Promoting entrepreneurial mindset as a means of securing linguist's professional success: the PROtranslation project experience

The article discusses mentors’ observations made while assisting students in growing their soft skills and fostering the way of thinking that in turn help them develop the competencies young professionals need in the language services market. Under modern market conditions, a linguist's competitive edge and career perspectives depend not so much on their translation or interpreting skills as on the ability to sell these skills and to become an efficient and problem-free component of the employer’s or client’s business process system. The ability to provide adequate language services and interact with potential and actual clients or employers as well as with coworkers in a team project is based on the competencies that can be developed only together with the so-called entrepreneurial mindset, which implies the ability to analyze the status quo, make decisions based on the analysis, assume the responsibility for the decisions, take risks, be flexible, quickly adapt to the market changes, etc. Undoubtedly, promoting the development of these qualities should become one of the tasks of the higher education institutions and career enhancement centers involved in the education and training of language professionals. The article examines individual components of the competencies essential for a modern linguist’s successful career growth, as well as their relationship to the way of thinking mentioned earlier. The article also presents the experience of assisting students in developing this way of thinking as part of the training programs provided by the PROtranslation mentoring project for linguists.