Know thyself - Branding for interpreters
On Thursday 11th May two of the Apertis Verbis team were lucky enough to attend, and even simultaneously interpret, a very interesting and insightful seminar on personal branding for interpreters.
- Maria Cecilia (Left) listens to ideas pitched by the participants -
Maria Cecilia Lipovsek, CEO of her own company MCL, is an Argentinian interpreter from Buenos Aires. She now lives and works in London after taking the plunge just over two years ago. She was kind enough to accept an invitation to give a talk to current students and graduates from the MA in Conference Interpreting and Translation Studies course at the University of Leeds. Her presentation gave an in-depth view of the considerations that need to be taken when an interpreter, or translator for that matter, creates their brand. As she stressed throughout the presentation, and as we were analysing in our own article, today’s interpreters and translators do not have the luxury of just interpreting and translating, they need to roll up their sleeves and act simultaneously as CEOs, accountants, PRs, secretaries and web designers of the company they run, approaching everything with a strategic marketing mindset. The very first step is to establish a personal brand, as it is true that we should not judge a book by its cover it is a fact that the society we live in is one based on looks, and more importantly presence. Projecting a professional and authentic image is pivotal for a series of reasons:
Being out there: establishing a solid online presence grants us visibility not only to potential clients, but also already established clients (a nice reminder always comes in handy) and colleagues. This point should not be underestimated, as we all know how important connections and networking are in our industry.
Improving and establishing the image of interpreters: let’s be honest, how many times, when asked what we do or study, was our answer met with a very confused look or a “Ah, my cousin speaks two languages too!”. Looking professional represents the first step in being recognised and accepted as such.
Maria Cecilia also stressed that this projected image needs to be authentic, coherent, and consistent: it needs to reflect us and our personality, and we need to consistently act in accordance with what we promise, be that how we communicate with clients via email or on the phone, how we behave during an assignment or what we post online when acting as our company. An eye-opening concept was that the brand you’re building needs to be directed to your own professional aims, following the logic “Start choosing and stop being chosen”. It’s easy to see that all of this needs to rely on a solid and deep self-analysis from a personal and professional point of view, and Maria Cecilia herself said this process takes months, maybe years, and it’s ever evolving. The important thing though, is to crack on with it, and the sooner the better! With this spirit, we were given a useful handout that had Maria Cecilia’s sharp, polished logo on the top (never waste a chance to make your brand visible!) in order to help us with our brand and what we really liked was how personal she had made the handout: Maria Cecilia asked us to fill in a list of our talents, our values, to identify our aims and think about how this can be reflected in our brands. In order to support her strategy Maria Cecilia explained the concepts behind MCL - with her “key messages” which you can see on her website MCL interpreting. She also encouraged us to think about our stories and how we can communicate them to our customers through our newly-born brands.
We found the talk very helpful as there were certain aspects of brands we had never considered - such as Maria Cecilia’s list of archetypes. Eleanor identified with The Sage, The Creator and The Caregiver so now she is wondering if her brand as Mirtillo Language Services reflects that! On her part, Lara really identifies with the Ruler, the Hero and The Explorer - time to tweak a few things here and there!
Possibly, the best feature of this well structured and forward-thinking talk was its interactivity: Maria Cecilia encouraged those present to think about their target clients when creating their brand and to try to see themselves from the eyes of their potential clients and colleagues, discussing and giving feedback to the ideas proposed. We are sure that the interpreters in the booth had the time of their lives rendering her lively, nicely paced and fun talk, or at least we did!
