To me, one of the most annoying bits about bizdev is localization tests.
I get how important they are and we use them ourselves. But they’re also long, usually boring and highly technical, and often (gasp) expected to be done for free.
Since we have -at present- absolutely no margins to speak of, every free test is either on me to handle or paid for out of my pocket if I’m not available. Not very sustainable.
In our third anniversary biz revamp, my goal was to optimize everything I did not enjoy about this job out of existence—or more realistically, as close to out of existence as it could get.
Unpaid translation tests were very high on my list. And so the samples page came to be.
Demonstrating your experience via past work instead of assignments is not exactly groundbreaking. But as with everything I do, I maybe went a little extra.
See, I never liked the idea of being typecast. Four years on, I’m still the go to for highly technical, variable-heavy Arabic locs bc I translated Obra Dinn at like 22 (I appreciate the business, but maybe shoot less cortisol spiking work my way, pretty please? 🥹).
So with the samples page, I didn’t want to be limited by what we’ve had the chance to work on. But IP rights were an issue, and so were the implications of presenting non-contracted work in a ‘samples’ page.
The sane thing to do would have been adding a text disclaimer above the ‘unofficial’ samples.
But wanting a way to showcase those samples in action, I cobbled together a custom subtitle player and overlaid it over Youtube’s own embed with a large disclaimer at the start of each video.
There’s also a filter, table view at the bottom of each clip, with highlights for translation notes (to lazy to populate those anytime soon, orz).
In conclusion, do NOT ask me to go through your 800-word-long thinly veiled mechanic apprentice test ever again. Unless you’re paying. kthxbye 👋
By Seif Chaib.
Originally posted on Linkedin.