What worked well for you in your translation business last year?

Dmitry

Let's kick off our first business-related discussion! The idea of this community is to do some intense knowledge-sharing, brainstorming and exchange of ideas so I welcome everyone to share their own opinions. Remember: we're all here to support each other and bring everyone up and not down, that's why every opinion matters.

To make things easy we can launch discussions by asking questions. If you have questions you are more than welcome to post them on this forum and other members are encouraged to share their opinions.

Since it's the end of a year let's talk about the results of the past year. Can you please answer one simple question: what worked well for you in your business last year and why do you think it worked well?

Dmitry

I'll start with myself: this year I've seen a lot of improvements in my positioning on the market as a video game localization specialist. This happened largely because I choose to focus on one niche only: video games and did everything I could to secure my position in that niche.

Of course, I could've done a lot more and there's a lot of work lies ahead of me in 2017, but my overall share of video game localization projects has increased by more than 50% and now it's a major part of my income. It feels great because:
a) I love video games
b) I love making money translating video games
c) Video game localization helps me become a better translator because every single game is absolutely unique in terms of used style, terminology, lore, etc., pushing my limits as a translator