Taught by Sara Maria Hasbun
Reviewed by Anna Livermore
I love CPD. My inner nerd rejoices at the prospect of starting a new course or attending a professional event. Nowadays, there are infinite opportunities to learn. So much so that it can be hard to choose from a gazillion options that come in the shape of online courses, professional conferences, live webinars, mentoring sessions, books, podcasts, blogs…
The CPD I dedicate time to usually falls into four categories: acquiring a new skill relevant to my specialization, improving my technical knowledge (CAT or DTP tools), keeping up with trends in the industry I specialize in or learning better business practices. Even so, the choice of available CPD options can be overwhelming. What helps me stay focused is going back to my marketing plan and my business goals, then choosing CPD opportunities that can help me achieve them.
One of the courses I completed recently is International Keyword Research for Translators from Meridian Linguistics. It is a short online course that provides a step by step guide for translators on working with international keywords. I intentionally use ‘working with’ instead of ‘translating’ because translation is only a small part of the overall process.
What this course is:
Exactly what it says on the tin: a guide outlining every step of creating a keyword file for a client in your target language for the target market. You will find out what needs to be discussed before you start work, what tools are available (and useful) for different stages of the project, what those stages are, why simply translating keywords from the source language does not cut it, and what your final product should look like.
Despite being short, the course packs a lot of information. The best thing about it is the way it relates the best practices for keyword research to the language industry and to the linguist’s role in that process.
What this course is not:
This is not a course that will help you optimize your own webpage, although some aspects of it can be useful. On the whole, its focus is researching keywords for clients for target regions.
It will answer a lot of questions about keywords—types of keywords, where to find them, how to choose them, and how they relate to an overall SEO strategy—but it is not a replacement for general SEO courses.
Bottom line:
I highly recommend this course: the information in it is distilled to help improve the specific skill of working with international keywords. It is designed and delivered by people who over the years have developed professional expertise in the field. I have been working with SEO and multilingual keyword research for several years now and still took away a lot from this course, which will help me deliver even more value to my clients.
Anna Livermore is an English>Russian and German>Russian translator and former marketing specialist. With a linguistics degree from the Oxford Brookes University and a Professional Diploma in marketing, she came to specialize in translating marketing materials, corporate communications, website content and various components of SEM. She is a member of the Slavic Languages Division’s Social Media team. Contact: livermore.translations@gmail.com
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