Wiktionary defines sticker shock as “Disgust, shock or fright upon learning the price of an item offered for sale,” and this roughly describes the reaction of many would-be translation buyers when they learn the price of a professional translation. This leaves the professional translator with a dilemma: how to handle a sticker-shocked client.
In my experience, sticker-shocked clients come in two basic flavors: translation buyers who are somewhat informed about the translation market and translation buyers who are not at all informed about the translation market. I feel that I can deal fairly well with the first group: generally low-paying translation agencies that are out of touch with what quality-conscious translators charge. Because I feel (or at least hope) that these translation buyers have some inkling of what good translations cost, I don’t tend to get overly involved with them. As in:
Agency: “Our budget for this project is X.”
Translator: “I appreciate the contact, but my base rate is X times 2.”
Agency: “You can’t offer a discount?”
Translator: “I’m fortunate to be very busy at those rates, so unfortunately not.”
I find it much harder to deal with potential clients who, through no fault of their own, are completely out of touch with how much a professional translation will cost. In these situations, I’m often unsure how to allow the potential client to save face while delivering the news that the project will cost two or five or ten times what the potential client has budgeted. As in:
Potential client describes a really interesting-sounding translation project that is right up the translator’s alley. Then, the conversation turns to money.
Potential client: “So, can you give me an idea of approximately how much this would cost?”
Translator: “Well, in order to give you a firm quote I would need to see the full text of the book and we would need to talk about your deadline, delivery format, etc.”
Potential client: “But just as a ballpark figure, can you give me an idea?”
Translator: “Right, just as an example I translated a book of similar length a couple of months ago and the total cost was $7,500.”
Potential client: “Sorry? You mean $750, right?”
Over the past year I’ve had several conversations similar to the one above. These leave me feeling terrible for a few reasons: often, the potential client is *really* excited about the project. Sometimes it’s a book they’ve written themselves, sometimes it’s their grandmother’s journal that’s just been found in the family attic, sometimes it’s a book on a topic they feel passionate about and for which there is very little information available in English. I’m also unsure how much it’s worth helping these potential clients from sticker shock to acceptance. Sometimes I empathize with them (“I know, if you’ve never used a translator before it’s a shock to find out how much it costs”), sometimes I try a little client education (“I’m sure that you can find someone cheaper or even free, but consider the risk of ending up with an unusable translation”) and sometimes I just try to end the conversation. However, I feel that there must be a better way to handle this and bring these clients around to an awareness of what professional translation costs.
Any sticker shock coping strategies from the readers?
I just read a good article on how to set a customer up to be more accepting of the price you set (general business info, not specific to translation): http://www.erica.biz/2010/arent-buying/
I think it also helps to educate—not just in mentioning the cheaper alternatives, but also to explain what they are paying for and the time that goes into it. Especially if the person represents a business, I think it’s worth it to briefly outline that the rough estimate of $7,500 means approximately X number of hours, which includes research, translation, editing, and the like. Sometimes they don’t even grasp the amount of time and effort that goes into the job, and framing it with that information at least helps them see that the job is bigger than they understood it to be.
An, in the end, I take a little comfort remembering that other freelance professionals deal with the same client education issues: http://clientsfromhell.tumblr.com/post/498720695/a-quick-and-easy-gig-from-craigslist
You describe the painfulness of those types of conversations well!
As your examples suggest, these types of dialogues take place with private clients for whom professional translation services are often financially out of reach.
When the sticker shock moment (or simply the price negotiation phase) takes place with corporate clients, I tend to use the power of silence as a negotiation tool. Serendipity, that is the topic of my last blog post (http://bit.ly/cLSlH5, shameless plug).
When private clients are eager to know the content of grandma’s diary, dad’s correspondence and so on – but don’t need a full-fledged written translation, I offer either:
– to read the material and write up a synopsis, or
– to read the prose and record it on tape in the other language.
This fulfills their yearning to “know what it says” at a fraction of the cost of a polished written translation, and sometimes, that is all private clients are really asking for.
I really like your idea about doing a synopsis or or making a tape for them. This is a great suggestion because it helps us to still get some interesting projects for a good rate for the pared down project, and to offer someone a solution.
I came across a site the other day that is for people to be anonymous and tell “funny” stories about clients. However, for half of those, I thought the “service provider” was missing the point and the chance to offer a solution to their client, rather than making fun of them in an online forum (albeit anonymously). You take exactly the correct approach, Patricia: sticking to your guns, but giving the client a positive, proactive solution (whether or not they choose to accept it).
I recently wrote a blog post about why translators shouldn’t lower their rates (http://tinyurl.com/yaptxu4). Shortly afterwards, I was contacted by a private client who wanted her novel translated and had a very different price in mind than I could offer her, so I expected yet another sticker shock reaction. Instead, it turned out she had read my blog post and she replied saying “Good for you for not lowering your rate just for me!” It was so great to finally have someone understand! 🙂
I have found that it often helps to explain how much time you will need to do the translation as those private clients who don’t know how much a translation will cost also have no idea how much work it really is and sometimes expect you to translate 10,000 words in a day. So when I give a quote to a potential direct client, I usually include something like: “I would need XY days to complete your translation. For your information, a professional translator working full-time translates on average 2000 words per day.” The price is often much better accepted when the client realizes that it represents 5 days of work instead of just 1 as he initially thought.
This is exactly what I experience from time to time, which is quite amusing, because the country and people are different, but the attitudes are the same. Obviously, many don’t and will never view translation as a profession that should be paid decently or at least at the same level as other professional services.
I have been using two basic strategies to handle this type of situations. The first one is sort of preventive: when I initially feel that the client is unlikely to react to my quote positively (e.g. when they are still not decided whether they need the translation), I simply start by giving them the word price. They normally go: “Is this just for one word? Even for prepositions?”, and this basically ends the conversation. The other strategy is to simply convert the word rate into a monthly wage so that the customer can evaluate the quote by comparing it to what they earn themselves. Once, I quoted for a 80,000-word job, and when the client was shocked by the price, I reasoned that the job will take about two months, so my monthly earnings will be 40,000 words x word rate, which turned out to be quite an average wage. And this reasoning proved to be effective in the end: the client confirmed the price.
I have received many offers with the exact phrasing you mentioned above from especially one specific translation company and I have responded more or less the same as you Corinne, plus sometimes adding that the only discount I give is for fuzzy and perfect matches, since this is the only time the project goes faster for me.
I will also have to try the technique from Roman and convert it into a monthly salary or even daily salary to give the client a frame of reference.
Translation of books are especially tricky. The only books that I have found worthwhile translating are business books. I am translating one right now and I am paid my regular rate. Another category would be books that you are extremely passionate about and can do as a “side kick” with lower rates just for the love of this book.
Hi Corinne, I’ve just discovered your podcast on itunes. I have downloaded some but haven’t listened yet. I’m excited about it. It seems that most of the blog content on translation that I’ve read this week is to do with pricing and how people misconceive our work.
Christine, I think that the sentence that you suggest could be a good idea for helping people realise the rates we ask. It’s annoying, as Roman said, that people think our rates for a preposition should be lower than for a 26-letter compound word. Those 2-letter words often change the meaning drastically.
Though I’ve not done that before, I think Patricia could be right in saying that a synopsis is probably all that is needed. Has anyone done this?
Nic at crosslingo
Great timing. I just got one of these requests from the former type (experienced buyer bargain hunting) today, and used your response: I’m quite busy at my current rates, so unfortunately I can’t accept your offer at this time.
The second case (new translation buyers) is why I generally don’t deal with individuals or first-time buyers of translation.
When I think it’s a worthy cause, I’ll do the translation pro bono rather than charging a lower rate. This is because even if I charged lower than my usual rates, the buyer would still feel ripped off if they were expecting the rate to be an order of magnitude lower.
Good stuff. Potential clients experience sticker shock when they see our written quotes quite frequently, and we look at it as an opportunity for doing gentle client education — unless we perceive that we are so far out of the range or that the potential client has such an unrealistic idea of what she wants to pay that it is not a good use of our time. In our experiences, most potential clients do understand that this is a professional service that cannot be had for dirt cheap. Love Ryan’s comment about “experienced bargain hunting buyer” and we have done something similar: we have, on select occassions, offered the non-proft rate, which we only like to use if the client is somehow involved in the non-profit world.
Good post, Corinne.
I’m convinced that many clueless reactions to pricing issues from potentially good clients result from ignorance, pure and simple.
Which is encouraging.
After all, ignorance ain’t stupidity — by proceeding to provide helpful information in a clear way you can actually bring them up to speed.
Here’s an example: our colleague Ros Schwartz has commented that many clients simply do not have any idea of how long it takes to translate, say, a page of text. Her suggestion: give them a table with some numbers and explanations (“a standard page like this has 250 words, and takes me an hour or so to translate”).
In your table, you also give lead times necessary to translate & revise X pages, as that will help them focus (“so if you have an 16-page brochure, remember to contact me as soon as you can to let me know it’s in the pipeline, and then give us Y days to actually produce it.”)
I also think that even a sticker-shocked client can shift into more realistic mode if he/she/actually sees what can be done with (say) the home page of a website, or a page or two of an important document.
Many people involved in text production don’t really measure their own investment in time (writing, fine-tuning, re-fine-tuning…). Just as many translators track words, not hours.
Very good topic indeed and very useful comments. Translators (or freelancers in general) still have a lot to do to gain the accreditation other careers have :/
The dialogs in this article look like the everyday life of the freelance translator… overall companies don’t have much knowledge about translation and tend to underestimate the costs.
How to convince them the service is worth the price? This is the real deal…
Thank you, Corinne, for the article.Some translators have to lower the quote just because they need money or they want to stay competitive. But this is not a good way to stay competitive.
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