There is little doubt that our current job market is becoming increasingly competitive. With a landscape comprising a large number of professional profiles and an industry that is specializing by leaps and bounds, standing out from the crowd and keeping up with the technical advances that our respective sectors keep incorporating becomes more complicated. The dynamic nature of the functions we perform is the reason behind the need for translators and the agencies that employ them to commit to continuing human resources training, i.e., in the long term, various aspects of our professional activity will have changed and the methods we employ will certainly have changed as well. Then, will we be too late to the future’s welcome party? This is the rationale in many companies that choose to stay ahead of future events and work to expand the technical knowledge of their workforce. It is in this context that CPD, or Continuing Professional Development appears.
As this article explains, “continuing professional development is the ongoing process of development, maintenance and certification of professional skills. These skills can be formally acquired, by means of courses or training workshops, or informally, while at work or learning from colleagues. In a general sense, it involves a commitment by any person in a professional capacity to learning and improvement. In other words, it involves the identification on the part of the company or the employee of the need to learn a skill or expand their knowledge in any subject that can be useful when it comes to performing their roles, thus making it possible to access those sources that provide said knowledge and which, in turn, allow them to use it in their professional activity. In this manner, employees grow in their careers and their professional profile gets a boost, which entails several advantages for their work performance.
Obviously, in an industry as specialized and evolving as translation, keeping up to date with the up-and-coming breakthroughs and discoveries is an essential task. It is also highly advisable that language service providers professionals learn to handle a bunch of translation tools with proficiency, since client needs can vary greatly, as well as the means to satisfy them, which are in a spiraling evolutionary path. This begs the question: What does CPD look like in the translation sector?
Translation associations, such as the British Institute of Translation & Interpreting, recommend CPD as a very useful resource that any translator should implement annually to remain in a constant learning curve that keeps them up to date while combining it with their professional activity. Therefore, an increasing number of companies offering training to their staff members as well as individuals seeking such training on their own. Now, which are the subjects for which we can get trained in the translation sector?
There are no hard rules on this, as it depends on the profile, employment status and business outlook. Has our workload been lighter than usual so that we have some time to spare? Did we detect a market niche that we are keen to exploit? Do we wish to incorporate a translation tool in the production dynamics? First and foremost, we need to set our goals and devise a strategy to achieve them. Other times, we only need to work on CPD to be able to keep doing a job properly or to keep working for a specific client. In other words, professionals can focus on acquiring knowledge in new areas of expertise or on deepening their existing areas of expertise (e.g., learning to translate a type of clinical document more thoroughly to emulate the original wording, learning marketing skills for advertising translations, among other options); learning how to use new CAT tools (many clients require the use of a particular tool) or management tools to keep track of the production workflow; consolidating the knowledge already acquired in a subject area; going deeper into the nuances of the target language into which we translate (e.g., to avoid mirroring structures that do not belong to the syntactic structure of our target language), or simply rejoicing in the pleasure of learning about a subject that is of interest to us in order to feel fulfilled and relaxed (e.g. creative writing, initiation or specialization in a type of translation that is new to the professional, etc.).
Where can we find this information? Most people think of CPD as any activity that contributes to keeping and improving language and translation skills, managing a business and giving back to the profession (e.g., via mentorship). Examples of this are reading books and newspapers, watching movies or TV series and listening to podcasts in the source language of the linguistic pair (sometimes, this is called self-directed CPD). Nevertheless, a more professional approach to CPD includes translation or business-related courses, workshops, web seminars and conferences (many experts in the field advocate at least one annual conference to keep up to date with what is happening in the profession and create new partnerships). Likewise, there is also the possibility of studying to obtain a more sophisticated Master’s Degree.
All the above serves to give an edge both to the workforce and to the companies. This is because translators that learn new skills tend to feel accomplished and able to incorporate them into their daily professional activities. Learning about new subjects can represent an incentive for the employee and help in releasing the tensions that pile up during the performance of activities linked to language service provision. In fact, professionals who are healthier at the psychological level are more easy-going and will therefore, achieve better results, which will reflect in a higher quality performance for the company.
Image reference: https://www.droit-travail-france.fr/chiffres-de-la-discrimination-sur-le-lieu-de-travail—un-mal-toujours-present-_ad1599.html
