Written by Canada-based Rwandan author, Sim Ngezahayo, Essentials of Career Management for Language Professionals: A Blueprint for Mastering your Career and Leading a Healthy Work-Life Balance is a self-help book which sheds light on how a language professional can succeed in their career and maintain a work-life balance. Ngezahayo who is also an entrepreneur, multilingual professional, and business executive declares that the book covers two main topics. “The first aspect of it focuses on career management,” he explains. “Here, I unpacked actionable tips that language professionals can apply to their careers and avoid common pitfalls as they also harness success. The second aspect focuses on work-health balance, which was inspired by the language professionals’ challenges during and after the coronavirus pandemic.” Ngezahayo asserts that the book resulted from his experience as a freelance language professional who later started his own language service provider, Golden Lines Translation, Inc. “Throughout the management process,” he continues, “I gained a deeper understanding of the challenges facing language professionals and so decided to write this book to guide them in their career journey.” The evolution of technology has made the language-service provision even harder for linguists to navigate, let alone rely on. According to Ngezahayo, the only hope that remains for language experts in the professional cosmos is to foster, maintain, and rely solely on their competitive edge. With actionable success tips and prompts, Essentials of Career Management for Language Professionals provides a seamlessly failsafe approach to successful mastery of the language career, both at work and in real life. As a senior business executive, Ngezahayo demonstrates through this book how thriving language professionals will succeed based on how well they define their goals, streamline their services, and promote their brands. In this competitive era, being enterprise savvy, harnessing language technology, and sticking with your niche will bring your career success to your fingertips. Tackling the target audience, the father of two said the book is intended for people who specialise in language practice — all professionals whose job revolves around languages, such as translators, interpreters, localizers, content creators, editors, publishers, linguistic validators, among others. “In fact,” added Ngezahayo, “some of my readers and professional reviewers mentioned to me that this book applies to a general audience, which means that anyone can benefit from reading it and applying its principles to their career. Therefore, I am hoping that people across various professions will improve their personal and professional lives, thanks to this book.” Talking about the book’s uniqueness, he declared it is the first to address in greater detail the challenges around the language industry as far as he knows. “It is a complete treatise specifically designed to guide the reader step by step on how to start and be successful by simply applying the essentials I unpacked. In addition, the book also covers a financial part as I prepare language professionals for retirement,” he explained. Ngezahayo noted that the whole process to write and publish the book took about a year, adding that it was smooth because he worked with an experienced and globally renowned publisher, TellWell Publishing, whose main offices are located in Canada. The author started developing his writing abilities two decades ago after enrolling in linguistics and literature school where one of their core assignments was reading and writing short essays. He says that he developed a love for languages at that time and decided to pursue language translation and interpretation studies at the University of Rwanda. Ngezahayo plans on sharing his book with as many language professionals as possible by launching it, speaking at networking events, and delivering webinars. His first in-person launch is scheduled on April 8, in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. People can primarily order the book directly from Ngezahayo’s website or find it on online sales channels such as Amazon, Kindle, Indigo, Barnes and Noble, and Booktopia, among others.
