The Power of Collaboration

Micro Oiseau Translators and the kindness of strangers

When I began thinking about creating a multi-language marketing project, my ‘how to’ guides were the more straightforward challenge, where would I find my translators?

“If you want to fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” African Proverb

Translators are amazing people. I have always been in awe of those who can split their brains and communicate in two or more languages. My own endeavours in French were progressing slowly and the more I practised, the more I found there was to know. My admiration is unbounded for bilingual, trilingual and extraordinary polyglots!

Being on social media as many advantages. Finding translator forums, groups and individuals by searching hashtags was a beginning. LinkedIn also is a great place to find professionals. I was interested to see the kind of work they were doing and were looking for, their interests and appetite for taking on a collaborative project. I was under no illusions that I may not find anyone who was prepared to pitch in and use their skills in exchange for what I was offering.

Ned was building a great website and so I set out to properly showcase the translators. They would have their own full page with plenty of space to talk about their skills, interests, specialisms and qualifications. There was to be space for a headshot, contact details and, importantly, easy access to their work on the Micro Oiseau site in their paired languages. Alongside this I would talk about their work on Micro Oiseau social media to extend their reach.

Starting my search I focused on translators who were engaging with the world with curiosity. Those who were already volunteering for charitable work to extend their skills and I made personal approaches to join the project. My hope that I would eventually also be able to offer them a royalty stream through eBooks.

The first brave soul to join Micro Oiseau as a translator was Gnama Roger Brigui an English > French translator from Ivory Coast. It great to see my words translated and these first steps also helped refine the translator page look and functionality. The whole site is search engine optimised from the get-go to ensure the greatest traction and reach with organic search engines, to help promote the translators work. Not being an agency, anyone interested in working with a translator would be able to contact them directly from their details on their personal biography page.

The translation software we decided to create this linguistic alchemy was WPML. A Word Press based website our research suggested that this would be the best option. Fair to say, to date, it’s been a less than straightforward path! Corrupted code and non-performance issues crop up with wearying regularity and we’re still working on stuff today. When it works it’s great. There remains a doubt about whether it was the right choice. What is not in doubt, however, was the fantastic support of the growing number of translators I welcomed to the Micro Oiseau project.

I reconnected with Grey Drane, a talented English > Italian translator with whom I had worked some years ago on the DaCuhna story project. Grey was generous enough to join the project and would go on to write a series of Micro Oiseau Translation Guides that are a great resource for anyone who is interested in briefing translation projects and engaging a translator.

The support and generosity of Grey and our wonderful translators from all over the world has been a revelation and helped to create this multi-language marketing guide resource. To date the site hosts:

العربية (Arabic)
简体中文 (Chinese (Simplified))
English
Français (French)
Deutsch (German)
Italiano (Italian)
日本語 (Japanese)
فارسی (Persian)
Português (Portuguese (Portugal))
Português (Portuguese (Brazil))
Русский (Russian)
Español (Spanish)

We invite you to discover our Micro Oiseau Translators from all over the world. All our translators also receive an exclusive badge to display on their own websites, emails and profiles.

“None of us is as smart as all of us.” Ken Blanchard

This collaborative power is a wonderful thing and because it is such an important and fundamental part of any successful enterprise, it led me to write a section on it for the marketing guides. The ability to collaborate is also part of a great mindset and that’s where we’re going next.