Welcome!

👩‍🎓We’re learning more from our intern than she’s learning from us

In January, as part of our partnership with London Metropolitan University, we offered a work placement opportunity to an MA translation student. Ewelina is a registered nurse with qualifications in midwifery, so she was the perfect fit for our in-house team. In the many conversations we’ve had since then, it transpired how out of touch we are with the younger generation of life science linguists. As industry veterans, we sometimes overlook the challenges the newcomers to the profession must face. I feel it was so much easier to find your feet as a medical translator when I started 18 years ago. The market conditions are a lot more challenging now. It was Ewelina who inspired us to start this newsletter so we could share our collective wisdom. It’s the insider knowledge she says she’s been benefiting most from. Every linguist receiving this email works primarily with life sciences, with the majority of you specialising in pharmaceutical translation. You’re the crème de la crème of the life science translation industry! Let’s level up together.

🔮We can predict the future

In January 2022, we took out our crystal ball to predict the future of the life science translation industry. We then proclaimed with confidence that neural machine translation (NMT) would replace the human translator for low-impact content, but not for highly technical and/or mission-critical content. Were we right? While MTPE has become the new normal for many market segments, we’ve been consistently building a loyal client base for very technical life science projects for which human expertise is simply irreplaceable. Whether it’s GenAI or NMT, these tools are fantastic for automating many processes. However, there are many projects for which they simply don’t work. The right tool for the right job, we hear you say. And the right tool for highly specialist life science content is the brain of an expert life science translator. Subject expertise has never been more important than now. All other processes already are or will soon be automated. This is the time we must prioritise expert subject knowledge.

🧠 We’re growing a second brain

We’re constantly bombarded by new information, some of it very useful for our translation work, some less so. Yet, rather than be empowered by what is useful knowledge for us, we often feel overwhelmed and paralysed by believing we’ll never know or remember enough for our future translation projects. We’re big fans of the concepts of deep work, slow productivity, and personal knowledge management. These concepts aren’t new — they have simply been lost in the hyperconnected world of today, and needed to be redesigned for the modern workplace and lifestyles. If you need help with an effective personal knowledge management system that puts you in control of your information, we highly recommend the timeless principle of a Second Brain. Until memory implants become a thing, you can learn more about personal knowledge management in Building a Second Brain by Tiago Forte.