Here’s a common question from beginning freelance translators, and from people contemplating freelancing: how long does it take to start a viable freelance business? The usual disclaimers apply. Is your non-English language Spanish or Japanese? Do you have just a language background, or a PhD in nuclear physics and a language background? Do you live in Tokyo or Montana? And what do you mean by “start”? But here’s a stab at an answer. To me, there are two milestones in starting a freelance business: 1) the point when you know you’re going to make it as a freelancer (meaning that you no longer stress out every single day about whether to plow ahead or just give up and get a regular job) and 2) the point when you basically always have enough work (meaning that you can focus on doing what you enjoy and are good at, rather than whatever pays the bills).
My own answers: 18 months, and three years. After about 18 months of freelancing, I knew I was going to make it as a freelancer. Halfway through year two, I had already earned more than I did in all of year one. One-time clients were becoming regular clients; a “big project” was $1,000, not $200. By the end of year three, I no longer stressed out about where the next project was coming from, because I had enough work almost all the time. I started to ease out some low-paying clients and ease in some better ones. I started to think about what kinds of translation I really enjoyed and was good at, and I looked for direct clients in those areas.
Mostly, I think that the answer to the “how long does it take?” question is, “Probably longer than you think.” Not to be sarcastic or cynical, but when beginning translators ask me this question, I often advise that if you want a booming business within a few months, offer a service that a lot of people need, and that lends itself to direct advertising. Clean houses, walk dogs, do tutoring. Don’t start a freelance translation business if you have to have a full-time income within a couple of months, unless you do a language or specialization that is both very high-paying and very in-demand.
Another question: what percentage of freelancers make it through the startup phase, and with what degree of success? I’ve been teaching my getting started course for beginning freelancers for about eight years, and I’d say, unscientifically, that the graduates I’ve followed up with are about evenly split into three categories. About a third of them launched successful freelance businesses and are doing great; about a third are translating in some capacity, but combine it with another job, and about a third either decided the whole freelance thing was too much work, or were never able to find the kinds of clients they needed to work with in order to make a full-time living.
Readers, your thoughts on the length of the startup phase?
I think “how long it takes” all depends on how long it takes an individual to put in the necessary work, not how many sunrises/sunsets an individual has witnessed.
My experience is it can be as short as <6 months, or forever. Of course, this also depends on how people define "success" – would you call making $40k/year "success", or does it have to be at least $200k/year (which is doable)?
Moreover, I also think no matter where people are in "freelancing" business, they can always keep options open for other business models.
So, enjoy the ride!
Hi Corinne,
Thanks for your post. You are right on the money when you say that if you are looking to make dough quickly, freelancing probably isn’t the way to go. Down here in Mexico, English classes are where it’s at for making the dollar bills and swiftly. When one thinks about starting a freelance translation or interpreting business I don’t know that setting up shop speedily is going to equal success. To me, these professions are about learning, quality and reputation. By nature a person looking to make money quickly with freelance translation is probably going to be doing crunch time work, either by being available on weekends and such or taking PDF conversion jobs that others won’t, or in general doing jobs that have some catch or another which is the reason another experienced translator is passing that job on. It takes time to court and find clients and time to apply to those 400 translation agencies. I’m entering my second year of easing in and it’s going well. I would say that by year three if you’re not on track then you are probably missing some important points that can easily be found in your book. 😉
Insightful comment, Jesse — although like others I think it probably depends on your market and language combination.
Where I live (France), my gut and my experience tell me that anyone who (1) has serious *translation* skills to sell (i.e., is not just winging it/claiming/pretending) and (2) is prepared to invest the time to get him/herself out on the market should be able to win at least one or two good, well-heeled direct clients within two years.
You then build on those and expand.
If after two years things are still sluggish, you should probably look more closely at (1) and (2) and rethink your strategy.
Not to rain on anyone’s parade, but translation is an incredibly demanding career. Loving languages and/or dabbling won’t/don’t do it. Thankfully (perhaps), people can be good at terminology, project management, tech issues and so on even if translation per se is simply too hard a nut to crack. Or a mismatch for them. And I do see language teaching as light years from translation.
Dear Corinne,
Thank you for this post. If you don’t mind, I would like to comment on that second that “third [who] are translating in some capacity, but combine it with another job.”
Although I have been a translator for more than 52 years, I have to admit that I “moonlighted” for the first 38. I thoroughly enjoyed my “day jobs.” They enriched my life, fed my family, and funded my business over the 10 years that I consciously headed toward full-time freelancing. More important, the many assignments I had during 24 years as a naval officer and 10 years as a university administrator provided me with the enviable technical background that is the foundation of my niche as a successful translator today.
Working part-time as a translator is nothing to be ashamed of. I have always believed that the secret to a successful working life is to find something that you would do for free, and then have people pay you to do it. I went down to the sea in ships, I traveled the world, I went to school, and I became a translator — and all along somebody else paid for it. How cool is that?
To those who must take a “day job,” I say, thrive with it. Learn all about your day job in both your languages. Let your employer send you to school. Or go to night school in a field that captures your fancy and your passion. Meanwhile, you can build a 10-year business plan (rather than the typical 3- to 5-year business plan) with quantifiable milestones to let you know when you can leave the day job. It may be a lot of fun to do both, if you find the right careers.
Smooth roads and tailwinds, Jonathan.
Great reply! I also don’t see anything wrong with working part-time as a translator especially if you are just starting out. I’ll use myself as an example… I was born in Colombia and raised in the USA and in October I am moving back to Colombia. I’ll be moving in with my father once I get there. My father is an official translator registered with the Colombian Dept of Foreign Affairs and over the years I have assisted him with translations and revisions. Once I’m settled in Colombia I plan on obtaining my CELTA certificate and teach English to my fellow Colombians. In addition, I hope to really start learning more and more about the translation business from my father. He has always wanted this to be a family business and as a bilingual person this seems like the most logical step for me. I’m sure I have a better advantage than most people because my father can show me the best ways to find clients so we can start growing the business together. While it might take some time to get some of my own clients, I fully intend on supporting myself by teaching English.
Dear comment thread:
Chris Durban, your comments are, as always, right on the mark. I agree wholeheartedly that language teaching is light years from translation. Just that, down here, it can be a lucrative source of income. In my case it has allowed me to translate, interpret and learn about these two callings with no financial pressure pushing me into jobs that aren’t interesting and rewarding. It’s let me spend all the time each job needs to be done as well as I can, without worrying about how much time I am spending on a project in relation to the rate I’m getting. Your comment also got me thinking about another point, related to (1)—besides having those skills, there has to be the will to see things all the way to their very end, to get to the bottom of every little thing in a translation, to really care on that level. I’ve met translators who I think have those skills, but I wonder if they really care enough to spend time sorting all the p’s and q’s.
Jonathan, I really liked your points as well, what a neat perspective—great ideas/tips. Thanks.
Hello Corinne,
I work with two very common pair languages, English and Spanish, I think the possibilities of becoming successful as a translator in this case are more difficult. That is why I decided to specialize but, anyway, it has been a difficult task to get some good clients. Furthermore, I’ve seen how other translators are asking for very low rates (even 0’02 per word). I feel that is an insult to my experience and years of study, and it makes the process of becoming a freelance translator even harder, since I have to compete with such prices when my rates are higher. Of course, I want to offer my clients a good work and if they want good results, they should know that you get what you pay for…but, sometimes they still prefer to pay cheap, and I cannot do nothing about it.
Regards,
– Raquel
Dear Corinne,
Thank you for your post and thank you all for the comment thread. I think each case is different, every one has a particular situation or circumstansces which definitely impact their professional lifes and interests. Where I live (in Spain), it is said that a business which is able to operate for 4 years is probably set to last, as most of the new start-ups disappear within their first 3 years of life. In my case, it took me about 1-2 years. I also started as a part-timer, combining my translation job with a clerical job in a big company. In my opinion, the most important thing is being aware of where you are, of your position in our market (Are we getting the right share of the market?, Are we charging what we should according to our skills? Is our client base diverse enough “not to have all our eggs in one basket”? As Chris says, if something is not as we had expected (either that we are not getting enough clients or we are not being paid enough), we should rethink our strategy, do some market research and act as relevant. And do always keep in mind that this is an ongoing task we should not give up alghough we have an stable income flow and a diversified customer base. Information is power, the more we know about clients, prices, the market, our competitors, new trends, etc., the more profitable our business will be. That is why I follow this blog, because I always learn something useful. Thanks.
Belén Carneiro
This is a very relevant post to my situation. I have lived in Japan for 2 decades and speak and read the language fluently. My professional background is in IT and translation has always been a key part of my job (RFPs, etc). I recently began putting a lot of effort into jump starting a freelance career. Your book was very helpful in that respect. In just over a month I have contacted about 60 agencies, heard back from 1/3 of them and passed a dozen trials (more pending). Doing trials, signing NDAs and filling out all the documentation takes a ton of time. Several firms have asked for in-person meetings and claim they have active projects very soon. A few small jobs have come in so far but nothing steady. Rates are not what I would like, and a few firms spammed me from my profile with ridiculously low rates. I am actually running out of agencies to contact in the J2E space and may start looking at jobs on Proz and oDesk. Wish me luck.
TC, if you have professional contacts in IT, why not go directly to them insteady of contacting agencies? Plenty of direct clients need translators.
Good question. I went the agency route initially since I figured it would be faster to get some work flowing and provide immediate feedback as to whether my translation skills are marketable.
The skill set required to succeed at professional translation is so demanding, extensive, persistent and endlessly expanding that “just having language skills” is about as useful as “just having the ability to metabolize glucose.”
Corinne, one serious quibble I have with your otherwise excellent (original) book is that it doesn’t address how high the bar on translation really is in a serious and realistically sobering way. People really need to be warned about this in the interest of full disclosure. Perhaps a good revision to make for the next edition?
“How to Succeed as a Freelance Nuclear Physicist,” for example, wouldn’t pass the laugh test because every sentient human knows that the bar for success in that profession lies somewhere out near the edge of interstellar space.
And of course if you have the skill set of a PhD nuclear physicist AND the required advanced language skills combined with compelling writing talent, well, congratulations, you just earned yourself a ticket at the starting gate. Let’s see how you do after a decade or so in the trenches with people who have the same skill sets but two or three decades of hard-earned experience on top of all that.
It’s instructive, I think, that the number of graduates of translation programs in the US going into translation and succeeding at the profession is shockingly small. So small that we may need to begin asking ourselves whether it’s time to begin calling them “language service industry programs.”
Imagine if medical schools suddenly started producing graduates who could only pass nursing school exams, or dental school graduates could only quality to become dental assistants in the real world.
These programs have become feeder schools for project managers and others working WITH language, but not for actual translators — you know, those people who have the skills to produce translations that have the authority to stand on their own.
This is perhaps not surprising. Translation is, among other things, the craft of leveraging every aspect of your life experience, training, technical subject-matter expertise and cultural sense in a way that allows you to project all that collective knowledge onto the page in a compelling and authoritative narrative.
In an altogether different language.
Kevin, your remarks resonate given a mid-term report I’m working on for the univ supervisors of my current intern. She is exceptionally good and I’m trying to work out why. A good sense of language, to be sure; she’s US American but spent a year in France during her first college degree, and is clearly gifted.
But she has also worked (professionally) in marketing for a decade (she’s 33, and has returned to university for a further degree in translation) and *you can see that in an instant*.
She knows how to write (in her native language, English).
She knows how to reconstruct a poorly structured source text.
She has an eagle eye for proofreading, and is familiar with mark-up.
She’s also at ease with technology (although that is far from the most important part of what we do in my office).
I’m thinking that it would be useful and helpful to recommend that students study something other than translation for their first degree (OK, OK, with a minor in foreign language X), then get out in the world for some firsthand experience before moving into translation.
That’s been my experience, too, Chris. Often the best translators come to the profession as a second career.
The challenge for all of us is that ultimately we must be perfectly transparent media for the successful transmission of the original optical image.
But none of us is perfect — we all have optical flaws, however slight or imperceptible, that will distort the image in one way or another. That’s why even excellent translations of the same text are subtly different, as you know.
So even if the distortion is not a degradation to the integrity of the image — perhaps it even amplifies one aspect, or improves it in a sort of charming or enticing way — it does ultimately change it (this is a common practice in literary translation, where whole images are inverted and switched around to facilitate emotional resonance).
If we introduce into this analogy an individual who has dramatic optical flaws in the form of gaps in subject knowledge or fluency of expression or understanding of source language, the image can become degraded in profound and often irreversible ways, so that instead of reflecting the message in the target language, it diffracts or even scatters it. This practice results in that ultimate cliché of “lost in translation.”
The best solution in such cases is often not to try to chase down individual flaws, it’s to remove the medium completely and replace it with a more transparent one.
And it takes a lifetime of experience to become that transparent.
Hi Corinne, this has been another helpful post, as were the comments. I wonder if I could also throw another couple of ideas into the mix. Presumably the prevailing economic situation at the time you start freelancing could have a significant effect on how quickly a translator gets established. It would also be interesting to compare the experiences of those who work in-house for a period prior to freelancing with those who go freelance straight away.