2023: The year in review!

Greetings, Training for Translators readers, and happy 2024! I hope you all got some well-deserved time off over the holidays, and I’m excited to dive into the new year with all of you. The Training for Translators year kicks off next week:

• On Tuesday, January 16, I’m teaching a one-hour “flash” class on Using objective data to set your translation and interpreting rates. The start of the year is a great time to run the numbers and see how much you need to charge in order to earn your target income. Most of us either don’t know or can’t face this “big number,” so let’s attack it together. Registration is $50 (special price for this one-hour class).
• On Wednesday, January 17, my four-week self-paced class, Getting started as a freelance translator or interpreter…in the age of AI kicks off. This class (which I’m always updating, to reflect the new realities of our professions) has launched 750+ freelancers, and you could be next! Registration ($190; ATA members use coupon code ATA for $30 off) includes four weeks of self-paced videos and bonus material, plus question and answer videos to answer all of your questions each week.

2023: How it went!

On to this week’s topic, The year in review. I write this type of post every year (here’s last year’s) to go over the work I did, how much I earned, what worked, and what didn’t. I’ll start with the usual disclaimers:

• I find it helpful to talk about income; if I’m going to take business advice from another freelancer, I want to know the context: how much they earn, what they mean by “high rates” or “low rates,” how much work they have at those rates, etc. The purpose is not to brag about how much I earn, make you feel bad if you earn less, make you feel bad if you don’t want or need to earn what I earn, or anything else along those lines.
• That being said, you do you. If you find it cringe-y to talk about income, skip this newsletter. I earned $9,000 in 2003 and I was thrilled. If you’re happy with what you’re making, stick with it.

Executive summary: It was a good year, but there’s always room for improvement

2023 was a good year in my business. I did a lot of interesting work for good clients, I landed a few good new interpreting clients and had more work from my existing clients. Training for Translators’ classes did well, and I’m happy with the new model where I teach most of the classes, along with occasional guest instructors.

I set a higher income goal for this year and actually exceeded it.I’m happy with my translation income, but (for various reasons) I still haven’t found another “anchor” translation client to replace the major direct client I lost in 2022 (because their French project wrapped up).

My 2022 goals list was a mixed bag in terms of what I completed and what I didn’t: I’d like to translate another book, but so far nothing has panned out, and I didn’t finish Getting Started as a Freelance Interpreter, my half-finished book that will hopefully be the companion to How to Succeed as a Freelance Translator when it’s done. I had a good year as a person: I really believe that I am the business, and my own heath and wellness are a huge priority. Overall, I give this year two thumbs up; read on for details if you’d like.

By the numbers

In 2023, I worked for 22 clients total (translation and interpreting combined: this includes only direct clients and agencies, not individuals). I did 103 court interpreting assignments and 90 conference assignments, of which 165 were remote and 28 were in person. Training for Translators ended the year with 633 course registrations. From 2019-2022, I earned around US $110K per year (I define “earned” as my gross income minus subcontracting: I don’t include money that I simply took in and paid out to online course instructors, but I include everything else). That’s obviously a decent income, but I was dissatisfied with it, for two reasons:

• Stagnation isn’t good, and because our own expenses go up over time, earning the same usually means less buying power.
• I wanted to aim for the equivalent of a six-figure salaried income, which, because we freelancers pay our own taxes, benefits, vacation time, professional development, etc., is a lot more than 100K.

Last year, I set a 2023 income goal of 120K (and again, “income” means gross income after subcontracting) and I actually earned 130K, which I was really happy with. In 2022, my income was divided almost evenly in thirds: 33K from translation, 33K from interpreting, and 33K from teaching, writing, and consulting. This year, interpreting really expanded, and I earned $12K from court interpreting and $41K from conference interpreting, meaning that my interpreting income almost doubled from the previous year. Translation income was basically unchanged at 32K, and teaching, writing, and consulting were also up significantly, at 45K, due to some Training for Translators classes that did well, and some trainings that I did for other entities.

Interpreting

When I finished my conference interpreting Master’s at Glendon, my goal (which I thought was pretty optimistic) was to have my work volume consist of 50% translation and 50% interpreting within two years of graduating. In reality, I have so much interpreting work that I have to deliberately carve out time for translation (which I don’t want to stop doing) so that I don’t become exclusively an interpreter. Interpreting went really well this year: a couple of my regular clients sent me a lot more work than in 2022, and I landed a couple of new clients, which I was happy about from the perspective of avoiding the “all eggs in one basket” phenomenon.

Translation

As previously mentioned, I keep saying that I need to work on finding a new “anchor” translation client, and (due to inaction and lack of time on my part: no excuses here) it hasn’t happened yet. This year worked out well in terms of translation work, largely because a couple of my agency clients had large projects at decent rates (14-15 cents per word) that I enjoyed working on. I also did a fair bit of translation for my direct law firm clients, and I worked for a couple of asylum cases that needed both translation and interpreting. It all worked out, but the approach feels a little piecemeal and this is something that I’d like to work on.

As mentioned above, I’m interested in translating another book, so I was excited to be approved on Reedsy (an online marketplace for editors, designers, and translators). It’s a pretty extensive application process, you have to have at least five published book translations, then create a profile, then do a live online training. However, so far the experience has been pretty disappointing: I’ve only gotten two inquiries, both from independent authors who went with someone cheaper.

Online courses

Life at Training for Translators was good this year. We had a total of 633 people participate in master classes, four-week classes, and challenge groups, and reviews were generally excellent. Marketing T4T is pretty straightforward, consisting mostly of my e-mail list (~4,000 subscribers), blog (~6,000 views per month), and LinkedIn. Teaching most of the classes myself, with a few guest instructors whose classes I know will do well, has proved to be a good decision. No major changes planned on this front!

Vacation and expenses

I took a good amount of vacation this year: a family trip to Mexico, a friends trip to Iceland, and a work-cation in British Columbia, plus lots of ski and mountain bike trips in Colorado and Utah. My family wrapped up the year in Belize (totally amazing), which I’ll write about in a future post. No complaints on the travel front, and hopefully more to come this year!

My expenses were pretty much the same as last year. My office rent actually went down, from $590 a month to $499 a month. This wasn’t any hard-nosed negotiation on my part; my office landlord told me they were going to raise the rent, so I told them I wasn’t going to renew my lease, and they offered me a different (but still nice) office at a lower rent. Accounting remains expensive. I now pay $80 a a month to my accountant for payroll tax prep, $46 a month to Gusto for the service that actually pulls the money from my business account and then pays me plus the various tax entities, and $62 a month to QuickBooks, for a total of $188 a month in accounting fees, plus year-end tax return prep. This is a lot, but I have an S-Corp and I hate accounting so much that I don’t want to do any of this myself, plus I want to work with an accountant who will represent me to the IRS if I ever get audited, so I don’t see a real way around it. Other subscription fees (MailChimp, Zoom, Thinkific) just are what they are: no way around them unless I want to stop doing business.

Goals (last year’s and this year’s)

Here’s how I did on last year’s goals:

• Increase my income to at least 120K: Yes; I actually significantly exceeded this goal
• Find at least one more interpreting client with regular work: Yes, I actually found a few new interpreting clients
• Publish at least one new book: No (no excuses, I just didn’t do it)
• Translate another book: No (same story here: this is on me, I put out a few feelers, but nothing panned out)
• Continue teaching monthly master classes for T4T: Yes, these went really well
• Start learning to play the cello: Yes; and I’m in a really great online cello group

Here’s what I’m aiming for this year; we’ll see how I do!

• Maintain an income above 125K. I’m not sure every year will be as good as this year, but now that I’ve broken 125K, I’m hoping to stay there.
• Maybe take a subtitling class. I’ve been subtitling-curious for while, and maybe this is the year to take action.
• No, really…finish this darned book!!! I’m really hoping to get Getting Started as a Freelance Interpreter out the door.
• Keep up at least the volume of translation work that I have right now. This sounds crazy, but I feel like the demand for interpreting work is so high, that I have to put a deliberate effort into remaining also a translator, which I want to do.
• Keep prioritizing my wellness and happiness. I’ve gotten into a good routine of going to in-person yoga 10-15 times a month, doing stretching and strengthening pretty much every day, and taking enough vacation that I still really love my job.
• Either go to cello camp this summer, join a community orchestra, or both. I really love playing the cello, and my goal for this year is to do some in-person ensemble playing.

That’s it! The year in a nutshell (a pretty long nutshell: thanks for coming to my TED Talk!!). I hope these data points are helpful as you think about where your own freelance business might head this year.

Corinne McKay (classes@trainingfortranslators.com) is the founder of Training for Translators, and has been a full-time freelancer since 2002. She holds a Master of Conference Interpreting from Glendon College, is an ATA-certified French to English translator, and is Colorado court-certified for French interpreting. If you enjoy her posts, consider joining the Training for Translators mailing list!