I developed and delivered a talk recently on Entrepreneurship for Translators & Interpreters: Strategies from the academic literature“. It came about after an invitation to speak at this year’s Australian Society of Interpreters and Translators (Queensland Branch) Conference in Brisbane. My aim was to inspire and motivate my audience to consider how they could proactively manage their businesses and careers in the face of rapid industry and technological change.
It was my first time addressing my erstwhile peers since my transition into a ‘new’ career as a doctoral researcher & academic. I was keen to integrate some of the insights I’d gleaned from my academic readings in the area of international business and entrepreneurship. Given empirically-based academic articles in these fields can draw on data from hundreds of businesses, it seemed like a worthwhile endeavour. It’s not easy to pitch the academy to practitioners, but as a former translator myself, I was counting using this experience to make the abstract tangible.
I wasn’t entirely certain how the session would work, but I was pretty happy with how it went in the end. I sense this topic has legs, and certainly my talk has scope for further refinement. I’m hoping another opportunity will arise in the future to enable me to develop it further.