Of love of learning …or how CPD might change your professional life

By Elvira Dărăban

I am easily bored and, as such, I need to learn something new each day, or else I feel like life passes me by. You can call me a curious cat, or a natural learner, or whatever funny name you can find for people like me. This natural curiosity, however, is the reason I loooooove translations. They are never boring unless they are in a field I have no interest in, and going down med/pharma rabbit holes is my favourite kind of clickrastination.

So, learning all the bits and bobs of my CAT tools I can possibly learn to make my professional life easier was one of the reasons I first started going to industry events, despite being painfully introverted. Then came the diners and drinks and friendships (one of which led to me becoming part of the TranslateCluj team).

But, having told you enough about my introverted self, let me introduce you to my list of reasons why CPD is good for you in many, many ways.

You get to meet translation titans*, people worth listening to at least once in your life, and to realise that they don’t stand on pedestals, but are rather friendly, caring, and passionate about their work and yours.

You learn about translation and translation-applicable technologies from tech wizards such as Marek Pawelec and Jerzy Czopic (and, as of late, our very own tech wiz Ciprian Iovu). I had no idea what Regex was before I met Marek, and, while I didn’t get much better at using it, I at least understood what an amazing tool it is when needed.

You find out the latest technology trends and their limitations from the mouths of experts, such as TAUS, and decide you shouldn’t worry too much about NMT (much ado about it not long ago, and already out of fashion) or AI (overhyped and very far from nearly perfect).

You learn about self-marketing (much needed for introverts like me), pricing schemes, tricks some LSPs use to reduce word counts, accounting, and legal requirements. And, most importantly, you understand that your translation business IS business and should be approached as such.

I can imagine you replying with “Yes, but that costs a lot of money”. Indeed, sometimes. However, online CPD events are affordable and take very little time, as opposed to conferences, and some of them are free or made available for free.

One or more of your big LSP clients might provide free onboarding training for their preferred CAT tools, and some CAT tool providers also do it for their tools, usually if you bought it, and also invite interesting speakers to their podcasts.

* This is my personal opinion, and, obviously, should be taken with a grain of salt: translation titans and translation influencers are not the same. The former are, usually, working translators with a passion for mentoring and helping fellow translators to improve their professional skills, work/life balance and their physical and financial health, while the latter are, quite often, trying to push an agenda, a book that might not tell you anything you didn’t know, or their non-translation endeavours.

Here is a very non-exhaustive list of affordable/free CPD resources, besides the TranslateCluj online events we organise for our Romanian colleagues: