2024: The year in review!

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When I assess the year, I try to look at three things:

• How much did I earn, compared to my goal?
• How much did I enjoy the work?
• How happy am I with life in general?

The executive summary for this year; details below!

• I’d rate my 2024 income as an 8 out of 10. I made US $125K, down from 135K in 2023 but still meeting my goal. While I’m not unhappy with that amount, it’s frustrating to look back at my 2021 wrap-up, where I set a medium-term goal of 140-150K (the freelance equivalent of a six-figure salaried job) and realize I’m still not there.
• Enjoyment of work: Honestly probably a 10 out of 10. I’m happy with my mix of translation, interpreting, and teaching/writing, and I turn down work that doesn’t seem interesting, meaningful, or both. My work really hasn’t been affected by AI, for which I’m grateful.
• Life in general: Life is good! I achieved all of the goals I set in my 2024 post (other than one that I voluntarily abandoned), plus some additional things (started working with a business coach, more on this later), and am allowing myself to jettison a few things that no longer serve me (ditto: more below).

Where did my income come from?

This year, I worked for 19 clients (agencies and direct clients, not counting individuals), I didn’t track how many words I translated, but I interpreted 189 days, including 93 court and 96 conference. This is pretty much a repeat of 2023, when I worked for 22 clients and interpreted 193 days, but I did slightly more conference interpreting work this year.

My translation work came from fewer, larger clients this year; the piecemeal nature of my translation work in 2022 and 2023 bothered me, so this was a good change after I landed a couple of law firms and a couple of NGOs as direct clients.

I earned exactly US $125,000. When I say “earned,” I mean gross income (everything I made) minus subcontracting. I subcontract a small amount of work to guest instructors for Training for Translators, and I don’t count that as income. This came from:

• Book royalties: 2K
• Direct language work (translation and interpreting): 72K
• Teaching and consulting: 51K

For various reasons, I’m giving one number for “direct language work,” but I’m roughly 2/3 interpreting, 1/3 translation, and I’m OK with that mix.

Income data points

I track my income based on how much I deposited that month, not how much I invoiced. My highest-earning month was November (more than 16K), and my lowest-earning was October (5K). This wasn’t surprising given that interpreting work drops off significantly in July and August and I don’t run Training for Translators classes in July or August, plus the summer was extra-extra disrupted by my husband being badly injured in a mountain bike accident (now on the mend), but it’s a pretty dramatic difference!

Of the 12 months in 2024, I made more than $10,000 in eight out of 12 months. I’m happy with that number, but I’d like to aim for more consistency; ideally I’d like to be down to maybe one sub-10K month rather than four!

Letting go of what no longer serves you

As an Upholder, I have a hard time letting go of unfinished things. And yet, sometimes I have to admit that I need to “let it go.” This year, I’m doing that with two things:

• Reedsy, an online platform for book publishing services that I was really excited about joining for book translation work. The application process was pretty extensive: you have to have five published book translations, then do a live training session, then have them approve your profile. In a year on Reedsy I got only two inquiries, both of whom decided to go with someone less expensive, so I decided to deactivate my profile.
• AIIC, the International Association of Conference Interpreters. I’ve been a pre-candidate for three years (the maximum), and I have more than enough conference interpreting days, but no sponsors (you can read more about the AIIC candidacy system on their website if you’re interested). AIIC is a really great organization, and/but it’s all about the network, and it’s a very different network than the network I have. As someone who doesn’t live in a major city and does almost exclusively remote conference interpreting, I just don’t come into contact with many AIIC members aside from other new-ish interpreters (and you can’t be a sponsor until you’ve been an AIIC member for a number of years), I could have used my dual Swiss citizenship to work in Europe, but that’s difficult with the AIIC domicile policies, and AIIC has a lot of in-person events that I could have attended, but didn’t. This isn’t anything negative about AIIC, just something that’s not going to work out for me, at least right now.

Trends I see in the language professions

I feel like this was the year that Things Really Changed, especially in the translation world. ChatGPT came on the scene in late 2022, and by early 2024, it felt to me like most agencies had made the leap to machine translation with a human editor. I just don’t see agencies offering that much “pure” translation work any more, unless the files aren’t readable by a computer.

I see a few results from this:

• In my experience, translators (and here we’re not talking about interpreters) who either diversified (copywriting, multilingual SEO, subtitling, high-end editing, etc.) or boarded the direct client train a few years ago seem to largely be doing well or even very well.
• On the flip side, translators who worked primarily or exclusively for agencies seem to largely be struggling.
• At this year’s ATA conference, I talked to a number of translators in the direct client market, who said, “Work has never been better,” and I talked to a number of translators in the agency market who said, “I’m barely holding on,” or who had even taken other, totally unrelated jobs (restaurants, pet sitting) to make ends meet.

My direct translation clients rarely mention MT/AI, other than out of curiosity (“Do you use it?”) or to verify that I don’t use it. This may be due to their own areas of specialization (law firms, NGOs) or this may just be the direct client market in general. But I do think we’re seeing, and will continue to see, a radical reshuffle of the translation profession and a lot of people looking for other careers.

Working with a business coach

This year, I tried to broaden my perspective on my business. That led me to join a couple of freelance writer discussion groups, which in turn led me to start working with a business coach. This has been tremendously helpful, and one of the best things I’ve done in a long time. I’ve been a full-time freelancer since 2002, and I tend to hang out in a lot of the same places online. I value that kind of continuity, but especially when it comes to marketing Training for Translators, I needed some new perspectives (and I got them!!).

Many of us are cheap about investing in our businesses; even if we’re willing to pay for advice, we want someone who will talk to us for an hour and fix all of our issues. I accepted from the start that I needed to make a longer-term investment, and decided to spend $1,500 on a three-month coaching package. I recouped that investment in the first month, and I’m now in a groove of spending an hour a day on business development work, where I work on my own, non-urgent, “when I get around to it” projects.

Goal analysis

Let’s wrap it up with a goal analysis, then over to you to look at your own statistics! Here’s how I did on last year’s goals:

• Maintain income above 125K: I was actually right at 125K, but we’ll put this in the Achieved column.
• Take a subtitling class: No, simply because I decided that with the amount of interpreting I’m doing, it’s too much audio-based work. So we’ll put this in the “Decided not to” column.
• Finish Getting Started as a Freelance Interpreter. Yes! Not published yet, but the publisher has the manuscript.
• Keep up the same volume of translation work: Yes, and I was able to land a couple of translation anchor clients.
• Keep prioritizing my wellbeing and happiness: Yes. Aside from my husband’s bike accident, life this year was really good. I took an impromptu trip to Switzerland with my sister-in-law, spent part of the summer in British Columbia, climbed nine 14,000-foot mountains with my daughter, meditated regularly, rang in 2025 in Costa Rica, and did a couple of challenges at the yoga studio!
• Go to cello camp or play in a community orchestra: Check! I joined Denver Adult Strings Camp and played in two of their orchestra sessions!

Looking ahead, here’s what I’m aiming for in 2025:

• Higher income. It’s bugging me that I’ve had the goal of 140-150K since 2021 and haven’t gotten there yet.
• Work roughly the same amount I’m working now: I’d like to keep the same volume of translation and interpreting work I have now.
• Mix it up with Training for Translators: Working with a business coach made me realize that there’s a ton more I could be doing with Training for Translators. I have ~4,500 people on the mailing list and I’m consistent with the newsletter, but I tend to do the same things, in the same way, over and over again. Lots of new ideas on this front!
• Prepare the 20th anniversary edition of How to Succeed as a Freelance Translator. I honestly don’t feel old (I’m 53) but somehow, HSFT is coming up on 20 years since I published the first edition. Maybe I wrote it when I was in second grade?? At any rate, that’s my next book project, to be published in early 2026.
• Get in a routine of spending an hour a day on things I choose to work on. I think this is really important: I want to devote an hour a day to work that is not for clients and not immediately deadline-driven. So far I’ve done this for the five days I’ve been back at work…lol…now I just have to keep it up!
• Meditate daily, exercise most days, and keep cultivating my non-screen hobbies, attend an in-person cello camp: These are all things I’m either doing or are in the works, but I just want to put them out there for accountability purposes.

That’s it! 2024 in a nutshell! I hope this analysis helps you with your own business goals, and thanks for reading!

Corinne McKay (classes@trainingfortranslators.com) is the founder of Training for Translators, and has been a full-time freelancer since 2002. An ATA-certified French to English translator and Colorado court-certified interpreter, she also holds a Master of Conference Interpreting from Glendon College. For more tips and insights, join the Training for Translators mailing list!