Writing Your Public Profile

In professional associations, you can often publish a public profile. Clients use this profile to decide who to work with. It should be brief, but it has to tell your story.

However, sometimes our public profile is not visible. Go to your profile settings on the platform your association uses and verify that your profile is visible.

You can generally select items from your profile to share publicly, such as your phone, address, email, and social media profiles. Be intentional about what you share. This information can be seen by the public. That means both your clients and other people can find you.

After setting up your profile, you can log out and then find yourself from another device that does not have your password recorded.

Readers of an ATA profile are often looking for professional translators and interpreters. I find that clients I meet in person go to my ATA and LinkedIn profiles to get a better idea of who I am. This is one of the early steps in building trust with them. How can you help them trust you?

• How much do they know about your work? Briefly take them from what they know to what you think they should know.
• How can you help them with their business? For example, what is the risk of working with an unknown person? How can you enhance their position in the market? Can you help them cut their risks when people who don’t speak English operate their factory machinery?

List just two or three things they should know. When you highlight a limited set of issues and explain why you are an expert on them, you build credibility.

Be careful with exaggerated claims. Saying you are the best or that you can do everything can be a problem. On the other hand, here is an example of how to express your experience clearly without exaggerating.

I am a Chingolese to English translator and interpreter. I have helped an engineering company get less phone calls from their Chingolese clients by translating their user manual clearly. After they got the translation, the support phone calls in Chingolese dropped and their sales increased!

Do you want to share something about your process? In translation, sometimes clients run your text by a person who is familiar with the language in their office, especially if they have an outreach department working with people who speak your language. Saying you will find your own editor might save them time.

Because there are many ways to say anything, I work with a colleague who reviews my work. She has my same level of qualifications, and with two of us working together, we can find the best ways to express your message in Chingolese.

What will you do with comments from your clients? Will you always incorporate them, check their suggestions for accuracy, or just ignore them? Keeping clients hinges on this dialogue.

Because my colleague and I work together on the translation, we would like to review any comments your beta readers have on our translation. We will carefully read your feedback and make changes that align with the intended message. If you have preferred terminology, we will be happy to work with you to build a customized glossary.

What will you do to meet deadlines? Underpromising and overdelivering is the best way to go… Many translators and interpreters overpromise and underdeliver, losing clients in the process.

I usually build some pad into my deadlines so unforeseen events do not affect my schedule.

What makes your work different from what a computer would do for them? Given the prevalence of AI, this matters. For example:

I thoroughly research the subject matter and study the predominant writing style in the relevant field.

I will consider the cultural nuances, idioms, and ambiguities so I transmit the implicit messages in my translation. This means I may be asking you questions during the translation process.

Your profile needs to sound like it comes from you, from your own experience. If you use AI tools to help you compose the profile, make sure to review the output carefully and tweak it to sound like your own voice. I write my profiles without using AI.

For more ideas, you can browse profiles on the ATA website and see what others are saying about themselves. What profiles help you trust the authors? What profiles make you skeptical?

By the way, it never hurts to have a trusted colleague or one of your current clients check it and give you feedback!

About the Author

Helen Eby

Helen Eby lives near Seattle, Washington, where she works as a translator and court interpreter. She is an ATA certified translator (English to Spanish and Spanish to English) and a Washington State certified Spanish court interpreter.  She enjoys supporting colleagues in the translation and interpreting professions, and digging into complicated issues. When she is not busy with translation she can be found playing with her family, out with her camera, or hiking on a trail.