From Translator to Dev, Freelancer to Contractor

A brief timeline on how I've moved from freelance translation to contracting in IT

I think it's all related: language, code, logic, communication. At least to me it is. It's perhaps how I interact with the world. I've always done all of it, for as long as I can remember.

I'd had an eye on switching sides for years while translating. It felt like a bigger challenge in terms of the day to day but also breaking in to the industry being self taught. As most programmers know, or soon find out, being self taught is not a barrier typically in the industry. Tech changes so quickly that it's not any one skill that sets anyone apart, but the ability to adapt. You accumulate patterns and transfer them.

Timing the move

Not ideal, as tech hiring slowed to a halt and contracts dried up, but this just mirrored what was happening in the translation industry. At least I could get hired at an entry level without sacrificing too much in the way of compensation.

But the fan was being hit by the proverbial in late 2022 for me. Even in the years running up to it to be honest. Furlough pay was minimal due to me having a limited company structure. If I'd have been a sole trader it would have been much more sustainable, perhaps 5x higher.

Freelancers in the translation industry have been getting squeezed since pretty much when I started out back in 2004. New technologies ended up benefiting the agencies and middlemen more than the linguists. The occasional big hit helped, but the trend was not advancing nearly as fast as I'd have liked. As fast as in software. I also ran my own small agency for a while, dealing in languages outside of my own. It certainly helped boost income at times but was hard to sustain while also doing work to support life, i.e. doing sales in the middle of a 20k word project isn't super likely to be done well.

So I retired that. I retired the language service startup I'd been tinkering with for years. It taught me a lot. Then I retired myself from the translation industry by shopping my technical skills to translation companies. I still do some translation, mixed with file engineering, trying to keep my rate up with inflation, but tbh my mind is now on the new role I eventually moved into and on my side projects which aim to eventually stabilise and scale income.

So what's it like, being a dev?

I've done more coding in the last year then maybe the previous three. Python, AI, integrations, APIs, data wrangling, server work… we calculated that I'd added another employee in saved hours through automations after the first year. That number will only grow. I added functions that allowed jobs that were previously untenable for humans to manage. I suspect many more companies outside of the industry I'm in will need this, as more work moves online into platforms, but I'm working on the craft and workflows with AI in a stable environment which should eventually enable a later move without the many incremental steps in between.

I'm engineering lead where I am now, managing some people and some code. I join client calls, research tech solutions, go on courses and go to events. It's the corporate life I missed as a freelancer and while it's very busy it's also quite fulfilling. I don't need to do it all forever but it's good for now.

Side projects I'll cover in another post, but this brings you up to speed on what I've been up to the last few years, in brief.

Feel free to reach out and say hi, email back, leave a comment etc. I'm hoping to engage more in this new direction, and offer info on code, AI, trading and the usual productivity and life musings I like to pontificate on.