Translator Website
In 2006, I was launching my first translator website. I had previous experience from building a New Age website during my sabbatical in Ammanford, Wales, and I had taken a web design class some years back, when I was attending the University of Colorado Denver (UCD) for my Teaching English as a Second Language course. Call me eclectica, but try to follow me!
I thought that the old Translations Decoder was quite clean for the time, straight to the point, and I liked its layout. The advantage of building your own translator website is that you don’t have to make the web designer understand what you envision; ideas are much harder than words to translate. I like playing with fonts, images, creating them, and making it all an integrated approach to the idea behind it: selling my linguistic services. Launching a new translator website at that time was easier.
The plain HTML websites became obsolete after WordPress.
But how was I going to find time to learn enough about it for launching a new translator website, with my translation business building faster and faster? I was not taking another sabbatical in Ammanford, or going, for a third time, back to college. It was when an SEO, Search Engine Optimization, expert recommended his friend to me, and that was a bad lead – expensive and unprofessional. I did not hire the guy.
I was serving on the boards of the Colorado Association of Professional Interpreters (CAPI) and of the Colorado Translators Association (CTA), and had taken the responsibility of implementing their new websites – in WordPress! So, I knew exactly what I wanted for myself, and thought I knew the right developers to help with my new translator website. But it didn’t work out that way! The web designer got sick and passed the design of my translator website on to someone who was not satisfactory to me.
Never hire a cheap designer!
I had this great idea of hiring a web designer from elance.com; it would be cheaper! Indeed, it was quite a cheap work! As a service provider myself, I simply could not understand how a freelancing professional could do such a sloppy job. After four months of frustration, I was stuck with that mess of a website, where all my ideas were implemented in most terrible ways. The idea that anyone I knew could get there accidentally gave me chills. Besides its content, nothing else represented my work or me; that layout really sucked! I wanted a translator website that represented me, to start blogging, but I wasn’t inspired because that website just didn’t make me horny for it at all.
Translators should not commission a one-size-fits-all web designer.
We are highly qualified service providers; our websites should go beyond our business card and résumés. Our website should convey a long-lasting positive impression to our clients and potentials. We are artists as well, and we should incorporate it in the layout.
Shop around!
This time, I was more careful when looking for a web designer, and interviewed a few. I didn’t want a web design company that would charge me tons of money, but would make me deal with their junior staff because I’m a low-budget small business. I didn’t want web designers of products for consumption because this is another market; I was not looking for a shopping cart-style website.
Look for a professional with aesthetical sense and abilities beyond the WordPress codes.
And more, I wanted a freelancer, like me, who could work with me from the theme choice phase to teaching me how to use all the theme’s resources, so I would not have to depend on paying him for future posts and minor changes in general. I wanted to be able to make my own choices in the future. And this guy exists! I found him through a lawyer friend in Brazil. I liked her new website, and I could tell immediately that I had found the kind of professional I was looking for. She referred me to him.
Don’t expect to leave everything in the hands of your web designer. Make sure the SEO is under your own control.
After all, it is your baby, you know better what is best for you and your translator website. I have seen beautiful websites that do not rank in Google, and worse: that cannot be found at all! It is like having great business cards in the drawer and never distributing them. Chances are your web designer will not know what are the best keywords for you to rank on the Google first page, and will not care about SEO codes. You will have to pay extra -lots of- money to an expert, or start doing your homework: reading about it and implementing.
Handpick your WordPress theme and make your own unique photos.
I wish there were a WordPress theme for translators, but there isn’t, so I chose a theme for photographers. It meant that I had the hard task of getting new and unique photos that nobody had used before, that I wouldn’t have to pay for, and preferably, that nobody would copy from me.
Jugglery and creativity?
Yes! I displayed my grocers for that week nicely on the kitchen table to take the photo for the Cooking blog subcategory landing page, which, btw, is one of my best photos. I arranged anise stars in grandma’s tea set, and that was when I found myself standing up on the top of my desk, stepping on a stool to take pictures from a straight top angle, even including my toes in the frame inadvertently – photo was duly cropped! I made my friend Gus leave everything in the middle of an afternoon to take pictures of me with great grandmother’s glass filled with water and berries! Why so much? Because this is me, and this is how I want clients, especially potential clients, to understand who I am and that I work with passion and dedication.
Finally my new translator website!
Remote clients can now envision how I work, where I work, and be sure that I am indeed a responsible eclectic perfectionist. I am proud of my translator website because I can show it to anyone, and say that this is what I do and how I do it.
