Tips for Indonesian Translators – How to Get More Indonesian Translation Jobs?
If you are a new Indonesian translator, one of the biggest issues you are facing now must be how to find new clients. Even if you are an experienced Indonesian translation provider, the question of how to get more clients is always a big concern.
Finding clients is obviously no easy task and to satisfy them is even harder. Understanding this, GTE Localize has asked some of our most experienced Indonesian translators for some great tips and advice to help you find more Indonesian translation jobs and better serve your clients. Let’s find out about these tips in our today’s post.
#1. Customize Your Indonesian Translation Portfolio
An Indonesian translation portfolio contains a collection of your translation experiences, education, qualifications, and related skills. In another word, it provides your clients with an overview of who you are, which translation services you provide, what language pairs you are able to handle, and which clients you have served up until now.
Having a strong Indonesian translation portfolio opens the door to many job opportunities. Thus, you should put a lot of effort into building a good one before starting seeking Indonesian translation projects to work on. Here are some tips for you when making a translation portfolio:
Don’t use the same portfolio for all jobs
If you are applying for a Korean to Indonesian marketing translation project, mentioning a lot about how you have experience in proofreading technical content from French to Indonesian will not add much value to your portfolio. Your clients only care if you have experience handling the language pairs and types of content they need.
Therefore, make sure you customize your portfolio for each project to make your relevant experience and skills stand out.
Shorten your portfolio
You have only a few seconds to catch your clients attention with your portfolio. They quickly scan your portfolio and if you have what they are looking for in their Indonesian translation projects, they will read your resume more carefully. Otherwise, they will move on to other portfolios. For this reason, make sure your portfolio is not too lengthy. Try to keep everything short, clear, and concentrated. Short sentences, strong words, and highlights are highly recommended. \
Don’t violate NDAs
#2. Don’t Be Afraid to Ask for Help
Working as an Indonesian translator, you must have experienced the situation when you cannot find a good equivalence for a term in Indonesian even though you understand perfectly what it means. That’s when translation communities come in handy. There are thousands of Indonesian translators out there that can provide you with some great tips and insights to improve your Indonesian translation.
When you have any difficulty, you can ask for help on Facebook and LinkedIn Indonesian translator groups or forums. Some popular names are Things Translators Never Say, ProZ, TranslatorsCafé, etc. All you have to do is to post questions and wait for your fellow Indonesian translators to answer. Sometimes, sharing a funny translation story or a ridiculously unreasonable request you have received from your clients is a great way to reduce stress and expand your network.
#3. Listen To Your Clients’ Feedback with an Open-Minded
Sometimes, you produce a great Indonesian translation that you take a lot of pride in. Then your clients want to make some changes that you believe will destroy the perfection of your translation. In such a situation, don’t feel offended or get angry. You should ask your clients why they want to make such changes.
Sometimes, regarding the linguistic aspect, your translation is perfect. However, when considering the business side, it’s not the optimized option and changes are needed. That’s why you should open your mind and listen to your client’s feedback and reasons. They will help you create a better Indonesian translation next time.
#4. Don’t Stop Learning
Every day, a new Indonesian word or a new meaning for an existing Indonesian word is coined. What’s more, the translation and localization industry also evolves on a daily basis. New trends in the domain in which you specialize emerge regularly. If you do not constantly learn and update your knowledge and skills, you will fall behind.
You can improve your knowledge and update new trends by reading books, keeping up with current events, attending seminars, webinars, conferences, and workshops, or enrolling in courses.
#5. Maintain Good Customer Relationships
Aside from impressing your clients with excellent Indonesian translations by using accurate vocabulary, sentence structure, and so on, you can bring them some extra value to strengthen your relationships with them during and after the project. Simple actions such as sending holiday cards and greetings to your clients improve their perception of you. Long-term cooperation requires you to respect your clients and maintain a friendly relationship with them.
Furthermore, many Indonesian translation jobs you receive may come from word-of-mouth. Your satisfied customers recommend you to new potential clients. Taking care of your clients even after the Indonesian translation project is completed is therefore highly recommended.
Wrap Up
For Indonesian language and culture enthusiasts, working as an Indonesian translator is a highly rewarding job. However, as with any other job, there are numerous challenges that you will face while working in the translation and localization industry. We hope the tips we provided above will be beneficial to you in obtaining more Indonesian translation jobs and satisfying your clients.
Join GTE Localize’s Indonesian linguist team if you want to work with a professional and experienced team of Indonesian translators worlwide. We provide high-quality, budget-cost Indonesian translation services for a wide range of industries to clients all over the world.
