First, it’s good to have a presence on major professional websites or social media. When hiring someone, it is common for managers or recruiters to look at the potential candidate online. It’s a way to get a preliminary look at a candidate and really get to know them better before deciding on whether or not to proceed with the hiring process.

Next, it is good to keep yourself familiar with a variety of different skills. If you have many different skills and are adept at all of them, then you can market yourself as someone who can work in a lot of different fields. However, it’s important if you could commit everything to one field and then promote yourself that way, as someone who is highly experienced in the specific field. Sometimes, recruiters look for people who have the most experience in the field, so if you show that you have more experience than other people in the field, you will be more attractive as a prospective translator or interpreter.

Also, it is important to maintain good connections with the people you work with. Make sure to be as courteous as possible and project yourself as a professional translator or interpreter. Also be sure to make friends in the industry. If you have a network of colleagues, then you can help each other find work. There are a lot of times when translators or interpreters might be too busy with an assignment they are currently working on to take any new client requests. In this situation, they try to refer a colleague, and you might be able to be that colleague that they refer. If that happens, you will establish a connection with a new client, and maybe be able to connect with even more clients afterwards.

Growing your presence as an interpreter or translator is not something that you can just do overnight, it takes time and effort. But if you are able to grow your presence, then it will benefit you in ways that you might not expect. You will reach many new clients, and build your own network of clients that know who you are and would love to work with you on future assignments.

Interestingly, this specific order might not affect translators all that much. Most translators already complete most of their work remotely. Translation does not need to be done in person, so many translators live in their home country, or in a country whose language they translate into.

Interpreters are significantly and directly impacted by the COVID-19 virus and stay-at-home orders. While there are remote interpretation services (such as phone and video interpretation), a majority of interpreters still complete most of their work in person. This is no longer possible for most interpretation jobs. In order to support interpreters, LSPs and the interpreters themselves should work with clients to set up remote services, including video and phone interpretation. There are many online platforms available, which our interpreters are familiar with. They are ready to offer services using these platforms, so that they can still provide necessary interpretations in a safe way.

Of course, this stay-at-home order doesn’t just affect linguists. It affects everyone who works in the companies that provide language services: project managers, vendor managers, localization engineers, sales teams, etc. At Monterey Language Services, we have many years of experience in working from home. While some of our operations do take place in our physical Monterey office, we also have several employees who already work remotely full time.

Working from home presents a major lifestyle change for many people. It does require people to learn how to balance life and work and how to maintain their energy and strive to reach their goals at work. In our experience, when employees are working remotely, it is not important to track employees’ actions and tasks every minute of the day; micromanaging is not an effective strategy. Rather, it is about everyone having a common goal and working toward that common goal comfortably yet effectively. It’s about managing tasks rather than managing people.

Working effectively from home requires various technological resources. We optimize our technology to help us successfully work from home; we use our virtual private network (VPN) to share and access files, we keep open channels of communication via apps on our work phones, and more. We are working hard to remain available to our clients who need our services, and to provide as much support as we can to the translators and interpreters that we work with.

During times like these, staying connected is more important than ever. We need to support language professionals and continue providing translation and interpretation services, so that people can stay informed and connected throughout the world, even if this connection is remote!