to setting what they consider a fair price for their work, based on the value they see in it, and their clients’ budget.

But the most inelegant part of it was that this ‘generous’ soul was piling abuse close to slander on regular conference interpreters whom he/she accused in no uncertain terms of being crooks and ripping clients off under the pretence of being professional and loaded with diplomas.

I e-mailed my colleague, telling her not to worry… Of course, such people may get some work, from time to time. But the lower the rates, the longer you have to work to achieve a reasonable standard of living. In this particular case, in order to charge such ridiculously low rates, you had to live on a shoestring, even in a developing country. To be honest, I thought this site was a little ‘too much’. I checked back recently and Google doesn’t know it any more… Mmmm. I’m not surprised.

But why pick on interpreters? Personal revenge? Just trying to make a handful of dollars on a ‘niche’ market? Who knows…

A few years ago, when my younger daughter was very much into web design, she offered to set up a website for me. We discussed it sporadically, but my list of requirements (it had to be in English and in French, to start with) grew so long that it would have taken years to complete, so we ended up doing… nothing.

I started this blog in the meantime, and to tell the truth, I don’t think that I needed a website at all. I am not overly interested in the institutional side of translation websites, there is something too impersonal and static for me there.

Yet when I started this blog I was well aware of the shortcomings in terms of official information, which is why I was glad to discover this Problogger’s post a couple of weeks ago, because it seems to match exactly what I had in mind. Darren Rowse lists 20 different types of pages to use in a blog, and I’m thankful to him for publishing it, even though not all types will find their way here. The Web is like one big library and if you browse long enough, you end up finding exactly what you were looking for.

So I’ve started experimenting with a page about my areas of specialization, and I will probably continue to customize the blog along those lines.

If you’ve been through this kind of inner debate, what kind of pages would you consider essential to a translator’s blog? Any ideas?

Thanks to Ann Rusnak, The Time Diva, a new kind of event was premiered on Twitter last night, Twitterville Business After Hours (hence the @tbah entries in my twitter feed below). Ann couldn’t have chosen a better name for it, it was really ‘after hours’ for me, as the event started at midnight. I dropped off at 1am, but I really wanted to take part in this new type of online event. The guests were from Australia, the USA and France, if I’m correct. What better way of demonstrating the power of the internet?

As if the time slot wasn’t hard enough for me, my computer decided to play up just as things were taking off, but after that small glitch, it was all business chat and passing Twips and Twitteritas. (I regularly forgot to pass them on, not that I was ‘consuming’ them either. :)) TBAH is, provided it’s used properly, a good way to promote your business and your services, in a relaxed way. Instead of simply pushing your tweets, inner thoughts and general actions into the ether, you are publicly talking to other people about your business. A more natural way of making yourself visible.

Ann is planning another such event next month. I have a few ideas about offering a more useful contribution, translation-wise, but I’ll have to discuss this with her first.

Whether or not you already have a Twitter account, would you like to participate in a future event?