Portfolio

A portfolio is a collection of samples of your work, which is aimed at showcasing your

professional skills at their best. It is a marketing document, and needs to be targeted at a
particular audience, just like any other marketing document. Keep selections short and sweet,
with no more than a few hundred words for each sample so that you don’t bore your clients to
death. Obviously anything you choose to include should be well laid out and proofread multiple
times to guarantee not a single error remains. Be sure to stick to professional fonts and design.

For translators, building a strong portfolio can result in increased credibility when marketing
their services to translation agencies and direct clients alike.

It goes without saying that you should always include the source and target texts side by side,
otherwise readers will have no idea if you’ve done a good job or not. Simply using two columns
is usually enough for this, but some translators take it a step further and add annotations
explaining particular translation choices. Provided the text isn’t too cluttered up with explanatory
notes, these annotations can be a great way of providing insight into your working process and
show off strengths such as excellent grammatical knowledge, awesome research skills or a knack
for localizing challenging concepts.

What other information should you include with each sample text? Each piece should begin with
your name, business name, slogan and contact details as standard, ideally in letterhead format
with a memorable logo to brand your work. Many of the more engaging portfolios take it to the
next level with a short introduction to the text, stating the subject matter, document and customer
type, whether there was a particular brief, or even why you’ve chosen this text to represent your
abilities. If you’re building your portfolio on your own website, this can also help you present
your portfolio in a user friendly way. Rather than copy-pasting thousands of words of samples
into a web page, be smart and create a menu page with links to each sample and a snappy
description of what clients can expect to find. This lets visitors to your site choose the most
relevant samples for their interests, and also allows you to organize your samples according to
topic or type.

There are just a few more technical considerations to keep in mind. New translators might not
have any sample translations from real jobs, but that’s ok – everyone has to start somewhere. It's
perfectly fine to start by translating specifically for your portfolio, but be sure you’re not
infringing copyright with the source texts you select. The best way to do this is to find those in
the public domain, or published under creative commons. With a bit of googling there are plenty
of free texts available. You could also consider getting some real experience by volunteering for
Translators without Borders or other charity organizations, or offering your skills to clients for
free on the understanding you’ll use the texts in your portfolio. You should target small local
businesses, non-profits or highly specialized companies—in your field of interest—to make it
easy on yourself. You might find that some of these companies love what you do so much that
they then become real clients, which is how many freelancers get started.
More experienced translators will hopefully have a wealth of material to choose from, but you’ll
need to be careful that you don't breach any confidentiality agreements. It's probably best to ask
permission from clients before using their texts in your portfolio, even if you didn't sign an
NDA. If they’re not comfortable with you using their material, ask if you could anonymize the
source text, changing any identifying details. Most clients only object to you using their most
sensitive information in portfolios, but will be quite happy for you to use more generic marketing
texts, for example. And if you're really struggling to show off your technical skills, why not use
an existing job as a starting point for creating your own “source text” to translate? Provided it’s
not recognizable as the original, even to people involved in the company, you should be safe
doing this. You can always run it past them first, just to be on the safe side. Many companies are
happy with the free publicity though, so don't assume your requests will fall on deaf ears.

When selecting your preferred layout, please bear in mind the following:

 Each sample should include both source and target text

 Source and target text should be easy to scan and compare
 The document should have a professional, clear and reader-friendly layout

It is recommended here is to use a two column layout, which maximizes readability of the
samples and also caters for a neat presentation of your work. To make your portfolio a bit more
personal, you can customize column frames visibility and parameters, background colors and
other style elements in the page. However, indulging in customization and color contrast might
have a negative impact on readability, and could also affect the ability of the reader to actually
focus on the translation samples.

Also recommended is the limiting of the sample length to 250-300 words, to make sure you can
include all of the sample information (including source and target text) on one page. And don't
forget to include your letterhead, logo and business name and slogan.

As already mentioned, the ultimate goal of creating a portfolio for your translation business is
showcasing your professional skills and expertise. That's why the samples selection should not
only focus on determining the quantity of samples to include, but also on the quality of the
samples and on the relevance these might have for a potential reader.

Even though there are no specific rules or recommendations about the optimal length of a
translator's portfolio, common sense suggests that including up to 10 samples (depending on the
individual needs) should be more than enough to provide readers with a general idea of the level
of service you can provide them with.

As service providers, protecting our customers' privacy and complying with confidentiality and
non-disclosure agreements is a must. That's why your translation samples shouldn't include any
sensitive data or confidential information.

It's probably best to ask permission from clients before using their texts in your portfolio, even if
you didn't sign an NDA. If they’re not comfortable with you using their material, ask if you
could anonymize the source text, changing any identifying details. Most clients only object to
you using their most sensitive information in portfolios, but will be quite happy for you to use
more generic marketing texts, for example.