Let’s look some more at the “How much should I charge?” question, since it’s such a source of stress and speculation for most freelancers. You might also be interested in these previous posts–What is the right rate for your translation services, and How and why to raise your translation rates.
If you want, you can have an absolutely 100% set price for your translation services. My accountant (who I love), charges $220 an hour, end of story. Phone calls more than 5 minutes and lengthy e-mails are billable, end of story. That tactic could work for translators too. But whereas accounting work is relatively predictable, we’re always balancing factors like the subject matter, the turnaround time, the format of the source document, the high or low maintenance-ness of the client, the appeal of the project in general, and so on. So instead of having a set rate per hour or per word, here’s another option: think zones.
The green zone is a rate at which you would almost never turn down work, as long as the project is within your capabilities. It’s your ideal rate, and ideally, you’re always trying to push it a little higher. Note: the green zone is a good place for your clients to be, because it means you’ll bend over backward for them (worth subtly pointing out to them, too!).
The yellow zone is a rate that’s not ideal, but that’s worth taking a look at. This might be a rate that you consider when work has been a little slow, or if a project is particularly interesting, or when there’s some non-economic reason to consider the project. For example, when I translate books, it’s yellow zone work. It’s interesting, it’s nice to be off the daily deadline treadmill, but it’s at the low end of what is viable for me financially.
The red zone is work that you turn down because it’s too low-paying. Point being: to have a viable business, you have to have a red zone. If you are continually making exceptions to your absolute, I-don’t-go-below-this-number rate, just for this one project and then you’ll really never work for that little again…you will never have a viable business. So whether your red zone is 9, 20 or 40 cents per word, just make sure that you have one.
I find that this zone approach really helps me; having an “I don’t turn on the computer for less than…” rate helps me feel that this is a policy, rather than a case by case decision. Over time, I also find that I’m more attracted to billing direct clients by the hour; they understand where the number is coming from (which, with per-project pricing, they might not), but I also get paid for everything I end up doing (which, with per-word pricing, I might not). But that’s material for another post…any thoughts out there on pricing zones?
Dear Corinne,
A nice way of looking at it.I particularly agree with your attitude on books; mine are all in the yellow zone, too. Anyone who is studying my break even system for determining rates can use the break-even number as the red zone.
BTW, now that I am back in Charlottesville, I have a date with my recorder teacher, just to play old tunes, no lessons. 🙂
Keep up the good work,
Jonathan
Great on all fronts! And yes, anyone who doesn’t have your booklet on pricing (http://www.scriptorservices.com/buybook.htm) should get it! I’ll have to ask my lute teacher if there is a way to play duets with a recorder if I don’t play from staff notation (I only know how to play from tablature, but I’ll ask her!). Early music jam session at ATA55 might work!
Corinne, I bought your book How To Succeed as a Freelance Translator, as soon as I decided to go back to freelancing (7 years after a Full-time employee in the Translation industry). Things have changed and the book gave me so many pointers. Plenty of good stuff there. This post is no different, such a tricky topic. I have to admit I had not labeled the different ranges as a red, yellow, green zone, but it’s pretty much the same concept and SO helpful when you run your own TI business. I also have a spreadsheet listing customer, rates, deadlines, word counts, hours spent, amount billed, etc., which helps me get a good idea, post- mortem, of my business health, and serves a guide to make better-informed decisions when new projects come in.
Anyhow, these are my 2 cents, and thanks Corine for your contributions to the T/I industry!
Regards from DC!
Thanks Alejandra! Glad that you enjoyed the book and the post. Yes, rates are tricky no matter how long you’ve been in the business! Your spreadsheet sounds like a very good tool!
Excellent post – as usual! I did take minor umbrage with one expression that you used – “the high or low maintenance-ness of the client”.
I have nothing against the invention of words or expressions but maintenance-ness seemed a rather clunky expression as compared to “maintenance-level”. If I’m being too pernickety you can put it down to my Virgo rising 🙂
Respectfully, Michal Pober
It’s fine to be persnickety! I’m the one who refuses to use the express lanes at the supermarket if they say “15 items or less,” after all! Glad you enjoyed the post!
Happy that you didn’t take umbrage to my per(s)nicketing! Incidentally I did just check the spelling and both versions are valid but I do actually prefer the resonance of your usage; the s seems to add strength or stalwartness.
Hi Corinne,
I’d add something to the green/yellow/red light system:
1) Customers who are not paying your current rate (either because they are old customers and you haven’t – yet – raised the rate for them, or because they are new customers that still convinced you to give them a discount). All projects from them are yellow.
2) They may stay in the orangish-yellow zone, if, for example, the projects they send are particularly fast to translate, or maybe if they are really fast payers. If they ask for further discounts – red.
3) The whole of ProZ “job posting” system, the whole of TranslatorCafĂ©, and the whole are red by default red (trending towards the infrared).
Thanks Riccardo; those additional breakdowns are really helpful (especially the “infrared” zone!).
Hi Corinne, I use an arguably slightly simpler variant – minimum rate vs target rate. Essentially, anything below minimum rate is a no-no (red zone); anything above the target rate is a “yes, please” (green zone); anything else is “it depends” (yellow zone).
Great, thanks Oliver!
Hi, always INTERESTING, indeed! Now, I often provide editing and proof-reading services. This has to do both with market demand which I have randomnly spotted and also my Literary profile, the fact that I’m doing a course in Letters and Literature, etc. So, my question is, how to set your editing rates? And your proof-reading rates? I work for both direct clients and agencies. How can you set a respectable rate for direct clients and still win the job when it’s a new client, per word or by the hour? Thank you!
Delfina, an obvious first step (imo) would be to have a clear idea of what your per-hour net rate has to be (in the yellow and green zones, if you must :-)). The question then becomes how long it will take you to edit or proofread text X, Y or Z — which obviously depends on how well written they are. Bottom line: in these cases you have to *see* the text itself, not somebody’s promise of what the text will look like. Serious buyers of your services will appreciate that. Less serious buyers trying to set up a deal (where you are part of their margin) will push you to commit before seeing your potential pig in a poke. So it’s up to you to manage that, based on what you want to earn.
My 2 cts.
Thanks, Christine! That’s exactly what I always insist on, SEEING at least a sample, like a certain portion of text to be edited (of course, I run the risk of not getting to see the worse bits if the client’s clever enough to choose WHAT to send!) Recently a client asked for a quote and when I requested to see the to-be-edited doc, he sent it together with his translation of it, which was the text I’d have to edit and proof-read. This, if you ask me, stands for the ideal case prior to setting a budget because it allows you to strike a balance between how much work you’ll have to put into it and how much you should get paid for it in rather fair terms. However, it is not always clear-clut for me when it comes to setting rates by the hour or per word. I s’ppose it depends on the job. What I also try and do is send an “estimate”, between X and Y, in case the client suddenly wants an unpredictably rush deliverable, or suddenly the translation turns illegible—and I end up retranslating a whole passage! I am glad someone thinks and acts like I do. It’s true that it seems to be rather daunting for certain clients to have to send you the original plus the translation when it comes to editing bilingual text, but that’s the closest to fair to both parties, I guess. My idea is to design a fair budget so that it is affordable for my potential client and also cost-effective and fair with as much time and effort and research I know I’ll have to put into it. Thanks so much for your tips!
Delfina, you might also be interested in this post on rates: http://thoughtsontranslation.com/2013/10/29/what-is-the-right-rate-for-your-translation-services/
Thanks Chris!
So…am I hearing that it makes sense perhaps to have a per word rate as well as an hourly rate for things like client interactions, formatting, etc.? I’m new, and on a recent project the word count was rather low but there was a lot of formatting- tables, images, and other non- word count items. I ended up charging per page, but hourly might have been a better expression of the actual work I did. Is it appropriate to give both a per word and an hourly quote in that situation?
These are some great ways to describe these steps in a business. Some people look at the Red Zone and still think they can do it. It’s not about if you can do it or not, but is it really worth taking that time to do it? Could you do 5 other Green zone things that pay more than that really hard/long job for Red that pays less than those 5 Green zone jobs?
But then again, on some of the Red zone jobs it’s not always about the money and time spent, as it could be a starting project for a MAJOR company looking for services down the road. At which point do you put them in the correct catergory? Red because it’s tedious, Yellow because you’re not real sure about the company, or Green because you see potential and want it to shine?
I never looked at my pricing practice this way. The prices I practice vary very little and they are labeled according to [age of relationship] and whether [direct or indirect client]. In the end it comes down to the same results since there is some flexibility in my pricing to accommodate the variables you mention.
Neat. Thanks, Corinne!
Hi, Corinne (this is my first comment on your blog). I’ve had similar zones for some time, though not as explicit and more numerous than three. I see the problem as an informal Walrasian auction. There’s a reverse auction system in the foreground — where translators compete on prices, degrees, years of experience, deadlines and other mostly numerical factors or close — and a far less obvious regular auction in the background, where translators choose their jobs, even, or perhaps especially, if they can’t raise their rates much. I wrote two articles about this on Proz.com last year with the main idea that if everybody paid the same or close, then jobs competed. And jobs competed not on the nominal rate (especially not before any custom CAT grids) but rather how much time they would likely consume plus any special pros or cons (e.g. how interesting or boring, easy or difficult, nice or tedious etc.).
I’m not a fan of the hourly rate, though, because at the same time: 1) people won’t pay any high ones to a translator (and generally not ones resulting in the sime per-hour earnings a translator can make on a per-text-unit rate), and 2) professionals with more modest qualifications in their own respective fields but higher per-hour rates may be regarded as having high seniority than the translator after a quick, superficial comparison. Using a billing system which is unique to the type of service provided enables translators to escape most such comparisons. Translators who are also interpreters, however, often won’t have much choice unless they bill their interpreting on a per-day basis. So they might as well translate by the hour.
As for flat fees versus per-hour fees, where one needs to balance (un)certainty and value, I believe it’s possible to have the bost of both words by quoting flat fees but keeping the source word count or page count and rate in the background, so that the client knows where the number comes from. However, the flat fee takes legal priority and is frozen on both sides.
This said, I dislike per-word rates because they commoditise and cheapen our work, reducing its significance to churning out words in a CAT tool. Even a completely equivalent per-page rate still looks better in this regard, I think. Publisher’s sheets are probably even better. Well, to me, as a translator, at least. But I’m not sure about the details of their impact on the clients’ perception, as in what’s more important: aversion to larger per-unit amounts with the resulting temptation to lower them, or contempt for paltry units and their corresponding rates, resulting in a commoditised and cheapened perception of our work. One’d need to balance the two factors. And perhaps a third being what a client thinks when we say his source has e.g. 10,000 words versus 40 pages versus 1.8 sheets.
I suppose the type of client and type of text may matter, for example sheets could imply quality writing and be good for article writers and basically any sort of writers (including the secretary who penned down a brochure or catalogue entry), while software localisation would prefer smaller units or blocks of such units and nothing arcane.
Then there are hybrid systems, like this: http://wantwords.co.uk/martastelmaszak/pricing/. It seems analysis and research are billed separately from actual translation in Marta’s system. I’ve almost tried that on one of my recent clients but decided to go with a more conventional surcharge instead. Again, there are pros and cons. A higher base rate increases the prestige of your work, a per-hour in a hybrid system gets you some compensation for assorted troubles without provoking your clients to challenge your base rate, and a surcharge sort of combines both.
This said, it isn’t a bad idea to offer examples/case studies especially for the type of documents that tend to have a standard length… or the kind for which text volume doesn’t cut it, so that e.g. they take roughly the same time regardless of their actual variable length. And then you can always say that a contract of this length costs that, website with this type of structure and content type and volume will cost anywhere from X to Y etc.
I am trying to locate someone in Northern VA to translate some ancestral documents sent by distant relatives in Germany. Where do I start.
Hi Richard and thanks for your comment. The website of the American Translators Association (http://www.atanet.org) is a great resource.