Today, we bring you all some great news from us at CSOFT. One member of the ever-growing CSOFT family has been awarded the prestigious Huawei Individual Delivery Excellence Award for his recent translation work. Bertrand Malingrey was overjoyed to receive the translation award, claiming it really boosted his confidence, and he feels great to know that he’s doing things right. We had the utmost pleasure of conducting a short interview with the man of the moment.
Q: How did you first get into the translation industry?
A: I always had an interest in languages, especially English, but other than becoming a teacher I didn’t see much career potential in languages. So I did a business school degree and moved to Ireland for several years where I worked for Microsoft. That helped bring me to full fluency in English. I returned to France where I held a position in exports, but I wasn’t really satisfied with my job.
That’s the point where I decided to give translation a try because I had acquired strong expertise in a few domains and I was confident in my cultural/linguistic knowledge of English and my writing skills in French. That was more than 10 years ago. It was a career change and I did not regret even for a single second.
Q: How long have you worked with CSOFT? And how has that experience been?
A: I started working with CSOFT International in 2010. It was a quiet week in October. I didn’t have much to do so I replied to a job posting CSOFT had put on a translators website and went through the test translation process. Since then I have forgotten what it’s like to not have much to do…
The experience has been excellent from the start. The people, the business processes, the communication are really great and help me just focus on my translation rather than waste time on non-productive tasks. The projects I work on are often intensive but there’s a “team” feeling in my relationship with the people at CSOFT which I don’t have with other LSPs. Being invited to the annual summit held in Beijing certainly helps. It’s great to meet the people you’re e-mailing every day, and also players at other levels of the industry. It gave me a broader vision of how we all work together to achieve success. It’s a worldwide family.
Q: What motivates you to continue to translate?
A: I love what I do. There’s of course the independence aspect of the profession which gives me a level of freedom not so many people can enjoy. I can work from anywhere as long as there’s a bit of electricity and Wi-Fi… and I’m not required to wear shoes! I also enjoy translating because it often requires research work and it makes me learn something new every day. Over the years I have been able to expand my working fields and improve my skills. More fields means more things to learn. Having a great diversity of topics certainly helps keeping routine at bay and a positive outlook on my job. Then there’s the recognition, which isn’t very common at individual level in the world of localization.
Q: What’s the most interesting (or satisfying) project you have worked on?
A: I come across interesting projects very often. And I forget them as soon as another interesting project lands on my plate. Overall, I think the most interesting translations are the ones I do for the United Nations. It is usually very informative research and I take pride in translating this.
In terms of satisfaction, from time to time I get to see my work “in the wild.” I’ve done some translations for a sportswear brand. One day I was in my car behind a city bus at a traffic light and the ad on the back of the bus was a translation I had done some weeks before. I did a quick additional proofreading. Had I found any error, I would have corrected it straight on the bus! But to my relief it was good. I felt like opening the window to tell the world, “look! It’s my translation!” but I guess people would have given me strange looks.
Sometimes I also get the satisfaction of self-spamming. I do a translation for a PC manufacturer, and when the new product is out, all the online resellers I ever bought something from send me e-mails announcing the new product… with my translation. It gives me a chuckle to think my work has travelled from my office to another continent, then another one, then back to France to finally return home in my inbox. It breaks my heart moving it to the spam folder after such a long trip.
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. If you think you have what it takes to become a translator, get in touch! We are always looking for qualified professionals to join our CSOFT family. To learn more about freelance translation opportunities with CSOFT International, visit our career page or send your resume and a cover letter to alma.gomez@csoftintl.com. If you’re interested in learning more about CSOFT’s globalization and localization solutions, visit our Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn pages or you can visit our webpage!
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