I am a self-employed translator, and as such I work in an industry which is not without its
never-ending challenges that I should never fail to rise to, even if I do say so myself.

Humility is important. That said, even with the aid of computer assisted translation (CAT)
tools, oversights in translation work are by no means unlikely. Even the best of us make
mistakes. Having established that, it seems only appropriate that I openly acknowledge that a
true professional, in the course of his or her work, know how to reject the inclination to seek
things to take for granted in the pursuit of a (possibly never-to-be-vindicated) belief that it
will make their lives easier while being smugly convinced that it could never be detrimental
to the progress or the welfare of wider society. We all make mistakes, but we learn from
them, and we adapt and grow; amen. And, if my judgement serves me well, part of this
means never failing to have the balls to make rules at no notice.

I mention in my CV that I have a university degree in foreign languages for a good reason.
Now, Heaven forbid I should unwittingly convince anyone that there is no merit or
importance to be attached to a career of menial work, like cleaning, or serving as a delivery
driver. It’s just that, to put it bluntly, the responsibilities of such roles don’t require any real
thinking or overt enforcement of standards (I myself invented the expression
“sleepworking”). Professional translation on a self-employed basis, not so much, even if I do
get to work from home and wholly by my own rules.

What I intend to say here is that, as a professional, as part of my career, I have learned how to
be prepared to establish my own rules and absorb them at a moment’s notice in the interest of
ensuring the continued production of translation work of satisfactory quality – this is not
purely self-interest!

Take this example: I recently did a German to English translation project in which I was
asked to translate a reference for someone who had attended Furtwangen University
https://www.hs-furtwangen.de/en/ A reference issued by this institution. It was in the
letterhead. Now, from the start I fully believed that “Furtwangen” was a proper noun; and I
was right, as the link clearly shows. It’s just that, at the time I was doing this project, I did not
think straight away to check whether Furtwangen was the name of a place or a person. As it
is, it’s the name of a place – but I accepted the existence of an untold necessity to research it,
if not from square one.

Because Furtwangen is the name of a place, I decided not to include a definite article before
“Furtwangen University”; but by then I had tacitly acknowledged that I would have done had
Furtwangen been the surname of a person the institution was named after. This is a rule I
have adopted for my work ever since.