It has been a while since I last posted on this site, so it’s about time to catch up on some of what happened since then.
Next to that, the main website also got a slight brush-up – then it shouldn’t be necessary for everybody to keep contacting me with offers for making us a professional looking website 😉
Websites
Sometimes, a website is just quietly doing its job in the background, without getting any updates – no changes or additions.
It was like that with Inidox.com for a while, since several other websites got all the attention, especially:
Inidox Data – a website for the data analytics part of Inidox, talking about everything related to data, from capturing them, over organizing and storing them in a database, data warehouse, data lake, or a data lakehouse, cleansing and wrangling, analyzing, reporting, storytelling, and setting up dashboards. It is about ideas and methods as well as tools, but mostly about purpose and value of doing this.
All of Life XL – a continuation and expansion of some of the creative writing activities from various other sites, all brought together in one place, to act as kind of a sanctuary: a place where you can spend some time just reading, without anything popping up, and without comments, likes, or other disturbances dragging you out of that “deep thought” mood that reading can bring you in.
And there were other activities too, now either on hold or a bit on the low side, so that the two above can get most of the attention.
For instance, a third site, Inidox Tech, focusing on technical writing and translation, is there now but will need – and get – more focus along the way.
All of these have been supplemented with showcase pages on LinkedIn, to enable easy communication with the world:
Inidox Data showcase page
All of Life XL showcase page
Inidox Translation and Technical Writing showcase page
Please feel free to follow the showcase pages (and click on the bell symbol on them, to enable notifications) as this is where you’ll see when there are new posts on the websites. Another way to do this is through RSS on the websites themselves, which is available on all of them – those who use this amazing concept will know what to do, or else, please just ask.
Translation Trends
What’s Going Down?
Inidox has seen a sharp decline in general translation tasks from translation agencies. It looks like this kind of activity is going through serious changes now: where machine translation has been introduced in almost all tasks over the last few years, it is now all about AI, and probably, many previous clients of the translation agencies are now doing their translations on their own, using an LLM engine such as ChatGPT or what may be built-into the word processing or other software they use.
This is a pity, because the overall quality of the AI translations is so that it really needs a careful quality assurance step afterwards, to end up having a decent quality. And that step is clearly not always being taken: the Internet is now full of AI generated texts and translations that, at times, leave an impression of work half done and quality not cared about.
The consequence of this new trend is that visitors to the website will stop reading the contents on it.
It looks like the situation is causing many translation agencies to struggle. Some have worked on their service offerings, now offering to do the AI translation for their clients, but the overall situation is that – as it looks from here – the agencies are getting fewer tasks, need fewer translators to work for them, and also, unfortunately, have become less financially stable. The latter implies that it is more risky to work for them, as they not always pay for the work.
For Inidox, having worked as a supplier of translation, editing, proofreading, and also post editing of machine translation and AI translation for translation agencies, it all means that this activity is phasing out.
What’s Going Up?
We are still happy to work with clients who need translation to be done well, and we are open to many constructions – including the post editing tasks – if only it means a focus on delivering good quality translations.
Larger and more creative translation tasks, such as book translations, have taking over from the ad-hoc translations of previous years. That’s great too, and we are very much open to more tasks in this category.
Technical Writing
After a few projects during the last couple of years, it has become difficult to bid in on the, rarely, announced roles. It seems to me that there is a bigger focus than ever on knowing very specific tools, even such tools that are used by very few companies. Some of these roles are then advertised again several times, because it obviously isn’t possible to find people with such rare and very specific skills.
My suggestion is to relax a bit on the requirements and think about what the task really is about: perhaps the tool can be learned easily, when first the project starts? Or if there is a group of people working together, then maybe some are experienced with tool, so that the others don’t have to be?
It is not unique for technical writing, but I would say that it does live in the technical part of the business world, more than anywhere else: that idea of candidates for a role being a 100% match to a set of ultra-rare skill requirements. It sometimes makes companies tell, when journalists interview them, that it is impossible to find skilled workforce, so maybe they will move the business abroad.
Well – sometimes it makes sense to set the expectations after the availability of skills and ressources, so that your business plans with something that is possible. For documentation, it shouldn’t be that complicated – there are other tools that can be used, and the special ones can be learned, if needed. The 95% remaining needs for the task can probably be fulfilled by the available consultants. Just saying.
Inidox offers a very open and flexible approach to writing tasks, and will be happy to work with tools that aren’t already on the skills list. We will learn, don’t worry.
Contents
Contents writing, “influencing”, and other types of creative writing are also part of Inidox’s business, and requests for such work are very much welcome.
It can cost less than you might think. For instance, if you already have some material that can be posted, and you simply want this get a broader reach with the influencer’s personal touch to it, such as comments or being put into a wider perspective, then a few influencers spending each a couple of hours per month will do magic, and make your brand better known. If you want content written from scratch, it will take longer, but then it may bring you value for a while to come.
Data Analytics
Data analytics is set to become more important for us, going forward, as there is a huge demand in the market for working with data, making use of data and the insights derived from them for guiding decisions, and for general communication.
Virtually every company has such a need, and it can possibly be met by the people already in the company, if they have the time for it. But during some periods, you’ll find that things are busy, and in other situations maybe you just need some extra hands to get started with a new tool or idea, after which you expect to settle with a fixed staff on the area.
Just be aware that ever since databases were invented, it has been a goal for many organizations that “everybody” in the organization should be able to make reports themselves. And it never worked out that way. Many tools have been marketed for that purpose, but there is, effectively, only a small group of the employees who can do it. It is not because the others are unable to learn what to do, but they are occupied with all the other tasks they were hired to do – and it takes some time to get into the data, find out how they can be used, and how to apply tools and techniques on them to get useful reports out of it. If someone doesn’t have that time, then it won’t be done.
So, this is such a situation that benefits from having dedicated people doing it. And, as needed, some extra consultants hired in to help.
Just a hint! Inidox is, of course, happy to help with this. And we take the same approach as with the technical writing: there are many tools, and we can’t be experts in all of them, but that doesn’t matter a lot – it takes only a very short time to learn how to use a specific tool, or to get better at it if already known, and all the rest of the work is more or less the same, no matter the technical setup.