I spend a lot of time explaining the merits of agencies to translators who work with direct clients, and explaining the merits of direct clients to translators who work with agencies. So, I thought I’d offer my explanation to the whole translation blogosphere and solicit your thoughts! Here we go:
Translation agencies are great, because:
- If the agency does its job right, you just translate. You are freed from such tasks as explaining to the client why the words aren’t in the same order in the translation as they are in the original document, or explaining to the client that words like “software” and “information” are not pluralized as “softwares” and “informations” in English.
- If the agency likes you, they will keep you busy. They will fill your inbox with requests, rather than the other way around.
- They have a sense of what you do, and what the constraints of your job are. They know not to ask whether you could translate 25,000 words for 3 days from now, or whether you charge “for the little words.” By the way, that was an actual question I received from a potential client. I apologize if my answer, “Only if you want them translated,” sounded rude or glib.
But translation agencies have their drawbacks, such as:
- In the agency market, a translator can only compete on quality to a certain extent. It’s in an agency’s best interest to use the cheapest translator whose quality and reliability fit the agency’s purposes. An agency that really likes you might pay you 10% more than what they pay their other translators, but they’re not going to pay you 100% more, whereas a direct client might.
- They can’t afford to be loyal to you. A direct client might shuffle deadlines, pay rush printing charges or have their own staff work on a weekend in order to snag a translator who they really love. But agencies rarely will: if you’re not available within a reasonable amount of time, they’ll call the next person on their list.
- Many agencies are not transparent about their teams and processes. When you work on a large project for an agency, the agency may refuse to let you communicate with the other translators. They may decline to tell you whether your work is being proofed a) by another translator in your language pair, b) by a speaker of the target language only or c) not at all.
Direct clients are great, because:
- At a certain point, you will reach “terminal velocity” in the agency market. You will be charging as much as even the highest-paying agencies will pay, and you can’t increase your speed beyond a certain point if you want to maintain quality. So, the next logical place to look is the direct client market, where the price ceiling is much higher.
- The business relationship is between you and them. Normally, you can communicate either with the person who wrote the source document or the person who is going to use the target document. In 11+ years of working with agencies, I’ve been in contact with the document’s writer or end user exactly zero times. To put it diplomatically, this model has its problems.
- Quality is a major competitive advantage. I know for sure (and Chris Durban has said this as well), that some of my direct clients use me for their mission-critical translations; when they’re applying for a large grant or producing a report that will go to potential donors, they’re willing to pay my rate. But for other, less mission-critical things, they use either agencies or less expensive freelancers.
- Questions and feedback are not only possible, but welcome. In the agency model, there’s pretty much an impenetrable membrane between the translator and the end client; in the direct client market, the back-and-forth flow is what makes the work more satisfying and the translation more accurate and more readable.
But direct clients have their drawbacks, such as:
- Sometimes, they have no idea how you work, other than that you change documents from one language to another. 12,000 words for tomorrow? Some direct clients don’t know that that’s laughable. And while you’re at it, why don’t you translate into your non-native language? Or interpret for their upcoming conference? It’s not their fault, it’s just not their industry.
- They may need you only sporadically, or for huge amounts of work at one time. Some direct clients only need a translator for a small job a couple of times a year, for example when they issue earnings reports or press releases. Others may have an onslaught of documents (grant applications, RFPs) a couple of times a year, and then they need 100,000 words in a month. So you absolutely must have a partner or backup person (more on that in another post).
- Corollary: you really don’t want to turn down their work if you can help it. In the agency market, you can pretty much accept and decline projects at will. As long as you accept at least some of the time, the agency will likely call you again. But if you bail out on a direct client at a key time, your relationship with them may be over, because they have to find someone else immediately (see reference to partner/backup above).
Now, over to you! Thoughts?
Great post and excellent points, Corinne. I also find that building relationships with direct clients can make for a more predictable and stable schedule. Agencies tend to reach out to freelancers at the last-minute. With a direct client, you can spend less of your week or month in panic mode once you start to understand each other’s rhythms.
…and of course I notice the stray hyphen after hitting post. This is why we love revisers… 🙂
OK, here is my thought.
I agree with most of what you say in your post, Corinne.
But that title, that title…
“Not Better Or Worse”?
When one client pays you five hundred dollars, and another one a thousand dollars for exactly the same work, which one is better and which one is worse to have?
At the end of the year when you look at how much you made, it is clear that one good direct client is worth at least half a dozen agencies, even the good ones.
Nice summary!
I like the balance here, which allows translators to decide for themselves which they prefer. I generally prefer the latter, but GOOD agencies certainly keep life nice and simple sometimes… Although existing TMs can be such a nightmare: even if I don’t allow deductions for matches, remaining consistent with something that is dodgy is quite hellish… You also missed out the scenario when a non-native who translates in the other direction is the one proofreading your work. That’s pretty common in my combination. Often it is done by the PMs themselves, too, who often have far too little training and favour the literal and ungrammatical…. 😉 I do have colleague-run agencies that are great, though.
I think another thing to bear in mind is culture – I get the feeling German direct clients are among the nicest out there. This may explain my bias.
I can certainly see the advantages of mostly having direct clients, and in a different life I think I might try harder to find them. However, being the sole provider for a family of three, with a chronically ill husband and a daughter in secondary school, I cannot afford the uncertainty and the irregularity. You may be able to charge (much) more to direct clients, but the responsibility is much bigger too, and you need a lot more time for acquisition. Also, as you point out, if a direct client has a job that is too big to handle on your own, you have to outsource part of it, meaning you’re responsible for the quality of someone else’s work. At this phase in my life, I just don’t want all that hassle – I had enough of that in my previous life as a project manager. So, at least for now, I’ll stick to the better paying agencies…
“Also, as you point out, if a direct client has a job that is too big to handle on your own, you have to outsource part of it, meaning you’re responsible for the quality of someone else’s work”.
As an experienced PM and a translator you are probably experienced enough to handle the awesome responsibility involving another translator(s), which means that you could probably do it much better than your average clueless and often monolingual kid working for an agency.
And when you do it well, you get paid for it at a much higher hourly rate than what you could make working as a translator, and the direct client may stay with your for years if not decades. Typically, when I act as an agency, I make about three times per hour as much as when I translate and my own rates are not exactly low.
The truth is that so many translators are simply too lazy (I would call it intellectual laziness because in the end they have to work harder for less money) to go after direct clients because it would involve a lot of heavy thinking since they would need to figure out a different business strategy, which takes a lot of time. So they go for the low-hanging fruit instead.
It would be a better world, for translators and for their clients, if more translators concentrated their efforts mostly on finding and keeping direct clients, in addition to working also for agencies, but only the good ones.
Oh, I agree with you, mostly, in general. And I’m sure I’d make an excellent co-ordinator of larger jobs, if I wanted to. It’s just that I don’t want to, considering my own personal circumstances (and they have nothing to do with laziness). If they ever change, I might change my way of doing business completely.
I for one am grateful that there are people out there who are happy being translators! I have gone from being a freelance writer and translator to now doing 90% project management and editing, while outsourcing the translation work to others. I definitely prefer it, and I’m making more money – but what I’m doing is not translation, it’s dealing with clients, coordinating with translators, and ensuring quality. It’s a whole different kind of job that requires another level of responsibility. Some people like translating, and we need those people!
I enjoy reading your blogs time to time and I like this one too. Do you mind if I translate this to my native language: Korean? I like to share your nice summary with many newbie translators in Korea.
I love your answer to the client who asked you if you “charged for the little words”. Thank you for your comments and insight.
Thank you for this wonderfully balanced review of two sides of a coin! This is great information for newbies and veterans alike.
I would love to hear more about your postcard technique. How did you go about creating your postcard? How do you find and target prospective clients? Do you do anything more than send a postcard (i.e. do you add a personal note or follow up later)? Ideas for a future post! 🙂
I also love the comment about the ‘little words’. I once had a customer (an individual) who reckoned there were fewer words than I had claimed, as words such as ‘contract’ appeared twenty times in the document and therefore should only count as one word! She thought ‘number of words’ meant ‘number of different words’ (as presumably we just had to look each of them up in the dictionary and slot them in) not the length of the document!
Good points! I do a lot of work for magazine publishers and company-funded blogs, which is nice in that the work keeps on coming out with predictable regularity and they have a clue about translation. On the Italian market there are only a handful of agencies aiming for high quality. My occasional experiences with non-Italian agencies over the years have been usually positive, whereas most Italian agencies pay translators poorly and after eons and seem to add little or nothing to the ultimate quality, leaving clients burned.
Just as you differentiate between good agencies “who do their job right” and those who don’t, one can refine the direct client discourse further. You touch on it, Corinne, when you evoke “mission-critical translations” v. the large volume / short deadline types of requests.
Direct clients come in all shapes and sizes. Landing a household name multinational as a direct client can be great for PR. Yet if one is working via its Purchasing Department (which typically handles the “large volume / short deadline / translation as a cost rather than investment” projects), there may be little advantage to that compared with teaming with good agencies.
The key with direct clients — big, medium or small — is the relationship built with decision makers for whom your work is an investment, with measurable ROI, including how it reflects on them.
Thank you, Corinne, for such useful articles like this one. I am in my first year of Translation and Interpretation at college, and one of my biggests doubts is whether I can work with a direct client and also to an agency. Could you or someone else answer me? Thanks in advance, greetings from Brazil.
Welcome to the world of translation, Natalia! You can definitely do both. Why not? 🙂
Thank you very much, Andie. 🙂
Really interesting article, having worked both in-house for a large translation company co-ordinating projects and outsourcing work, and then as a freelancer on the other end of it, it’s always interesting to draw comparison from new perspectives.
The pay ceiling is a definite issue; agencies at some point just can’t pay more than their budget allows. We had some excellent translations when I worked in-house who we used only very infrequently because we just couldn’t pay their rates. You have to price yourself competitively if you want to reach a stage where you’re the default option for an agency in your particular field.
Having said that, if you do manage to reach that stage and get regular agency work, you can get paid very well. Individual clients with no knowledge of the industry often have to be convinced that your charges are worth it; agencies know the average rate for different markets.
I guess a good balance between the two types of clients would be ideal! Thanks for a thought provoking post.
Great post – very balanced.
Here is an example of my agency dealing with two translator just a day or so ago.
One had done a small translation a few months ago and forgotten to invoice us. We chased for the invoice and made payment within an hour.
Another translator invoiced us for four translation jobs on Thursday 5th December. Due date on the invoice shows 19th December. We made payment yesterday (5th December) within an hour of getting the invoice.
The translators were asked to quote so no searching for clients or selling for them to do at all.
We never negotiate on rates. We always agree the rate the translator quotes if they are right for the project so – we never knock anyone down from the rate they state and, as you can see, we pay exceptionally quickly. Not always the same day but always very quickly. (We have some direct clients who take 2 -3 months to make payment.)
Just a view from an agency enjoying your post and the comments.
Wow, it hadn’t entered my imagination that agencies like that exist.
Whether working for direct clients or agencies, it is important to bear in mind that translation as a product is almost never a goal unto itself. But, whereas a direct client orders a translation to better communicate with her target group (as a means to deliver technical, legal, marketing etc. information that helps selling their true products), for an agency a translation is THE product. A direct client, by far more than an agency, might be inclined to think in terms of value and price, whereas for an agency, a translator is rather a cost item. This explains many differences in relationships with directs clients and agencies, as stated here.
This post leaves aside another type of clients that Steve Vitek calls hybrid translators. A good point to start thinking about this alternative is his blog post http://patenttranslator.wordpress.com/2013/12/03/the-secret-world-of-translatorstranslation-agency-hybrids/
Or perhaps take the advice from an ATA publication: “As most translators know very well, colleagues – fellow translators like the ones who take part in these forums – can become sources of work, either by recommending you to one of their clients, or by sharing jobs with you.“
Another problem with some agencies is that they basically see themselves as the chief authors of the product despite the majority of the work, and sometimes all non-admin work, having been done by you. Thus, you’re somewhere at the bottom of the chain, as a supplier or vendor or some such, and it’s not for you to take a share in the profits or anything of the sort. This relates to some inconsistencies in agency marketing, where the role they project is not really the same as the role they actually play.
Great post, I like the balance between both points of view.
I’ve been freelancing exclusively for direct clients for 7 years, and after what I’ve seen from agencies rate-wise, I had no idea why anyone would want to work for an agency…. your post gives me some insight as to why this could be a good option for some.
If I may add my two cents: in terms of the freelancer’s business development, direct clients are a definite asset – agencies, not so much, I would guess.
Referrals go a long way in our business; in my case, every new client I’ve ever gotten came from a referral. I’m assuming that agencies might send you more work if they get more work, but they won’t refer your name to anyone else.
I find that happy clients are the best publicity for my business!
Lots of very good perspectives here! This is the first big debate I’ve seen about this issue and it’s helpful to take in all these different points of view at once.
In my experience, direct clients are always preferable over agencies, but it is true that they are much more difficult to acquire. Part of it may be due to the fact that agencies invest more money in their websites and marketing and, consequently, they attract more clients because they have much more visibility. As a freelancer, I can’t compete, but I’m willing to accept their lower rates since they are the ones paying for the marketing.
That being said, it’s up to agencies to charge the higher rates so that translators can be compensated fairly. I see it as a huge problem that some agencies charge less than freelancers would charge a direct client, making fair compensation next to impossible. I haven’t heard this argument from anyone else, so I’d appreciate if anyone would care to agree or disagree with me on this point!
I am curious – did the post about having a partner/backup person get written? I can’t seem to find it, but my partner and I are interested to read it!
Well, we did a presentation on that topic but I haven’t written a post; but thanks for the nudge!
Translators often forget that agencies handle the marketing and project management and often admin work, formalities, well, a lot of things, including risk ownership and management, not to mention the inhouse QA some of them have. All of which is surely worth a lot together, and if a freelance translator tried to pay for it out of his direct client rates, the deal could prove to be much less sweet than expected.
What is more of a problem, though, is how a lot of agencies dominate the market without really providing much added value, just simply outcompeting translators on this or that ground, including even the price sometimes. And then translators try to outcompete agencies on scope and scale and added services, with a similar and cumulative result. All of which leads to low prices.
More of a problem still are agencies which are basically total resellers and e-mail forwarders, who burden translators with adversarial, even hostile contracts, which might as well come down to: ‘you acknowledge that we own you and will have our way in everything.’ Complete with rudeness and formalised procurement routines colloquially known as the ‘hoops’ you need to jump through before you can start working with them (or be put in their database and contacted once or twice a decade, you never know). Their drafting is basically an NLP-like attempt to make the translator believe that basically everything is the translator’s responsibility: full TEP, any expert consultations, any technical issues, even all economic and other risks associated with the project. But the agency will still act like the main or sole provider of the high quality of translation, pretending that you don’t exist. Unlike normal middlemen do.
Still, the way I see it, the ideal client — or rather one of 2 or 3 varieties — would probably be a quality-minded agency. They’d market on quality, not on price. They’d have an inhouse QA department. They’d double-check typography etc. for translators who not overwhelmingly into it, prepare and troubleshoot everything to do with technology and so on. Nothing would leave without proofreading, and they’d source all the necessary consultations with subject-field experts or other specialised translators.
The clients would either be expected to act reasonably or handled by inhouse staff, so no silly queries or grossly unfounded complaints would normally reach the translator’s desk
Naturally, the rate would be less than from direct clients, but it would be a fair rate net of marketing, QA, tech, and any business and legal advantages. On the financial side, As an honest establishment, the agency would pass any CAT discounts to the end client (unless supplying its own good TM, preferably not based on your own previous translations), and pass an appropriate share of any rush fees and other surcharges to the translator as opposed to charging the client +100% and pocketing the difference.
Since dedicated editors and proofreaders work faster than translators who need to self-edit, self-revise, self-proofread etc., while the agency would obviously earn money on your next project to which you moved on twice faster, hence — unless I’m missing something — the setup would be comfortable for everybody.
If I could work with such an agency, I’m not sure I’d even look for direct clients much. I’d probably be more interested in referring them to the agency for the greater benefit of all involved. If we had a close bond, I might eventually consider proposing to become a partner or shareholder, contributing as a consultant to the business/marketing/client service strategy etc.
If this looks like a law firm to you, spot on.
Excellent points, Corinne.
I’ve found that, in many cases, the relationship with direct clients is considerably more time-consuming than with translation agencies, and that is something we should take into account too.