When I was little, I wanted to be a doctor, a screenwriter, and a dancer. If I've ever seen a job description worthy of taking over the world, right? The doctor was my dad, the dancer my mom. The screenwriter was the kernel of truth about what it was I actually, realistically, wanted to spend the rest of my life doing. Words. I wanted to be doing words.
When I think of my professional persona today, I think of myself as a teacher, a translator, and a writer. While they're all not so far removed from each other as to be baffling in their combination, it's still not always easy to strike the balance. Don't I have to choose one of them to be my dominant career path, the objective I try to complete, the what-I-want-to-be-when-I-grow-up? Maybe. Probably.
If we go by what has made me the most money out of the three, that would be teaching. I've spent a total of four years teaching undergraduate German and then English composition 101 at WVU. Hilariously, "the most money" is still not very much money at all - everything you've ever heard about TAs being absurdly underpaid is true. Translation has earned me, oh, maybe $500 tops to this day. And the only thing I've ever gotten for fiction writing was a NaNoWriMo winner shirt. That I paid for. Wait, I also got 10 free copies of a short story collection when I entered a contest and had one of my stories published in it. This was when I was 13, and it was the height of my literary career.
Of course this means that if we go by what has been my longest, most permanent passion, I'd have to go with writing. I was making up little poems when I was four years old, my mom tells me. In middle school, if we got any creative writing homework assignment, I'd spent all day and half the night writing something approximately ten times the required length, followed by nearly dislocating my shoulder trying to get the teacher to let me read my story. And the teacher usually did, even if it meant I'd be reading until the bell rang. Making up stories was always my favorite, and in my teens I firmly believed that I would grow up to be a writer. Teaching and translating, as career goals, came much later, after I realized that the rest of the world might not be as enthusiastic about my writing as Mr Schaefer was. At least not without some serious practice. On my part, not the world's.
Truth is, I've fallen out of the writing habit a little. I always say I want to do it more, and I go through phases of intense, daily laboring over my Chromebook, typically in November (ahem), but then writing falls by the wayside when I start feeling guilty about how I should be doing something that will make me some actual money. Enter translating. HA!
In case you don't know, starting out in the translating business is about as financially heartbreaking as starting out in the trying-to-write-a-bestseller business. In fact, being an aspiring writer and an aspiring translator do have a whole bunch in common. You can expect to spend the first few years working for nothing or next-to-nothing, and to constantly reach out to potential employers (or editors and publishers), only to be rejected over and over again. But slowly, the more experience you build, the more likely you'll be to pick up small jobs. And then maybe, if you're lucky, bigger jobs. And then, one magical day in the future, you'll be able to charge 42 cents per translated word, and you'll be SO TOTALLY FREAKIN' RICH - at least compared to when you were a teaching assistant. For a reality check, consider this: You know the rate at which I translated while in college? 2.5 cents a word. Two. Point. Five. And I had to negotiate that half a cent.
But here I am, putting myself out there. These days I spend my mornings scouring for new job postings on Proz.com and other translator-specific job sites and applying for everything I think I might even remotely qualify for. Do I ever land any jobs, you ask? Well, let me tell you. A couple of days ago I translated a resume and cover letter for a German guy after I found him looking for a translator on Ebay. That's right people: Ebay. After Paypal fees, I made $31.33, which was actually amazing for the two hours of work I put in. Seven cents a word. BOOM!
I've made the decision that this is my life now. Applying, applying, applying. Sometimes translating. And blogging about it, apparently, just for a change of scenery. I'll still write sometimes in my off-time, I'm sure. And apparently you can't take the teacher out of the Layla - I sent back that translated cover letter with some half-solicited feedback, which my client thankfully appreciated. So maybe the Trifecta of Word Jobs is something I shouldn't quite give upon yet.
