Let’s just dive in to this one: bad habits that may be putting the brakes on your freelance ambitions. Feel free to add your own in the comments! And for the record, I’m not getting all superior here…I culled many of these bad habits from my own experiences!
- Waiting for the big block of time that is never coming. That book you’ve been planning to write; that marketing campaign you’ve been meaning to launch; that blog that you’ve been on the verge of creating…but not until you can take a week and focus only on that task. News flash: unless you’re independently wealthy and have no responsibilities to anyone except yourself, the big block of time is never coming. I tell you this because I waited (literally) two years to write the second edition of How to Succeed as a Freelance Translator, because I was going to take a month off and just blaze away at it. After two years of waiting for that elusive month, I decided that even if I only wrote one sentence, I had to work on the second edition every single day. And guess what; in another six months, it was done. So, whatever your long-term goals are, chip away at them in small, regular increments.
- Publicly ranting about clients or colleagues. When I see people doing this, mostly in the form of Facebook or Twitter posts, I have one question for them: Why? I agree, everyone needs to vent now and again. But that’s what your e-mail and phone connections to your most trusted colleagues are for. Public ranting has so many downsides, it’s hard to know where to begin. First, nothing on social media is private, and someone may forward the rant to the client or colleague at whom it’s directed, even if you don’t actually name them in the post. Second, social media is there forever. You can delete the ranting post, but lots of people have already seen it. Third, it’s off-putting to other people who might refer work to you. I would never take the risk of referring a client to someone who is a habitual ranter. Also, I think that most clients run away from translators who have a reputation as being high-drama or difficult to work with. The emotional release of publicly flaming someone just isn’t worth the risk. Fourth: that whole thing about people in glass houses. I definitely get irritated when clients or colleagues inconvenience me because of their own bad planning, or send the wrong file, or don’t understand a question or instruction that seems simple to me. But I try to keep the perspective that undoubtedly, I do those same things sometimes, possibly without even realizing it. Fifth, it’s a waste of your time and energy. With the time you spend being aggravated at a client who bugs you, you could proactively go look for a new client who pays more and is less annoying. So, keep the complaints offline, and only to a few colleagues who you really, really trust.
- Feeling that other people have all the luck in this industry. Everyone else lands the plum direct clients. Everyone else gets asked to speak at the cool conferences. Everyone else’s webinars sell out. My take: it’s not luck. If you want to be jealous of something, be jealous that those “lucky” people work harder than you are willing to. As Thomas Edison said, “Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.” So go out there and perspire; just don’t wait for the big block of time to do it!
- Overestimating your marketing/networking/professional development efforts. I bet that if you asked most translators to honestly audit themselves, most people are doing *no* outbound marketing at all: zero. And even those of us who are doing outbound marketing are likely to be radically overestimating how much we’re doing. For example, I think I’m pretty good at outbound marketing, and I have a database of potential clients who I regularly send stuff too. But, I ordered a set of 100 marketing postcards about 10 months ago, and I have at least 40 of them left. I aim to send out one postcard per day, and I’m actually achieving more like one and a half per week. Ditto with professional development: let’s say that we recommended that freelancers spend the extravagant sum of 5% of their yearly gross income on professional development. So if you’re making 70K, that would be $3,500…here again, I’m guessing that even translators who attend something like the ATA conference are not hitting that mark. Result: if you don’t move forward, neither will your business, in terms of new clients and new opportunities (see “some people have all the luck” for more on this).
I could go on…but, over to you!
I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating: “Not waiting for a big block of time to do things” = best advice ever!
I particularly agree with n. 1. So true..
Reading the above made me feel very happy to be involved in a translation partnership. Of course it’s not an automatic panacea but we are basically very complementary in our talents, our knowledge, our strengths and weaknesses and our language combinations.
The danger is that we sometimes find ourselves working together all the time and not taking sufficient breaks to focus on our other independent interests or outside friends.
OTOH, however, our production is very high and our complaint rate is minimal.
I believe that my own biggest mistake is to cling to my day job (I’m still somewhat new in the business) and not putting the extra work and faith into becoming fully independent. Not having a second source of income and thus good health insurance and other benefits available to me give me the constant excuse to work half and half and it is draining and does not allow me to be as good as I can be at either one of them… quantity and quality wise.
Great list, Corinne. Here’s another bad habit that I would add:
Thinking you’re doing your job fine, when actually you could be doing it much better. I’ve certainly been guilty of this one. So long as jobs come in and you don’t get complaints, it’s very tempting to give yourself a pat on the back and move on complacently to your next project. But there’s always room for improvement, and we shouldn’t forget that.
In the case of translators, this ties in with not using reviewers’ comments to our advantage. I completed a big project recently and after the reviewer had gone through it, the project manager sent it back to me to get my approval of the final version. My immediate reaction was – wow, what a lot of changes, and they’re all just a question of personal preferences. But to be honest, when I went through them one by one, I saw that the reviewer had improved the text, making it more direct, more readable and more concise.
So my advice is: don’t be held back by complacency. It’s a freelancer’s worst enemy.
Great comment Emma!
Ours is indeed a humbling profession.
You are so right! Such feedback is often the best source of quality improvement.
I appreciate your honesty in #4, about marketing. I’ve got a similarly neglected stack of marketing cards on hand. What a great reminder to use them!
It’s encouraging to know that translators of all experience levels let things slide occasionally. Best practices don’t necessarily mean common practices.
Great entry, Corinne!
I have to agree with Emma on thinking you’re doing your job fine, when actually you could be doing it much better… as I’ve learnt that the motto “no news is good news” is a tricky one. Problem is that working on my own, I very often find myself asking myself (and no one else) how I can improve a translation or an edition, and very few times do I find a good answer. I could ask a colleague to review some of my texts, but they’re already busy enough with their own work… So, I’m still working on this one! Then, I’ll move to the marketing stage.
A good, solid, down-to-earth post, Corinne!
I was most interested in what you had to say about overestimating our marketing/networking/professional development efforts.
It occurred to me that a few month ago, I stopped doing something I used to do almost every day. I have recently started it again, but this time, hopefully with a little more structure and purpose. It is this: at the end of every day, I write a short list of what I have done on that day under various categories. It is one way of keeping track *in your mind*, but also gives rise to new ideas (which go on the To Do list). Funny thing, though, is that I had not included networking as a category. I shall have to look at that! 🙂
Good advice, Corinne. As regards “publicly ranting”, I sometimes find myself writing an angry tweet about a category of clients. And then I take a deep breath and a step back – and delete it before publishing. Because Twitter or other social media aren’t the place to vent our frustrations. Better to raise the issue directly with the client and keep relations professional.
Likewise with grievances with other translators / translation agencies. It’s tempting to name and shame. But as you say, glass houses are dangerous places to be throwing stones around in. I was recently tempted to write a blog post about a truly dire Italian translation agency and their badly written and error-full website. But then found a typo on my own site – right in the “proofreading” section. Ouch!
Great post, Corinne!
An additional bad habit that is worth mentioning: being too quick on the trigger with e-mail, without checking messages thoroughly before sending them, and especially without a cooling-off period if the message is a complaint of some sort.
In fact, ideally any important (and most not-so-important) e-mail messages should, if possible, be checked by a second pair of eyes, both to make sure it is clear and correct, and (perhaps even more important), to make sure it doesn’t unintentionally offend.
I’m lucky enough to work in the same office with my partner, and we routinely check each other’s messages.
That’s a great point, I’ve certainly been guilty of firing off emails only to later discover a grammar mistake, or even worse that I’ve been a little rude or rambled on in the email.
I wholeheartedly agree that public ranting about your own clients’ projects or practices — or those of your colleagues related to your own projects — is wildly inappropriate, not only because it’s in poor taste and presumptuous, but because it violates confidentiality on the most basic of levels.
This is true even if you attempt to “hide” the identify of the offending party through the omission or obscuring of details. This is rarely successful because people who are familiar with these clients and projects have the knowledge to fill in the gaps, as it were, so that will defeat any attempt to blur out the identity.
So we agree on this.
But having said that, I am going to state what may be an unpopular opinion.
I’ve grown increasingly concerned by how translators’ fear to take a public stand when they really should on companies and practices actually causes damage to the profession (I am not speaking about your own clients and colleagues where you are bound by confidentiality and good sense — see above — you have to deal with them individually and in confidence, of course).
A failure to state publicly and call out appalling practices followed by other companies, however, can have a silencing effect — the fact that nobody is speaking out suggests to observers and those on the sidelines that perhaps that it’s too dangerous to do so. It leads to more silence, which makes things progressively worse.
I do not consider calling out companies’ abuse of translators, or deliberately misleading advertising or deeply cynical bait-and-switch practices to be objectionable or easily dismissed as just “ranting” — in fact, I consider such practices to be essential as a corrective to the market and in a sense, virtuous, especially if you are taking a professional risk in doing so.
Taking a professional risk that is decidedly not in your own selfish best-interest and could get you hurt in the future is sometimes exactly the right thing to do.
I’ve taken on several companies and individuals on Twitter, as well as on LinkedIn, directly and by name, who engage in practices that are cynically disrespectful of translators, show a profound lack of understanding for the value we add, know nothing about the translation market, and seem gleeful to exploit this conspiracy of silence to their own great and enduring profit.
We should not let them get away with this.
I think we owe it to the industry (and to our associations for that matter) to challenge them to rise to a level of excellence that they once may have shown.
Is this “ranting?” If so, sign me up.
I deeply, sincerely hope that translators are not slowly morphing into “sheeple,” those quiet followers who bow their heads and shuffle along silently just to get along and say nothing. Those who dare not offend any people who could ever give them work in the future. Those who are too timid to take a stand, or who confuse manners and politeness (or the knee-jerk reaction to always agree and smile and praise every single thing on social media) with kindness and politeness.
It’s not kind and polite to enable people to exploit you, or to misrepresent your skills and talent, or to tell all their clients and the public that all translators are interchangeable and equal and frankly not all that important in the larger scheme of things because they are already being replaced by technology and you can always crowdsource translation anyway for free, so who needs translators, really?
If this sounds excessively strident and forceful — good. We could use a LOT more stridency and force in this collision of opinion.
So perhaps we should distinguish between “good rants” — those that defend the profession and promote best practices at potential risk to yourself, from “bad rants,” where you are trashing your own clients or colleagues in flagrant violation of confidentiality and even the most basic and sensible business practices.
Thank you, Corinne! This is probably one of my favorite posts here over the years, if only because of its personal relevance. Point #1 is so desperately true; every time I find myself taking a “short” break from plans for content creation, months will pass before I notice that I’ve slipped on time like a banana peel.
Your second point is also much appreciated. I’m an infamous ranter myself, as you know, though I try to restrict it to issues in the scope of what Kevin H. suggests. There are simply too many damaging things being promoted knowingly or naively by quite a number of people and companies, and failure to articulate a position or perhaps poke a bit of fun at bad practice is a significant sin of omission with sometimes unpredictable costs. I am particular grieved in cases where I choose to remain silent on some matter, only to find that a colleague I value has come to grief in some way as a result. But I find the frequent grumbling, whining tone in many social media to be intolerable, and in certain language/culture circles where that is the norm I find myself reluctant to make contributions of any sort.
I think that along with overestimating our efforts in some respects, we should also keep some quantitative record of the actual effectiveness of our various measures. I can’t claim to do this recently and have usually done so only in an informal way, but it would have been useful some years ago to know more precisely what the breakdown of referral/acquisition sources for new clients was. Even something as simple as the old 5-line marking groups on a scrap of notepaper under the keyboard on my desk would have been useful.
I wrote a story that mentions this, but I think being afraid to leave your comfort zone seriously limits your opportunities. You can find the link here: http://charleneoldham.com/2012/09/19/my-new-story-in-wow-women-on-writing/
I just downloaded your piece Charlene and look forward to reading it 🙂
Some interesting points there Corinne, I would definitely have to agree with point 2, social media is such a strong influence and businesses can easily track their names so it would be damaging to publicly rant about your client on social media. Another point I’d add in is freelancing is getting so competitive that many are not taking the little minor steps to optimising their careers such as getting recommendations and ratings on platforms such as Linkedin. These little efforts can help with differentiating yourself among other freelancers and ultimately landing a job that listed on various freelancing and hirer websites.
too much wandering and dreaming could be also added to the list. at least it applies to my case 😆
An excellent list of bad habits here (if bad habits can be called excellent ). I completely agree about waiting for a big block of time, which is basically another form of procrastination, and publically calling out clients just seems to be insane, not to say unwise from a marketing perspective. As for the last habit, from talks I’ve had with freelancers from every walk of life – from copywriters to website designers to app developers, they all feel the same frustration of either not doing enough to market themselves, or not having the time and place to do it. That’s why I joined up with LCKCenter (http://www.lckcenter.com), which a place for that reason exactly, for freelancers to create a profile with a minimum of fuss, which in turn, helps them with their outbound marketing.
Thank you for this list, Corinne, and for your excellent blog!
I am especially guilty of no. 1 and no. 4.
But I would also add: failing to take care of my own health through regular relaxation, sports and healthy food because I am too busy translating.
Great information, thank you Corinne. All that advice that you share on your blog, and your book How to Succeed as a Freelance Translator have been extremely useful for me as a beginning translator.
Great post, thanks so much! In my case, improving my (very poor) networking skills would solve most of my bad habits and my tendency to procrastinate, making me more efficient and productive (as well as more cheerful and optimistic..). But it’s easier said than done, and I am really struggling to figure out how to do it at the moment!
There seems to be some cathartic value in taking the blame on one’s own shoulders, or on the shoulders of one’s own profession while disclaiming it personally, but the truth is that translation really is a difficult market in which a lot of irrational things are currently going on.
The fact that prices are increasing and pressure for discounts and lower rates is increasing despite the growing demand can’t be denied. Price compression is a fact, as is buyer control and the prominence of middlemen with cuttthroat, red-ocean competition among them, which takes skill to leave behind.
Skill and possibly ‘luck’. Luck does not exist, but as much as such a thought may feel inviting, neither are everybody’s starting chances or opportunities met along the way truly equal.
Fields, pairs, types of texts, translator and client demographic brackets, all of those things impose some difference in the circumstances, resulting in a different outcome. It definitely is not as simple as positive thinking vs negative thinking, despite all the motivational appeal of such a proposition.
Nor can it really be reduced to bad habits on translators’ part.
* I meant to say, ‘the fact that prices are *de*creasing.’ Sorry.