Session | IJET-31 (June 24-25, 2023)

When I first started freelance translation, it felt like I was facing a binary choice: establish yourself as a stand-out specialist in one field to earn more money, or be a lower profile generalist for more variety but less income. Being a contrarian by nature, I decided to try for both. Guided by the idea that “the best part of ‘freelancing’ is the ‘free’ part,” I avoided more established corporate specializations and turned a personal interest in sake into a niche that has helped me create a highly visible public profile. Now, not only is it a valuable segment of my career in its own right, but also helps bring attention to my more general translation work. In this talk, I will go over how I managed that and try to extract lessons for others who may be weighing the specialization choice or wondering how to stand out more as a generalist.