GTS Blog

Hello everyone. I have been neglecting my blog and this is my first (and last) entry of this week. I have been busy, of course, but that is not a good enough excuse for an active blogger. It’s not a case of writer’s block either. I am writing every day. It’s just brain drain. Coming up with things to say is not always easy. Sometimes it flows and sometimes-like this week-it just doesn’t.

The first thing I wanted to talk about is free products on the Internet. It seems that the biggest enemy of a free product is its own popularity. If a free product is not widely used, it usually remains free. But if the demand for a free product is very high, then the owner of the product usually wants to cash in on it. We witnessed this a while back with Google Translate, when Google decided to start charging for use of its Translate API. Microsoft followed suit in quick fashion and also announced a paid option for its translation API. Recently, Google did the same with its Maps API and announced that heavy users would need to start paying. The moral of this is simple: if a product is good and is offered for free, don’t use it! Because eventually they’ll start charging you for it.

On a completely different topic: I was flattered to read a blog post by Miguel Llorens, a blogger whose work I respect, entitled Ortsbo and the Sleaze Factor. This post is based on a series of blog posts I wrote this year. Miguel had some nice things to say about me and my blog. Thanks Miguel!

In his blog post, Miguel also criticized some of my views of the translation industry.

Now, I disagree with Mr. Grunwald about most things. His ideas about translation as a commodity are depressing and I wouldn’t work for him unless something with a bit more dignity—such as “circus freak”—weren’t a viable career option (for whatever reason).

OK, so not everyone agrees with me. But I still maintain that translation is a commodity. If there are 10,000 professional English to Spanish translators in the world that are native Spanish speakers, that have a CAT tool, and are subject-matter experts, then one translator is easily replaceable with another. The price for this service is set and is within a specific, well-defined range. And that makes it a commodity. Commodities, like pork bellies, gold and corn are traded in the same manner. And just like in translation, prices go up or down based on availability and demand.

Which leads me to the subject of creativity. Miguel Llorens is clearly a creative person. Just read his blog to see what I mean. But the truth is, translation is not a very creative field by its very definition. The job of a translator is to convey ideas written in one language to another language. The ideas themselves cannot be changed. The translator has a clear charter. And while it takes creativity to choose the appropriate words and piece them together; while you need to be creative to make a translation sound well written in the target language; it is still a conveyance of thoughts from one language to another. Miguel is channeling a lot of creativity into his blog, but probably less so in his actual work as a financial translator. True that some forms of translation, like translating poems or children’s stories, take a good measure of creativity. But the majority of the work translators are assigned to does not take that much creativity. Which strengthens my argument that translation is a commodity.

By stating these opinions, I don’t mean to belittle the role of a translator. I have found most translators to be very intelligent and interesting people. And clearly, good translators are in high demand. But knowing your place in the world never hurt anyone.

What’s the biggest excuse for not starting a blog? And what’s the answer you most often hear when you ask a blogger why they don’t post more often? In my experience the answer invariably leads to: “I don’t have time to write blog posts,” or “I have nothing to blog about.” Both of these are lame excuses. Here are some tips which will get your creative juices flowing and kick-start your blog with excellent new content.

The title is the most important component of a blog post. Write a catchy title and people will want to click and read more. Write a boring title and people will skip you every time. It’s all about how you package your content.

I am not going to provide a mini-workshop on title writing (I could probably use one myself). But just ask yourself a simple question before you write your next blog post: what do your readers want to read? What topics interest them? If the title of the post you are working on sounds boring, then either (a) scrap the post or (b) think of another way to package your information. Try not to publish blog posts with uninteresting titles. Look at some of the well-known newspapers like the New York Times or the Washington Post. See how they phrase the titles and try to emulate the tricks that they use. These guys are pros at writing catchy titles.

Start to develop your blog posts from the title down. Even if you don’t have the content yet, if you can come up with an interesting title, write it down first and then start pouring content into it. The title is the blueprint of your blog post and will determine its content.

Here is an idea. Do some brainstorming and come up with 3 or 4 interesting blog post titles you yourself would be interested in reading. Create a draft for each title in your blogging platform. In the next few days, add content to those blog posts until you feel they are ready to be published. By having your next few posts in your arsenal, you will be able to publish on a daily basis. If you do this once a week, you will never run out of new content and your blog will be flowing with great new content all the time! New readers will come and traffic to your blog will flourish.

My next post in this series will be: 10 ideas for your next blog post