Update to this post: Make sure to read the comments for more excellent tips from experienced translators!
Today is the first day of the winter session of the online course I teach for beginning translators. It’s an occasion that always prompts me to think of the first day I thought of myself as a translator, and what I did correctly and incorrectly during that stressful and exciting first year as a freelancer. I’ve been mulling over some of the best and worst decisions I made when I first started freelancing, and I hope that readers will feel free to add their own tips. Here I’m mainly including advice for people who are in their first year of freelancing, but some of these tips apply to experienced translators as well.
DO keep a record of all of your contacts. During the first year you’ll be doing a lot of marketing; at times during my first year, I was doing about 80% marketing and 20% translation. Trust me; a lot of this effort is wasted if you don’t have a good system for tracking who you’ve contacted, what the response was (if any) and how you followed up if there was a response. This could take the form of a computerized contact management system, a spreadsheet, or even a Rolodex-type file, but make sure you save this information.
DO NOT take on work that you know is wrong for you just because you need work. This is a mistake that I made several times during my beginner days. For example, at one point I let a client convince me to translate into French and then have my work proofed by a native speaker. This resulted in a lower hourly rate for me since I write very slowly in French, and also in a lower-quality end product than what the client would have received from a native French speaker. At the time I remember thinking “…well, if the client thinks it’s OK…” whereas now this is one of my non-negotiables no matter what the client says; I translate into English only.
DO ask prospective clients in your area for an informational interview. To give my beginner self some credit, this is one thing that I think I did well. I e-mailed a variety of prospective clients in the Boulder/Denver area and asked if I could come in to learn some more about their business and how I might, at some point, fit in. I think that this took the pressure off the prospective client because I wasn’t aggressively pumping them for work, and I also correctly theorized that I presented myself better in person than on paper. Of the five or so prospective clients I visited, I ended up getting work from three of them soon after.
DO NOT contact agency owners directly. Of the beginner mistakes I made, this one was probably the worst; I used the local translator’s association directory to find local agencies, then I phoned up the owners. Now I realize that although association directories and client websites are a great resource, wasting someone’s time is a very poor first impression. Always use the general contact information provided on a prospective client’s website, and avoid cold phone calls in nearly every situation.
DO ask for very specific instructions on your first few projects. Unless you’ve misrepresented your experience, most of your clients will realize that you’re a beginner and won’t mind doing a little hand-holding. So ask them: what do they mean by “reproduce the formatting exactly”? Should you do something special with handwritten text? What if something is illegible? What if there are abbreviations that you don’t understand?
DO NOT set your rates suspiciously low. I think that especially in a down economy, many beginning freelancers are tempted to set their rates markedly below the going rate for their languages. I still cringe at some of the rates I accepted when I was first starting out. In one sense, I think that offering attractive terms can help get your business of the ground; in another sense, I think that lowball rates attract bottom-feeding clients who are looking for high-quality work for minimum wage. Personally, I think it’s a better idea to sweeten your offer in other ways; maybe offering night or weekend work without a rush charge, or being available on holidays when other translators aren’t working.
DO set reasonable expectations for the growth and success of your business. Of all the advice I give beginners, I would tag this as the most important. I’ve been contacted many times by beginning translators who say that they’re “so discouraged” because they’ve sent out 25 applications in the last month and they still have no work. In my own case, I contacted over 400 prospective clients during my first year in business and it still took about 18 months until I was replacing the income from my previous full-time job. I think that for most people, it takes at least a year to get your business to the point where you are working more than you are looking for work; once you break through this point, you will hopefully have a freelance business that becomes like a regular job where you have a great deal of control over your schedule and income.
Please feel free to add your own advice to beginners too!
Excellent summary! Good luck with the online course; I am sure it will be fantastic. I would add:
* DO NOT TAKE on more words than you can realistically handle without losing sleep. I know it’s tempting when someone calls you with 3,000 words for tomorrow, but especially in the beginning, you need to start slow. To this day I don’t take crazy-rush projects like that. I know my limitations (=I am not that fast, and I don’t like extreme time pressure because I can’t guarantee a high-quality product), and I stick to them. I am in awe of people who can routinely do 3,000 -4,000 words a day. I’d be setting myself up for failure.
* DO DEMAND PROFESSIONAL-LEVEL PRICES. Amen on your post on that. You have to start high, even if you are just starting out. Of course experienced translators should earn more, but on top of that high base. You will not be paid a higher rate by the same client (or others, as word on rates spreads fast) once you accepted a lower rate. Why would they pay you more when the client knows you will do it for less?
*DO TAKE time to take care of your physical well-being. You don’t need to be glued to your computer 24/7: go out and clear your head by running, taking a walk, biking, getting some fresh air, etc. You need a healthy body to have a healthy mind!
*DO ESTABLISH a good network of colleagues: there’s enough work for all of us, and this is a business of referrals. We’ve sent work to our trusted colleagues for years, and everyone wins. I strongly recommend getting involved in the local translation organization as well.
*Do KEEP GOOD RECORDS for tax purposes. Lunch with a prospective client? Keep the receipt! Miles driven to see your accountant! Keep track of the miles = tax deduction.
I would also add:
*Do NOT get in the habit of talking or complaining about “the agency’s rates”.
They are your rates – thinking of them as the agency’s means abdicating control over them, which can lead to many undesirable results, such as agencies unilaterally lowering the rates (after all if they are “the agency’s rates”, it’s the agency who decides whether they go up or down, not you!)
I would also add “Please do NOT contact an agency repeatedly asking why they have not given you a project”. We have removed translators with good credentials from our database because they have crossed the line from persistent to downright annoying. We may not have contacted you because we don’t have anything in your language pair and calling every few days is not going to change that!
* SAVE ENOUGH MONEY TO PAY YOUR TAXES. Remember there’s no employer withholding money from your paycheck anymore. You may need to send up to 30% or so of your earnings to Uncle Sam (more or less depending on where you live).
* ASK THE PROJECT MANAGER IF YOU HAVE QUESTIONS. Bosses and managers would far rather have you ask them questions than do something totally wrong and try to hide it and hope they won’t notice. Don’t wait until you turn the project in, either. Send them an email right when the question comes up. If you’re embarrassed to ask the PM, try asking another translator who can act as a mentor to you first.
* DO CONSIDER PROOFREADING JOBS. If you proofread the work of other, more experienced, translators, you will quickly learn to recognize the difference between good and bad translations. This will help you see things from your client’s perspective and make you a better translator.
* BE PROFESSIONAL. Even if you’re working from home and you’re in your pajamas and there is chaos reigning in your home, you must shield your client from this. A client wants a translator who interacts by e-mail *as if* they were wearing a suit and sitting in a fastidious, dictionary-laden office. The client wants to pretend you’re a computer genius, a language genius, a business genius. Make it easy for them to pretend this and they will love you.
Corrine,
Many of these are good tips for anyone starting their own business, not just for translators. I’m going to remember this and look back over time…it’s not easy!!
Thanks much.
All good wishes,
Anne
Think about what agencies can offer you: the option to say no to a job when you are busy, when you don’t feel like it, or when you want to go on a holiday. An end client may go and seek another translator if you can’t help them, as they need the job done (and this may erode your clientele), but an agency will just give you a ring two weeks later with a new project. And this is a major advantage worth considering when comparing agencies’ fees and fees for end clients.
Excellent advice!
What I’d like to add: REMEMBER YOU RUN YOUR OWN BUSINESS. Your clients are your business partners, not your employers. This means that you determine your rates and payment terms, not the client. You can negotiate them, but ultimately you’re the one who decides what you do and don’t accept. So if you are unhappy about your rates, payments terms, conditions, etc., don’t complain, but negotiate better rates and conditions!
I am a beginner and I’ll learn this article by heart 😉
Thanks for the advice!
Thank you SO much for this. A lot of the points were advice I’d already been given by people in business, or things that I’d learned during the whole process of qualifying. But even if it was something I knew already, it’s good to be reminded now and again.
Loved the reminder about realistic expectations. I was guilty of this before I even got my first job (I’m currently on client #2… so still very early days), after contacting countless agencies, replying to various jobs posted on forums, and getting no response. It still probably only amounted to a few dozen attempts, though – really not enough to be getting discouraged about at that point.
And I shall be keeping a note of who I’ve contacted from now on! Better late than never…
Wow! Even more great tips here, these could be a post in themselves, thanks to everyone who offered suggestions and those who have enjoyed the post.
Having just started as freelance, I do indeed keep track of contacts in an xls sheet, incl. rates I offered and the counter-offer. I include the rate structure since it seems each agency has a different discount rate for fuzzies and 100%/repetitions, as well as the payment terms, and anything that may impact my decision to accept the deal. Once the client and I have reached an agreement, I only have to transfer that information into my finance info.
As for the tax money, I put it on a saving account so that I get some interests and I do not inadvertently use it for other purposes.
And a question for Janine: what you’re describing is close to harassment. However, I’m thinking of reminding a few people of my great skills and availability a few times a year and would like to hear whether once per quarter/semester would still sound too much for you.
/ml
Corinne,
Thanks for another invaluable post. When asking for an informational interview, who did you request to have it with? Or did you just ask for an interview and leave it up to them to decide?
@Holly, if I recall correctly, I sent an initial inquiry to the general e-mail address on the agency’s website, then if someone responded to me, I asked them for the informational interview. Good luck to you!
Thanks a lot for this wonderful post! I’m starting my freelance career and the tips and comments are really useful. Specially, knowing that it probably will take more than a year to be able to live from this job. Patience!
Thanks Cristina and best of luck to you! And yes,the first year as a freelancer is a lot of patience and hard work, but you’ll get there if you stick with it!
Corinne,
Any plans to release a digital version of your book – Kindle or ebook?
I’m someone travelling the world long-term, running an internet marketing business. With a second language under my belt, when I was first looking for ways to earn income while travelling, I’d have read your book in a heartbeat. However, ordering the paperback while travelling is inconvenient, digital is much more accessible.
There’s quite a few “Digital Nomads” kicking around, and people tempted by the lifestyle – many of them with language proficiencies and interests – you could be the first to really market freelance translation to them. It’s a burgeoning movement; check out DigitalNomadAcademy.com for an idea of the demand for this stuff.
I think there’s a great business opportunity for you here if you brought out a digital version of your book, maybe alongside a well-marketed website. Not to mention real potential for a partnership with one of the “Lifestyle Design” businesses like DNA.com mentioned above, getting your book in front of their audience.
Let me know if you’re interested in these ideas, I’d be happy to talk further.
Hello Richie and thanks for your message. I’m actually working with BookBaby right now on a Kindle, iPad, etc. edition of my book. Thanks for asking!
Hello! Thanks for this excellent post! But I have a few more questions that I hope one of you more experienced translators might be able to answer (thanks in advance).
I’m a beginner translator, and I start working as a live translator (English to Spanish) on Tuesday for the “Mary Poppins” Theatrical Production in my country. Approximately, I’ll be working 12-hour shifts, 6 days per week, translating for the Disney-USA and The London Theatre crews.
I’m only 19, yet I’ve been studying english for the past 16 years, and I lived in America for a year, too. So I’m really wondering what I should charge them. I’m meeting on Monday to talk over my fees and over-all details, and honestly I was indeed thinking about lowering my rates since I am a beginner.
But now, I want to start out well and get it right from the very beginning. If any of you were in my position, what would you do? Any idea of how much I should charge, or an average?
Any comments are very much appreciated, and congratulations, again, on the awesome post!
Thanks 😀
Hello,
I don’t know if you can help me but I am an unexperienced translator currently trying to obtain further experience and I am unsure what rate per word I should be asking for. I work within the Portuguese-English language pair and don’t quite know what to indicate to an employer when they ask that I indicate my wages. Do you have any suggestions on what a realistic rate would be at this stage? I would greatly appreciate your help.
Thanks,
Daniel
Hi Daniel and congratulations on launching your translation business. I would recommend a few things: a) calculate how much you need/want to earn and how fast you translate; that will give you an idea of the per-word or per-hour rate that will result in your target income; b) look at translation industry compensation surveys published by translators’ associations and see what they say. Unfortunately the ATA study is out of date and out of print, but other associations should have more recent ones available.