Here’s an issue that several readers have asked about lately: What to do when a client treats you like a cog in the machine? A podcast listener recently referred to this as “dehumanization” in our profession. Examples may include:
- Applying to work with a client without ever interacting with a human–the application process is a series of online forms, DocuSign documents, and auto-responses
- Translation projects assigned by mass e-mail (“Dear translator”) or through an online job portal
- Inability to talk to a human, even when you want or need to
For us as freelancers, the real question is what to do about this if it bothers you. Here are a few suggestions that may help:
- Adjust your mindset. These kinds of interactions are a) transactional, and b) impersonal. No question about that. However, they are not objectively wrong and horrible. For every freelancer who longs for a personal relationship with their clients, there’s a freelancer who sees those personal interactions as a waste of time in a relationship that is fundamentally about exchanging a service for money. Feeling critical every time a client treats you impersonally will only subtract years from your life and is unlikely to change the client’s behavior.
- Set boundaries. When you work with a client, you are telling them that their way of working is OK with you. If their way of working is not OK with you, it is not a good use of your time to try to change the client, or–worse–to expect that they will change on their own. The best option is simply to set boundaries about what kinds of client relationships are–and are not–OK with you.
Examples of boundaries:- “If you typically assign translation projects via mass e-mail, please be aware that I will not respond. I respond only to project requests sent directly to me.”
- “Before working with you, I’d like to have a five to ten-minute Skype call with one of your project managers, to get a sense of whether we’re a good fit for each other.”
- “I prefer to have a conversation about rates, rather than putting one rate in your online form. Would that work for you?”
- Stop expecting clients to be something that they’re not. I truly believe that every type of client serves a purpose in our industry. Clients who need their HR training videos transcribed, translated, and re-recorded into 28 languages are probably not the best fit for a freelancer; they really need a company. Clients who want the same translator to work on every project, and whose businesses depend on consistency and confidentiality, are probably not the best fit for a company; they really need a freelancer. Problems arise when you expect a huge agency to crave a personal relationship with you, when they’re trying to push gazillions of words out the door. The huge agency business model is not intrinsically bad, but it’s a mass market business like any other. Just as you wouldn’t expect a personal shopping concierge to greet you at the door of a big-box retailer, don’t expect big-box translation clients to call and ask how your weekend was, before they ask if you’re available for 10,000 words.
- Trust that there are clients who want–or even crave–personal relationships. I can attest that my direct clients have taken me out to dinner, invited me to their birthday parties (no kidding), invited me to tour their campuses, and asked to see pictures of my daughter’s bike races. These types of client relationships do exist, and you can find them. But the first step is to acknowledge that many clients do not want and will not cultivate a personal relationship with you. Once you accept that, you can free yourself to move on to clients who do want that kind of thing.
If you have a story about a personal relationship with a client–or how you extricated yourself from an impersonal client relationship—let’s hear about it in the comments.
ANOTHER great post, Corinne. This is exactly what I needed to read… I have gotten so frustrated with these big-box translation outfits who don’t care about quality at all, just the number of words they can churn through the door. I work with both big-box outfits and smaller outfits, and vastly prefer the boutique companies. Thus my strategy for next year is to get more of those smaller companies as clients, as well as direct clients.
Thanks, Eliza! Glad it was helpful!
Perfect—every word! 🙂 I’ve had both types of clients: I myself prefer one-on-one relationships with direct clients who care about quality, ask intelligent questions, and actually READ my work. But I cut my teeth on “cog in the machine” work for big agencies, and that can be very lucrative. And I don’t dislike project management portals for downloading/uploading files and invoices: To me, that’s just efficient and smart, not impersonal. A good client will personalize it to make you feel human and valued!
Thanks, Michael! Great to hear from someone who has worked “both sides of the aisle” and sees the advantages of each!
Excellent post, Corinne, Spot on, as usual. Not everyone (freelancer or company) has the same approach to our business, and what is desirable to one may not be to another. But it is possible to find good fits and cultivate mutually beneficial relationships in our industry. You just have to know what you want and go after it with a laser focus. As with personal relationships, you may need to kiss a few toads before you find what you want, but it will pay off. Thanks again for another insightful post.
Thanks, Steve! I always think of you as someone who explains these concepts really well, and who makes a very sincere effort to build bridges between freelancers and agencies; thanks a lot for your comment!
Thank you Corinne for this excellent post. I don’t like to be treated as a cog and I really appreciate when I can develop a more personal relationship with my clients. Unfortunately, the industry is changing and big agencies need to have ever-larger volume translated and ever-shorter deadlines. I often receive mass email, but the rates are often so low that I don’t even take the time to answer. We are working in the communication field and it is sad to realize that the basic values of communication between humans are slowly disappearing. Hopefully we still find clients out there that value real face-to-face communication with their translators.
Thanks for your comment! Yes, I do think that it’s still possible to find clients who want a personal relationship and direct communication. However, I also think large agencies are in the somewhat unenviable position of applying an industrial scale to a fairly artisanal process. For example if you compare how translation was done in medieval times to how it’s done now, it’s really not that different-as compared to, say, the process for manufacturing physical objects. But it’s also true that the industrial scale is unappealing to a lot of good translators, leaving large agencies with lots of translators who are either total beginners or can’t find other work (that’s not universally true, but just speaking generally). Thanks a lot for your comment!
First and foremost, great piece.
I am both a translator and the head of translation and quality assurance at a translation boutique. While some words from this perspective might be of interest. Below, I offer five bits of advice that might be useful for freelancers to get the attention of people like me, who enjoy personal relationships with the freelancers they work with.
First: I don’t know whether freelancers are aware that translation agencies get bombarded with resumes from serious translators and scammers alike on a regular basis. We just don’t have the time to review each one. Certain days are better than others, and these will vary from industry to industry. On such days, I generally don’t have the time to look at freelancer email applications. What is more, if I do get email applications on these days, I suspect that the freelancers are not familiar with the norms in this industry or has too much time on their hands … or, in other words, that they are not working in the same segment in which I might want or could use their help. Whether this is justified or not … on those days, I have to get things done and do not have any time to recruit, even if I wanted to.
Second: Write a brief cover email summarizing (a) who you are, (b) why you are contacting the agency/boutique, (c) what your qualifications are, and (d) why you think it a good idea to explore whether you and the agency/boutique are good fit. I recently received an email just like this; it was a grand total of about 200 words, including signature block and contact information. Just perfect. After a 15 minute telephone call, we arranged to bring the freelancer on-board. Everyone seems happy at the moment.
Third: Format your resumes modestly and simply. A good portion of the resumes I receive are poorly formatted, with font sizes, colors, and weights that cause physiological strain. These, I close immediately and delete. I can only imagine what the work product from these translators looks like. If you want to impress, send your resume as a Word document that shows off your formatting skills; formatting simply and well in Word is (because of all the choice) a horribly difficult task that takes lots of practice. Or if you think the resume’s design is important, prepare your resume in a DTP program; that’ll be obvious to anyone who looks in the properties of the PDF (I always look at the properties). If you claim you pay attention to the details, let the first piece of evidence be the care you used in putting your resume together.
Fourth: Avoid typos & spell your names correctly. Words are our business. Get’em right. If we cannot get our resumes right, we can’t expect other people to believe that our work product will be right. This is a small point, yes, but you wouldn’t believe how often translators misspell words or spell their names in two (or three) different ways: as a signature, in the signature block, and/or on the resume. I cannot be expected to believe that freelancers will produce accurate work product, if they don’t even know their names.
Fifth: Be interesting. Show off your writing ability. Show off your business acumen or write with wit and humor or whatever else tickles your fancy and expresses who you are. But do keep it short and sweet.
Well, those are my five cents.
Thank you so much; that’s a great perspective, and I think it’s rare that freelancers hear directly from someone on the agency side! When I look at the number of spam/unsolicited resumes that *I* receive (despite the fact that I rarely outsource work, and then only to two or three very trusted colleagues), I wonder how agencies cope–since agencies actually need translators! Thanks a lot for your insights.
“Clients who want the same translator to work on every project, and whose businesses depend on consistency and confidentiality, are probably not the best fit for a company; they really need a freelancer.”
That’s exactly what I, being a freelancer, am aiming at. Thank you for pointing me out that I am on the right track.
Wonderful post.
Personally, I prefer to create personal connections with clients, as I find the referrals from those clients often lead me to interesting work opportunities.
I work for larger companies as well, but only if they at least provide me with a human I can contact directly at the company.