But what if *your* translation business is dying?

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a newsletter and blog post on the topic, Is translation a dying profession? My opinion is: no, the translation profession is not dying, but I understand why people ask the question.

Here’s a related question: What should you do if your translation business is dying?

I’ve received a lot of interesting feedback on the initial article: several people posted comments on my blog, saying that while they are happy as translators, they would not encourage current high school or college students to become translators. More than a few people e-mailed me privately, saying that their translation work flow is a fraction of what it once was, or “I’m just hoping to hold on long enough to retire.” Also, for the record, not one but two translators I really respect, both in their 60s, told me when I went back to grad school for interpreting when I was 48, “If I were you, I sure wouldn’t be going to grad school for anything in the language professions; I’d do something completely different while you’re still young enough to get out.”

At the same time, the positive outlook isn’t just me. For every “my business is dying” translator I talk to, I talk to an equal number of people who say, “My income has doubled in the past two years,” “Even with a moderate amount of marketing, I’m finding a steady stream of new, well-paying clients,” “My clients are actually phobic about machine translation; they hire me because I do everything by hand, and they pay well for that.”

So..what’s going on here? I have a few theories that may or may not be correct:

• Most of all, adapting is hard. As I mentioned in the original article, I think many translators who started their businesses before the early 2000s have been accustomed to earning good money working for agencies and doing little to no marketing. That’s not the reality of the current market. I honestly like working for agencies, because I enjoy projects where I just translate. And this year I did land two new agency clients paying 14-15 cents per word, but the typical offer I get these days is around half of that, or even less (recently: “highly specialized” work paying $15 an hour: no thanks!). Adapting to this new reality is hard. Where these agencies are finding all of the great translators they claim to have, who will work for these types of rates, I have no idea, but they seem to be staying in business. Interestingly enough, I don’t experience this kind of downward price pressure in the conference interpreting market, even from agencies.
• Most translators don’t stick with any kind of marketing long enough to move the needle. I don’t mean that to be critical, it’s just true, and I know this because I see “under the hoods” of a lot of people’s translation businesses. When you don’t have a lot of work, you have a big advantage: time. When I started my freelance business, if I aimed to work 15 hours a week (my daughter was a baby at the time) and I only had three hours of paying work, I marketed for the other 12 hours. It’s rare that I see freelancers who are willing to put in that kind of effort, because they’d rather be translating. So would I! But if your business is withering, you need to take some sort of action.

Which brings us to…what to do if your translation business is dying. Here’s what I’d recommend:

• Realistically assess what’s going on: My sense is that too many freelancers are pursuing the “blood from a stone” system. Basically, thinking that if they just keep half-heartedly applying to a few agencies per year, well-paying work will miraculously appear. It’s totally fine to apply to agencies: as I mentioned above, there are still good agencies out there. But you need to be strategic (search them on Payment Practices or the ProZ Blue Board before you apply to them), and you need to contact them at least three to five times (online application, follow up by e-mail, contact their employees on LinkedIn, send them a handwritten card).
• Be honest about whether the market you’re pursuing can yield the results you want: Agencies are not evil. Realistically, agencies are where most freelancers start. *And* I know that it would be impossible for me to meet my financial goals by working for agencies. Thus, I put no (zero) proactive marketing time into applying to agencies. If they find me, great (and that does happen; don’t give up hope!). But I also know that all of my active marketing time has to go toward clients who can/will pay what I want to earn.
• Accept that it’s OK to do something else, in addition to or instead of translation: I hear from a lot of translators who are branching out into something else word-related: grant writing, sustainability report writing, copywriting, etc. It’s really OK to say: I can’t make enough money working for translation agencies, I don’t want to look for direct clients, so I think I’ll narrow my translation client base down to only the clients I really want to work with, and also do other things to make money. If you need someone to give you permission to do that, there you go.
• Make sure you’re doing work that you enjoy and are good at: Again, I see way too many freelancers just going through the motions (another day, another document that no one but the translator will ever read) instead of actively pursuing work that they feel excited about doing. I honestly don’t think I have much of a “secret sauce,” but if I do, I think this is it: I actively seek out work that makes me say, “Yesss I get to do this today.” If you don’t feel that way about your work, it’s time to look for clients who make you feel that way.