You can be a terrific translator and have an outstanding educational background,
but without self-confidence skills you might not accomplish much. It’s true for any
business and any activity. You need reasonable self-confidence skills to raise your rates, to negotiate with your customers, to close the deal, to start your marketing campaign, to network with your colleagues, to come up with a business plan, to follow your plan, etc. Everything comes down to self-confidence. It is a starting point for any journey, no matter where and how far.

Unfortunately, quite often Mother Nature fails to equip every brilliant translator with this necessary feature. But the good news is that you can learn it, coach it and excel at it. From a variety of methods reaching from dedicated courses, practising with friends, meditation, positive self-talk, thorough preparations, and visualising, my favourites are definitely the last two. When you are prepared for potential situations such as criticism, complaints or refusal to accept your higher rates, you are more likely to handle it professionally and in a confident manner.

                                 (Photo by D. Pawlak)

Visualising daily situations and your confident reaction is equally beneficial. Of course, a real life training will verify all your efforts and most likely you will have to improvise at some point, but before this happens, you will already have a solid foundation to build on.

Finally, no methods can train your self-confidence skills better than just getting out of your comfort zone and actually trying things out you for the first time. Even if you don’t know it, you have it deep inside you, so a little practice will definitely make you perfect.

Dorota Pawlak

Dorota helps digital brands infuse their content with a local touch. She is a localization consultant, translator specialized in IT, prompt engineer, and a book author. Dorota teaches online courses on localization, writes for her blog and a Medium publication. She also runs a Small Biz AI, a Substack newsletter for freelancers and small business owners ready to discover handy AI tools.