The Multilingual Writer

What I’m reading: The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro
What I’m listening to: Talking to the Moon by Bruno Mars

You know, I had planned to leave more posts for you while I was on vacation. Really I did. But there was a rush of work right before we left– so much so that we were left to make part of our plans while sitting in Oxford. Turned out to be the easiest planning we’ve ever done, thank goodness.

So my apologies for not being here, but damn. I needed to disconnect. I didn’t entirely — I posted while we were gone — but I kept my online presence minimal.

We spent a good bit of time in Oxford with day trips to London. It’s tough to find a more multicultural city than London. There were many different languages heard on trains, subways, in the streets, and in stores. Not that London is any better equipped to accommodate such a wide variety of languages; English dominates, just like here in the US.

Not so in The Netherlands, where the national language is Dutch and regions have their own language preferences, including German, English, Frisian, Dutch Low Saxon, Papiamento, and more. In fact, the residents of Amsterdam seem to know on sight what language by which to greet you.

That’s customer service, multilingual style.

It got me thinking about the way we writers can be multilingual and what that would mean for our clients. That’s not to say we need to take up a new language (although why not?), but that we should be constantly looking for opportunities to extend our working vocabulary, be it a new area of concentration, a new client base, or an extension of our knowledge in our current areas of practice.

To me, a multilingual writing career would look like this:

Expanded into related areas. I’m doing that, and you may be doing that already, too. For example, you write about fashion, so it makes sense to add jewelry and other accessories writing. Or maybe you write for the consumer side and you want to add trade writing in that same industry.

Reaching out to clients in related areas. You write for pet owners, so it makes sense to connect with those people who serve them — kennels, pet shops, and groomers. Think about your favorite area of writing as a circle with a myriad of lines connecting it to so many other areas. No one client or industry is independent. Even doctors need suppliers, office support, insurance, and billing services.

New knowledge that opens doors. Right now I’m working with a client whose industry was related (see my first point), but not all that familiar to me. So I studied. The result has been a great relationship and the potential to reach more clients with my newly acquired knowledge.

Accommodating nature toward clients. It should be part of our writing business to put the needs of our clients first, but there are plenty of freelance writers who don’t manage this simple customer service move. Don’t be a patsy, but do try to create a partnership with your client, and give them 100 percent of your attention and effort.

Writers, how do you create your multilingual writing career?