No source attached: When translators decide to become (copy?)writers "{Panel discussion}"

Bryan Montpetit 00:00
All right. So thank you everyone for sticking around with us. I really appreciate it. We have another panel coming up. No source attached. When translators decide to become copywriters, it's going to be led by our very own Vova. Basically, Vova is the editor in chief here at SmartCAT are responsible for producing all the wonderful content that you see from our emails to our website to you know, a whole bunch of different different platforms. You'll see on your screen, we just popped up a poll, if you can, please provide your input. With respect to the the session you just saw, that would be greatly appreciated. We're always looking for that feedback to be able to gauge the the audience, I guess, interest level in terms of what we what we have. And it helps us create better content, of course, for the next one. Don't forget, we're probably running the surveys as well, you know, throughout the chats, so please monitor the chance for any links to the polls. And with that, I'm sure we have Vova that's already connected.

Vova Zakharov 01:03
Yeah. Hey, Brian. How you doing? Nice trip has been grounds. Almost mesmerizing. Like for food for the occasion. Like it's all the octopus.

Bryan Montpetit 01:18
I'm glad to see you dressed up today.

Vova Zakharov 01:19
It's good. Yeah. I spent a long time seeking what? Where?

Bryan Montpetit 01:25
Does the so I mean, as we're getting the other panelists together, is there anything you want to say about your about your session? Anything that you want to point out?

Vova Zakharov 01:35
Sure. So this will be a fireside chat, as we call it. For translators, we didn't have a lot of panels or presentations today for translators. As such, I think this one will be interesting, because I think for anyone who works with text for translators, you from some time you start to point out some flows in the source text and you start thinking like, well, maybe I can do this myself. And so for all the translators out there who have such thoughts who have this presentation, and yeah, I want to present our beautiful panelists or chatters today. And so we have today, Natalie laka Hi Natalie. You're muted, by the way you can unmute if you want to So Natalie isn't in this pyramid? Yep, we can hear very well. So Natalie using an English to Greek marketing translator and she is also the author of a content writing for translators course and she is also a top 50 industry influencer According to McKinsey, in case you didn't know. So then we have a loyal follower who is the content strategist at alconox Translation Agency. She started out as a translator and transition to more of editing and content strategy role. And finally we have to gauge Hi Lauria loi una you're also muted so some of you who are like veteran source market community can't remember can remember una from our many webinars that we had in the past you know, he's also running translators owned course for newbie translators, that she where she teaches them how to what to do in this industry, right. And she's also a content writer and translator if in case you didn't guess that

Bryan Montpetit 03:33
fantastic well, I'll leave you to run your panel.

Vova Zakharov 03:38
Left one time ago, why are you still here? I

Bryan Montpetit 03:41
am sorry. I was just hanging around here was awkward. I don't know. Thanks. I'll talk to you in a bit.

Vova Zakharov 03:46
Okay. So it's a funny thing when we were starting this starting to think about this panel. I was thinking I will make a panel how to become copywriters for translators, right. And I contacted one of the first people I can think it was Natalie because I thought like well she has a course for copywriters and when I contacted her his she said, Well, I don't have a course for translators to become copywriters. I have, of course for translators to become concentrators. And actually at that moment, I felt pretty stupid. Like it was not the first time in my life, I felt stupid. But as someone who has been doing both for some time, I have never ever thought that it's actually that much of a difference. And the first question I perhaps want to ask Natalie is what is the difference between content writing and copywriting? Why do you teach one and not the other end? What is the what is it exactly that you teach?

Natalie Lekka 04:45
Well, first of all, I don't blame anyone for using these two terms interchangeably, and they are very similar in in the way copywriting also falls under the umbrella of copywriting. However, there are some basic differences. I simply put, copywriting is writing advertising text. So that would be sales pages, landing pages, email sequences. And content writing has more of an educational role. And so basically accompany us uses both. And the purpose is obviously to sell services and products, but they do it in a different way. With copywriting a copywriter is trying to tap into a series of emotions, to get the prospective buyer to take an action, which is to buy ideally, with collagen writing, what we're trying to do is educate the the buyer, the prospective buyer about the services and products of a company. And that could be by writing, blog posts, ebooks, white papers, and there are a lot of types of content. Of course, a video is a type of content, for example, infographics, different types. So obviously, it was somebody who's selling the course and content writing, it was very important for me to make clear what this course is about and what it is not about. And I come from a magazine background. So obviously, which is more journalistic. So obviously, I've transitioned into content writing, and this is what I teach and what I have more experience in.

Vova Zakharov 06:27
Yeah. And what is it the exact content of this course? Well, not exactly, of course, it's a big question. But what are the main tenants main points that you?

Natalie Lekka 06:37
Well, I started with the idea that translation is a type of content. So basically, if we translate the text, if we have a text in front of us, that's because somebody was hired to write it. So if you're knowledgeable, if you're an expert in your niche, that means you can both write and translate for that niche. What I tell translators who want to branch out to copywriting is that no matter what your interests are, no matter what your passion, your educational background, or the experience that you've gained from a previous job, there are companies which sell services and products in that space, and they need good content to promote them. And so basically, as a translator, I also feel that as translators, we have a lot of, we share a lot of skills with writers. And one of the most important skill is research. Because as translators, we're quite big on researching a project, which is the same thing that writers do. Now, good content, in the world of marketing equals traffic, and traffic equals money for these companies. So if you have an expertise in a certain niche, your expertise is worth a lot of money to these companies. And so thinking about that, and thinking that we have quite a few, we share quite a few skills with writers, I was trying to find a course that helps translators branch out to writing but I couldn't find that anywhere. So I decided to take my expertise, basically my experience of doing that for nine years. And this is how the content body ready for translations was born, basically, to do exactly that. It's a step by step course that helps translators take the expertise they already have, and apply it to writing.

Vova Zakharov 08:33
Sounds like a good idea. Lloyd, you started out as a translator, but you're now like a full time content writer and editor strategy. So how did that work out? And why and why did you end up like this.

Loie Favre 08:47
So kind of goes along the lines of what Natalie is saying, you work, I worked in a certain area for a long time as a translator. And the more you work in an area, the more information you come across, the more knowledge you acquire. And, you know, you have these problems and solutions that you you know, all this biomass a bunch of knowledge that, that it from your experience that you can actually use for your writing. So for me, I learned a lot about the topic, I was taught, right working for a tech company tech magazine, for a Berlin startup. And I soon read, I started writing my own content pieces. I then became the editor editor in chief as well, because I found that, you know, it wasn't enough for me to take an idea from somebody else. I wanted to start with my own ideas. But the cool thing about translation is that you can also localize content so you can take a content piece from one writer and you can really transform it adapt it for a new target audience. So as Natalie said, you know, to be a translator, you should also be somewhat of a somewhat of a writer, you know, you need to also think about what you're writing about. And you know, the more you write the more you know about it. So that was what happened to me. I started as a translator in house translator, I became an editor. And after leaving that company, that tech magazine, I started going freelance. And I've been writing for many companies, and doing content marketing on that, in that in that way. And now I've joined Alchemist, their language service provider, and I'm doing content strategy and writing for them as well. So I'm taking basically my experience as a translator, I worked as a project management manager and translations, really taking all the knowledge knowledge that I've amassed and writing really great content or writing content about those topics that can help other people learn about localization. So that's, that's it for now.

Vova Zakharov 10:38
Yeah, that's pretty interesting that your, the content you write is in the same area like in translation, but we are we will come to this a bit later when we talk about specializations. Now, you are a concentrator as well, right? You do write content, but I know that you have some reservations about it. So maybe you can voice them.

Una Dimitrijevic 11:01
Yes. My audio is fine, right? You can hear me well. Yep, yep. Yeah. So yeah, hi, everybody. Some of you might know me, I did some work with Volvo before in SmartCAT, to help as well as set up translators for their business. So my work is really 90% translating, I do a bit of also proofreading editing. Occasionally, I interpret. And I have worked in a digital work as a content writer for one travel company. Now, this is a travel company that I used to work for, as a tour guide some years ago. So from what I can tell everyone who contributes to their blog was in some way involved in this company knows them well, I'm very familiar with their values to the dedication to what they do. So I'm very comfortable contributing to their blog with articles about culture and travel for a teacher and student audience. And so I would say that contract writing is a language service that I can potentially offer, I think it's good to expand your offerings as a translator. But my reservations are, for example, that I wouldn't feel comfortable projecting myself as a content writer for just any company. So I just want to give you a hypothetical example. I'm really into yoga, I like health foods, you know, I'm interested in plant based diets, and I could have a blog about that. And wellness company could come to me who's selling maybe dietary supplements, and they would want me to write content for their blog. And I would not feel comfortable offering my services to companies whose products I couldn't vouch for. So I'm not writing for myself, I'm not writing for someone I know for but just offering my services to anyone, it makes me feel uncomfortable. My reservations pertains to, I think the value that we are creating if we decide to be content writers, and I think there's a term that's already been used to do content creation, it's something that makes me think of a digital equivalent of mass production. When I hear content creation, I hear making stuff content, it's as if it's nature's, if whether we're making, you know, research articles, or just tweets, or whether we're making little videos or images, as if the nature and the quality were somehow less important than simply the need to constantly create to put things out. And on the other side, of course, it's consuming, consuming and consuming and consuming content. And what is it for? What is the value of this content? Is it just for clickbait? Is it just for search engine optimization, is it just to draw people's attention away with snappy headings, and the way I feel about this sort of trend of content creation, is that we live in a time when too many people as a result of this are claiming expertise in areas where they shouldn't be where we like regulation about what's being posted as truth on the internet. And people seek basically, to have their own opinions and ideas validated by somebody else's article, somebody else's opinions. So when I see you know, yet more listicles yet more tweets, yet more things, to me, the polluting my feeds as if there were another bottle cap thrown into this ocean of the Internet where I think there's a lack of reliable and quality content. And so my position is that while I think content writing is a natural counterpart to translation, and I think we are, you know, language linguist or language providers, we can provide the service. I think that we should also step back and question not just, you know, what we seek for in terms of the monetary value of a page of text, but what we seek to create in terms of value that we put out there in through our language through our words in a broader sense. That's sort of where I stand on that.

Vova Zakharov 14:52
Yeah, that's a pretty strong standing. I think, Natalie, what do you think about about this?

Natalie Lekka 14:58
Do you agree with what Hakuna says I think one of the benefits of being a freelancer and being your own boss is that you can choose your own projects. And obviously, I wouldn't feel good if I don't feel comfortable working on a certain project that wouldn't do it. And the same thing goes for translation. We said that translation is a type of content. So if you don't feel, you know, comfortable seeing a certain type of content online, I presume you wouldn't feel comfortable working on the translation either. In that case, you just, you know, you just pass you just, it doesn't align with your brand with who you are. And you just move on to another project that you feel passionate about?

Vova Zakharov 15:40
Well, yeah, I can tell you that you know, what you think? No, I

Una Dimitrijevic 15:45
think it's true. I think that you need to stand, you know, firmly, I think, yeah, if you want to call it your brand, in terms of you who you are as a translator, as a content creator, and the project you're accepting, relating to your brand, but I think that you need to do you need to do your research. And I think that promoting simply, content creation is something that is valuable. I don't think that it's necessarily, it's, I don't think it's necessarily for everyone. And I think it's something that people should should consider, that's what I would say is consider the value that you're creating, and consider whether that's the way you want to be writing, whether as someone with the skills and linguistic skills that you have the capacities that you have, that is the best direction that you want to take. And also, I mean, what is content writing? You know, there's, as you say, lots of different ways to approach content writing, and do you want to be someone who researches in depth articles for a National Geographic? Or do you want to be someone who's tweeting for a pharmaceutical company, you have to be clear about about where you stand. However,

Natalie Lekka 16:49
the content sorry, as cotton brings value, though, in in pure marketing terms, good content brings traffic and more traffic to a company. Obviously, it goes straight to the bottom line, this affects the bottom line, basically.

Loie Favre 17:08
So sorry, go ahead. And

Natalie Lekka 17:12
traffic equals equals so you know, money money to the company. Yeah.

Loie Favre 17:17
Yeah, and I just want to add that, you know, you can really see which content is good, much content is bad there are out there on the internet. And I think that people who write really good content, authentic content, you know, without any kind of fake news, that sort of thing, they really get rewarded for it, you know, they get more followers, they get more views, etc. Sin, you know, sort of like cheap click Beatty type content, it can maybe serve a purpose for a short period of time. But then people will, sooner or later look, see through that, and not ever not come back. So you're actually doing yourself a disservice of writing bad content, because you don't have returning visitors, you don't have returning clients. So if you write authentic, well researched, high quality content, that's when you're actually going making doing a service for yourself for the company and for the readers that you're writing for. So something to take in mind.

Vova Zakharov 18:09
It's sort of like market economy, as applied to content. So the good stuff stays, the bad stuff goes it of course, I think it's open to argument whether it really happens like this. Yeah, let's keep it hanging. Because obviously, we will do not find one single answer to this. But slowly, you mentioned, like, if you do if you do good content, so maybe you can shed some light on how do you actually do good content? How do you do the research? How do you choose the topics? How do you avoid writer's block, and all these kinds of things.

Loie Favre 18:42
So I can tell you a little bit about you know, how to come up with ideas and do the research and that sort of thing to begin with. So we've mentioned before, you know, it's easier to write what, you know, everybody has a specialization, everybody, you know, you've you've worked probably in a field, so, and you've probably encountered problems that, you know, you've already found a solution to you've done research for in the past. So the first, you know, tip I could give writer or something is to write about something, you know, so in my case, I'm writing more translations localization. In the past I wrote wrote about, you know, smartphones and tech, because that's what I would always be with looking at every day, so if you write what you know, it makes it a lot easier, just from the get go, you don't have to deal with that much that much research. But at the same time, there's a lot of tools that you can use out there nowadays that many of you probably know about. To get ideas you know, so basically use data that these programs software websites have already amassed, that you can use to then create ideas and then from from these, this data that you were quite from, that you looking at, you can do brainstorm sessions, so you could then you can get really creative but in order to do that, that research group Forehand, you can really look at platforms such as you know, AdWords SEMrush, you can look at Google Search inquiries, queries, you can you can find a lot of ideas on the internet and go from there. You can even look for the, to the community for inspiration. So in my situation I, I look a lot on Facebook groups, LinkedIn groups, to see what kind of problems translators project managers, translation managers are having, and coming up with solutions to that and publishing an article about it. So actually coming up with problems, the solution that they're facing, and writing about it, and publishing posts in that article for somebody to maybe get some help from. So that's something that I was thinking about that that I do to get some ideas. You know, you need to look at the comments within articles, often people post more questions. So for more questions, questions, more articles comes more questions. So from that there, you can kind of create, like, a tree of different content, ideas that kind of fit together. But you always have to think about, you know, who you're writing for? What do you want to get from your writing that content piece? So looking at, you know, who's your target audience? What problems might they be having? And then what do you exactly want to achieve with your article, like, not just start, you can just start writing for the practice of writing. But if you want to make some a piece that's really effective, you need to think about, you know, are you trying to grow awareness? Are you trying to, you know, boost user engagement, something like that. So, you know, it's thinking about it, making a little bit of a plan before you get started is always a good idea. And then also, you know, a lot of content pieces out there, maybe, are quite stiff. So, it's always good to adopt like, conversational, more storytelling, like, tone when you're writing. So writing to a person, you know, not necessarily writing like, very, very formal, because that's not really what's going to drive engagement and get as much reaction from the reader. So don't think about you have to say, like, super formal, technical texts, because most people will probably who are writing for might not even know what you're talking about. So you need to always explain it in a way that's like, based on storytelling. And that's going to be conversational, helpful for them in that sense. And, you know, you don't always have to reinvent the wheel either. You know, there's a lot of content ideas out there that have already written written about, but if you add your own perspective, and you add your own, you know, ideas to that article, in your own opinion, you can always make it authentic, original piece of content that sort of like reinvented, I guess, from an original content idea. And so those are just some of the things that you can do to kind of get started as a writer, get smarter writing ideas. And if you ever have writing writer's block, you know, just just try start writing, and not be too perfect about it, you know, like some, you might feel always not good enough. I don't know, if I'm doing a good job. Just start writing. And don't be so hard on yourself, I guess, if you really want to try, and you're not going to get anywhere, if you don't do it, writing is like anything, it takes practice. So the more you do it, the better you'll become. And for writer's block, I, there's so many articles on medium that I see every day like, these are the best ways to start writing. This is how you're going to get ideas. This is how you're going to stop writer's block. So if you ever need to find inspiration when it comes to, you know, ways to start writing check out medium, because it's like a blog for bloggers. So that's really a good place to get some good ideas.

Vova Zakharov 23:40
That's a great advice. Natalie, you want to do you have something maybe to commend to add?

Natalie Lekka 23:44
Well, I agree, first of all, with everything that Louise said, and it's important to be very clear on your niche. If you know your niche inside out, or you're passionate about your knees, you're probably already may be reading some trade magazines or checking websites. So you can find lots of ideas. And there are also lots of tools, like you mentioned, one of them is Buzzsumo, for example, which is a tool that marketers use, which shows which content is shared across all the social media platforms. And this is very important. Or you can visit online forums. Quora, for example. That's that's a goldmine, I would say, depending on your niche, because it's a q&a database, basically, when people ask questions about the topics that they really want to know the answer to. So the more questions you see there, you see, there's more interest about about a certain topic. And then that means obviously, that if you write if you write about the topic, incorporating the right keywords, people who ask about the topic, will be able to find your article and the article will also show up higher in the Google rankings. Because exactly it's it's a topic that everybody's looking for. And definitely when you write, you should write in a conversational tone. One thing I tell to my students is that you should treat it as if you're in a way as if you're writing a letter to a friend. And because the more convoluted your species, the more literary or academic try to be, the less SEO friendly the article becomes. And it doesn't drive any, you know, engagement or any traffic. And that's obviously besides the point when we're talking about copyright.

Vova Zakharov 25:35
Good stuff, you can actually see we have are you have anything to add?

Una Dimitrijevic 25:40
Well, I mean, my advice. Again, as I said, I think that content writing, writing in general, makes sense as a pathway for translators to explore if they want to diversify their service offering. And to start off with what I would say this is just general advice that applies, obviously, to translation as well is, to start off, you want to build a little bit of a portfolio. So you're probably going to work on a few projects, for free. No might be for associations, you'd like website, you like writing articles on widely viewed platforms, to get examples of your work to get a place where your work is available online, so that you can send people there so you can show people. And then yeah, as you grow your network, that's how clients getting clients becomes easier getting direct clients is, once people get to know you, word of mouth, you sort of get the get the ball rolling. And I know that somebody, I just saw their questions sort of come up on the chat window about pricing. And, and what I would say about pricing is that the way I work with whatever I'm doing proofreading or interpreting or translating, is that even though you end up setting a price to per word, if you're translating, you look at what you need to learn per hour. And that's the same as with writing, if you're writing an article, you quickly learn yourself, okay, in this area, I know a lot about this area. So I can write easily on the fluent writer, it's going to take me two hours to write this length of article in this area, I need to earn X amount per hour, so I'm going to price it as that. And it's essentially a question of knowing your worth, knowing what knowing what you need. And not going below that, you know, just learning to say no is really hard at first, when you're just starting out in any area, learning to say, this is what I'm worth, this is what I need and to look yourself for quality clients because you yourself want to be providing quality work and to be known for that.

Vova Zakharov 27:45
Great advice. I agree totally. We have very, a couple of minutes left. So let's go to some questions, one of which you have already answered. There is also this question about ghostwriting. What do you think about ghostwriting? And would you like to see as Brian, we see you? Yes, I understand. Give us just a few minutes more. So what about you guys? Have you ever done a ghost writing? And what do you think about this,

Loie Favre 28:13
I'm currently doing a ghost writing project right now. For me, it's a good opportunity, because I'm writing about a topic that it not necessarily a super specialist about but because I'm working with a specialist who might not isn't that good at writing, like per se, I'm able to learn something and also help somebody convey their messages and in their message, their art or their their content, and a really in a nice way that they might not be able to do otherwise. So, you know, I think you have to balance that out. Because I don't want all my content to be in my articles and everything I write to be published under somebody else's name. But I find that like in this particular situation for myself, I'm learning so I'm kind of taking that from this experience. Because I get I'm working with a CEO of a company who is a software company that you know, I it's something that's a good, you know, step in my career, I guess you could say.

Vova Zakharov 29:10
Thanks. So we have to wrap it up. I have one minute still. So Natalie, maybe from you some final words, what would be the one thing that a translator needs to do first if they are to become a content writer?

Natalie Lekka 29:25
Well, I could say a couple of things of how you can go about finding work some tips. Again, this is not very different from how we find work as translators. Basically, we have two options in a way wants to go to agencies as translators or to direct clients and writers do the same because there are agencies that deal with content. And so you could right now, if you wanted to go and try branching out to writing, you could find content writing agencies or digital marketing agencies, where they they're looking for content writers or SEO, multilingual SEO writers. And the other option is to go straight to a company, direct client? And how do you make a list of brands that you'd like to work for that you are quite knowledgeable about that you feel passionate about anything, you have a lot of things to say, visit the websites and see if they have a blog. Because in my opinion, blogging is the first step visa step. For you. If there's a blog, that means there's a Content Manager behind the blog, so you can go and find the content manager on LinkedIn, to study the the articles on the blog, and to see what kind of articles they're publishing. And send a letter to the Content Manager to introduce yourself and maybe include a couple of well targeted articles that are very, they're quite relevant to what is already published on the on the blog, and explain why you think you're the right person to write these articles and take it from there. And this is how I've studied lots of collaboration since they're exactly doing that.

Vova Zakharov 31:08
Okay, guys, we have so many things to discuss that we didn't have time for. If you want to continue the discussion, please go to smartcare.ai/community and let's continue talking there and I guess that's the best we can do right now. So yeah, Brian, you you Yeah. Do what you have to do. Thanks guys a lot. much.

Bryan Montpetit 31:33
Thank you to all the panelists that really appreciate your time. Thank you both for moderating it was great. Really appreciate it.